The better question is how to bring up salaries/wages/benefits for most of the rest of the population so that it’s on par (or better) with what our local teachers now receive. That is, rather than feeling resentment or envy over the teachers’ total employment package, let’s instead ask why everyone else doesn’t get that now. As it is, what teachers receive as compensation still falls beneath living standards in some Western European countries.

Why cripple teachers’ existing health and pension plans? Coverage through private sector health care plans is in freefall — an ongoing state of collapse in terms of what you get for what you pay, and it’s going to get worse with or without the wimpy federal reform legislation. Upstairs in Canada, a non-union, career broom sweeper receives better overall health care for far less than most everyone stateside. And pensions are essential — for nearly everyone, not just teachers — since social security and Medicare presently do not come close to covering retirement needs.

We won’t maintain an efficient, high-quality school system by bringing down living standards for teachers, or trying to bust their unions for that matter.

However, I’d like to complement you on your idea of letting the teachers make specific proposals for cost reduction. That is a positive step in the right direction.

One of the principle successful arguments we have used is that here, unlike some coastal cities, there are excellent public schools, reflecting a strong community commitment to education. That argument is rapidly losing force with the multi-year cuts in education funding we have seen.

Michigan is in the middle of pack in terms of state funding for education but close to last in keeping up funding over the past 5-7 years. We are on a trajectory to rapidly join the cellar dwellars in the deep south. For the type of transformation Michigan is hoping to make to high tech and biomedical industry, those businesses will not succeed with the dull output of a cheap mediocre educational system.

The Ann Arbor Public Schools have cut millions of dollars over the past decade and have had a structural cut to their budget since prop. A passed. Many of the non-core enhancement programs in music, arts and athletics that distinguish the schools on the national stage are already funded on the backs of student fundraising and from the parents. It is so easy to say that there is “lots of fat” but that is not much of an argument and even less of a solution. Those who think so should get out their business skills and get involved to help find ways to make less go further.

It is however clear that we must move on. The PTOs of politically influential districts need to coordinate lobbying the state to fix its broken school funding mechanism. Here in Ann Arbor businesses and individuals need to do what they can perhaps by supporting the AA Educational Foundation or sponsoring “community resource” opportunities for students to replace some of the exciting educational programs that will be lost.

What is equally clear is that we can not continue penalizing the schools for whatever we think they are not doing for us by slowly asphyxiating them, just to see how little oxygen they can survive on. That is a strategy for a loser.