Chernovetsky and the teachers

We know someone who is a teacher in the Kiev district. She tells us that Chernovetsky has taken away the bonus that Omelchenko gave them for some reason. She says he's anti-teacher but I don't think she really knows why. We don't know why either.

Apparently, Omelchenko raised their pay 10% in a kind of cost-of-living raise. Then he added another 10% as a sort of bonus. All of this was an attempt to raise their pay, which is abysmal by any standards. But according to her, Chernovetsky has taken that away.

Some of these teachers supplement there meager wages with offers--demands, really--to tutor the children outside of class. That will give the student a leg up, something implied if not stated, and so the bribe is paid. But our experience is that these are not usually the best teachers anyway.

There has been an outflight to some extent of teachers to other jobs in the economy. And that has left a lot of mediocre to bad ones. There are some excellent teachers still there but they aren't there for the pay but for the love of it. But Ukraine cannot afford to lose the good ones. They can kiss the rest goodbye if they cannot educate their children adequately.

When we get more on this, we'll post more.