Good teachers are an important part of society and a building block for the young of America. However in a the country's current situation where companies are laying off people off, 9.7% unemployment in the state, and people have exhausted their unemployment benefits and their are no jobs to go to, teachers make a live able salary, they don't pay a lot if anything for their medical benefits and work less than 9 months of the year they should be able to exist on their current contract until such time that the economy turns around for everyone. Enough complaining about being hungry and you have a loaf of bread under your.

Teacherrs work for nine and a half months and get paid for nine and a half months. You seem to be insinuating that they simply get the balance of the year off. This is not the case. They do not get a paycheck during the summer, in fact, most work other jobs to get by. If they do not work, they do not get to collect unemployment in those months when they have no job. Please take this into consideration in the future before justifying anything with how long a teacher works.

.......and are paid quite well for those 9 1/2 months including their very generous, no cost or low cost health plans and pensions that they keep for the summer months at no cost. Let's not forget that once tenured they get to keep thier jobs for life and can't easily be fired for under or non-performance and some can retire at age 55 after 25 years of "service" and get another public job. With high unemployment and people losing thier homes, struggling to make ends meet, state and municipal budgets strained to the max, be glad that you have jobs!

After several years of service, teachers begin to make a decent middle class living wage. They also get benefits that all full time workers should get and most professionals do. Instead of bashing them for achieving this level of compensation, we should hold it up as an a minimal standard for all full time professionals and focus our objections, if not outrage, at the fact that our culture and economy has regressed to a point where many do not.

So, I support the teachers' efforts to protect and improve a fair and exemplary deal. My beef with the OC teachers is that it is estimated that 40% of them voted for Governor Christie - an unabashed union scapegoater, protector of the most wealthy, and, well, a big bully (especially of the most vulnerable). I respect that the teachers are rallying in support of their own matrerial self-interest (the contract negotiation) but do not respect that they didn't make a peep of an objection to the superintendant prohibitting broadcast of our president's back to school speech (of which she had a draft in advance and an basically said "study hard and obey your parents and teachers") - a shameful and irresponsible capitulation to partisan ideologues and racists. Now that would have been a worthy cause for rally.