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Donna Komorech is a Charleston elementary school teacher, who resides in Cape. She is a 20-year veteran of education. Her three children attend the Cape Girardeau Public Schools.

To Peter Kinder:

You state in your article that you wish to have a "high profile debate" on funding for education. Usually, in a debate, the sources are cited for facts and figures presented. What is your source for your $28,706 dollar figure as the average for teachers' salaries? Does that figure include only classroom teachers or does it also include administrators' salaries? Average can be very misleading. For example, if we take seven teachers earning $18,000 a year ($126,000) and add in two teachers earning $30,000, and one earning $20,000; we have a total education budget of $206,000. Divide that figure by 10 and we have an average salary of $20,600. It sounds like most teachers are earning $20,600 a year, while in fact, seven out of 10 are earning $18,000, $2,600 less than the average.

It is more enlightening to look at what the average salary range (minimum and maximum) in the state is. In the MSTA Salary Schedule booklet for 1990-91, we find the average for a beginning teacher is $17,430. According to state law, no teacher is to earn less than $18,000, so the state must provide the extra money to raise salaries to state minimums. For a teacher with 25 years experience and a master's degree (plus extra college hours), the average maximum salary is $26,438. It will cost a new teacher over $2,000 to earn a master's degree at SEMO ($69 an hour, plus books and fees). The average minimum salary for teachers with just master's degree is $18,580. This is only $580 over the state minimum for a new teacher. Try getting a master's degree for $580, yet new teachers are required to get a master's degree in order to retain their teaching certificate.

You also state that there has been a 101.7 percent increase in the overall education budget since 1982. Yet, nowhere in your article did you mention the millions of dollars in the education budget that are going to the St. Louis and Kansas City schools to desegregate, bus students and upgrade city schools. This money is deducted right off the top of the education budget at the expense of the minority and poor students in our own region. What percent of the education budget has gone to this desegregation plan? While you are checking that figure, re-figure the per pupil expenditure without the millions of dollars that are being spent on desegregation. If you deduct the cost of the desegregation plan from the state education budget, you will have a much better idea how much the public schools in the state of Missouri are actually receiving per pupil. You will also find that the public schools have received little, if any, additional funding in the last nine years.

I am curious about several other ideas your choose to address. Why did you decide to focus on teachers' salaries? When we are talking about salaries, we are talking about salaries for others, also. We are talking about salaries for administrators, aides, secretaries, school nurses, bus drivers, cooks, crossing guards, and custodians. Many of the non-certified positions have just received a raise in the minimum wage. Their raise per year may, in many cases, be greater than a teacher, who has reached the last step on the salary schedule. Many teachers with 25 or more years experience will receive no raise at all next year.

When we are talking about education budgets, we are not just talking about salaries, either. We are talking about many other expenditures. We are talking about new buildings, and repairing old buildings. We are talking about buses, gasoline, utilities, office machines, paper, texts, library books, cleaning supplies, furniture, playground equipment, art supplies, projectors, VCRs, even toilet paper. Can you, in all honesty, tell me that the price of supplies has not increased in nine years?

Why don't you focus on the issue of spending millions of dollars in state revenue on the desegregation plan? Are you concerned when poor districts in Southeast Missouri can't provide science equipment and up-to-date texts? Why should any school in the state have to use 20-year-old spelling books? Why should teachers have to spend their own money to provide basic supplies for their classrooms as 40 percent of Missouri's teachers do, according to an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

You focus on a tax hike of a `half-billion dollars' for education. According to Sen. Wilson, as reported in the Southeast Missourian, the actual figure is a $462 million tax hike, of which $247 million is slated for colleges and universities, and $24 million for job development and tourism. That leaves $185 million to be divided up among 543 school districts. Last year, according to Wilson's figures, 280 school districts in the state received less money per pupil than the previous year. By the end of next year, 40 districts in the state may go bankrupt. Many of these districts can not get voters to raise property taxes. Schools are not allowed to levy a sales tax at the local level. The only chance some of our schools have of getting more revenue is from this tax hike - a tax hike that will tax everybody, not just property owners.

Finally, I am still having a hard time understanding the logic of your last paragraph in the first article. You state, and I quote, "If war is too important to be left to the generals, surely education is too important to be left to the educators." I would think that comparing the Vietnam War with the Desert Storm War would show anyone the advantages of letting the generals, the experts, run the war. It would be nice, if just once, someone, somewhere, would listen to those who deal with the real world of education. Who are these experts? They are the classroom teachers, who are in the trenches every day, molding the future for Missouri. Unfortunately, for Missouri, most schools are not given any equipment as up-to-date and modern as the military hardware used in Desert Storm. We make do with what we can scrounge and patch. Decisions about education are left in the hands of legislators, politicians, and governors. Given the current way of funding education, this is a necessity, but we still must remember that politics is politics, and talk is cheap. Rarely does a classroom teacher have any input into the decisions that are made concerning education, but they are the first to be criticized.

If you want to discuss the education budget, be prepared for teachers telling exactly what they feel. We care about our schools, we care about our kids, and we care about the facts being presented truthfully. We are the experts. We know what our schools and students can do, given the opportunity. We know, because we see what they are able to do with the limited opportunities some of them have. Even though Missouri ranks 49 out of 50 in spending per school age child, our students rank above the national average in SAT and ACT scores (St. Louis Post Dispatch). We teachers, want the same opportunities for our students in Southeast Missouri that a St. Louis or Kansas City student has. Our kids, our schools, our teachers and our region deserve it.