Early release: paying teachers not to work

Every school year, the LPOSD has established an early release school schedule dumping students onto the streets of Sandpoint wandering about town until parents can get off work to pick them up. School districts and teachers unions across the Inland Empire have negotiated these contractual early releases to allow for so-called "profession development" or "professional peer learning days."

These are actually P.C. code names for what they really mean, "time off with pay." So effectively to appease teachers' unions, school districts sacrifice student class time and learning to offer a compromise of paying teachers not to work in favor of a pay increase.

And what do the parents and students get out of this arrangement? Nothing but inconvenience

and unsupervised children roaming Sandpoint and clogging up the East Bonner County Library with unruly, noisy kids that disrupt the library patrons trying to read, study, research, or play chess in peace.

School districts like LPOSD must realize that our libraries are not meant to be the stop-gap public daycare centers to watch unsupervised students who should be in school being taught by teachers paid to teach, not paid to not work every other Wednesday of the school year.

The quality of student education in the 21st century has become inferior to the public education I received in the 20th century, and state student competency results prove it.

MARK ROSSMILLER

Sandpoint