Do homework before bashing teachers

Recently there have been many letters in the papers concerning public employee benefits such as pensions and health care. I can’t speak for everyone or about everything on the subject of public employee benefits, but I can provide my own personal experience regarding this issue.

In 2001 I took an early retirement from a major corporation. I was a software engineer and I had a master’s degree in computer science. After retiring, I started teaching at a private school in Chicago and my salary was about one-third what it was in my previous career. Three years later I earned a master’s degree in teaching and started teaching much closer to home and in a public school.

My current salary as a public schoolteacher is still more than 30 percent less than it was as a software engineer in 2001, but that’s not the point of this story.

The point I’m trying to make is teachers have to pay for their benefits. Yes, I said “pay” because when I read many of the letters written to papers on this subject I often get the impression that people think teachers don’t pay for any of their benefits — and that is a misnomer.

For medical coverage I pay $437 per month. I also pay $757 per month to the Teacher Retirement System. These items on their own are a substantial deduction from my salary, and as a teacher I still have deductions for federal tax, state tax, Medicare and union dues.

All I’m asking for as a teacher is what I ask of my students. What I ask students to do before making statements is to do their homework by getting the facts on a subject and then provide an accurate position statement on the subject.

Ken Fron

North Aurora