Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 7, 1993 TAG: 9301070300
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
TEACHER RAGE HEARD
Teachers are angry, Kitty Boitnott said.Actually, they are beyond angry, she told members of the Senate Finance and House Appropriations committees at a public hearing Wednesday in Roanoke.
They are sick and tired - of "betrayal," of "game-playing," of having to "beg" for a raise, said Boitnott, who represents Roanoke County, Alleghany Highlands and Covington for the Virginia Education Association.
"We are sick and tired of being expected to bear the entire brunt of the state's shortfall, the nation's recession and the political ambition of every public official from the governor down to the local board of supervisors and city council members who continually put their personal political ambition above doing the right thing," said Boitnott, her voice filling an auditorium at Virginia Western Community College.
"We are beyond feeling resentful about being used as pawns in this financial tug of war."
More than 100 people addressed the state money committees at the fourth of five hearings on this year's state budget - the second half of the 1992-94 biennium. The 1993 legislature will only make adjustments to the two-year spending plan, adopted in March.
Wilder's budget proposals provide for 2 percent raises for state employees and college faculty but nothing for public schoolteachers. As expected, the absence of teacher raises has drawn protest, much of it at committee hearings across the state.
Though the teacher-pay issue dominated hearings in Northern Virginia and Harrisonburg, it was less prevalent in Roanoke, where citizens devoted more attention to the restoration of a $5 million cut in public library spending, increased support for human and community service programs and increasing the 23-cent per capita rate of spending for the arts.
But teacher pay was not ignored.
Shannon Turner, president of the Pulaski County Education Association, said Wilder has reneged on a promise to pay public school teachers salaries comparable to other professionals.
"When he made that commitment, Virginia was $423 behind the national average," Turner said. "We're now $2,776, or 8.6 percent, behind the national average. We're 45th in the nation in support of education. How can the governor single us out to be excluded?"
Suzanne Wilmont, a Floyd County teacher, said that although she loves her job, it "saddens me that every year we're out begging for money."
Wilmont asked that greater care be given to ensure that money the state provides for teacher salaries be used for that purpose.
"The board takes the money to pay for landfills," she said. "You feel that education is undervalued."