School Priorities Are Out of Order

* Teachers of the Orange Unified School District, after having been betrayed by the present school board in recent years, now find that their own professional organization, Orange Unified Educators Assn., has failed them once again during the just concluded contract negotiations.

The veteran teachers of the district are the lowest paid in the county, and thanks to a self-serving negotiating team will remain so. These are the same teachers who have seen the least experienced teachers receive pay raises of 19% to 25%, voted to take a 2.5% pay cut during the recession, and are virtually earning the same salary as they did in 1990!

Members of our organization resent not being a part of the negotiating process and not being allowed to vote on a potentially lucrative buyout for our lifetime health benefits for fear of its passage.

When an agreement was reached, an agreement our negotiating team previously said they would never accept, we find we are betrayed again.

It should not come as a surprise that many veteran teachers are opting to leave our district, and many more would if a system weren’t in place that requires them to take significant pay cuts when changing districts.

RON THRASH

Orange

* This is a thrilling time to be a teacher at Santa Ana High School. Changes we’ve been working on for several years are building into wonderful new programs to better meet the needs and challenges of our students.

We are creating pathways for our students to connect their career goals with real opportunities by coordinating our classes with the community colleges and the university.

In addition, we are creating partnerships with the business and professional communities to provide mentorships, apprenticeships and real world experiences. All this is in an effort to make school more relevant and satisfying for our students and to propel them into the future as well-directed individuals, aimed at success.

For many years, teachers at this school have volunteered to teach up to three extra, unpaid days each year to provide time to meet and plan these changes. If a corporation had decided to implement such sweeping changes, it would most probably have hired a consulting firm at huge expense to provide massive support for its staff. The faculty at SAHS has done this on our own, tailoring the programs to exactly fit the needs of our students.

I know that the other schools in Santa Ana are doing similarly exciting things. So it is sad and disheartening that the Santa Ana School Board, as represented by Aida Espinoza in her statement to The Times (“Students Say Teachers Deserve an F in Fashion,” Aug. 28) looked at teachers working miracles, some wearing jeans, and noticed only the jeans.

ELLEN KNOPF

Tustin

* The Sept. 10 ruling by U.S. District Judge William Shubb to allow the Orange Unified School District to teach Spanish-speaking children in “‘English only” is clearly a step backward, not just for those children but for all the young children who could benefit from learning a second language at a time in their lives when they are most capable of doing so.

“The court will not second-guess the education choices made by educational authorities,” said Judge Shubb. There would be no need to try to “second-guess” choices if the judge could recognize the fact that not all educators are in agreement with the decision made by their school board, nor by their administration.

As a veteran teacher in California and having worked with many language groups, I can testify as to the advantage of being able to speak in a child’s own language.

This is particularly true for the Spanish language, as it is the language spoken by the second-largest population group in our community. There is a vast amount of research in the study of the human brain which indicates that the early years are the most critical and that young children can learn more than one language very well.

However, this research has also shown us that children learn best in their own language to begin with, followed by a comprehensive plan to allow transition to the new language.

ELEANOR STAFFORD

Orange