A harsh lesson for teachers

Like her mother before her, Erica DeMichele loves being a teacher. A science instructor at Cherry Hill High School East, she's used to getting respect when she tells people what she does for a living.

She wasn't prepared, at a recent neighborhood barbecue, when she found herself in the middle of guests slamming public employees for refusing salary and benefit concessions.

"They started to teacher-bash right in front of me," DeMichele said, still incredulous.

A couple of days ago, she said, she woke to hear Gov. Christie on TV accusing New Jersey educators of hurting their students if they didn't take a wage freeze.

"You feel personally attacked," said DeMichele, 35.

These are uncommon times to be a teacher in New Jersey.

Accustomed to being held in high regard for their dedication in a demanding profession, they say they feel demonized. Their commitment to children has been questioned, they say, and they have been portrayed as greedy in the midst of a state budget crisis.

On top of that, thousands of teachers may lose their jobs.

To help fill a nearly $11 billion budget hole, Christie introduced a budget last month with almost $820 million less in formula aid to schools than was budgeted last year.

Districts already were reeling from the withholding in February of $475 million in aid that zapped surplus funds counted for use next year. On March 17, the news got worse: Under the proposed budget, every district in the state would lose aid. About 10 percent of the districts would receive no formula aid at all.

Since then, the battle between Christie and the New Jersey Education Association, which represents most of the state's teachers, has become a clash of the titans.

Christie has repeatedly called on school staff - especially teachers - to take a wage freeze next school year and pay 1.5 percent of their salary toward health benefits to help spare colleagues' jobs and lessen program cuts. So far, teachers locals in 23 of the state's roughly 600 districts - including Florence, Mantua, and Southampton - have tentatively accepted wage concessions.

The governor's mantra has been "shared sacrifice," but union officials say he has singled out teachers for blame while refusing to reinstate the so-called millionaire's tax on the affluent.

Each side accuses the other of using rhetoric to distract attention from the truth. Each says the other is intractable. Their analysis of teachers' raises and how much educators contribute toward their health care - not zero in many cases, but less than the governor would like - differs widely.

The governor has not depicted teachers as bad people, says Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak.

"This is about economics," Drewniak said. "It's selfishness and unresponsiveness in the face of economics."

NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said the governor had gone after teachers.

"He's been very loose with his language, and he has said things that are very demeaning to teachers, and he's paying the price as his poll numbers sink," Wollmer said.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll last week, 65 percent of New Jersey voters who were called said they favored the one-year pay freeze. In a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released last week, however, 57 percent said they opposed aid cuts to schools. The margins of error were plus or minus 4.5 percentage points in the Rasmussen poll and 3.2 percentage points in the Rutgers-Eagleton poll.

A poll by Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey suggested Christie's strategy might be backfiring: 44 percent of registered voters blamed Christie for impending teacher layoffs, compared with 28 percent who faulted unions and 17 percent who blamed school boards. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

"He's losing the public opinion war," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "Even people who support wage freezes or paying for benefits think he did not go about this in the right way. He's coming off as the bad guy."

In the state whose education-supporting property taxes are the highest in the nation, it's not surprising that many are in favor of givebacks for teachers.

Christie's call for wage freezes and state-aid cuts equal to 5 percent of districts' total budgets are reasonable, said New Jersey Taxpayer Association president Jerry Cantrell.

"I find it hard to believe they can't absorb 5 percent," he said.

The state lost 235,700 private-sector jobs from January 2008 to December 2009, said James Hughes, dean of Rutgers' Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. In the same period, local governments, including public school systems, added 12,000 jobs.

"The private sector has borne the brunt of the recession," Hughes said. Teachers' making concessions "is an issue of fairness."

Teachers have heard it to their face. Helen Iapalucci, 51, a lifelong Maple Shade resident who teaches third grade in the township, recently ran to her local market to pick up a few things. She wore a T-shirt with the name of her school and the phrase Wild About Education.

"The lady at the checkout said, 'Really? Wild about education? You're wearing that in public?' " Iapalucci, a union local leader, recalled.

Iapalucci, who is proud to be a teacher, said she paid the same property taxes as everyone else. They help pay her salary, but in her school district, she said, she doesn't see waste.

"I think the children in our community are worth spending the money," she said. "I don't see any fluff."

Like other teachers, she said educators were being scapegoated.

Many interviewed said they were reluctant to give back gains won over years. They work more than their contract requires, they said, and often spend their own money for the good of their students.

"I've spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars at Barnes & Noble because I'll see a book that may reach a child," said Christine Onorato, 45, a Delsea Regional literacy teacher who leads her local union.

Some said that, given their level of education, they could get paid more in another field, but they choose to teach.

John Karakashian, 35, took a pay cut when he left his job as manager of a body-shop company a few years ago to become an educator. "But I'm not complaining," he said. "I'd rather be happy."

A fourth-grade teacher in Delran, Karakashian recalled a student who went from being a poor writer to a gifted one in just four months.

"I said, 'How did you do this?' She said, 'You taught me,' " he said.

"There's no amount of money in the world that could compare to that feeling."

Karakashian doesn't have tenure and could be laid off. His wife is a teacher who hasn't found a permanent position. Given the number of colleagues who soon may be looking for work, he said, they might have to leave the state.

Karakashian said he did not blame his fellow teachers for not taking the freeze.

"I think a wage freeze should only be accepted if the millionaire's tax is reinstated and the revenue is used to replace the surpluses that were confiscated from fiscally responsible school districts," he said.

He said he felt Christie had besmirched teachers. "It's been pretty shocking, to be honest, to go from being a respected professional and, in one fell swoop, we've become Public Enemy No. 1," Karakashian said.

The teachers in Florence Township would get the governor's approval. In a 202-16 vote, the Burlington County district's teachers, bus drivers, aides, custodians, and secretaries agreed to a wage freeze for the coming year.

"We did not do it because the governor asked," said Barbara Mayer, a technology teacher and head of her local education association. "We were in a unique situation. We were able to save almost every position they wanted to cut."

In Cherry Hill, Erica DeMichele said she and her colleagues felt a little beaten down, but that hasn't changed her efforts in the classroom.

"It's all about the kids," she said.

She got that approach from her role model and favorite teacher: her mother, Arline St. Jean, an educator for 30 years in Rhode Island.

From her mother, she also got this quote, which St. Jean found in a magazine:

One hundred years from now the future may be different because I was important in the life of a child.

DeMichele has always kept it close. Lately, she said, she keeps it even closer.

Visit www.philly.com/ReportCard for detailed data on South Jersey school districts, including teacher salaries and per-pupil spending. EndText