On Thursday morning my mom read me a letter to the editor. I heard her say that someone was mad about the teachers going on strike and shaming them. I am a 10-year-old boy who goes to Minneapolis Public Schools, and I have gone picketing the last few days and now can safely say that that reader was wrong for shaming the teachers. Two of the teachers I was picketing with had a sign that said, "I'd rather be teaching, but this is important." What I take from that is they are not being selfish. They would rather be with their kids in the classroom. They are partially going on strike for us. They want smaller class sizes so they don't get as worried when everyone in their class is yelling, they want better health support because they don't want kids feeling vulnerable at school, they want nurses in the school every day so if anyone gets seriously hurt they can be there right away, and finally they want more staff of color so Black- or brown-skinned kids have inspiration to do what they want to do.

In conclusion, teachers are not going on strike just for them. They are doing it for all of the students, too.

Heiko Bohnhoff, Minneapolis

•••

The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers is led in this strike by amateurs who have taken our children and their education hostage ("Mpls. teachers make support staff pay a 'hard line,'" front page, March 10). They are not competent to navigate this issue due to its massive size. They deny hard truths about the financials, and they don't understand the basic math in the gap between what they are demanding and what is possible. Nor do they even begin to fathom what it requires to fund salaries and pensions into the future. Their leadership has stated that there is funding from the Biden relief plan and from the state's surplus, indicating an incredible lack of understanding that those funds have requirements and timelines and allocations against them already. MFT leadership is too shortsighted to work with legislators on funding bills and bonds and other mechanisms to accomplish what they are demanding.

And all this going on while leadership lacks enough experience going through a complex, billion-dollar budgeting process with many and often competing priorities. It's terrifying for the education of our children to be in the hands of such incompetence. Get back to work, MFT, and stick to teaching. You have made Minneapolis even more of a used-to-be desirable location. Way to go.

Robert Raub, Minneapolis

•••

Can we please clarify what the yearly pay of our teachers is? I have seen the average stated as $71,000 for Minneapolis teachers today. My assumption then is that with a work year of nine months for most teachers, the pay equates to an annual salary of more than $94,000 if they worked 12 months like the rest of us do. My point (I am not judging whether it is adequate or not) is that their pay is for nine months of work, not 12.

Charles Hendrickson, Columbus

•••

This is the last place I wanted to be: writing at 1 a.m. on the third day of a strike. No pay coming in. Worried on how long will this go on. I am essentially caught between a rock and a hard place. Some might say I should be grateful to have this job. And they are right — I am grateful. Ten years ago, I lost my job where I worked for almost eight years. I remember trying to take a shower afterward crying and saying, "Why God? Why?"

I remember working a minimum wage job for almost two years after that, wondering if I would be stuck doing it forever. Then I got this job eight years ago. I was so scared I would screw it up because it felt like I seem to screw everything else up. Thankfully, I had a confidante in the nurse who worked me through it. And it is an amazing job. It is a job where every day I feel I am making a difference in the life of someone else.

So, why strike? Because maybe I deserve more than I think I do. Maybe I deserve better. Maybe I actually matter in the whole scheme of things. As it is, I had to pick up a second job back in 2020, so I am not necessarily making all this money some think I might be making.

That said, I know people are saying money is tight here and there and everywhere. But couldn't people make an exception? And I know people will be reading this and being apathetic and saying I am being greedy and selfish. Except I have lived a life where I have been harassed and bullied for most of it, where people have written me off again and again, where I felt like all I was meant to do was to struggle and struggle until the day I die. So maybe I feel this need to be acknowledged and that this struggle could finally be over, or better than it has ever been.

For now, it is the third day of the strike as I write. I went to union headquarters the day before and helped out. I was not planning to picket until I got a text from my mom. She was not happy about the shutdown and insisted that she and I picket next week if this stalemate continues. Hopefully, the stalemate ends before then.

William Cory Labovitch, South St. Paul

•••

It would take single percentages of our $9.3 billion budget surplus to meet the requests of our striking educators. It is sad and pathetic that we cannot meet basic requests of the educators who most deserve it, the people who have literally been heroes over the last two years (and are heroes every day), the people who inspire and lift up our children. I don't want to hear excuses, I don't want to hear about budget limitations, I want our kids back in school with teachers who feel empowered and valued when doing one of the most important jobs on the planet. I'm furious. Haven't our kids suffered enough through the pandemic? Haven't our teachers earned a fair salary that keeps up with cost of living? Did you see our teachers handing out school lunches during the pandemic and turning their lives upside-down to serve our children?

What will it take to get our priorities straight? We should feel ashamed.

Matthew Van Dyke, Minneapolis

For me, not everything is about race. I'm even in a tiny, tiny minority who isn't convinced that the killing of George Floyd was primarily a racial incident.

But something is seriously lacking when the outside, after-action review of Minneapolis's response to the civil unrest following the Floyd killing doesn't even mention the word "race" ("Mpls' chaotic reply to Floyd riots detailed," front page, March 9). In an 86-page report that discusses policing, protests and community trust in the police, surely the issue of race must have come up at some time.

Ouch.

Chuck Turchick, Minneapolis

I believe that the students who flashed a white power symbol did not know what they were doing, per the explanation of their administrators in "New Prague students flash 'white power' gesture at state hockey tourney" (StarTribune.com, March 10). I also believe it is not a coincidence when children are not educated to be aware of the meaning of racist symbols and the potency and power of their impact. The New Prague district has gotten statewide media attention around mishandling of race at sporting events. Have parents, schools and administrators implemented a comprehensive curriculum and created places for discussion to protect students from the implications of their own naiveté? Parents, schools and the community must raise students' awareness. Were some of these people instead working to ban the type of education that could have prevented their youth from becoming the center of another controversy?

Annika Fjelstad, Minneapolis

We want to hear from you. Send us your thoughts here.