Letter to the Editor Re. Teacher Salaries

Hi,
I sent the following 'Letter to the Editor' to Foster's on May 15th, and they have yet to contact me regarding publication. I suspect I may have been a little too harsh on them, though my comment on "newspaper owners" was meant for more than just them.

In any case, if you'd be willing to print this in your blog, I'd really appreciate it. I'm starting to doubt that it'll get published anywhere else.

Thanks,
Dave Sanborn

To the Editor:
Apparently, my wife's been holding out on me. If you were to believe the spin presented in Foster's list of the salaries and benefits received by Dover's school teachers in 2007, she took home over $62,000.

Like Pavlov's dog, I'm sure that the usual suspects are already salivating over the numbers, ready to whine about out-of-control salaries, and teachers who live like Donald Trump. And without fully digesting what these numbers mean, it would be real easy to buy into such suggestions. But since when does ANYONE tack on their employer's insurance and benefit costs to their take-home pay?

Ignoring any concerns about privacy in this discussion (thanks for setting the bar, Foster's!) my wife's PRE-TAX salary was actually $39,000 last year, which came after 10 years of teaching. For those of you about to roll your eyes and suggest that her salary comes easily, don't. Summer vacations are a trade-off for the fact that her workday seldom ever ends when the bell rings..

Educating our children is an important task, with plenty of inherent challenges. Being forced to endure attacks from the more well-heeled members of our community (like, say, those who own newspapers) shouldn't be one of them.

Regards,
David Sanborn