Regarding state Sen. McClin-tock’s guest opinion in the April 7 Thousand Oaks Acorn, as a teacher with over 25 years of teaching experience in California public schools, I remember the school system of a generation ago that Sen. McClintock wrote of in his guest opinion column. In many ways it is not much different now.

Class sizes have gotten larger, but the vast majority of teachers then and now are hard-working and dedicated, putting in countless hours outside of the regular school day to provide the best education possible for their students.

But as the senator pointed out, one of the things that has changed was allowing teachers to set up unions, a right allowed for millions of working people in the United States, to give them a fair voice in collective bargaining.

I remember the days before this when teachers would go hat in hand to ask for a raise or health benefits, hoping that the school boards would grant their requests. After collective bargaining began, an administrator remarked that she hated this new system.

My answer was that yes, there are problems and difficulties, but it is the best system we have come up with so far and much better than the way it used to be.

The senator claims that teachers’ unions are part of the cause of a huge rise in the state’s bureaucracy and that they also are part of the reason public services have plummeted, but he never explains why. The local and state educational bureaucracies were created by the local and state governments, not the unions.

Providing a quality education is a basic tenet of California teachers and is a major goal of our union. We are in the classroom every day trying to educate our students, not taking potshots from Sacramento.

McClintock proposes that part of the remedy for the people of California is to take back control of our schools from the unions. I would suggest that the senator needs to attend more school board meetings.

If unions have so much control, why are requests for raises always so hard fought? Why are there long drawn-out negotiations, often with picketing, before settlements?

Sure doesn’t sound like a union in control to me. Lots of people whom I meet tell me how much they admire the job teachers do. I’ve never had one tell me teachers are overpaid. Have salaries gone up? Yes. Does any teacher go into education to get wealthy? No.

Have the teachers’ unions gotten involved in politics? Absolutely, just like big corporations and business interests have for decades. We try to have a voice in our government. Perhaps that is what bothers the senator the most. Maybe he wants us to be those passive teachers he remembers from his past, willing to take whatever is handed out for themselves and their students, but those are not most teachers of today.

We are involved and need to get more involved in politics.

For I positively agree with the senator’s concluding idea that the citizens have the power to effect change, and I certainly will be working to replace this senator whose overgeneralizations, unsupported accusations and total lack of understanding of the public schools show him as someone who needs to be replaced by a person who will stand up for the students and teachers of California.

Will Donley

Thousand Oaks