TEACHERS THROW IN ERASER

Everyone knows that white students are fleeing the Dallas Independent School System, but the flight of white teachers has gone almost unnoticed by all but a few school personnel officials.

Although white teachers made up 61 per cent of all classroom personnel last year, they also accounted for 84 per cent of the 718 resigna-tions announced before school opened this fall.

“Eighty to 90 per cent of all resignations over the past 10 years have been Anglos,” says John Santillo of DISD’s personnel department.

As a result of those departures, the percentage of white teachers in DISD’s payroll has fallen from 75 per cent 10 years ago to 61 per cent last May. The percentage of white students in the district has fallen from 41.26 in 1976 to 32.9 per cent in 1980.

“The Anglo teachers can’t cope with the environment they have been placed in, and to which they are not accustomed,” says one white veteran of the schools. ’There’s the abuse -verbal a buse, mainly-from the students, the absenteeism, and the fact that so many kids don’t have any interest in education.”

Those things probably bother black or Mexican-American teachers as much as their white counterparts, but the whites may have an easier lime finding jobs, or have families who can support them while they’re looking.

“We ought to be paying teachers $18,000 a year to compete with private indus-try,” he says, noting that DISD newcomers earn only $13,217. “The legislature seems to have more respect for highways than for teachers, and that’s hypocritical.”