In Response to Carolyn Dodd, President of the Amityville Teachers Association ("Teachers oppose unfair standards, not accountability").

Dear Editor:

"Accountability" can mean different things to different people, maybe Carolyn Dodd, President of the Amityville Teachers Association can inform your readers how many tenured teachers were held accountable and terminated over the proceeding five school years?

I'm sure the district has several hundred classroom teachers who perform at varying levels of effectiveness, that would be natural. So, let's put a number on it to reassure residents that ineffective teachers are not shuffled from class to class, or to the library, to the computer lab to perpetuate the lifetime employment scheme we fear the system has become.

As an accountant, I can tell you that the cost of adding one teacher costs the district over $5.5 million from the date of hire to the date of death (salary, FICA, health insurance, other benefits, and the big white elephant in the room called a pension, which typically pays 50%-60% of ones final salary).

Attaining tenure shouldn't be the The Golden Ticket, the students and the residentS cannot afford it. Molly M. Amityville The writer has requestd that her full name not be used.