High School Teachers

Our high school teachers are some of the best people I know, who as a group work very hard to teach our kids so they will gain the knowledge and strategies to be successful in their lives.
That said, there are some things that are producing some low moral for our high school teachers at this time. Obviously, we are being asked to again take no raise, and in fact, we will have less take-home pay since our retirement system is taking another half percent out of our paychecks (not that we have a choice). Factoring in the cost of living, some of our business teachers have discovered that our Oakville high school teachers are actually making $3000 dollars less now than we were in 1976. Yesterday, we received an email from our superintendent about how this is teacher appreciation week and how much he appreciates us. Then we go and hear at our NEA negotiations package presentation meeting that we are not getting anything for next year. What a disconnect. Of course, this doesn't mean our administrators are not getting a raise. Our NEA president at yesterday's meeting made it clear that our super will be getting a nice raise for each of the next two years, since it is in his contract. It might be a show of good faith for him not to take the raise, but he hasn't said anything.
People keep writing into the Call about how overpaid we are, and how we got this huge six percent raise last year. There is no understanding that last year's raise doesn't even begin to make up for having little to no raises for the five years prior. With this year added in, it's around one percent a year, but since we didn't get the money till last year, it is actually less since we were not able to save or invest. We are all sick of this. It is hard to keep dealing in a fair way with kids who refuse to behave, call you names, throw things at you, threaten you, and then to realize that your community doesn't care about how hard you are trying to help these kids. High School Teachers are professionals, and deserve to be treated this way. I hope it happens in this district soon.