Ken Mettler came out and said, on offical Republican Assembly letterhead, that he is asking for teachers to take a 5% pay cut to help with the school budget.

Now, I ask, why didn't he bring this up a day earlier at the KHSD Board meeting, of which he is a voted-in member?  Easy.  He'd have been booed out of the conference room.  Mettler would be considered an enemy of the people in his own chambers.

Luckily, Mr. Mettler wears two hats.  One (ill-fitting) hat as a "leader" in education and another as president of the Republican Assembly.  I feel that the hat he wears for education is just a costume and the hat he wears as a member of the Republican Party is his real hat that he is nurturing and filling as best he can.  Why else would he bring up teacher pay reductions under that hat, and not the KHSD board member hat?

Who is he trying to help?  "outside of the box" thinking?  How about cutting the pay and pension/insurance of the board members first?  Or all the administrators that fill out offices on Sundale Avenue?  This is just more political posturing on Mettler's part to gain favor in his party and keep his political future alive (which is not as a lowly school board member).

People will tell teachers, its for the kids.  Everyone else in the state is taking a cut, how about you?  True, it is tough all over, but as a classified KHSD employee said Monday evening, start the cuts at the top of the food chain, not the bottom.  As for me, that 5% cut in my salary means, 100% less in my buying ice-cream, yearbooks, Camp Keep, etc for my three school-going children and the weekly fundraising forms they bring home.  That 5% will keep me from helping my own school's fundraising efforts, some of which I coordinate.  Cutting 5% (as is the case for anyone else who has taken pay cuts) will be directly cutting into the school's ability to raise funds.  One way or another, the kids WILL lose out.  JV sports is a small cut (we've had two levels before and the world did not end).  If it happens, it happens, I accept it, but my children and their school will not be getting my donations this year to run their extra-curricular programs.

In two years, I really hope that Kern County notices that Ken Mettler has an education agenda and this agenda is his alone, which is called his future in politics.  The KHSD and its staff/students/teachers are just a stepping stone for him towards bigger things.  He needs to take off his costume "hat" as a board member, and just wear his political "hat".  Its just easier for everyone else that way.