Dear editor,I would like to thank the BC Teachers’ Federation for the unique social experiments that they are indirectly supporting through strike action.The first being the ever-awaited four-day work/school week and the second an experiment of tax bracket differentiation. Many find the logic of a four-day work week seriously overdue for a growing multitude of reasons.Those who have had the opportunity of a four-day work week notice a phenomenal increase in productivity (as significant as a five-day week) and an even greater reduction in life-stress.It will also be curious how this will translate into the lives of the students, since we know all too well how quickly Monday morning rolls around. Some four-day models even go as far as optimizing the use of school facilities during the three-day hiatus, for other educational cohorts or programs, maximizing the use of maintenance and taxes already paid on these building that currently sit empty 30 per cent of the time.Yes, people’s lives will be affected by loss of salary, namely the teachers, in an all-out bid to get the Ministry of Education to understand the inherent problems of class size and class composition.Yet, and this is experiment No. 2….If the average salary of a teacher is 50K and the next lowest tax bracket (federal and provincial combined) is 43K, and the difference between the two brackets falls from 29.7 per cent to 22.7 per cent, it would be very interesting if BCTF will at minimum be able to calculate the most beneficial number of days required to take advantage of this loss of salary in terms of a lower tax bracket.If a lower tax bracket comes out to 5K less in salary, then surely these educators will “do the math” and determine each for themselves what the best number of days to strike will be, and as such, the social experiment of the four-day work week will not hurt them nearly so much.And you can bet government has done their math — and it seems they are all to glad to recoup salary they don’t have to pay out, but would they say the same for tax loss? Caroline Alexander,Courtenay

Comox Valley Record