No school administrator left behind

To the editor:

If I may borrow a sentence from Michael Heath's Thursday letter to the editor, in which he quoted a Teamsters union official saying, "We don't give a damn about your company, but we will make sure the last Teamster driver is well-paid" -- apply that remark to the statement from Stephen Augspurger, executive director of the Clark County Association of School Administrators, as to why the long list of places to save money in the Clark County School District did not include the bureaucracy. "We have contracts that were negotiated in good faith, and we would expect the district to honor that."

In other words, "We don't give a damn about your children, but we will keep our jobs and pay scales."

Mr. Augspurger is too young to remember the early 1960s, when we teachers had signed a contract before school was out for the summer, only to come back and, on the first day of class, be told at 9 a.m. that "You have until noon to either sign a new contract (for less pay) or clean out your desk." The teachers union shrugged, the administrators said they meant it, and most of us signed the new contract.

These are not ordinary times anywhere in the state, so perhaps some extraordinary measures are needed. I have long thought that every administrator, from the superintendent on down, ought to spend one-quarter of his or her time in a classroom teaching kids.

That is, after all, what the school district is all about, but once a person gets into an office -- or worse, one of the administration's buildings -- that person's job of pushing paper around becomes the most important "business" of the Clark County School District.

I don't see it happening, but I do think a whole lot of money can be switched from administrators' pay and benefits to benefit the kids in the classrooms. Having 40 or even 50 high school students in one room doesn't help anyone, but it does keep the administration members in their well-paid positions as "educators" rather than teachers.

We have come a long way from the days when the adjective "principal" meant "principal teacher."

George Appleton

LAS VEGAS

Parental involvement

To the editor:

In response to your Friday editorial, "Merit pay":

Parents need to be part of the system. Many parents are unwilling to accept responsibility for their child's poor performance in school. They would rather blame the teacher for not understanding their child, but the truth is the teacher can only teach a child who is willing to learn and who has a parent who is willing to support the child and the teacher.

When parents and students do not do this, it doesn't make any difference what the teacher does in the classroom. So, Review-Journal editors, please understand this situation before you start blasting teachers for non-performance. We are doing our best with what we have -- and what type of parents these kids have at home.

Ken Zelasko

LAS VEGAS

Corporate travel

To the editor:

The CEOs of the Big Three automakers recently made their case to Congress for a bailout. The fact that these big shots chose to fly to the congressional inquiries in corporate jets instead of taking commercial flights is raising the hairs on some necks. How dare these guys come hat in hand for a bailout and not be humble enough? How dare they come in their private airplanes?

It seems to me that those who are getting upset over the travel arrangements of these CEOs are concentrating on the hole, but not the doughnut. Perhaps we should consider that these three guys are among the most influential and powerful people in the United States. Do we really expect that they should go through a two-hour boarding and security screening process before they board a commercial airplane?

And speaking of security, have the pundits considered that the use of private airplanes by these important guys is for their protection as well as efficiency? Are we considering the value of their time when we get annoyed that they fly in company-owned private jets instead of on United or American?

Maybe these three guys didn't show up before the Congress with all the answers that the congressional representatives wanted them to have. But it seems the real issue is being overlooked when we criticize how they got to the meeting.

I for one am not going to be upset if one or all of these guys chooses to go to Washington next month on their company jets. If doing so gives them more time to prepare themselves to answer the tough questions that will be put to them, that's probably a good thing.

Dennis Sarfaty

HENDERSON