BUREAUCRATS SINKING SCHOOLS.

Byline: Alan Bonsteel

GOV. Gray Davis recently announced his belief that California taxpayers would never be willing to pay enough taxes to permit market-level salaries for our teachers. He went on to urge young people to think of teaching as a kind of domestic Peace Corps assignment - a public service they would perform as ``temps'' for a few years before going on to their real careers.

Davis is wrong on two counts. Teaching is the most important job in our society, and should be a high-status, long-term profession. And we're already paying enough in taxes to pay teachers $60,000 per year salaries, or what experienced, college-educated workers in California typically earn.

Teachers aren't getting paid what they deserve because the public education establishment is spending more than 40 percent of our tax dollars on bureaucracy and overhead, much of it going to fat-cat administrators pulling down six-figure salaries. The four interlocking layers of dysfunctional bureaucracies at the federal, state, county and local levels consume almost as much money as ultimately is spent in the classroom. That's also why California's public school teachers have to dig into their own pockets for classroom supplies, and why art and music programs and school libraries have been slashed.

The phony $6,313 figure for California K-12 per-student spending currently being bandied about is the Proposition 98 number, which dramatically understates true per-student spending by omitting federal spending on California public schools, lottery money, construction costs of schools and interest on school bonds.

The truth is that California currently spends $7,500 per student, which represents a 39 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars since Proposition 13 was passed in 1978.

For a typical classroom of 30, that means $225,000 per nine-month school year. For that kind of money, we could pay teachers $60,000 and still have a generous $165,000 per classroom for overhead, books and supplies.

These numbers aren't just theoretical. California's charter schools - public schools of choice - receive only about 60 percent of the per-student funding of traditional public schools. They have nevertheless been able to pay their teachers about $2,000 per year more than those in traditional public schools - and could do much better still if they were 100 percent funded.

What makes this possible is that charter schools are self-governing, being run by parents and teachers at the local level. They have thus chucked overboard the colossal layers of bureaucracy that weigh down our traditional public schools and hold down salary scales for our teachers.

Imagine a system in which parents could take their educational tax dollars and seek out the best school for their children. They would naturally choose schools that paid high salaries to ``trophy'' teachers. Traditional public school districts would be forced to downsize their bureaucracies fast and put the money back in the classroom, or face the fate of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The benefits to teachers, however, wouldn't end with higher salaries. In our current system of compulsory assignment to government-run schools - which resembles, more than anything, our prison system - alienation is pandemic, and even extends to outright physical assaults on teachers. With such a crazy system, rapid teacher turnover is inevitable, regardless of how high salaries are.

By contrast, in schools of choice - whether charter schools or private schools financed with vouchers - there is a sense of community, of belonging, of commitment that is never present in compulsory government-run schools. Teachers feel that energy and are inspired by it. It gives them the fire in the belly that makes their profession the lifelong career it should be.

Davis can offer teachers higher salaries without a penny in new taxes. Even more importantly, he can give our California's lower- and middle- income parents the freedom of choice that has always benefited wealthier families.

Davis should take to heart the best interests of teachers, of parents and of children, and support school choice.

Alan Bonsteel, M.D., is president of California Parents for Educational Choice, and co-author of ``A Choice for Our Children: Curing the Crisis in America's Schools.''