The Origin Of The Species

To the Editor:

The species I refer to is the high cost of education, whether it be high school or beyond. I refuse to accept the ever higher costs and ever more unjust taxes as a fact of life of inflation, if you may. That is what our politicians want you to believe. It is nothing of the kind, but politics as usual. If you trace the high cost to its origin, what you find is a bloated bureaucracy which is more interested in assuring the votes of the privileged groups than dealing a fair hand to all of us. Look at your real estate taxes and tell me if I am wrong.

And where is the problem to be found? If you are honest with yourself, you will conclude that the high real estate taxes making up perhaps 20 percent of your income, at least for retirees and being outlandish, when compared to the federal income tax, is mainly to be traced to high salaries of the teaching staff and their fringe benefits. And why these high benefits? There is only one answer: collective bargaining power! And where is the power of collective bargaining coming from? Partly from the fact that we have a closed shop, meaning that every teacher must belong to the union. No exceptions.

The other and more important reason is the existence of tenure for teachers, meaning you cannot fire them. Name me a tenured teacher who has been fired within the last year for incompetence. When you read about a teacher being fired, it is almost always for inappropriate behavior, not for being slack on the job. Tenure lies at the very root of the high cost of education and coupled with the lack of incentive to perform is the poison pill which penetrates every aspect of our education. If you value your children’s education, speak up and let your voice be heard loud and clear.

You are groaning at the cost of a college education for your children? Look no further than the cost of the local system. If a teacher makes $80,000 a year, will a college professor work for this wage? No wonder we have a head of police at UConn who gets $250,000 per year. I would like to swap pensions with them, and I was a senior staff engineer at the recently declassified Hexagon reconnaissance satellite system. Did we have tenure of office? Did we have a union and collective bargaining? If we did, Hexagon would never have made it off the ground, and you my fellow citizens might have looked down the barrel of a Russian atomic missile.

Oscar Berendsohn

34 Apple Blossom Lane, Newtown                            January 2, 2012