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As Americans, we all have a right to speak, and that certainly includes the uninformed like yourself, as well as teachers. We have not brought this state to the brink of bankruptcy, you can blame a one-two punch by 2 former governors (one Democrat and one Republican) for that. Between Jim Florio and Christie Whitman, they played accounting games with the funding of our pensions in the 1990's. Florio did it to avoid raising taxes again after his unpopular 1 percent sales tax increase. Whitman did it to fund an enormous tax cut to fuel her reelection. Who benefitted from these accounting gimmicks? You did. Every person who enjoyed these tax cuts benefitted off of our loss. The pension fund for public emplyees was fully funded until politicians started retracting funding in order to pay for tax cuts. They overestimated the growth the stock market would create for these funds, then when the market went South, the pension funds became insupportable. Now teachers are being villified, when in actuality we are the victims. It is our retirement that we have worked very hard for that is in jeopardy. Shame on politicians for not telling the truth about this. We all make trade-offs in life. One sacrifice teachers have made is to trade high salaries for good benefits and job security. We sacrificed salary increases for maintaining those benefits in each contract negotiation. We're being asked to do it again. In our district, we have already been prepared by union leaders not to expect salary increases in the next contract. This has happened before, we take flat salaries for 3 years while the economy recovers (usually within a year or 18 months). Then you all start getting your raises, while we continue to live on less. And all the while we are caring for your children, doing our jobs like the professionals we are, and enduring our scapegoat status.