Education funding still isn’t a state priority

To the editor:

In response to your Nov. 30 editorial, "The state's true spending priority":

I read with interest once again your take on the good deal that public employees have. You most astutely affirm the reason that Nevada's education system ranks near the bottom in every national category; you get what you pay for.

Let's see, where shall I start? The 3 to 5 percent step raises that "public school employees" (oops, I mean teachers) get? Actually, it averages about 21/2 percent, with no teachers near 5 percent. And 25 percent of our step increases were taken this year to fund the retirement health care subsidies of those already retired -- if you got a step increase.

Annual step increases come for five years with a bachelor's degree and up to 14 years with the equivalent education of a doctorate. After that, raises depend solely on the discretion of discerning legislators, many of whose opinions are affected by people such as yourself.

I wonder if you would be willing to work at a job where there were no raises after, let's say, 10 years, unless your boss happened to feel like it every two to three years or so, and where top-notch performance had nothing to do with whether you got one. I wonder if you would just "show up." Oh, and those step increases are on top of a $35,000-a-year starting salary with a college degree.

And these are not nine-month jobs, they are 2,000-hour-a-year jobs, just like everyone else's. Just follow a teacher around for a month. Lest you say teaching is a choice, it is, and thank God people are still willing to do it.

And that 4 percent raise that we got in July? In real terms, over the past 10 years, even the pay that teachers do receive is not close to keeping up with inflation, unlike most other professions. How dare we? Did you happen to notice the pay raises that the nurse's union recently received? As citizens, we pay for health care, too. And while I agree that it is imperative we provide adequate and top-notch health care, it is unfortunate that you don't feel the same way about education.

Last, unless you think I have not chosen my profession wisely, and that this is sour grapes, teaching is my second career. I write you having made the decision to teach knowing I would receive substandard pay for what I do because I was able to save from my work in Southern Nevada over the past 30 years and want to give something back. I am in a fairly unique position to survive with a family in spite of teaching.

But there are not many people who are in my position, nor who are willing to look at a 30-year career in a field where they will be required to have their hand out to people so unwilling to give. It seems that as long as good-paying jobs that do not require a college degree exist, apparently there isn't the heart to give education in Nevada its proper place.

Is the economy down and out right now? Of course. As much or more than anybody, I probably feel the effects; the investments I had counted on to help support my family while I teach have been halved; but it seems to me to be but the latest reason not to pay teachers what they are worth. There's always something else, and it has become the norm.

This is not an issue about the state's true spending priority, it is an issue about whether education is a priority at all in Nevada -- and it isn't.

Tim Massanari

HENDERSON