It recently came to my attention that the Lewiston school system pays teachers $30 per hour to teach summer school. The teachers are paid for a workday from 7:30 a.m. to noon, or similar hours for afternoon summer school.

The teachers work four-and-a-half hours per day, but are paid for five hours. Since summer school is only four days a week, the teachers have 20-hour workweeks. This equals about $600 a week for every summer school teacher; this is a huge expense to the taxpayers of this city.

The teachers will argue that they do more than just teach; they need time to prepare lessons and correct work that their students complete. The planning and correction portion could easily be completed during that extra half-hour portion of time they are paid for. It seems to make more sense if the teachers are getting paid for five hours, then they should be working five hours.

How can the school system justify paying $30 per hour to do these duties? It would seem to make more sense taking that extra money and investing it into hiring more staff, so classes could be smaller and more personable.

Maybe then we would see fewer students in summer school classes.

Jackson Dunleavy, Hartford