God no, I am just presenting the other side of it, and how the public system can be a complete and utter failure as well. Alot of teachers walk around like they are these saints and saviours amongst society working for peanuts and giving up so much to embetter our youth.
Firstly, a tenured teacher in the public system makes a very healthy living. Many of them over $90,000/yr. These people are not living in 1 bedroom apartments over a bowling alley, with a collection of dusty old books, and driving a 20 year old Volvo like television seems to depict. This notion that Alberta teachers are underpaid for a profession that offers them 8 weeks in guaranteed holidays anually is silly. Take the 8 weeks out, and get the standard 2 or 3 weeks most professions allow for, and there is a huge chunk of teachers that would be earning 100k if you prorated the holiday time.
Secondly, a TON of them take on the profession for the amount of time off they get, job security, and union protection...nothing more. I have had this discussion with numerous teachers, and some of them are almost smug about their summers off.
Here us the ATA pay grid:
http://www.ataloc55.ab.ca/assets/files/Grid_2011.pdf
Maybe if they want to reduce classroom sizes, they should look at taking some pay concessions. You sometimes can't have the best of both worlds. We needed to give a couple guys in my company a raise, and to do so, my department had to make a concession and take a pay cut. What makes teachers immune to having to be sensible, and budget conscious.... oh wait, a union.