The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 9

The Courier-Journal, Tuesday, September 28, 1976 tv movies coping nutrition spending 3 Teacher John Schmidt and his family have learned to live without many frills of middle-class life, and they prefer it They like a simple life Cff vM fjjj yj John and Pat Schmidt have tried to teach their children that other things mean more than money. The children are Dennis, 12, Kathy, 11, Jon, 8, Tina, 6, and Paul, 4. Schmidt, below in science class at Male with Tim Nutgrass, says he tried another job and found teaching more rewarding. Staff Photo by Bill Luster man. It's a life that the Schmidts say they have learned to enjoy.

"People who go into teaching assume they are not going to live on a very grand scale," said Mrs. Schmidt, who also taught before quitting to start a family. The Schmidts had their first child in January of 1964 and the family has lived on one income ever since. Mrs. Schmidt says she doesn't think she should leave her children during the day for a job and Schmidt says he doesn't believe in taking a second job, as many other teachers do.

"Frankly, I don't think I could do my job properly if I had to work at night," Schmidt said. "I don't see how people could work several hours after school and work up good lesson plans." Resolved to make it on Schmidt's teacher's salary, the family has been forced to forgo the frills of middle-class life. This is easy, the Schmidts say, because they aren't shackled by expensive tastes that may cause frustrations and money problems for others. They live in a house they can afford, rather than long for a bigger and better place, and they get by with a single car, rather than paying for two. Schmidt takes the bus to work and leaves his wife with the seven-year-old station wagon that gets the family where it wants to go.

And besides also staying away from expensive food and vacations, the Schmidts avoid using credit. They feel using credit cards is asking for trouble. "Perhaps it was part of my rearing," Mrs. Schmidt said. "It was impressed upon me if you don't have the cash, don't buy it." Mrs.

Schmidt said she is also a great bargain-hunter for food, clothing and used furniture she can restore, Both John and Pat also save money by doing themselves many things others would pay to have done. Mrs. Schmidt upholsters and refin-. ishes old furniture and Schmidt is a handy man. "I put in my own furnace and air conditioning and I do my own plumbing and electrical work," Schmidt said.

An important part of living on a teacher's salary the Schmidts said, is teaching the children about money. "We've given these children a very realistic picture of what life is in terms of finances," Mrs. Schmidt said. "And we teach them material things aren't the By LARRY WERNER Courier-journal Staff Writer There's nothing fancy about John and Pat Schmidt and that, they say, is their strength. Their home is modest and their meals are basic and cheap.

Their social events are family affairs and vacations are camping trips. We live pretty simple lives," said Schmidt, who says that's the way he likes living. Schmidt is a teacher, has been for 12 years, and says there is no other job he would rather do. But teaching means raising a family on less than a princely salary. And Schmidt, a father of five, has more family to raise than most.

But with Jefferson County teachers currently locked in negotiations over the money they make, Schmidt is forced to concede: "By doing simple things and living simple lifestyles, we're not hurting." It's not that Schmidt, a science teacher, at Male High School, doesn't want more money for his work. He does. But he's adapted to a lifestyle his salary can support and this has kept him happy, he says. Schmidt is one of 5,683 teachers whom the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA) is representing in negotiations with the Jefferson County Board of Education. On Sept.

9, JCTA members turned down a contract that had been negotiated with the school board. A major issue was the size of the pay increase that would be given to teachers under the new contract. Traditionally in this country, teachers have maintained that they are underpaid, especially when the importance of their work is taken into consideration. Kentucky teachers repeatedly complain that their pay scales rank near the bottom among teachers' salaries in the United States. Schmidt agrees that teachers are paid too little and says the low pay for teachers indicates, "The whole value system's distorted in America." Schmidt, a 42-year-old teaching veteran with a master's degree, makes about $14,000 a year.

That translates into take-home pay of about $500 every two weeks modest pay for a professional man with six dependents. So Schmidt puts aside the notion that he's a "professional" and lives a life he says is more reminiscent of the laboring Timely By JAMES HERZOG Courier-journal Staff Writer WASHINGTON West Virginia gu-bernatorial candidate Jay Rockefeller sat next to Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane, who sat next to Kathy Sloane, who sat next to Ms. magazine editor Gloria Steinem, who sat next to Assistant Atty. Gen. Stanley Pottinger, who discussion Magazine's 'young leaders' meet and talk Staff Photo by Bryan Mom never felt completely part of a group outside his family.

Ms. Steinem, raised in a "middle-class family fallen on hard initially thought show business was the way of Toledo, Ohio. She worked as a dancer and salesgirl and went to college. Her father worried about "what to do with educated women." Feeling herself an "outsider," she used to conceal her intelligence and giggle and "Uncle Tom." The son of a small-town banker in Missouri, Bradley doesn't quality for the "Abe Lincoln log-cabin snydrome." Raised in a upper middle-class family, he spent his winters in Palm Beach. But he does feel separate from those around him.

Joseph Rhodes a Pennsylvania state representative who was a member of the Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest in 1970 His father was black, and his mother Chinese. When he attended a white elementary school, he was called "nigger." At a black high school, he was called "chink." Growing up under a domineering mother, he felt separate from the rest of the community. Although he was president of the student body at Caltech, he was one of the few nonwhites at the institution. 1 The other Kentucky leader besides Sloane on the Time list was Barry Bingham editor and publisher of The Courier Journal and Louisville Times. Bingham didn't attend the conference, and his secretary said that he had conflicting meetings elsewhere.

Some who did show up haven't quite fulfilled Time's two-year-old forecast of leadership success. One such person is Utah's Wayne Owens, who Time predicted would move in 1974 from the House to the Senate. Owens tried to do it but lost to Utah Sen. Jake Gam. Owens is now a Mormon passionary in Canada.

than the JCTA. He. said the only hope for better pay is a strong, labor-oriented, teachers' union. "We are paid and treated very much like labor," Schmidt said. "We are not paid or treated as professionals." June Lee, president of the JCTA, agrees with Schmidt that teachers are mistreated.

"I do not think the pay reflects the importance of the jobs we do or the amount of schooling we must get," Mrs. Lee said. Mrs. Lee said a man who tries to support his family on a teacher's salary "is living at a poverty level, in some cases." She said public education will suffer if teachers' salaries aren't increased because: "You get what you pay for." "It makes you feel people are really not concerned about their children and their children's education," she said. Although teachers are becoming more aggressive in their demands for higher pay, experts don't foresee significant increases in the amount of money teachers make.

Randall Powers, dean of the University of Louisville School of Education, said: "As a nation, we don't put a large financial premium on people who work with other people, unless it's doctors. Schools are not a priority." Powers said this means many people can't afford to teach, even though they would like to, or suffer in their work because they are "moonlighting" to bring in enough money. Schmidt has faced the financial facts of a teacher's life: "Why dress up in a fancy suit and drive around in a Cadillac when you're making a poor man's salary?" guests showed up. There were congressmen, governors, mayors, educators, law-yers and scientists. These were people deemed by Time to have "civic and social impact." They were found by the magazine as a result of some undisclosed selection process to be "men and women capable of leadership in many ways and many spheres." Sitting beside Gloria Steinem during a speech by Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen.

Walter Mondale of Minnesota, Pottinger wondered aloud if he and Ms. Steinem were the only "leaders" who were dating each other. Ms. Steinem said she showed up at the conference because she planned to be in town anyway. She said she hoped to make new political connections.

Mondale warmed up his "young" audience by telling Time magazine managing editor Henry Anatole Grunwald that the only thing the two had in common was being over 45. After his speech, Mondale accepted a handful of questions. A man in the back of the room who got Mondale's attention by yelling, "Fritz Fritz," asked what Democratic presidential contender Jimmy Carter meant when talked about raising or cutting taxes. The questioner was Sen. Robert Pack-wood, an Oregon Republican who was on Time's list.

"What he means," shot back Mondale, "is he's closing loopholes you've been protecting." Bill Bradley, a former Rhodes scholar who plays basketball for the New York Knicks, lunched with Karen DeCrow, president of the National Organization for Women. Asked why he took a day off from basketball, Bradley snapped that the Knicks weren't training that day. He said that he wanted "a chance to have lunch with Karen DeCrow." Ms. DeCrow, meanwhile, pulled a most important things we can give them." "They say, 'So-and-so has a Schmidt said. "We say, 'You don't have the money to have a and that's it." Mrs.

Schmidt says that even though her oldest child is only 12, she has already told her children that they will be expected to work their ways through college if they want to go. The Schmidts accept these limitations, they say, because Schmidt wants to make his living as a teacher. And they also accept them because there are some advantages for the teacher's family, they say. "One definite advantage is we have more time to spend together than people in other jobs have," Mrs. Schmidt said.

Having the summers off allows the family to take camping vacations when they want to, she said. "But the real advantage of Jack being in teaching is he's satisfied." Schmidt got out of teaching for four years and worked several government jobs. But he says the government jobs were "just a paycheck every two weeks." "I just wasn't learning," he said. "I decided teaching was a more meaningful experience." But the Schmidts concede they aren't "typical" and they are reluctant to recommend their simple lifestyle to others. "I'm not going to tell teachers they shouldn't have the same ambitions that other people have," Schmidt said.

And because he believes teachers deserve more from the school board, Schmidt has been active in the American Federation of Teachers, which is a more militant teachers' organization in 1974 provided a Who's Who of 200 American leaders under 46. Two years after bestowing its leadership designation on the 200, Time invited the group to Washington for a two-day conference on "the nature of leadership." It ended last night. With Time picking up the tab, about two-thirds of the magazine's invited for governor of West Virginia. sat in front of former Army football star Pete Dawkins. They were at the Washington Hilton' with some 125 others taking part in a Time magazine-engineered conference of America's young superstars.

"The Weekly Newsmagazine," which with regularity tells the public who are the best and the brightest in the land, 7 rf try movie camera from her handbag and filmed the big-name leaders at the conference. As they were walking from a Richard Bcn-Veniste, who was one of the special prosecutors probing the Watergate scandal, stopped Pottinger, who heads the Justice Department's civil rights division. "When are you going to indict J. Edgar Hoover posthumously?" asked Ben-Veniste, referring to reports of misdeeds alleged to have occured at the agency during Hoover's tenure. Pottinger mumbled something in reply, and Ben-Veniste said: "Well, he'd probably get a posthumous pardon anyway." The conference had its serious side.

There was a series of task force sessions, in which there were lengthy discussions about just exactly what leadership is, who leaders are and where leaders come from. Mayor Sloane joined a pair of governors, a congressman, two college presi dents and others to discuss the development of leadership. "Is it possible to teach leadership skills or are leaders mystery men, born in paradise or in some Devil's pit?" was one question posed. A Harvard professor suggested that many leaders are forged as a result of unhappy childhoods that often include poverty and a sense of separateness. One by one, 21 of Time's leaders gave sketches of their backgrounds in some cases agreeing and in some disagreeing with parts of that theory.

Mayor Sloane said he was raised in Virginia under "very comfortable circumstances." An only child, Sloane was raised by a mother with "a strong personality." His father died when he was 11. His mother infused him with a "strong sense of responsibility," which lasted through his education. Like most of the other Time leaders, Sloane feels a "separateness." He has Staff Photo by Jamtt Horiot assistant attorney general, Gloria Steinem, editor of Kathy Sloane and her husband, Louisville Listening to a speech by Sen. Walter (Fritz) Mon-dale, the Democratic vice presidential nom-. inee, at Time's Washington conference for "young Mayor Harvey Sloane, and John (Jay) Rockefeller, leaders," were, fro left, J.

Stanley Pottingej, U.S. who's running.