To the Editor:

Those greedy teachers are at it again. Imagine having only to work nine months a year, with Christmas and snow days off additionally. Talk about a cush job! Really?

I just read about legislation being introduced in Pennsylvania to arm teachers. It should hit home to all how different and dangerous it potentially is to be a teacher in today's world, especially in inner-city school districts and those closest to them. Maybe it's my imagination and all these school shootings didn't happen?

Single-parent families, poverty, language, physical abuse, absentee fathers, drugs, alcohol, etc. it's a very dismal home life for some kids.

Ah, the good old days, "when I went to school"...yada, yada, yada!

If you read the newspaper or watch TV news, you should come to realize what a teacher faces every day.

I have three sons who are teachers and am associated with many others, so I have insight. They cannot be public with the way things are, but do the best they can while being unappreciated by most.

If you have the need to bang the drum, try focusing on all the fraud for those refusing to work and bleep the welfare system and other social systems. How about big-buck company executives, professional athletes, and don't forget our government at all levels.

I look forward to receiving my school tax every year, and its increase, yeah, right! Do any taxes decrease? Everything goes up, but the teachers always get hammered.

What they deal with, beyond academics, makes them underpaid in my way of thinking. Visit any school unannounced and see for yourself, if you dare. While there, ask how much all the administration gets paid!

Let me add that as long as the school tax is tied to property value, discontent will continue. Teachers should all have the same salary structure and negotiated per county, for the good of "all" students, or the less fortunate and underprivileged will never prosper, but a few.

Patrick T. Holmes

Whitehall