Posted by Disgusted, a member of the Las Lomitas School community, on Oct 14, 2009 at 4:34 pm

I can not say strongly enough how disappointed I am in the teachers in our district who engaged in these tactics. They are among the most highly paid public school teachers in the State and it is not enough. They are lavished with parental support and they want more. They are given every tool, implement and device they can dream of to make their jobs easier and they find their situation wanting. Well I have news for them - you are killing fundraising for the Foundation and the Foundation pays for a number of your salaries. If you are "depressed" about "low morale" and "larger class sizes", you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until a number of you get pink slips because the parents/donors who help make this district tick decide to sit on their wallets rather than cave into your attempted emotional black-mail of the School Board.

Oh and on the substance of your demand, if you believe that private sector employees are getting a "cost of living" raise this year you have not been reading the newspaper (in fact, a number of federal and state programs are shrinking their payments because the cost of living didn't increase this year or last).

Dragging the school board members' children into all of this is incredibly inappropriate and unprofessional. I am very disappointed in these folks.

Posted by Concerned Parent, a member of the Las Lomitas School community, on Oct 15, 2009 at 9:02 am

I would speculate that the root cause of this is that the teacher's union wants to push salaries ever higher in our district so that they can point to Las Lomitas when they are negotiating on behalf of other teachers across the state. Even though there is no economic basis for a raise here, it serves the union's political interests if one is given. Unfortunately it looks like the union was able to get a number of our teachers to sign onto this hair-brained letter writing campaign.