I understand you must promote the anti-union mantra of your boss - although it is getting a bit repetitious, as well as boring, to read your weekly "unions are the root of all badness" routine. Your recent editorial promoting Luna's laws shows you are fairly in the dark about how things really happen. Please use caution, as your column has a Luna-like problem with accuracy, which could be taken as a problem with truth.

Please quit parroting that Luna fib about teachers having tenure and that protects all teachers forever. Idaho teachers have NEVER had tenure. Ever. They can be let go any year, even before the year is over if there is cause. Prop 1 is totally about crushing unions and stripping teachers' rights. If a teacher does inappropriate things at school, he/she can be relieved on the spot. What is important is a way to get due process so a teacher can't be let go because he is/isn't Mormon, Jew, bald, female, male, young, old, or at the top of the salary chart without some hearing of fairness. What worker in what trade would be OK with getting fired because of a boss's prejudice and no recourse? In addition, teachers' unions have never controlled school boards. The local control has been lessened by Luna's invasive laws.

Please quit promoting the myth of up to $8,000 teachers can earn for pay for performance. Ask any teacher if he/she has been informed on when and how this mystery money will be available. If that number was accurate, don't you think the people who would earn that would know about such details? No one knows where that money will officially come from, but teachers have a sneaky hunch that any such money would be trimmed off the pool of money from which teachers are now paid. Taking a buck out of teachers' left pocket, calling it a bonus for good performance, and putting it in the right pocket stinks! What other professional occupation has a salary structure that states you are going to make less money each year because some of your salary will be used to fund other programs (pay for performance) and equipment (laptops)?

A laptop on every single kid's desk would be a teacher's dream. No more time consuming trips to computer labs. No more kids lugging heavy books around all day because they would be in digital form on the laptops. Research time would be so much more productive. Less paper moving around the buildings as student's work could be electronically transferred for grading. No teacher would be against that. Paying for it with reductions in teachers' salaries is the part teachers don't favor. It is another way for the state to further ignore its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund education. That is also why school districts have to keep asking for local levies. The legislature continues to shirk that part of their job.

Please remind your readers that Luna fibbed to get elected. He bragged that Idaho Education (HIS SYSTEM) was doing great. Two months later that same system (HIS SYSTEM) was "broken" and he planned on firing almost 1,000 (all taxpaying, local community economic supporters who would become unemployed) teachers to pay for laptops. Why do you leave that part out?

Readers, if you really want to know how things work before you vote on Props 1, 2, 3, get hold of a teacher and ask them. A great lot of you have kids in schools. Call your kid's teacher and ask to visit with them about these important issues. Ask your questions. Voting based on anti-teacher editorials and full page ads paid for by mystery companies would be careless unless you hear both sides. Please allow yourself this measure of fairness.

One more item then I'll leave you alone. Doesn't it seem more than a little hypocritical to rant about transparency in teachers' negations when you take potshots at teachers in a nameless editorial? Is that transparent?

Russ Bohn is a teacher and an Athol resident.