Jim, let's do a little math ok? For the sake of argument, let's even run with your statements about teaching being part time work, and that teachers just hand out a book, tell the kids to read it, and then read a magizine.

Based upon those statements, you must think teaching is little more than babysitting. We pay our sitter $30 per day to watch our child in her home. That's the going rate in the Cranberry area. Now, she watches 8 kids a day. That's $240 a day - that comes to $62,400 per year, give or take. That salery would put her at the top of the pay scale at Seneca Valley. She needs no licence, no college degree. She doesn't have to teach anything. All she has to do is keep them safe and feed them, which is a tough job!

Your teachers at the elementary level have anywhere from 18 to 25 kids per day. Using the same math, that would be $108,000 per year (20 kids at 180 days).

Sounds like a bargain to me when the teachers do so much more than babysit.

It's so easy for people to just use broadbrush generalities about "all teachers" because they might have had a few bad ones 30 years ago. It's unfair to do that. My township road crew has plowed off my mailbox three of the last four years. Do you hear me blasting all townwhip road workers as careless or lazy workers? No, just the one who can't seem to keep the plow on the road. Just the same, let's not paint all the teachers with the same brush either. I know many who care deeply about what they do, and are as upset about the few underachieving teachers in their ranks as the rest of us.

Lisa, as for taking personal days off, they only get 2 personal days a school year. I don't think taking an extra day here or there will really make that much difference. How many kids to you think are going to be there on Dec 26? I bet 60% don't show up. I was in high school during a strike once, so I remember. My parents made me go the day after Christmas, and hardly anybody was there. The teachers couldn't do anything anyway because they'd have to reteach it to the majority of the class the next day.

It's won't make any difference. Can't you work with your kids at home, if you care so much about it?