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Educational Crisis
To the editor:
I’m writing as a parent, an educator and a citizen concerning the issue of teachers’ salaries.
An x-student of mine from Rappahannock County High School is now working for IBM in Manassas producing chips for computers. With no college degree and three years of experiences, he’s earning over $25,000. A teacher w orking in our school system for 25 years, with a minimum of a bachelor’s degree and renewal of the teaching credential through additional college courses every five years, earns $19,300. This does not make sense. It must be changed.
The problem is larger than our county, of course. While the task of teaching has new difficulties, the salaries have not kept pace. Even in a community as stable as Rappahannock, teachers are coping with the effects of the unprecedented divorce rate here and the loss of many mothers to the work force who have been a crucial part of the educational support system. With the technological revolution, the complexity of knowledge is mushrooming at blinding speed. The competition and power of television for young people’s values and attention is a new factor in the learning equation. Teaching reading, writing and arithmetic is not as simple as it once was.
It is suicidal for our country to poorly reward those who guide and challenge the future generation. If we do not treasure our children, we cannot ask them to respect us. In an attempt to halt the brain drain from the teaching profession, Virginia’s executive branch has recommended an increase of 10% to base salaries each year. This approach will help make teachers’ wages more competitive with the private sector. The surrounding counties have been acting on the Governor’s recommendation for several years now' and their systems are looking particularly attractive to our teachers at this point.
Rappahannock has seen the effects
90.8%