John - thanks for the advice. I'll leave my high and mighty horse in the stable today.

But...

You proved my point. I absolutely agree that you have every right to say whatever you want on this message board. My challenge to you was to simply bring something intellegent to the table instead of an angry rant. I challenged you to bring a solution that would work. You didn't rise to the challenge, rather you proved my point by trying to insult me. Did I once insult you? Did I question your intellegence? Did I insinuate in any way that you shouldn't have a voice or an opinion? No. All I asked for was a logical discussion that aimed for a workable solution.

But I forgot this was the "rant" message board instead of the "solutions" message board. My apologies.

You should be commended for being active in your children's schooling. Far too many parents are not, yet they are the first to complain about the system when they perceive it fails their children.

That's why I get so frustrated with with this message board. Everybody has an opinion, everybody is angry, everybody has an axe to gring, but nobody ever has a reasonable solution.

Which brings us to Mark. You are correct, almost anybody can be replaced. But do you really want to go through that process? I don't know how big S. Butler is, but let's say there are 100 teachers district wide. Who's going to interview that many people? I do a lot of hiring at my job, and I often interview 3 or 4 people for every 1 I hire. That's 300-400 interviews. Sorry Mark, there arn't that many unemployeed teachers in this are that could start ASAP. And besides, if you limit the interviews to 100, what are you getting? Like I said before, teachers who can't get jobs at other districts. Is that who you want as your ENTIRE STAFF? Belive me Mark, I think very carefully about what I say before I post it here.

Jes - I agree to some degree with your idea, but it sounds like you feel that parents should be dictating what happens in schools, because new teachers would be more easily twisted to do what parents want. Forgive me if I mis-read your post, but that is a common thought among parents. I ask though, who should be dictating what goes on in school? The people we hire who are trained in it, or the parents who mean well but don't know Bloom's Taxonomy from a hole in the ground? (look it up if you believe John's assertion that I'm not an intellectual!)

I agree with Mike's thoughtful post. We all want compensated like our peers, in fact - we expect it. Why should we be suprised that teachers want to be paid like teachers at other districts? Just because they work with children, does that mean they are supposed to be less concerned with money than the rest of us? I don't think so.