On the Table: Pay Caps and Thinking Caps

Metaphors and me, we go way back, though it took me a while to catch on. “People who live in glass houses,” my mom would say, “shouldn’t throw stones.” Why, I wondered, would anyone live in a glass house? Couldn’t the neighbors see you in the bathroom?

Mom also talked about “saving for a rainy day.” This seemed odd. When it’s raining out, wouldn’t you rather stay warm and dry? Wouldn’t you rather shop on a sunny day?

Something about rainy days reminds me of the standing dinner orders: Clean Your Plate. “Children are starving in Europe,” Mom would say. Now, this isn’t a metaphor, but it was equally hard to understand her point. Like every kid steeped in the moral greatness of the American character and the wonders of Yankee ingenuity, I wondered why we didn’t just build a pipeline that would redistribute leftover vegetables to the world’s hungry.

For some reason--I’m still trying to figure out why--glass houses, rainy days and hungry children came to mind after a visit the other night to the headquarters of the United Teachers-Los Angeles (UTLA). The sorry state of public education--the declining finances, sagging academic performance--might evoke rainy days and hungry children. As for glass houses, it must have been the purpose of the visit: I was curious whether they could identify with their unlikely brothers in organized labor--the striking Major League Baseball Players Assn. It’s funny to hear players and owners accuse each other of greed.

I was wondering whether L.A. teachers, folks who last year made an average salary of $39,600, could relate to people who last year made an average salary of $1.2 million. The players union says it’s unfair to cite the average salary. Well, fine. Could teachers identify with folks who have a median income of $410,000 per year? Even the poorest major leaguer makes $109,000.

My survey was not scientific. At a table labeled “East Valley,” three teachers were opening envelopes and counting ballots in the culmination of voting to decide whether to accept a one-year contract that would restore 8% of the 10% pay cut Los Angeles teachers absorbed during the last two years.

“I certainly feel that every group of working people has the right to withhold services in collective bargaining,” said Lila Dawson-Weber, a special-education teacher at Fulton Middle School and a lifelong Dodger fan. “So I’m supportive of them in that respect.”

Well, naturally. Would we expect anything else in a gathering of union officers? Dawson-Weber shared the table with Loretta Toggenburger, a first-grade teacher at Hazeltine Elementary, and Jay Winters, a science teacher at San Fernando High. The trio represent the East Valley on the UTLA board of directors.

But, they agreed, there was little comparison to be made between their own labor disputes with the school district and the baseball strike. If you divide the world between the haves and the have-nots, baseball’s problem is a feud between the haves.

“This is the have-nots,” Dawson-Weber said as she counted ballots. “Neither side has any money. . . .

“I have no problem with the fact there is a strike,” she said. “My problem is with the different attitudes in the media and the public. The public and the media are more concerned about what’s happening with them than what is happening in our schools.”

There were nods of agreement all around. A society that is fascinated with celebrity is interested only intermittently in public education. Winters points out that the media also have judged the O. J. Simpson murder case to be more newsworthy than public education.

This is especially troubling, Winters said, with Proposition 187 coming up, the initiative that would bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools. Winters said he’s heard that it may affect up to 25% of students in Los Angeles schools. And since school funding is based on average daily attendance, Winters fears that passage of Proposition 187 would lead to massive layoffs of teachers.

That’s a possibility I hadn’t considered. A more likely scenario, it seems, is that Proposition 187 would at least fuel an industry in false documents. All considered, phony papers may be better than the increased crime that would result from putting thousands and thousands of juveniles on the streets.

But I digress. I wasn’t there to talk about meaningful issues. As a representative of the media, I wanted to talk about baseball, and the lack thereof.

Besides, the Dodgers owe me money--a refund on some tickets that I can’t use. Dawson-Weber mentioned that she and her husband were supposed to attend a game this summer, but had to give them up because they became involved in preparations for a possible teachers strike.

That possibility, you may know, was averted. By an overwhelming margin, teachers accepted the 8% restoration of their pay cut. That means the average salary will be more than $43,000.

Toggenburger, who’s been a teacher for more than 40 years and has raised eight children of her own, seems to be looking forward to the classroom.

Unlike professional athletes, who are role models at a distance, teachers are role models in the flesh. And Toggenburger wants people to remember that it isn’t only about money.

“They come into the first grade and they don’t read. They leave and they’re reading,” she said. “That’s the pay.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.