Where The Newspaper Stands  March 08, 2005   Teachers have
advocates, but social workers don't  As school boards pull
together their budgets and city councils and boards of
supervisors prepare to decide how to fund them, they'll hear
from well-organized, passionate advocates for teachers, pushing
for salary increases.  They're right. Teaching is an important
job, and teachers should be paid more. Facing a classroom of
kindergartners or middle-schoolers or school-weary seniors every
day, juggling the demands of SOLs and parents and principals,
isn't easy.  Neither is facing a family who has been evicted and
has no food, or figuring out if an elderly person has been
abused. Neither is trying to keep a paroled felon on the
straight and narrow or a drug addict on the road to recovery.
But it's unlikely that lines will form at the microphones in
cities and counties to argue for higher salaries for social
workers or counselors or case managers or child protective
service workers. They and their fellow human servic