Editor, Gazette-Journal:

In response to "Crying the school budget blues" (Readers Write, Feb. 17), let’s look at this mathematically. The average teacher in Virginia makes $45,000 per year. Break that down to 180 days of school and seven hours of instructional time per day. That equals approximately $35 per hour we pay our teachers to teach. If we break that down even further, based on the average 20 students that each teacher has, that’s approximately $1.75 per student, per hour.

And that is simply instructional time we are talking about. That does not include planning, grading papers, training, meetings, after-school hours to tutor students, time spent helping with extracurricular academic activities, etc.

Looking at these numbers, it looks like quite a small investment for the future of our country. In my opinion, teachers are way underpaid. If my taxes have to go up to ensure that our youth are being educated to one day take over this country, so be it...