After watching the Auburn City Council workshop from the audience on May 26, I was irate and disappointed that not a single councilor spoke in opposition to cutting teacher positions, even though most councilors did support not eliminating, or even restoring, positions in the municipal budget. I walked away with the feeling that they do not believe that teachers are people, too.

Cutting teaching positions makes the work more difficult for all of the remaining people. All of the reductions proposed by both the city manager and the superintendent would create a burden and a challenge for those managers and their employees, but the city council only showed concern for one side. Eric Samson was the sole councilor who addressed the issue of fairness to both sides so, instead, advocated for accepting the reduction proposals as presented, rather than adding back to the municipal side and not the school.

My second disappointment was that the Sun Journal article May 27 does not accurately state that the proposal by the superintendent included a reduction of five teaching positions. The article mentions three teachers and a custodian, but in order to reach the revenue reduction goal set by the council, it was necessary to cut much deeper than that.

If Auburn citizens are concerned about maintaining and improving the quality of their schools by using teachers as human resources, then they need to inform their city councilors to ensure that they will be heard.

Kathy S. Constantine, Auburn, member, Auburn School Committee