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gates m Roanoke, nor should it have been.
In terms of teachers’ pay, Virginia ranks 31st among the 50 states. The Standards of Quality enacted by the General Assembly several years ago have improved the situation to a degree, but in truth the resulting pay hikes have not even kept pace with inflation.
What members of other professional groups would be expected to start their careers at annual salaries as low as $10,745, the entry level wage in Carroll County? The top starting salary of $15,045 in Alexandria is not all that great, either, considering the cost of living in Northern Virginia.
So at their Roanoke convention the members of the VEA served notice that something has to be done, and what they propose is enough to scare the wits out of state and local legislators in labor-shy Virginia.
They want the right of - perish the words! - collective bargaining with school divisions to negotiate the levels of their salaries.
Furthermore, if the General Assembly does not grant them this right, the teachers say they will initiate unspecified “job actions” to bring pressure to get it. A final decision on just what action will be taken will be made at the organizations’ 1984 convention in Norfolk.
Job actions can mean anything from “working-tocontract” to sick-outs to strikes. In Virginia the last, of course, would be illegal.
Working-to-contract means the teacher would work eight hours a day, and that would be all. There would be no after-hours tutoring, no grading of papers at home, and no lesson preparations outside the contracted-for work day.
As any teacher knows, this would be a disaster for the school system if it were applied on a large scale.
Teachers participating in any of this sort of activity could, of course, be fired and otherwise punished. Substitutes could be brought in who would be willing to work under the objectionable wage conditions. But their qualifications would likely be so dismally inadequate that it would be an ever greater disaster for the school system.
The point is that none of this should be necessary or even threatened.
Virginia is not an impoverished state, but even if it could afford to do nothing else, a teachers’ wage set at a level which would attract the best instructional talent available to the school system would be the wisest possible investment of public funds.
The alarm bells of militancy clanging at the VEA convention in Roanoke clearly signal that time may be getting short for the legislators and local governing bodies to address this problem in a realistic way.
If they do not, there may be big trouble ahead for public education in the Commonwealth.
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