This week, teachers at Delaware public schools staged a protest. They chose to go to work on time and leave on time.

Typically these teachers work way over the hours they’re supposed to but don’t get paid for it. That’s just what teachers do. They know it takes more than a regular work week to be a great teacher and deal with our wacky kids.

What got them working regular hours was a proposed 8 percent pay cut by the Governor to shore up the state’s budget.

There is something wrong with a society that values bank executives more than it does educators.

I’m not going to tell you anything new. Teachers don’t make a lot of money and have been among the lowest paid professionals in the work world for years. Part of that has to do with the fact that so many women are in the profession and we’re just not that big on paying women a fair wage.

But part of this problem is our priorities are screwed up. At some point we decided certain individuals should be paid the big bucks and others should not.

Even with the government take over of financial institutions no one has had the balls to step up and do something about the obscene pay not just top executives, but lower level traders and analysts in the financial sector have enjoyed. These fat paychecks, many economists believe, is what got us in the economic mess we’re in today because big payouts encouraged reckless behavior by money managers and the whole system collapsed.

But nooo, we can’t actually do anything now to stop the excesses.

This week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the government shouldn’t set limits on executive compensation: “I don’t think our government should set caps on compensation.”

God forbid we put caps on high-flying executives. But teachers … go ahead, cut their pay. Who really cares about them?