The WCAEA needs to put aside its Tredyffrin/Easttown "pay matrix obsession" ... and begin sharing the private sector misery as described below:

Kodak retirees lose health, welfare benefits

Matthew Daneman and Tom Tobin, USA TODAY, 2:38PM EST November 6. 2012
Eastman Kodak won court approval Monday to quit providing health and welfare benefits to 56,000 U.S. retirees and dependents. The ruling, made Monday by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Allan Gropper, is a major one in Kodak's Chapter 11 bankruptcy and restructuring. Kodak had been seeking court OK to quit offering such benefits by the end of the year.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/11/05/kodak-retirees-lose-benefits/1684135/

However, our PA legislators are to receive a little more than a 2% pay increase, effective 12/01/12, and the average salary will be over $83,000. I think I am going to send them your post with your links, Star. I think they need it more than teachers do.

You see folks ... this is what taxpayers have to deal with - here we have what passes for a WCASD teacher (supposedly with a master's degree, who pretends to care about the children she teaches), brashly stating that teachers deserve to exploit the parents of those children more than the criminals they have campaigned to put into office for their collective bargaining conspiracies.

Hahahaha. Star you do make me laugh!!! My point was that SOME people think that TEACHERS are gouging the taxpayers when the fact is it is our state legislators who are really gouging the tax payers; of which I am one. Cite me a fact where I or my colleagues exploit parents. I just had parent/teacher conferences. My parents are outstanding and supportve of their childrens' educations. MY parents THANKED me for the hard work. Yes, that is very important to me, but so is the fact that teaching is a PROFESSION, as well as a CALLING. I, like a lot of people, need to support my family. What is so wrong with that?

Here is one huge fact of parent exploitation - In Pennsylvania, there were 72 strikes in the twelve years prior to the passage of a compulsory public-sector collective bargaining law which legalized strikes in 1970, and 767 strikes in the eleven years following enactment.

Your dream that teaching is a profession .. is one of the biggest jokes propagated by the public service union propagandist movement, and certainly no fact whatsoever ... unless you can name another profession that receives its salary and benefits by means of forcible threat of foreclosure and violent eviction ..

I can name another profession: politician.. Politicians are much more expensive than our teachers!

It is not my dream that teaching is a profession, it is a FACT. Teaching is a calling as well as a profession, and until you've had children who attend a public school or you've been an educator, please do not judge, because you do not have that right to judge. You do; however as a taxpayer, have the right to make sure that the children of our community receive an excellent education. The best way to do that, if you have no children in the schools, is to visit the schools and witness for yourself the wonderful learning going on. Sitting at home, on the computer all day, does not give you the right or facts to judge how successful our schools are. Go visit and see for yourself where OUR tax dollars are going.