School system should pay teachers more rather than release kids early

Editor:

Re Columbia County's proposal to release elementary school students early one day each week:

How much more burden is this Columbia County School Board going to place on its elementary school teachers? And not just elementary school but middle and high school teachers who have children in elementary school!

These children are not old enough according to Georgia state laws to be latch-key kids, and yet any teacher, who must now pay for day care, won't be seeing an increase in their paycheck to compensate for it in this plan.

Middle and high school teachers once had the convenience, with the elementary school releasing an hour after them, to just go pick up their children. Now they will have to pay for day care on Wednesdays.

How can (the proposal) justify 15 minutes added to the end of each day to compensate for two consecutive hours of instructional time? This statement has the common sense of a screen door on a submarine! Why not add an hour to, let's say, Tuesday and Thursday for these elementary school teachers, pay them for it, and not add any undue burden on them or the other several thousand parents of Columbia County elementary-age children?

I'd rather see the teachers get paid a little extra for their burdens than to see even more money spent on 14 separate after-school programs to house all the displaced children.

Cherie Portinga

Evans