Bari are you really serious? Does it matter if it is gross or net! It will take a qualified English teacher quite a number of years to get to that level be it gross or net. It shows that the government is willing to put its money where its mouth is just not in the case of "real" teachers like us. As you know it has taken numerous strikes, work to rules etc just to get to 5300 (New Horizons) as a starting salary with a lot of extra hours thrown is as well. All of a sudden the powers that be have woken up and realised that in a very short time there will not be enough teachers around and lo and behold they have found a pool of unemployed hi techies to breach the gap.Even more amazing is the fact that they have, abracadabra, found the money to offer them as well. Not good enough in my book. I am a veteran teacher like you and I work two jobs to make enough to cover the mortgage loans etc etc.Merecenary, short term thinking on behalf of the government. In the long term we are up the you know what creek without any English teachers. Barry Praag Har Vagai Dafna Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:56:33 +0200 Subject: [etni] Re: Fw: new English teachers From: Bari Nirenberg <bnirenberg@xxxxxxxxx> I have to ask this again -- are you all talking about how much you net or how much you gross? I'm fairly certain that the 9000 in question was gross salary. I'm in my 20th year with a full misrah and an MA and I gross well over NIS 9000. Bari ----------------------------------------------- ** Etni homepage - http://www.etni.org or - http://www.etni.org.il ** ** for help - ask@xxxxxxxx ** ** to post to this list - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** -----------------------------------------------