DON'T DISCOUNT `EMERGENCY' TEACHERS.

Byline: Lydia Okelberry Local View

I have a bachelor's degree in educational and pure mathematics and am currently finishing my second year of teaching under the authorization of an emergency permit.

References to teachers in my position throughout the media seem to imply that we are unqualified and a major problem with respect to the current issues in accountability.

On the contrary, we are working double time teaching and attending school in order to complete the course work necessary to receive our credentials.

We are passionate, hard-working individuals who care about teaching our students and seeing results. We are not negligible and should not be referred to with disrespect, especially when the authors of these comments have probably never observed one of our classrooms nor experienced the trials of a new teacher.

In order to attract much needed new and qualified teachers, there needs to be a competitive starting salary. If I have friends who started programming computers at $50,000 a year, why would they even think of teaching?

Los Angeles Unified School District is offering a sliding-scale pay raise of which new teachers are at the lowest end and where the starting pay for credentialed teachers would be $37,000. San Bernardino School District already pays its new teachers $37,000 and is currently in negotiations for raises. Palmdale School District is starting teachers at $40,000.

LAUSD needs to consider the competition and where its new teachers will go as we struggle to pay for rent, car payments and tuition to obtain our credentials on our current salary.

The district is doing nothing to encourage me to stay; it is only my wonderful students and colleagues who do so. If the public needs me, I am certainly not feeling it from the media or my paycheck, and I don't know how else I am supposed to know.