Teachers Spared? Think Again about Proposed Budget Cuts

This is a letter that I sent to the reporter at the News and Observer asking for clear, factual reporting of the proposed budget cuts:

Ms. Stancil,

Your article (http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/18/998028/budget-spares-teachers.html#story_tab_comments) indicates that teachers and teaching assistants are spared and that non-teaching positions are reduced, including media specialists.

While for budget purposes media specialists are classified as instructional support, media specialists are TEACHING staff: we are TEACHERS. We INSTRUCT students on a daily basis. We TEACH individual, small group, and whole classes of students. We are evaluated on our TEACHING. We are paid on the TEACHER pay scale (unlike other instructional support staff which are paid on different, higher pay scales).

It is important that we TEACH students to evaluate, analyze, and think critically, to access information and to use it ethically. It is important that we keep TEACHERS whose curriculum includes information literacy. Those TEACHERS are media specialists, and we are responsible for TEACHING students!

Please be sure to report the fact that not all TEACHERS are being spared in the proposed budget cuts.