EDITORIAL : `UNREASONABLY GREEDY'; TEACHERS DEMAND HIGH SALARIES DESPITE LOW STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT.

TALK about a sanctimonious statement. Los Angeles teachers union chief called the board of education ``unreasonably greedy'' for thinking a $90 million windfall from the state would be spent as it was intended: for educational programs, textbooks and supplies - not a bonus salary hike for teachers.

Clearly, Day Higuchi needs re-education. He's so far out of step with what the public wants for its tax dollars that it's laughable.

Except nobody's laughing. Certainly not the union clones who pose as the Los Angeles Board of Education.

Having just negotiated a three-year contract that started with a 6 percent pay raise and 2 percent more over the next two years, the school board is taking the demand seriously.

Here we are with a chance to actually put textbooks into the hands of students, to enhance programs and solve educational problems - and the empty heads at the top of the Los Angeles Unified School District are conspiring to bamboozle us so they can put more money into the pockets of the people who have failed to educate our children.

``My argument is that those things (books and programs) don't teach kids. Teachers need those things, but I would stack a fully credentialed teacher against a whole roomful of books,'' Higuchi said.

His argument goes like this: A motivated teacher will increase student involvement and the grades will rise accordingly. Money is the motivator.

We don't believe for a minute that teachers have been lying down on the job and graduating tens of thousands of kids who can't read and write because they aren't paid enough.

Teachers are by and large dedicated professionals who knew good and well that their salaries would always be modest but that they would have long-term security, good benefits and the personal satisfaction that comes from helping children grow intellectually.

The trouble is some aren't very good at their job and nothing is ever done about them. What's lacking is accountability even though both the union and the school board boasted last year that teachers got their whopping raise because there was an agreement to deal with incompetents.

Of course, nothing has happened to implement that deal. So now we are being asked again to give whopping raises in order to get teacher accountability that we supposedly already paid for.

This is nonsense!

Teachers - and administrators - are employees. They work for us. If they aren't doing the job, then they are given an action plan and told to shape up or ship out.

That's the deal everyone else in society gets. The other side of that equation is if you're excelling, you get the big bucks. Accountability includes rewards and punishments.

Within the LAUSD, it ought to be easy to determine who's doing the job and who's not since the performance of teachers is measured constantly by the test scores of their students.

If this were done a long time ago, good teachers already would be making more money and bad teachers would be gone, replaced by more good teachers.

It's high time the school board started teaching its union leaders just what ``unreasonably greedy'' means. And that means showing them the door until students start achieving what they are in school for - a good education.