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Flood watch issued for Luzerne County until Saturday

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Russian Foreign Ministry poked fun at hacker scandal

Someone needs to wake up our friends in the Back Mountain.You know who we&#8217;re talking about &#8212; those Dallas teacher union leaders who believe it is their God-given right to demand their membership not pay &#8220;one penny toward health care,&#8221; as union boss Michael Cherinka previously declared.Simply put, Cherinka must be living in some sort of dream world where money &#8212; your tax money &#8212; grows on trees and exists in an unlimited supply.Now, before we get started and take the union to task for its unrealistic stance, we must point out all the good work teachers do.They can make an impact on young lives, and by doing so, help shape the future.That&#8217;s pretty important stuff.It&#8217;s also fair to point out teachers need to possess a high level of patience that some of us in the rest of the population cannot come close to matching. After all, those at the front of the classroom have to deal with everything from cranky kids not too far removed from diapers to angst-ridden teenagers looking to challenge an authority figure.So for all that, we give them a pat on the shoulder. And we also firmly believe their work warrants a good salary. (Pay, of course, is the other main sticking point in this protracted dispute.)But now back to those of us slaving away in the real world, where work on holidays, weekends and &#8212; gasp! &#8212; throughout the whole summer is common operating procedure.The vast majority of real-world workers also contribute toward their health insurance premiums.Did you hear that, Dallas teachers?Please, listen closely:We know of people working in the Wyoming Valley who are expected to pick up more than half of their insurance premiums for a family plan at a cost of more than $10,000 annually. That&#8217;s money that comes right out of your paycheck.In Dallas, the teachers are throwing the whole school year into chaos over a request to contribute about $500 per year for their coverage.That&#8217;s right &#8212; a measly 500 bucks has become the crux of this long-running standoff.In the school board&#8217;s last contract proposal, it again requested health-care premium sharing that would require teachers to pay $20 per employee, per paycheck for a plan that would cover the whole family.So, let&#8217;s do the math: $20 biweekly is $40 a month. For the year, the insurance tab would come to a more than reasonable, almost charitable, $480.Again, there are people in the private sector paying 10 or 20 times that.What makes teachers so special that they should not shoulder at least some of the burden?Ridiculous.It gets worse, too, when you consider this:We were recently talking to a longtime teacher and administrator who worked in Hazleton Area schools. He remembers paying $34 per month for his health plan &#8212; wait for it &#8212; back in 1964!So, more than 53 years later, Dallas teachers are being asked to contribute just $6 more than a teacher working elsewhere back when Lyndon Johnson was in the Oval Office.Here&#8217;s hoping the Dallas school board sticks to its guns and does not cave to pressure from the union on the insurance issue.And on a related topic, it was less than classy of some teachers to recently stage a mini-protest outside the Forty Fort business of board member James Gattuso.They were out there for nearly 90 minutes, and Dallas Education Association President Cherinka promised more &#8220;sporadic&#8221; mini-strikes in the future.Big kudos to Gattuso&#8217;s son Mason, a Dallas High junior, for coming to the defense of his father. He hit the picket line with a sign of his own.It read: &#8220;I love Jim Gattuso.&#8221;Hey, Mason, you probably don&#8217;t need to buy a Father&#8217;s Day present this year.Sticking up for your old man like that is about the best gift any dad could ever hope for.<style>
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OUR VIEW: Dallas teachers, union must be in dream world