Do the math. When a teacher is paid a yearly salary of $60,000 with $9,600 for health benefits, and she instructs 32 children for six hours a day for 181 school days, she earns a measly $2 per hour.

Additionally, this teacher volunteers her "free" time for parent-teacher conferences, lesson preparation, correcting and grading students' completed assignments and mandatory staff meetings.

Yes, the state's budget crisis is adversely affecting the budget for San Jose Unified, but asking teachers' [to contribute more toward their] medical benefits is an absurd suggestion.

San Jose Unified can save money without gouging teachers' compensation. First they can dump all the standardized testing; that should save a bundle of money. Second, the school board can require credentialed district office personnel to substitute in classrooms once a week. Again, more money saved.

Teachers deserve pay raises, and teachers deserve medical benefit packages that the rest of us envy. Why? Because teachers are doing the most important work in our society, they are educating our children.

K.C. Tanner

Glen Una Avenue

San Jose teachers have already given enough

If the newspaper has a concern about teachers in the San Jose Unified School District and the medical benefits they receive, it might take the time to check with their union, the San Jose Teachers Association.

Here are a few facts that you might have learned: This year SJTA and other employee unions agreed to a change in the medical plan that will save the district more than $1 million over the next year. SJTA meets regularly with the district to discuss ways to reduce medical costs and improve service. The percentage of the district's budget that goes to medical costs has actually decreased over the past few years. SJTA makes a decision each year to take a full salary increase or to pay for full medical benefits.

In 2001, when other teachers in the area were negotiating salary increases of more than 10 percent, San Jose Unified School District teachers got an 8 percent raise because we used 2 percent to pay for increased health costs. If our medical costs are a bit high compared to other districts, it is because our salaries are somewhat lower.

We believe that money spent on medical benefits, which is not taxed, is a better use of these funds than a few dollars a month in taxable income.

Gerie Bledsoe
CTA/SJTA Executive Director

Marlene Mattoon
SJTA President

District commended for listening to people

On Jan. 22, the San Jose Unified School District Board announced its decision to not cut the middle school electives next year, nor will it end class-size reductions in grades kindergarten through second grade.

I commend the board for listening to the community and for remaining true to the task of educating our children. Many parents became involved in the emotional fight to save our children's right to a strong, well-rounded education. The cuts proposed would have had a detrimental, and in most cases, a permanent effect on our middle school children, including an increase in dropout rates, a loss of interest in the arts and amplifying the inequalities between the district's middle schools. It would also have been the last straw in sending many parents out of the district and to private schools.

I realize that budget cuts still need to be made, and they will likely be painful. But I now have hope that the board looks in the appropriate places to make those cuts.

Carrie Maietta

Willow Glen