Dear Editor:
Re: Behind the dispute - a teacher speaks out, Burnaby NOW, Jan. 20.
I am not qualified to judge whether Ms. Kelly Shellard's reasons for school teachers to be exempt from the public sector's net-zero increase is valid, but I do question one of her assumptions. I don't know anyone who would hold that teachers work only from "9 a.m. to 3 p.m."
Nobody I know is unaware of, nor questions, the fact that school teachers work lots and lots of time outside of class time. It seems to vary from one to another, but no teacher I know of works less than two extra hours every day and some as much as four; the average seems to be about three a day. That makes a nine-hour day including lunchtime, which is often interrupted. This estimate is confirmed by most teachers of my acquaintance, and very few parents would dispute it.
The 190-day work-year comes out to a bit more than 1,700 hours total, on average. A teacher with 10 years' experience earns $74,000 per annum: $43.25 per hour plus two or three dollars worth of benefits - more if they have a master's. Teaching is a high-stress job, and I don't presume to judge whether teachers' pay and benefit scale exactly matches that of similar professionals, but it doesn't appear to me that Burnaby taxpayers have been seriously miserly when one considers the economic times.
A. McCallum, Burnaby
