By: Hugh C. Donnelly

I feel the need to add another, hopefully objective perspective to the labor situation in the Souderton Area School District.

Much has appeared in the press and much has been said, primarily by teachers at recent school board meetings. Let's take a look at the facts.

We have a teachers union demanding an 8.25 percent salary increase per year, claiming Souderton Area teachers have the lowest starting salary in Montgomery County.

The facts are some years ago, the union negotiators were given the freedom to apply a lump sum approved by the school board to a complicated salary matrix.

In doing so, the union leadership applied a disproportionate amount of the available sum to the most senior salary brackets, leaving a pittance for the junior teachers.

Therefore it was the teachers union that purposely caused the low pay for starting teachers while at the same time jumping pay for the most senior teachers 15 to 20 percent.

Both publicly at school board meetings and in the press, teachers have stated the school board is demeaning to their status as hard-working, dedicated professionals.

Don't shoot the messenger; no member of the board has ever made derogatory statements about teachers either as an individual or as a group.

However the law of supply and demand has plenty to say about the teachers union salary demands. Simply put, the supply of teachers far exceeds the demand. With the exception of hard-to-recruit disciplines such as math, physics, chemistry and speech therapy, every school district in Pennsylvania, especially eastern Pennsylvania, is awash with hundreds of qualified teachers looking for positions.

Take a look in the job wanted section of the newspapers and you will never find ads for teachers in public school except for the hard-to-recruit disciplines. Teachers demean themselves and lose credibility by ignoring this while continuing to clamor for higher salaries.

Teacher comments with respect to board President Bernard Currie are entirely out of line. Currie is professional, balanced, factual and totally devoid of rhetoric or personal comments. It is a sad commentary on the professionalism of some teachers that would personally attack a messenger of truth.

Stay the course, Currie, the community is behind you.

Currently, we have a teachers union pushing for more salary and better benefits based on comparisons with other school districts in Montgomery County.

The facts are that the Souderton Area School District teacher salaries rank 55 out of the 501 school districts in Pennsylvania. Granted, Montgomery County and the other southeastern counties have higher salaries than most of Pennsylvania. The fact remains, however, that teacher salaries generally are artificially high only because of a powerful union that focuses on inflating teacher salaries by sacrificing the education of our students.

Thus we have a trade union mentality that takes our public school system hostage by throwing our students out on the street, all the while claiming our teachers are underpaid relative to other school districts. Given the law of supply and demand, it is clear the other school districts have allowed a bully union to force their school boards into paying excessive teacher salaries. Bravo to the Souderton Area School Board for holding the line.

The teachers unions in Pennsylvania clearly have lost the right to strike as a means to gain economic benefit for union members. Bravo to Rep. Robert Godshall for going on record as opposing the right of teachers to strike, as is true in 37 other states.

The Souderton Area teachers walked out on their students when the school board refused a salary demand of 8.25 percent each year for four years, or a salary increase of more than 35 percent. Surely this strike is a poster child reason to eliminate teacher strikes in Pennsylvania.

Finally, although allegedly returning to work, many of the teachers are refusing to carry out their full professional duties by denying students their extracurricular educational programs and clubs.

Again, the teachers that carry out this unprofessional, demeaning conduct are rapidly losing the respect of their students, parents and the community.

Has anyone seen a teaching profession code of ethics? If there is one, it is being violated. If one does not exist, it is time for the teaching profession to establish and follow a code of ethics before claiming they are professionals.

Hugh C. Donnelly is a resident of Telford. This commentary appeared on the opinion page of The Reporter February 25, 2009.

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