“We don’t fire the police if crime goes up.”
—Greg Gores, a history teacher at Lodi High School in California, expressing his indignation at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent proposal to tie teacher pay raises to assessments of their classroom performance.
“I picked up the chair and said, ‘OK, which one of us throws first?’ ”
—Julia Pruchniewski, recounting how she responded 30 years ago when a student lifted a chair and threatened to throw it at her. Citing an increased workload, the 52-year-old English teacher recently appeared before the Anne Arundel County, Maryland, school board to announce that she was quitting in the middle of the school year, three years before she’d planned to retire.
“Thank goodness we have term limits. He can go bury his head down in the bitterroot for a few years and stay out of our business.”
—Eric Feaver, president of the Montana Education Association-Montana Federation of Teachers, referring to lame-duck state Senator Fred Thomas’ suggestion that the Treasure State cut the jobs of 1,700 teachers and spread the savings among the rest.
“We’re moms using guns as tools to protect our kids.”
—Marta Ellison, a member of the Hanna Springs Intermediate School Parent-Teacher-Student Organization, in Lampasas, Texas. She’s one of three mothers who took in about $9,000 raffling two hunting rifles and ammunition to pay for a fence to separate school grounds from the surrounding area, where several registered sex offenders live.
