Baby-sitting wages? Deal!

Until Brett Delegard (March 3) used numbers, I really hadn’t thought about my teaching wages on a per-hour basis. Interesting concept. Since numbers (A) never lie, and (B) make a lot of sense to me, I’d like to use some numbers of my own to suggest a fairer wage for teachers.

How about we get paid baby-sitting wages (since, really, that’s all we do)? My understanding is that the rate nowadays is about $5 per hour per kid. That’s a tad much; I don’t want to seem greedy. How about $4 per hour per student? So, I see each of my 130 students about 4.5 hours per week, and our school year amounts to 36 total weeks, with loads and loads of time off doing nothing. But, let’s face it, students are absent sometimes; maybe 34 weeks of pay per year is better.

So, if I work those numbers out, it comes to – oh, my! – $79,560 per year. Hmmm. I’m only a simple English teacher, but it seems that number is a bit higher (52.3 percent higher) than the $52,232 figure I used in my Feb. 15 op-ed. For nothing more than baby-sitting wages.

Maybe I’m still being too greedy?

Robert Archer

Spokane