Gov. Josh Stein on Monday outlined his education priorities ahead of this year’s short legislative session, including raising teacher compensation and adding additional school support personnel to meet students’ nonacademic needs.

“If we truly believe that kids are the future of this state, then we have to make the job of educating them more attractive,” he said to a room of education leaders at nonprofit annual meeting.

Stein highlighted education items in his $1.4 billion , released earlier in March, including 5.8% average raises for teachers, funds to restore master’s pay for more than 1,000 teachers, and a 2.5% raise for principals. Beginning teachers would receive a 13% pay raise in the plan.

The state legislature starts its short session in April. It has not passed a new comprehensive budget since 2023. Stein’s proposal says it includes “critical funding needs that cannot wait until next fiscal year.”

He said teacher pay raises are needed to raise student outcomes, pointing out that the state’s average teacher salary ranks 48th in the nation, with its per-pupil spending ranked at 47th in the nation. Those rankings from the Reason Foundation using data from 2023.

“Teachers drive student success,” Stein said Monday. “They are the No. 1 in-school factor of student achievement. We know this, but we have not passed a meaningful raise for our teachers in years.”

Schools also need more support personnel, he said, like social workers, nurses, psychologists, and nurses to meet students’ nonacademic needs.

Stein celebrated recent wins, including the state’s highest four-year , highest on AP exams, and (CTE) courses.

He praised the state’s move to train teachers in “the science of reading,” or a body of research on how students learn to read. All pre-K to fifth grade teachers completed , a professional development program funded by revamping its long-time efforts to improve reading proficiency.

He also highlighted , the , — a teacher apprenticeship program — and passed by legislators and signed by Stein last year.

Local innovations like a Perquimans County program exposing high schoolers to hands-on teaching experience, he said, have much to teach the state.

“We have to take inspiration from and match our teachers’ tenacity and our principals’ passion,” he said. “If we believe that our kids are our future, investing in kids is the best we can do.”

Stein pointed to the , which he created with  and , as an example of bipartisan partnership.

“Public education is not a Democratic policy,” Stein said. “Public education is not a Republican policy. It is a North Carolina policy. It affects every child in this state. There are so many areas like the cellphone ban, where we can and we must work together for the benefit of our public school kids.”

Stein also urged the General Assembly to reconsider its tax policy, adding that upcoming federal cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), have changed the state’s financial pressures.

“The No. 1 item on the chopping block when cuts have to made will be our K-12 schools,” Stein said. “So your voice matters in these debates. I urge you to use it.”

The Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) projected a budget gap between $2.5 and $4 billion between fiscal years 2027-28 and 2032-33 between the state’s revenues and the funding levels needed to continue its current services, adjusted for inflation and population growth. Current law has in place if revenue targets are met, including a 3.49% personal rate in 2027. The corporate rate is set to drop to 2% in 2027 and to 0% by 2030.

On Tuesday, state’s nonpartisan Consensus Forecasting Group (CFG) , showing that while there is an expected increase in the General Fund, there is a $360 million decrease in revenue expected in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026-27.

Stein said the loss of state revenue, along with federal funding cuts, will make the state unable to maintain its current funding levels, much less invest in new education efforts.

“Few ideas to enhance public education come with zero cost,” he said, estimating a $3.5 billion funding gap in the next two years. “Typically, they come with some cost, which is why, as a state, we must get our fiscal house in order.”

He said much of the state’s overall success, like its rankings as and , is the result of education investments “over the course of many decades.”

“We are bearing the fruit of an orchard that was planted a long time ago,” he said, “but today we risk hollowing out the institutions that have helped to create our success.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

It’s not widely acknowledged as such, but America is experiencing a surge in anti-tax politics.

You see this of course on the right, which has always been skeptical of taxation. But we’re also starting to see a version of this on the left.

The growing progressive interest in exotic new tax-policy ideas — like Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna saying they can  — shows a left that has lost faith in the idea of asking Americans to pay higher taxes in exchange for more and better public services.

And whatever you think of the Sanders/Khanna proposal, it’s important to understand that this kind of plan doesn’t scale well to small states or to cities and counties since it can be relatively easy for people to leave to avoid the taxes.

So, especially when it comes to local services, you really have to ask questions like “Can we make people feel that it’s worth paying more for this?” and “Can we get more value for the money that we are already spending?” Unlike with the federal government, where  in part because it was based on , local governments actually spend a huge share of their budget on direct provision of labor-intensive public services.

The most expensive of these line items is public school systems.

Education spending presents us with something of a paradox. We know from small-scale studies that marginal increases in school spending . In particular, fairly boring things like  are effective at promoting student learning, especially in low-socioeconomic-status schools.

So it seems to be the case that for a lot of schools there’s low-hanging fruit that could be addressed at least somewhat effectively with an influx of money.

On the other hand, if you look at large-scale cross-sections of American schools, it’s just not the case that higher levels of spending are strongly related to student outcomes.

The Urban Institute’s  shows that the top-performing state for eighth grade reading is Massachusetts. That’s a relatively high-spending blue state, but not the highest-spending state. Number two is Louisiana. On eighth grade math, Massachusetts is number two and Louisiana is number three (Mississippi is number one).

The highest-spending system, New York, gets above-average results (I’ve seen a lot of people express excessive negativity about this), but they’re not dramatically above-average in the manner of either lower-spending Massachusetts or dramatically lower-spending Mississippi and Louisiana.

Which is all just to say that even though there do appear to be useful opportunities to spend more money on schooling —  — it seems like just looking at the average expenditure in high-spending systems is not very useful.

And those of us who think there are things the government should probably spend more money on ought to confront the reality that in many states the government is already spending a lot of money, some of it on things that are not very useful.

Teachers don’t move to higher-paying states

The question of how you design a high-functioning school system is complicated, and it’s clear that money isn’t the only thing that matters. For example, one factor that has gotten a lot of attention recently, and that I believe is a dominant factor in explaining why Mississippi and Louisiana in particular have started doing so well, is curriculum.

A restaurant can buy quality ingredients and hire decent cooks and have everyone work hard, and the food is still going to be bad if the chef’s recipes are no good.

But even when you get high-level agreement on something like curriculum, you can run into implementation problems. When I spoke recently with two people who worked in state government in Louisiana on setting up the current curriculum framework (which has had good results), they told me that a lot of their teachers had been taught in education school that the concept of centralized curriculum was bad. So, even with a strong curriculum in place at the state level, it still took work to get to a broad agreement to actually teach the curriculum.

So there’s obviously a lot happening that isn’t directly related to spending, but I do think it’s worth focusing on the more tedious technical question of how school systems are paying their staff, especially the teachers, who account for the lion’s share of the money and the work.

New York is number one in overall  and . So how come teaching talent isn’t fleeing Mississippi and Louisiana for New York, where average teacher salaries are 70 percent higher?

There are, of course, many reasons someone may not want to move across the country, but we’re also seeing the hidden cost of bad housing policy. Due to the much higher cost of living in New York, the real value of a middle-class salary is quite a bit lower there.

We know that there’s a lot of domestic migration out of the coastal states, and that it’s primarily not rich people fleeing taxes but . But this ends up inflating the cost of providing frontline public services, which leads to higher tax burdens, which itself further inflates the cost of living.

Another issue, though, is that teachers just don’t move state-to-state very much.

A  on Washington/Oregon border counties found that “teachers along the state border were almost three times more likely to make a within-state move of 75 miles or more than to make any cross-state move.”

They attribute the lack of interstate teacher mobility to two things: one is that mid-career teachers tend to lose a lot of pension value, and the other is that teacher licensing and certification is handled at the state level in a way that discourages mobility. Policy toward interstate transfers of teaching certifications differs from state-to-state. But New York in particular is a  — it’s one of only three states that has not  the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification interstate agreement.

So while you might think that one point of paying teachers unusually well would be to make your state an unusually attractive place for teachers to move, New York undercuts that with high cost of living and also has regulatory policies that specifically discourage out-of-state teachers from coming in.

Rewarding veterans, not attracting new talent

The issue behind the issue is that the highest-paying states are the ones with strong collective-bargaining frameworks for public sector workers: The National Education Association says  have salaries that are 24 percent higher on average. And when labor unions negotiate compensation packages, they prioritize the interests of their existing members. That’s different from the mindset of an employer who decides to unilaterally increase compensation specifically for the purposes of recruiting new talent. An employer who is eager to attract new talent would, for example, put money into hiring bonuses, but a union is never going to demand that around a bargaining table.

That’s how states end up raising compensation without reducing barriers to entry.

It’s also why compensation in the more generous states is heavily backloaded. So while New York pays 70 percent higher teacher salaries than Louisiana on average, its entry-level salaries are only . That doesn’t come close to compensating for the higher cost of living. If you ask where “teacher” counts as a decent-paying job for someone just starting out, Mississippi and Louisiana look good and New York looks terrible, despite there being much higher average salaries in New York.

I don’t want to overstate the significance of this. Massachusetts, as noted previously, has very good school performance despite a New York-esque compensation scheme.

My guess is that other things like curriculum are moving the needle on outcomes, so I think we should look at it the other way around: What is the case for spending a lot of money on teacher salaries if not to make it easier to hire teachers? Plowing tons of money into backloaded compensation systems while making it hard for people to laterally transfer in is not a good way of achieving any of our education goals.

Of course, if you assume that people are perfectly rational maximizers of income across the life cycle, it’s possible that people considering entry-level teaching jobs care a lot about the fact that a teacher with 23 years of experience will earn dramatically more in New York than in Mississippi.

But in the real world, people are imperfect in thinking that far ahead. And they are extremely imperfect about assessing the long-term value of things like unusually generous pension and health insurance plans. Veteran members who are closer to retirement and have more health care needs place a lot of value on these benefits, so unions can end up bargaining for things that cost the state a lot of money but have very little juice in terms of teacher recruitment.

Pensions in particular also intersect with housing and growth policy in a nasty way.

If your community is experiencing rapid population growth, then you can spread pension costs accrued in the past across a relatively large number of present-day taxpayers. But if your community has low population growth, then the retiree hangover is a much larger burden in per capita terms. The economic impact is even worse if those retirees take their pension incomes to Sunbelt states, leading to New Yorkers’ tax dollars supporting the economy in Florida.

Governing is hard

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how structural roles in the political system can be at least as important as factional affiliation.

When Zohran Mamdani was in the state legislature, he voted for a law that created an unfunded mandate for New York City to reduce class size in its public schools. The comptroller’s office thinks this  and more than $1 billion per year in subsequent years. Not coincidentally, now-Mayor Mamdani .

It’s easy for even relatively moderate state legislators to vote for policies that push up school costs, and it’s hard in practice for even very progressive mayors to raise taxes.

Matt Mahan is running in California’s crowded gubernatorial election, arguing that  before raising taxes to fund new initiatives.

I think that’s a courageous and correct moderate/reformist platform. But even a politician who has a totally different factional identity and set of priorities should consider this. If you have a new spending idea that you truly believe in on the merits — whether it’s free buses or child care subsidies — then it shouldn’t be all that hard to identify something the state is already spending money on that is not as good or important.

Not just as an exercise in sloganeering but as a way to actually get things done.

Even if you assume there are zero political or substantive problems with raising huge sums of revenue from new special taxes on billionaires, residents of high-tax places will reasonably ask “Why not use the money to cut my taxes?”

The explanation for increasing net revenue — as opposed to just making the base more progressive — has to be that the money already allocated is being well-spent.

Unfortunately, state budgets are quite complicated, so I can’t just write down three bullet points for cutting waste. But if you start looking under the hood of major budget categories like teacher compensation, you start seeing problems pretty quickly. I get why taking this on is nobody’s idea of a good time, but with the public increasingly cranky about taxes I don’t think there are any easy options available.

The revealed that of the 16 states that require districts to offer paid parental leave, only two — Arkansas and Delaware — give teachers their full wages up to 12 weeks. Six other states offer partial pay for up to three months.

Access to paid leave decreases postpartum depression and boosts the likelihood that employees will return to their jobs after having a child, according to the study. Multiple national medical organizations a minimum of 12 weeks of paid time off for new parents.

The number of large school districts offering paid parental leave has in the last three years, from 27 to 64. About 40 are located in states that don’t require the benefit. While this shows district-level progress, the lack of state mandates allows schools to refuse to take action, said Heather Peske, NCTQ president.

“What we know is that leaving it up to districts leaves too much to chance, and it leaves too many teachers high and dry,” she said. 

A 2024 by RAND Corp. found that 32% of teachers have access to paid parental leave, compared with 46% of similar working adults. Of those who received the benefit, 46% of teachers thought it was an adequate amount, compared with 78% of other adults.

The new report highlighted Arkansas as a , saying it’s a prime example of why states need to enact paid leave requirements. An optional program created in 2023 allowed the state and districts to evenly split the cost of substitutes who covered for teachers who were absent for up to 12 weeks. But only 10% of districts participated. 

Last year, lawmakers changed it to a mandatory, state-funded benefit that covered the full cost of long-term substitutes. The study said results of the new program are still unknown because it only took effect in August.

Washington state offers teachers the most time off: 12 to 16 weeks that can be extended to 18 in cases where pregnancy or birth complications arise. But the state offers only partial pay.

Maryland has a cap of $1,000 per week during parental leave, while Minnesota’s program covers between 55% and 90% of teachers’ salaries, depending on income level. In 2019, New Jersey increased its for eligible workers — including teachers — from 66% to 85% of their average wage. That change resulted in a 70% hike in program participation.

Seven states and the District of Columbia provide educators with full pay, but for a shorter amount of time, like six or eight weeks.

In , lawmakers debated in 2018 whether paid parental leave was the best use of limited state dollars, according to the study. Following months of advocacy, Delaware eventually created the nation’s first paid parental leave program for teachers, which NCTQ considers to be a model policy. It offered 12 weeks off, funded by an employee payroll contribution of less than 1%, and the state reimbursed districts for the cost of long-term substitutes. About 3% of teachers used the paid leave benefit in 2024.

“If states reimburse districts the cost of long-term substitutes, districts need only maintain normal operating costs by paying teachers’ salaries as usual,” the study said. “This policy ensures that educators receive their full pay during leave, while having minimal impact on the state’s overall budget.”

NCTQ also recommends that states extend paid parental leave to all teachers who become parents, including fathers and educators who foster or adopt children. About one-third of states that provide paid leave offer reduced benefits for non-birthing parents or none at all. 

“Research shows that when both parents have access to paid leave, families grow stronger, children are healthier and women experience greater career outcomes,” Peske said. “Ensuring leave benefits for all parents helps attract and retain talented teachers in the classroom.”

But theory is not always reality. In the case of teachers, research the best way to get better is to actually practice teaching, especially with and mentors, not to sit in a classroom to earn an advanced degree. 

Unfortunately, a flawed theory of teacher development has been baked into a range of state- and district-level policies that encourage or even require teachers to get ever-higher levels of external training. And, instead of working to better understand how to help teachers improve on the job, policymakers continue to rely on credentials to do that work. 

That starts with state control of who gets into the profession, with some states demanding that teachers earn master’s degrees to get or stay in. In California, for example, educators can’t remain in the classroom beyond an initial five-year grace period unless they earn a master’s or become certified. 

Once prospective teachers are licensed by their respective states, most districts use educators’ academic credentials to decide how much money they will earn. Salary schedules typically offer higher pay to teachers with more academic credits, on the theory that extra training should make educators better. 

And, to help teachers pay for all those additional courses, many states, districts and even the federal government have stepped in. 

 As a result, more teachers have master’s degrees than ever before, even though the profession today has than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. As of 2020-21, of all public school teachers had a master’s degree or higher. That makes teachers overall than biochemists, zoologists, mathematicians and statisticians. 

But suggests that relying so heavily on teacher credentialing is misguided. Other than a few potential in high school math and science, teachers with master’s degrees are no better than those without them. A from the Institute of Education Sciences found there was “no statistically significant relationship between student test scores and the content of the teacher’s training, including the number of required hours of math pedagogy, reading/language arts pedagogy or fieldwork.” 

But teachers with a master’s are no worse, in general, than those without, either. So what’s the harm in pushing teachers to pursue more and more higher education credits? 

The most damage is done to teachers themselves. Despite all the government subsidies, the Learning Policy Institute found that 60% of teachers have to to pay for those advanced degrees. Among those who took out loans and completed a master’s in 2020, the average balance owed was $38,230.

In other words, teachers are taking out large loans to earn academic credentials that won’t help them do their jobs better. That’s not a good trade. 

The individual harm to prospective teachers should be enough for policymakers to pay attention. But paying for credentials also costs a lot of money, and those precious resources could be put to better use. According to from the National Council on Teacher Quality, 15 states require districts to offer additional pay for master’s degrees. Those states — Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia — tend to be concentrated in the Bible Belt or upper Midwest. 

But the practice is widespread. NCTQ found that 135 of 148 large districts offered higher pay for master’s degrees. The average premium in 2025 for beginning teachers with a master’s was $3,581 a year. For teachers with 25 years of experience, it ran to $9,315. This adds up to millions of dollars that districts are investing to reward teachers with higher degrees. 

Seattle, for example, pays beginning teachers with a master’s degree almost $13,000 more than those with just a bachelor’s. In Miami, teachers with 10 years of experience make $20,446 more if they have a master’s degree. In Montgomery County, Maryland, a teacher with 25 years of experience makes almost $40,000 more with a master’s. 

As these examples suggest, master’s degrees do pay off handsomely for some individuals. But that’s not the norm for most teachers. Last year, an analysis for the found that master’s degrees in education have low to negative returns on investment, in contrast to master’s degrees in science, engineering and nursing, which offered much greater returns. 

There are better alternatives. States have been ramping up that don’t require much of a front-end investment on the parts of teacher candidates. And a Texas program shows that states can pay teachers more without making the higher salary contingent on a master’s degree. Team-based staffing models demonstrate how schools can reward effectiveness rather than resumes.

But in most parts of the country, state and district policies continue to rely on teacher credentials. That harms educators, who take on debt and never earn much of a return on their investment. And it’s a poor use of taxpayer resources, which go toward a credentialing system that ultimately doesn’t help teachers get better at working with students. 

Our conclusion: Targeting bonuses to educators in high-needs areas — beyond the additional pay for seniority and advanced degrees that most teachers enjoy — would help equalize access to high-quality educators, rectify per-pupil spending inequities between schools with high proportions of low-income students and their more advantaged peers, alleviate shortages in specialty areas such as STEM and special education, and reduce teacher turnover at high-poverty schools.

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Yet despite the and , bonus pay for teachers in specializations like STEM, special education and bilingual education, and for those working in high-poverty schools, is still shockingly uncommon. on 148 collective bargaining agreements in large districts shows that fewer than 1 in 6 (15%) offered any differentiated pay for teachers working in schools with large proportions of low-income students. Even where extra pay for other shortage areas (e.g., special education) ostensibly exists, the financial incentives are usually nominal and often require activation by school boards or other entities through processes that lack transparency and accountability to parents and taxpayers, which, in turn, renders them ineffective.

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So why isn’t more being done to build a better system that provides equal access to high-quality teachers and fairer per-pupil spending?

Unions are the most formidable barrier to bonus pay in high-need schools and specializations. In a 2022 piece for The New York Times, Thomas Toch of Future Ed : “For their part, teachers unions, influential voices on state and local staffing policy, tend to back expensive strategies that benefit every teacher rather than concentrate resources where there’s clear need. An American Federation of Teachers shortage task force in July recommended higher across-the-board pay, smaller classes and a reduction in the use of student achievement to measure school and teacher performance.”

Similarly, researchers at the Brookings Institution in 2017: “Both state policies and teachers unions have blocked differentiating teacher compensation for things like teaching in high-demand subjects or in high-need school settings, but this type of price discrimination would be an expedient way to address many of the persistent teacher vacancies districts increasingly face.”

Union leaders often opine that any from standard salary schedules and that bonus pay could be divisive among the teachers who receive it and those who do not. 

We don’t see anything necessarily nefarious or malicious in this stance. It may have some grounding in practical realities and could be an easy way to please most members without ruffling too many feathers. However, the stance of union leaders seems at odds with that of their rank-and-file teachers, 92% of whom, in a 2023 survey by E4E, said they for working in hard-to-staff schools. The popularity of this idea was sustained in , when teachers selected “Opportunities for higher pay for working in a hard-to-staff school or subject area” as one of the strategies most likely to attract talented and diverse candidates to the teaching profession — and teachers of color chose it as the No. 1 strategy.

That opposition also reveals a fascinating contrast with standard practices in nursing — a profession for which, like education, the American Federation of Teachers provides widespread representation in collective bargaining.

Though nursing shares similar demographics and educational requirements with teaching, the union’s approach to compensation in these two professions is worlds apart. Our of six matched AFT teacher and nursing contracts in Manchester, Connecticut; Cincinnati Ohio, and New Brunswick, New Jersey, shows that while bonus pay is rare, restricted and meager in teaching, it is widespread, accessible and far more generous in nursing.

When it came to hard-to-fill roles in nursing — such as weekend and overnight shifts —  the we examined provided substantial supplemental pay to attract nurses to these less popular time slots. Nurses in Manchester, for example, receive a shift premium of $5.25 per hour (18% above base rate) for evening shifts and $7 per hour (24% above base rate) for working nights and weekends.

In contrast, the teacher agreements we studied had no incentives whatsoever for teaching in high-poverty schools. Some were there, in theory, but upon closer inspection, they were reduced to zero in practice by the failure to actually implement them.

For example, while the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers contract gives the superintendent authority to declare shortage-based needs, the funding is restricted behind multiple layers of bureaucratic processes. When contacted, Cincinnati Public Schools officials informed us that the superintendent hasn’t authorized this policy since at least 2022.

The situation was somewhat better for teachers in specializations in which there are shortages, such as special education, bilingual education and STEM. However, where teachers might, if they are lucky, get a maximum differential of 5% of their base salary for one of these positions, nurses’ contracts commonly include bonuses of 15% or more for hard-to-staff assignments. Research shows that bonuses 7.5% above base salary are the to influence choice of assignments, with increasing efficacy above that level.

We don’t consider our study to be the final word. We examined only six contracts in three geographic areas. And in both professions, there are ways to provide bonus pay outside collective bargaining agreements.

Districts could offer differentiated pay as annual bonuses outside of contracts (though negotiation through a memorandum of understanding or the like might still be required) or by giving school leaders, such as principals, autonomy over hiring (instead of assignments based on bumping and seniority) and weighting funding based on student needs rather than teacher seniority in order for school administrators to set salaries and staffing assignments according to their school’s specific needs.

At the state level, funding could be offered to districts or schools through grants tailored to address shortages in high-poverty and rural schools and specializations, such as Illinois’ Teacher Vacancy Grant Pilot Program and Texas’ Teacher Incentive Allotment. 

More research is clearly needed.

Nonetheless, we think our findings weaken the argument that bonus pay is somehow inherently anti-union or unmanageably divisive. This is also a situation where we feel that the adults need to give a little to do what’s best for children, especially students in the highest-need classrooms that continue to suffer from shortages of experienced and qualified teachers that diminish young people’s opportunities. It is time to pay added bonuses to get the best teachers where children need them most.

New data shows that while has climbed in recent years, Hoosier educators still earn less than peers in neighboring states — a gap union leaders and some legislators say threatens teacher retention and classroom success.

Members of the Interim Study Committee on Fiscal Policy spent much of their final meeting on Friday examining teacher and administrator salaries, student-to-teacher ratios, and other education funding trends. 

The statewide median teacher salary was $60,100 as of the 2025 fiscal year, compared with $98,193 for school administrators and $114,825 for corporation administrators, according to a presentation prepared by the Legislative Services Agency.

The mean salary across Indiana was $63,424 for teachers; $99,556 for school administrators; and $116,731 for corporation administrators.

Though average salaries rose about 4% from 2024 to 2025, LSA staff told the committee that when adjusted for inflation, median wages for teachers and administrators have actually declined since 2020.

Suburban districts continue to pay the most, while teachers in rural and small-town schools saw the smallest wage growth, according to the LSA analysis.

Public schools spent roughly $824 million on teacher and administrator benefits in 2024, nearly 80% of it for health insurance.

‘We simply have to raise teacher pay’

Joel Hand, representing both the American Federation of Teachers Indiana and the Indiana School Social Workers Association, told the committee that Indiana “still lags far behind our other Midwestern states.”

He pointed to Wisconsin, for example, where teacher salaries averaged $65,196 for the 2023-24 school year. Ohio, meanwhile, reported average teacher pay at $72,644.

“If we want to keep those students who are getting degrees in education from leaving to go to Illinois or Ohio or Wisconsin or Michigan, we simply have to raise teacher pay,” Hand said.

He emphasized that Indiana currently ranks 39th in the nation for average teacher salary, citing data from the National Education Association. 

“If we want to address teacher retention … we have to raise teacher pay across the board,” Hand told lawmakers.

Gail Zeheralis, with the Indiana State Teachers Association, echoed those concerns. She reminded the committee that the 2019 Governor’s Teacher Compensation Commission had set a goal of a $60,000 average teacher salary.

“A $40,000 salary in 2019 equates to roughly $50,000 today, and a $60,000 average in 2019 equates to about $76,000 in today’s dollars,” she said. “Indiana must continue increasing state funding.”

LSA staff told lawmakers that statewide, student-to-teacher ratios have declined — from 17.6-to-1 in 2019 to 15.6-to-1 in 2025 — while the student-to-administrator ratio dropped from 208-to-1 to 196.9-to-1 over the same period. 

The trend, said LSA Assistant Director Austin Spears, mirrors national patterns but is “really driven by an increase in the count of teachers” rather than student enrollment growth. 

Still, Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, noted the roughly 1,300 open, unfilled teaching positions on the Indiana Department of Education’s website.

But other committee members questioned whether funding decisions at the local level steer too few dollars directly to classrooms. 

“It’s frustrating up here … that we want to take care of teachers as best we can, because we think that helps us educate kids better,” said Sen. Scott Baldwin, R-Noblesville. “But dollars going into the school system from this body don’t seem to always make it into the classroom or teachers’ pockets.”

Hand responded that “the erosion of collective bargaining for teachers at the local level” has weakened educators’ ability to advocate for fair pay and working conditions.

Hand additionally called attention to Indiana’s severe shortage of school social workers, which he and others flagged as a “critical” issue in the midst of growing mental health needs across the state’s schools.

The latest data from the state and national school social worker associations showed that Indiana has a student-to-social worker ratio of 1,829 to 1 — massively above the recommended ratio of 250 to 1.

“With the enormous crisis we have in Indiana — and really throughout the country — with mental health in our schools, this is a ratio that I would strongly challenge you as members of the General Assembly to work on,” Hand said.

School social workers are different from school counselors and are primarily focused on students’ lives outside of the classroom and on helping deal with issues outside of school that interfere with academic progress. 

Hand said that despite holding master’s degrees and being specially-certified, school social workers are typically not considered to be teachers and many are not on teacher contracts. 

He urged legislators to include social workers in the state’s definition of “teacher” for funding purposes, arguing that change will make it easier for school social workers to get hired or be qualified for raises.

Possible legislative solutions

Lawmakers and education advocates pointed to — approved earlier this year — as a starting point for potential reform, but said additional changes are needed to make teacher pay competitive.

That law from $40,000 to $45,000 beginning June 30, and increased the share of state tuition support that school districts must spend on teacher compensation from 62% to 65%.

It also created a statewide Teacher Recruitment Program to help fund training and placement in high-need schools, while requiring annual reports on expanding affordable health plan options for educators.

Several lawmakers on the committee signaled interest in going further. 

Rep. Jeff Thompson, R-Lizton, suggested offering weighted funding or incentive pay for shortage areas such as special education and STEM fields — “a market-based approach,” he said, that would help schools recruit for the hardest-to-fill roles.

Baldwin continued to push for greater transparency in local spending to ensure that “dollars reach classrooms and teachers,” rather than being absorbed by administrative growth.

Qaddoura additionally proposed a deeper analysis of district administrative structures to distinguish between small charter schools and large corporations when comparing salary ratios, noting that such distinctions “would give us a clearer picture of where our dollars are actually going.”

Other ideas discussed included restoring stronger collective bargaining rights for teachers and giving districts more flexibility to redirect certain capital project funds — like those used for athletic facilities — toward salaries. 

“We just need to somehow loosen up that money for teachers over another astro-turf football field,” said Sen. Travis Holdman, R-Markle.

No formal recommendations were adopted, but lawmakers said the findings will guide education discussions in the 2026 legislative session. 

“We’ve seen the data,” Thompson said. “Now we need to figure out what levers we can pull.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

They racked up credit card debt, borrowed money from relatives, and ate frozen dinners.

Now, after , the Education Department has begun sending payments to soon-to-be-teachers who were counting on the money to cover living expenses over the summer while they trained to enter the city’s public schools.

Members of the NYC Teaching Fellows expected to be paid up to $4,500 in installments during the summer program, which quickly trains career changers and recent college graduates to fill hard-to-staff positions in the city’s public schools. Nearly 1,000 people participated this year, about double the number compared with last year, as the city races to comply with a state class size mandate that will require than usual every year.

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Education officials initially indicated that participants would be paid periodically during the seven-week program to help offset living expenses, according to a recording of a webinar obtained by Chalkbeat. But when the program wound down during the last week of July, the payments still hadn’t arrived.

Several fellows complained about the delays, and the Education Department responded with vague messages that did little to clarify the timeline. City officials eventually told fellows they would begin issuing checks on Aug 1., meaning participants would not receive them until after they completed their training.

“They just kept saying, ‘Expect an update,’” said Kimba Williams, a 44-year-old former case manager for a foster care agency who participated in the program this summer. “They waited until the whole program was over.”

, the Teaching Fellows program has long been a key pipeline for attracting educators into high-need schools and is also designed to help diversify the teaching force. About were hired through the program, which offers a faster track into city classrooms that skirts the traditional certification process.

Williams, who is slated to teach at a Bronx middle school this fall, joined the fellows program because he wanted to be a positive role model for Black boys. Research students of color have better outcomes when they are in classrooms with teachers who look like them.

As the weeks ticked by without any sign of a paycheck, he maxed out his credit cards, took on $2,500 in debt, and canceled a trip to visit his daughter in North Carolina because he couldn’t afford the travel. He was expecting a stipend of about $3,700.

“It makes it hard to live a normal life,” Williams said. “At times you may not know where your next meal is coming from and that’s not fair to put anyone through.”

The training experience — which involves learning how to devise lessons, manage classrooms, and teach summer school students under close supervision — was positive except for the lack of payment, Williams said.

A check finally arrived on Aug. 11, more than a week after the program ended. Williams plans to use some of the money to drive his daughter to college.

City officials eventually blamed the delays on a “transition to a new payment structure that was required for us to remain in compliance with tax regulations,” according to an email some teaching fellows received at the end of July.

“While the Office of Teacher Recruitment and Quality has been working tirelessly to issue this payment as soon as possible, we deeply apologize for the delay caused by this transition and appreciate your patience and understanding,” the message continued.

After this story was published, Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull wrote in an email that “all payments have been issued” and noted that the city would “quickly identify and resolve any outstanding issues to ensure every Fellow is paid in full.”

Some fellows, however, said they are still waiting to be paid.

One participant, who previously worked as an accountant, said he borrowed $6,500 from relatives to pay for rent and groceries this summer. The delays have strained some of those relationships.

“They’re asking, ‘When are you going to be able to pay?’” said the fellow, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “I can’t tell them because I haven’t received it.”

City officials warned fellows in a late July message that lost checks could take months to reissue.

Some experts that starting a new career in debt could mean they wind up leaving the public school system sooner, as teachers often make less than peers with similar experience and credentials. The former accountant said the experience has made him second guess his decision to change careers.

“People are not going to want to stay in a profession if you’re not going to be treated with respect,” he said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Advocates are hopeful that change is coming: This June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law , a historic $8.5 billion piece of legislation devoted to increasing education funding across the state, with a particular focus on teacher training and retention. It includes almost $190 million specifically devoted to teacher preparation and certification programs, as well as $4 billion for teacher and staff pay raises to keep high-quality teachers in the classroom. 

“I don’t think about this being your kind of traditional state policy, which tends to do a lot of patchwork reforms,” said Jacob Kirksey, associate professor at the College of Education at Texas Tech University. “This really tackled the teacher pipeline from its inception.”

The teacher pipeline issue “was a Texas-sized problem,” he added, “and this [bill] is a Texas-sized solution.”

Before this legislative session, Texas lawmakers hadn’t raised schools’ base funding or passed a comprehensive education finance package , leading to what some called a dire situation. Last year, the K-12 school system was ranked overall and 44th for reading scores.

The certification crisis became a major focus of the bill once lawmakers “started to recognize that the [resulting] learning loss was a statistic that you couldn’t turn away from,” Kirksey said.

In response, House Bill 2 will also limit some components of a which allowed the vast majority of Texas districts to hire fully uncertified teachers, experts told The 74. Initially designed with a goal of opening educator pathways for industry folks to teach career and technical education courses, consequences of the bill really exploded post-pandemic, when schools were struggling to hire teachers, according to Kirksey.

Ultimately, over schools statewide applied for and received Districts of Innovation designation, allowing scores of them to hire uncertified teachers. By the , the share of all new public school teachers in Texas who are uncertified reached 56%. That share has increased significantly over the last decade, worrying advocates, experts and district leaders across the state. The previous year, when just under half of new teachers were uncertified, almost had no prior experience working in Texas public schools. 

That lack of preparation has real impact, both for the teachers themselves and the students they serve: 64% of uncertified teachers leave the classroom after just five years — compared to about a third of traditionally certified teachers, according to the  

“It was really creating a revolving door of teachers that sort of became a self-fulfilling prophecy,”  said Ryan Franklin, managing director of policy and advocacy at Philanthropy Advocates and former associate commissioner for educator leadership and quality at the Texas Education Agency.

Students with new, uncertified teachers lose about in reading and three months in math each year, comparable to and compounding the learning loss kids experienced during the pandemic, Kirksey’s research found.

The new legislation gradually mandates that all core subject teachers are fully certified by the 2027-28 school year, with an option for schools to apply for an extension until the 2029-30 school year. It also provides incentives for teachers who are currently in the classroom to seek out certification quickly with a $1,000 bonus.

In addition, the bill looks to promote high-quality training programs since “all preparation is not created equally,” Franklin said. 

A ‘chance at sustainable growth‘

While the scale of House Bill 2 is unprecedented in Texas, the desire to introduce innovative and high-quality pathways to teaching isn’t new.

Clifton Tanabe, the dean of the College of Education at The University of Texas El Paso, has been working on this for quite some time. Six years ago, he introduced a residency program to his university to train teachers differently, so they were not just certified but truly prepared to enter some of the most difficult-to-staff urban and rural classrooms.

Residencies are a year-long, intensive form of training that pairs pre-service educators with a mentor teacher and single school site, allowing them to be fully immersed in a classroom environment and learn through doing. Teaching responsibilities often ramp up for the residents throughout the year, allowing them to “get their hands dirty,” as one researcher put it, with training wheels. 

Although essentially full-time jobs, they are often unpaid and done while the resident is simultaneously attending their own classes and paying tuition, making them historically inaccessible to a predominantly low-income student body like Tanabe’s. So, he started “pounding the pavement, asking for money,” and ultimately, in 2018, was able to launch a pilot program that offered all residents a yearly stipend.

Despite the program’s success, it wasn’t sustainable. Without COVID funding, Tanabe wouldn’t have the necessary money to keep paying residents. Already, this year, he’s had to cut back yearly stipends from $20,000 to around $14,000.

That changed this June with House Bill 2, which Tanabe called “massive” for his program and the students they serve.

“It’s what we think about as our chance at sustainable growth for this model,” he added.

The legislation will use a to get money into schools, ranging from an expansion of the a merit-based pay program, to the creation of a Teacher Retention Allotment, which will provide significant raises to core subject educators who have been in the classroom for more than three years. Teachers in smaller districts will get even bigger bumps. 

In addition, the sweeping bill expands career and technical education, introduces special education reforms and increases funding to charter schools. 

On the preparation side, the state will pay the cost of training teaching candidates, up to 40 in residency programs or 80 traditional student teachers in each district. Districts will receive up to $39,500 a year for each teacher resident and $21,500 for each student teacher. Along with the additional funds comes tightened requirements for program content — including mandatory reading and math academies and a ban on any critical race theory-related curriculum. 

Historically, around 20% of certified Texas teachers were prepared fully online, asynchronously, meaning they accessed the materials on their own schedule and without real-time live instruction, according to Kirksey’s research. Candidates could get a temporary certification in a matter of weeks and immediately enter the classroom. 

“That just shows you the incentive structure that was happening,” Kirksey said. 

“What [the new funding] does is it allows them to choose quality and not have the same kind of economic loss that they would have,” he added.

Wes Corzine, superintendent of Huckabay Independent School District, a small, rural district south of Fort Worth, said because of the bill, he’s able to give raises up to $8,000 a year to his more experienced teachers. While he’s excited about the increase in pay and the funding for his district’s residency program, he did push back on one element of the legislation, noting he wished there was a bit more flexibility in how districts could spend some of the money.

Tricia Cave, a lobbyist at the Association of Texas Professional Educators, also argued that the Teacher Retention Allotment funds only support raises for core content classroom teachers, excluding scores of other school-based staff like librarians, counselors and school nurses. Still, she is optimistic about the changes this bill can bring.

For the residency at El Paso, and others like it, the money can’t come soon enough. This year, Tanabe has 200 residents working in schools across seven urban and rural districts that are particularly challenging to staff. The vast majority of the student teachers receive federal Pell grants, and about a third come from families making less than $20,000 a year. 

“It’s a student population that’s tenacious, looking for opportunities, working hard and if you give them a realistic program, with the kinds of supports that a residency model with a stipend has, we can succeed at a very high level,” he said.

In the first six years of the program, they’ve already seen promising results and a high percentage of residents are ultimately offered full-time teaching roles at their school sites. Last year, leaders in one district that Tanabe’s program partners with told him the residency program had solved their teacher vacancy problem. This is particularly significant in rural districts, where in the uncertified teachers were hired at a rate four times higher than the rest of the state. 

And, because of their intensive training, these teachers “start day-one ready,” and remain in the classroom “because they’re not crying in the parking lot after week one, saying this was the worst decision of their lives. They know how to teach from the get-go,” Tanabe said. 

Corzine echoed this point, noting that whenever his district has an opening, they make an effort to hire a resident, “because you’re really hiring a second-year teacher … It creates this huge talent pipeline. It’s a yearlong job interview.”

Experts across the field are hopeful that these across-the-board investments will ultimately have a substantial positive impact on schools, teachers and their students. 

“I think we know with the teacher education pieces, this is about the long game,” said Franklin, the Philanthropy Advocates managing director, “and this is about long-term, sustainable ways to ensure that our students have the teachers they deserve, and that the teaching profession is an attractive profession to the end.”

This is not a new finding, but Texas is actually doing something about it, by providing millions of dollars in school funding explicitly tied to teacher quality. The way Texas is doing it stands in contrast to past efforts and could be a model for other state and national policymakers.

During the Obama administration, state, district and federal leaders all seized on research on the importance of great teachers. One at the time found that high-quality educators can boost college outcomes and early-career earnings and even reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy.

But many of those policy efforts focused on the nuts and bolts of evaluating teacher quality, rather than using the results to drive personnel decisions. They became a top-down exercise in measurement and bureaucracy rather than a human capital tool. Predictably, that effort largely , and it kicked off a against federal education policy writ large and around teacher policy.

But over the last few years, Texas has slowly built a new approach that could be a path forward. The state is offering carrots, not sticks, as a way to get districts to behave differently. And it’s working. Not only is Texas offering its best teachers a lot more money, those educators are in the classroom in greater numbers.

It’s called the program. To qualify, districts submit their evaluation systems for state approval and explain how they will identify and a certain percentage of their teachers as outstanding, based on student growth — which may or may not include test scores — and classroom observations. The state then awards those districts extra money for each designated teacher.

Districts must use a validated observation rubric and evaluate educators at least annually. Under state , a “Master” teacher would perform at about the 95^th percentile, an “Exemplary” teacher between the 80th and 95^th percentiles and a “Recognized” teacher at the 67^th percentile or above.

After the state verifies a district’s evaluation process, it starts sending out . Each Recognized teacher earns at least $3,000 for his or her school, with higher amounts for Exemplary and Master teachers. Extra funding is awarded if the teacher works in a high-need or rural school. For example, a Master teacher in such a school could bring in an extra $32,000 a year. 

Critically, the money doesn’t flow to teachers directly, and districts have some flexibility in how they spend the funds. They can pass on the full amount to the designated teachers, or divide it among those teachers and other support staff at the same school. A district can also reserve up to 10% of the money to pay for professional development and other activities related to the designation system.

Once teachers earn a , they keep it for at least five years. If they change schools or districts, the money follows them. This gives them additional power. But, because the designations are worth more in higher-poverty schools, districts have an incentive to try to keep their designated teachers in their classrooms.

In addition to providing higher pay, this process is also a way for the state to acknowledge and thank great teachers. The state provides letters for districts to send to their designated teachers to notify them of both how much they earned for their school and how much extra they personally will receive.

Since its inception in 2018-19, Texas legislators have expanded the program and tinkered with its design. passed this year raised the dollar amounts for each designation, allowed districts to incorporate principals in the future and created a new category of “Acknowledged” educators, those at the 50^th percentile or above. The number of districts has also swelled, from 33 at the start to 597 last year — about half of all districts statewide. Importantly, the extra money seems to be helping to keep teachers in the classroom. Last year, 19% of all non-designated teachers their districts, compared with just 10% of the designated teachers.

Other states and federal policymakers could learn from the Texas approach. Rather than getting bogged down in the details of evaluation systems, it offers carrots to districts that are able to create systems that can meaningfully differentiate among their teachers. And, by putting real money behind it, the state is providing incentives for its best educators to work in the hardest-to-staff schools. Through its allotment program, Texas is raising the pay of its best teachers by thousands or tens of thousands of dollars each year, and sending a powerful signal that it values their work and wants them to continue teaching.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Education announced Tuesday that 4,200 educators qualified for bonuses under the Learns Merit Teacher Incentive Fund Program, which launched in 2023 as part of a major education reform bill. Roughly 3,000 educators received checks during the program’s first year.

“It’s neat to see how surprised [teachers] are, because they think that everybody’s working just as hard as they are, and that all the students are learning as much as their students,” said Jacob Oliva, Arkansas’ secretary of education. “It’s a special moment to really celebrate some of the best of the best.”

This year’s from the state is meant to incentivize, recruit and retain high-performing educators while reducing staff shortages, according to the department. But the state’s largest teachers union says too many educators are left out of the running for the annual salary boost.

To be eligible, educators have to meet a complex , including having three years of experience and either spending 70% of their time in the classroom or working as a librarian or school counselor.

Classroom teachers have to demonstrate growth in their students’ state test results and be ranked as effective or higher in the Arkansas Teacher Excellence and Support System, based on district of factors like quality of instruction, classroom environment and student engagement.

Educators who don’t have student state assessment data — such as those specializing in subjects not tested, like fine arts — have to be rated highly effective. 

Finally, qualifying teachers must rank in the top 25% of student growth scores, based on a three-year average of English language arts, math or science state tests; teach in a critical shortage area; or mentor college students to become teachers.

Bonus amounts depend on which criteria educators meet. A teacher can receive $9,000 for ranking in the top 1% in student growth, while a counselor could receive $1,500 for working in a geographic shortage area. Bonuses can reach $10,000.

But April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association, said many high-performing teachers are left out. 

“I’m a special education teacher. One time in my life I’ve had a student that hit ‘exceeding’ on that test,” she said. “I’ve been a great teacher, and I’ve consistently got [highly effective] on my test evaluations, but I may or may not get that bonus, depending on whether or not my kids had a great day. It’s all based on a test at the end of the year for that growth. The results of one test are not an accurate indicator of how a student is performing.”

The that created the merit pay program also eliminated bonuses for national board certified teachers, a recognition that educators can receive after meeting rigorous standards. Reisma said certified teachers used to receive annual bonuses of $10,000, but those dwindled to $2,500 by the end of last year.

Lawmakers and state officials have said the bonus program’s many qualifications were intended to reward, retain and recruit educators who have a significant impact, such as producing outstanding student growth, teaching in short-staffed schools and mentoring future teachers.

“The program is designed to target those specific things, and from my perspective, has done a good job of providing significant additional compensation in those areas, and is likely to improve recruitment and retention across all three of those areas,” said Josh McGee, a professor with the University of Arkansas Office for Education Policy. The university is partnering with the state to implement the program.

The effectiveness of performance-based pay has varied over the years, with lacking in impact and producing positive results.

While Arkansas’ program is state-funded, the federal government has awarded to school districts for nearly two decades. , , and , have implemented performance pay programs over the years with mixed results.

Federal funding for teacher incentives was with the Trump administration’s efforts to scrap diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The university will conduct research on the Arkansas program’s effectiveness in the coming years. McGee said an initial analysis will most likely take place in the fall, but an overall study won’t happen for a few years.

When Angela Dominguez took the helm of Donna Independent School District in Texas in 2021, she thought the district’s original decision to use most of its federal Elementary and Secondary School Relief (ESSER) money to pay for existing fourth- and fifth-grade teacher positions was short-sighted.

“I was like, ‘Did you guys think that we were going to just do without fourth and fifth grade after ESSER?’” she recalled.

Dominguez had a longer term vision for the remaining rounds of pandemic emergency funding: Hire teaching assistants for early elementary classrooms to help the district’s youngest learners, who were struggling with math and reading as a result of uneven exposure to school during remote learning.

“My belief about these types of funds is [they] come around one time, and the investment needed to be in things that were tangible, that would be lasting for our students, our staff and our community,” said Dominguez, who created a committee to ensure ESSER investments aligned with these goals.

Congress rolled out to states between 2020 and 2022 to help school districts address academic and social-emotional hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic on students. 

Districts generally had flexibility in how they used the money to support pandemic-related recovery on all fronts, from getting students back to in-person learning to supporting student academic and social-emotional recovery. 

Districts used ESSER funds in myriad ways and with varying outcomes. EdSurge talked to three districts — in Donna, Texas, Fulton County, Georgia and Guilford Country, North Carolina — that are seeing gains despite the emergency funds’ expiration. They made educated, data-driven bets on how to best support their students and teachers by investing in educational infrastructure and support systems, from high-dosage tutoring to teacher coaching and professional development on new, streamlined literacy and math curricula. 

Their data show their bets are paying off. What’s more, these districts have found ways to sustain these improvements despite .

Sasha Pudelski, who directs advocacy efforts for AASA, the school superintendents association, which did  about their pandemic emergency fund spending, said the approach these three districts took resonates with the survey findings and fulfilled what she called the government’s “holistic vision” of funding long-term student needs.

Superintendents saw ESSER “not just as an opportunity to meet the urgent and immediate needs of their students, but also as a chance to invest in systemic, long-term improvements that would make a lasting impact on students and educators,” she said. 

Not all districts have been able to maintain their pandemic emergency-funded initiatives and programs.

“There are high-poverty communities that have lower property tax bases and lower commercial property revenues and declining populations and higher student community needs,” Pudelski said, that prevent them from reallocating resources now that ESSER is over. Those districts “disproportionately felt the impact of the expiration of the funds.”

In-Class Assistants

Under Dominguez’ leadership, Donna, Texas, refocused its ESSER spending to support its youngest learners. Pre-pandemic assessment scores showed that more than 90 percent of third graders were not reading at grade level and 95 percent were below grade level in math. So the district used relief funds to recruit, hire and train classroom assistants for concentrated reading and math instruction in pre-kindergarten through grade 2.

That decision paid off: In two years, from 2021 to 2023, tests showed third graders reading at grade level jumped from 9 percent to 31 percent, and those achieving math proficiency went from just 5 percent to 27 percent. Dominguez called the results “remarkable.” 

These gains prompted the district to prioritize the program in its annual budget. Dominguez said Donna is using a combination of state and other federal funds to retain the assistants.

“That investment really did get us a lot of traction around students getting to some [level of] recovery,” she added. 

Focus on Literacy

Playing the long game also drove Fulton County, Georgia, schools’ ESSER spending strategy. But it was tempting to direct all the emergency funds toward immediate needs, according to Fulton’s chief academic officer Brannon Gaskins. 

“There were two schools of thought around using the ESSER funds,” Gaskins recalled. “How do we reopen schools as soon as possible? And what is the long-term plan for those funds?”

Dedicating most of its ESSER funds to supporting students’ literacy development made the most sense to the district’s leaders, Gaskins said. Recognizing the high probability of student learning declines as a result of remote learning, Fulton used the money to accelerate pre-pandemic plans to reorganize literacy instruction around scientific reading principles. 

“We knew there was a way to use these funds in an innovative way that would really impact us five, 10 years after the pandemic,” Gaskins said. 

As part of a three-year plan to help students recover from pandemic-related learning setbacks, Fulton created Every Child Reads. The initiative included training district leaders, principals, early elementary teachers and staff on the science of reading, installing a dedicated literacy coach in every elementary school, setting up high-dosage tutoring and replacing dozens of disparate reading programs across the district with high-quality instructional materials. 

Similar to Donna, Texas, Fulton dedicated a district finance director to oversee ESSER spending, which Gaskins said helped the district spend its funds efficiently. 

Later, the district evaluated Every Child Reads and found that  — a feat state assessments confirmed. The findings persuaded Fulton to eliminate or scale back programs that weren’t working or no longer needed, such as small-group tutors and high-dosage tutoring, and supplement or expand programs that showed results, such as a dedicated literacy coach in every school. 

“Although our budgets are tight, our superintendent said we will deprioritize other things in our budget to make sure we have the literacy coaches that we need,” Gaskins said. 

He added that enhancing teachers’ literacy instruction “will have generational effects.”

“When you think about a brand-new teacher or a novice teacher five years in…and they still have 25 more cohorts of students to teach [over their career], that has a huge impact on generations of students,” Gaskins said.

High-Dosage Tutoring

Even before the pandemic, education leaders in Guilford County, North Carolina, were concerned about middle grade math proficiency. That concern, coupled with an outpouring of community support for and research on the power of high-dosage tutoring, drove the district’s ESSER concentration, said chief academic officer Jusmar Maness.

The difference in Guilford’s program compared to other districts’ high-dosage tutoring, she added, is that it was “home grown.” The district established a department to oversee the program and recruited and trained tutors from the local universities it already partnered with for other programs. 

“We knew the investment needed to be at the student level,” Maness said. “But we also needed to build capacity within our district to be able to continue this work.”

At its peak, Guilford’s tutoring program supported more than 17,000 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The district also introduced coaching and professional development aligned to new, high-quality math instructional materials to enhance teachers’ math instruction. 

“Expanded teacher capacity has been critical,” Maness said. “These efforts were designed to ensure that every single one of our teachers had the support and tools they needed to engage students in that grade-level content and accelerate learning.”

By scaling the program quickly and broadly and building teachers’ instructional capacity in math, Guilford helped its fourth-grade studentsby the 2023 school year. These students also recovered much faster .

Maness said the addition of tutors during the school day also deepened students’ feelings of connectedness in school. 

“They don’t only have the teacher, but they also have a tutor [who] is another trusted adult that they have a relationship with,” she said.

Maness added that the tutoring program and teacher development were unequivocally the right investments for their pandemic emergency funds, which the district exhausted.

“I don’t know that there’s something we would have changed,” she said. “We were able to really reach so many students and provide them what they needed.”

Focusing its ESSER funds on a program fueled by community support has meant that, with some modifications, Guilford has been able to sustain its tutoring program through local philanthropy after ESSER dried up. The district now provides high-dosage tutoring in literacy for kindergarten to grade 3 and math for grades 6 to 8, and supports high school students through out-of-school learning hubs.

“We had support from universities. We have support from the community. It’s thanks to those relationship and philanthropic partners we’ve been able to continue the work beyond ESSER,” Maness said, adding that the district continues to advocate for state and federal funding. 

Uncertain Future

But districts across the country are also bracing for other federal cuts after President Donald Trump’s .

“We would just not even be able to function if we lost federal funding,” Dominguez in Donna, Texas, said. “We would have to lay off staff across the board.”

She added that state-level priorities in Texas have shifted, making budgets tighter. Her district is rounding out this school year $8 million short.

“The state is not any better right now than the federal [funding]. School vouchers just passed, and money for public ed has been kind of held hostage,” Dominguez said. “We’re fortunate to have a very healthy fund balance, but we can’t keep dipping into savings forever and expect it to stay that way.”

Maness in Guilford hopes policymakers keep in mind the need for continued investment in public schools.

“We want the people that are making the decisions on funding to understand how critical investments like these are for our students,” she said.

In short, teachers face, “a widening gap between income and housing affordability,” according to . 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines “affordable” as “paying no more than 30% of gross income for housing costs, including utilities.” NCTQ had looked at a select sample of 69 large urban districts and found 18 where beginning teacher salaries met the definition for “unaffordable” as of 2019.

By 2024, that number had risen to 39, or about half the sample. In 10 of those districts, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment cost 40% of a beginning teacher’s salary. In Boston, for example, it would eat up nearly 43%. 

Bowser notes that the picture today is even grimmer when looking at a teacher’s prospects for purchasing a home. Using some (ambitious) estimates about how much an educator could save toward a down payment on a mortgage and comparing it with local real estate prices, Bowser finds that teachers would struggle to purchase a home in 54 out of 56 sample districts.

These are extreme numbers. But who or what is to blame? And what can be done? 

One potential solution starts with a simple premise. If teachers can’t find affordable housing, school districts could partner with developers to build apartments and become landlords to their own employees. This has been a particular focus in , where state Superintendent of Public Education Tony Thurmond and a coalition of legislators and developers are encouraging districts to repurpose empty buildings and unused land to address housing needs.

That may seem like a good idea at first blush, but have been plagued by delays and rules that prevent “low-income” housing subsidies from going to people who are not truly low-income. In other words, teachers often to qualify for extra financial assistance.

The idea that districts can solve teacher housing issues is also complicated by the fact that educators are far from the only group of workers who struggle to make ends meet in high-cost urban areas. Indeed, recent studies have found that high housing costs have led to and for people to climb the economic ladder. If police officers, social workers, janitors and cleaners, bus drivers, food service workers and many other types of low- and moderate-income employees are all being priced out of many American cities, there’s only so much a school board can do. In that case, the “teacher” housing problem is largely a generic, community-wide affordability problem that will be solved only by housing units.

But even if individual school boards cannot solve this big, societal trend, education policymakers are not helping. In fact, their choices have made the housing affordability problem worse. How? By not turning rising revenues into higher salaries, they’ve chosen to prioritize a larger education workforce over a better-paid one. In turn, that makes it harder for teachers and other school employees to afford housing in the places where they work.  

As I noted in a recent project for The 74, school spending is keeping up with or even outpacing inflation in many parts of the country, but those investments are not translating into higher compensation for district employees. If those salaries had merely kept up with total education spending, they would be 34% higher. At the national level, that would have worked out to a $22,000 raise for the average school employee. 

In Portland, Oregon, for example, NCTQ’s Bowser that it would take 41% of a beginning teacher’s salary to rent a one-bedroom apartment. But that’s not for lack of investments in the district. As we found in our report, Portland’s revenues rose 54% from 2002 to 2022 in inflation-adjusted, per-pupil terms. (That is, the district revenues increased much faster than inflation.) And yet, the average salary paid to Portland school employees fell by 8%. Portland, like many parts of the country, did not turn budget increases into salary gains for its workers. 

These trends have continued in recent years. While Portland housing prices surged over the last five years, the district lost 10% of its student enrollment. At the same time, it added the equivalent of 445 full-time employees to its (an 8% increase). In other words, instead of leaning into the housing problem and trying to pay its existing workers higher salaries, the Portland school district actually made the city’s housing problems just a bit worse by hiring more, lower-paid workers.
I don’t want to just pick on Portland here. As we showed in our project last month, 90% of districts are making these types of choices. But they effectively mean that school district leaders in some of the biggest, most expensive places to live are making budgetary decisions that add to the housing difficulties in their communities.

At the time, Castro’s salary was less than $20,000. Two decades later, after earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology and urban studies and working as a special education and a language paraprofessional, she is earning $55,000 – still far below what most people would need to earn to afford to live in New York. To help her make ends meet, Castro lived with her parents early on in her career. 

But the main reason she has stuck with it? The impact she has had on the kids.  

“We are there with the students every period, so we see the challenges the students go through and their success,” Castro said. “To me, it’s amazing to see, especially when I’m [working with] an autistic child who, for the first time, is learning how to read and learning how to write their name.”

Castro now advocates for other classroom support staff as the president of the paraprofessional chapter of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. The city is currently struggling with a shortage of more than 1,550 paraprofessionals. Hoping to attract and retain more people to the profession, the union is stepping outside of its traditional collective bargaining practices to that would of at least $10,000 for the city’s paraprofessionals.

Paraprofessionals are usually hourly workers who assist students and teachers with classroom work, supervision and instructing small groups. Roughly 75% of paras don’t have a bachelor’s degree, according to a . Average pay for paraprofessionals in 2024 was $35,240, according to the .  

Across the U.S., unions are seeking to boost paraprofessional pay, which remains so low that workers are struggling to get by in many states, according to an from the National Education Association.

A found that more than half of paraprofessionals worked other jobs on weekdays after classes ended and 75% said they had a problem making a living wage.

The NEA said that while paraprofessional pay has improved, “there is still a lot of work to be done.”

In April, paraprofessionals in Boston landed raises ranging from 23% to 31% over three years Most will see a pay increase of nearly $8,000 by the end of the , according to the Boston Teachers Union. 

Allentown School District in Pennsylvania accepted a contract last fall that will give its paraprofessionals . Pittsburgh Public Schools awarded its paras in December.

In addition, California lawmakers are that would increase pay for both teachers and staffers, including paraprofessionals, by 50% over the next 10 years. 

“I’ve received strong support from teachers and [other school] employees who are struggling to live in the communities that they work in,” said Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who authored the bill.

Dannel Montesano is one of them. She left her paraprofessional job earlier this year to become an office clerk at Liberty Ranch High School in Galt, California. The new job paid just $1 more per hour. It was the only way she could get a raise.

“Our starting paraprofessional pay is $18.63 an hour. This school year, we’ve had a hard time filling all of the positions because when you can go work at McDonald’s for over $20 an hour — and not have as much responsibility working one-on-one with students —- the draw isn’t there,” she said.

In New York City, paraprofessionals earn between $31,787 to $52,847 a year, according to the UFT. The city’s current system of collective bargaining ensures all job titles receive the same percentage wage increase. But those increases have a varying impact depending on an employee’s base pay. The union said in a that a 3% pay raise could mean roughly a $900 increase for a paraprofessional but a $6,000 bump for a principal. 

More than 1,600 union members rallied in front of City Hall in April to advocate for the paraprofessional pay bill, which would create a separate “” that would exist outside of collective bargaining. Each year, the city’s general fund would provide full-time paraprofessionals with a check of at least $10,000.

“We have paraprofessionals who are struggling,” Castro said. “I received an email from a paraprofessional who’s living in a shelter with a child. It broke my heart to receive this email. We have to make a difference. We have to ensure that the bill is passed in City Hall, because it would change so many lives.”

Updated May 21, 2025

School spending is up. So why aren’t teacher salaries? 

For example, from 2002 to 2022, per-pupil spending in the Los Angeles Unified School District rose 108%. That’s in real terms, after accounting for inflation. 

But that money didn’t lead to higher pay. In fact, the average salary earned by district employees rose just 5%. 

These trends are not unique to Los Angeles and are, in fact, playing out in most schools and districts across the country. 

We set out to document the disconnect between rising school spending and stagnant salary levels. 

Nationally, average teacher salaries have been remarkably flat for a very long time. In inflation-adjusted terms, they’ve been around $70,000 for decades.  

Meanwhile, pay for other college-educated workers has risen steadily, leaving teachers behind. For example, an analysis last year found the average nurse made less than the average teacher in the 1970s, but nursing pay has since then while teacher salaries have not. Compensation for other professionals, including accountants, engineers, college professors, doctors, health technicians, managers, officials, proprietors, lawyers, judges and scientists, has pulled even farther ahead.

The most obvious explanation for stagnant teacher salaries would be if total education spending were flat. But that’s not it, because America is investing more in schools. 

The graph below compares the growth in school spending versus employee salaries for the last two decades. Both figures are adjusted for inflation. But, while spending rose 31% per student, the average salary paid to district employees fell by 2.5%. 

If district salaries had merely kept up with total education spending, they would have been 34% higher. That would have worked out to nearly a $22,000 raise for the average employee. 

I’m not the first person to document this. Last year, the libertarian Reason Foundation published looking at state-level trends. It found that inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending had risen across the country and in every state except North Carolina. And yet, there was not a single state where teacher salaries kept up with the pace of overall spending. 

In my home state of , per-pupil school spending rose by 15% from 2002 to 2020 while teacher salaries fell by 4%. In , spending rose 36% while teacher salaries increased by just 8%. In , school spending skyrocketed a whopping 70% while average teacher salaries rose by a more modest 16%. In , school spending rose by 16% while teacher salaries crept up just 1%. Again, these figures are all adjusted for inflation. 

What about individual school districts? I worked with Eamonn Fitzmaurice, The 74’s art and technology director, to look at local trends. 

Unfortunately, there’s no national database of average teacher salaries by district, but we got pretty close. The NCES Common Core of Data collects the total salary expenditures per district and the total number of staff employed. By dividing these figures, we calculated an average salary across all employees in the district. These are not “teacher” salaries, but we think they’re a reasonable approximation. Particularly large changes in the growth of school spending versus employee salaries could be due to a variety of factors, including rapid increases in revenues or decreases in student enrollments, governance changes or data input errors.

We looked at revenue and salary expenditures from 2001-02 to 2021-22, the last year for which the data were available. We adjusted everything for inflation and took out districts with fewer than 500 students or missing data. That left 8,877 districts that educate about 90% of students nationwide. Use the interface below to see how per-student revenue and salary trends are changing in your community.  

INTERACTIVE

School District Revenue vs Salary Change 2002-2022

For some districts, about 10% of our sample, salaries rose at a rate commensurate with district revenue increases. Washington state districts were disproportionately represented on this list, thanks in part to in state funding explicitly tied to teacher salaries. 

But that means 90% of districts did not raise salaries in proportion to their revenue increases. This disconnect may help explain why some teachers feel their salaries aren't keeping up with their expenses. 

Take housing costs, for example. Imagine someone living on a teacher’s salary in Santa Monica, California, where housing costs are some of the nation's highest. While policymakers have delivered on the budget side, and the total amount of money allocated to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has mirrored in housing prices, that money isn’t translating into higher salaries. The district average actually fell by 19% over the last two decades, making it more and more difficult for employees to live in the city in which they work. 

These trends are playing out across the country. In Billings, Montana, per-student revenue rose 51% while average salaries declined 32%. In Philadelphia, revenue per-student climbed by 155% while average salaries fell by 8%. In Buffalo, New York, revenue rose 114% while salaries fell 14%. In Jefferson County, Kentucky, revenue per-student climbed 62% while salaries rose a more modest 12%. 

Where is the money going? The answers vary state by state and district by district, but the national trends provide at least some answers. 

The biggest factor is the number and type of staff. Schools employ a lot more people than they used to, meaning they have to divide their budgets across more workers. While enrollment rose 4% from 2002 to 2022, the number of full-time equivalent rose three times as fast, led by particularly large increases in instructional coordinators, classroom aides and district administrative staff. 

But these figures actually mask another trend. According to Census Bureau , schools employed about 200,000 fewer part-time workers in 2022 than they had in 2002. (Part of that was due to COVID.) Meanwhile, schools added 540,000 full-time workers. This shift carries real costs because two half-time employees don’t earn as much as one full-time employee, and part-time workers also don’t qualify for benefits like health insurance or retirement. 

And the cost of those benefits has risen rapidly. Since 2004, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has broken out the components of the costs for a school district to a teacher. In 2004, base salaries and wages represented 74% of a teacher’s total compensation package, the rest being a combination of health care benefits, retirement plans and Social Security contributions. Over time, total teacher compensation has grown faster than inflation, even though the salary component has not. Instead, benefits costs, especially , have increased rapidly, eating up a larger and larger share of district budgets. 

These changes have been slow and gradual over many years, but they have all played a role in stagnant salaries. State, district and school leaders should dig into these trends if they want to boost take-home pay in their communities.

Clarification: This story has been updated to note that particularly large changes in growth of school spending versus employee salaries could be due to a number of factors. In addition, we noted that salary calculations do not include additional compensation such as retirement or health benefit contributions. 

The phrase “say the hard part out loud” has had a moment in the national spotlight recently. And within West Virginia, you’ll hear it repeatedly when you talk to education professionals in the Eastern Panhandle about teacher pay.

Something else you’ll hear with regularity is the word “crisis.”

Michelle Barnhart, a social studies teacher at Martinsburg’s South Middle School in Berkeley County, has seen the teacher shortage turn from a growing problem into something much more serious.

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“When I started teaching in 2017, you had to be actively working on your degree to even be considered for a position. Now, they’re putting people with associate degrees — or no degree at all — into classrooms as full-time teachers,” she said. “They aren’t supposed to, but they have no choice.”

The state, added Barnhart, is ignoring the problem.

“Charleston doesn’t see it, or chooses not to. People downstate don’t understand that many of the adults in these kids’ classrooms up here aren’t actually teachers — because the teachers have gone elsewhere for better pay.”

Imagine, she said, if hospitals started hiring people with no medical background to be doctors. “Just pulling people off the street, handing them a clipboard, and saying, ‘Here, practice medicine.’ That’s what’s happening here in education.”

Barnhart said that many of her colleagues and fellow educators feel powerless at the end of the day.

“The cost of living in the panhandle is nowhere near the rest of West Virginia, but teachers, state workers — anyone whose salary is coded into law — get the same base pay. If you live elsewhere, that’s not a big deal. But if you move here, you suddenly realize this is a crisis.”

Parents, she said, are often unaware of just how bad the situation has become.

“They’ll see the bus driver shortage on the news and get outraged about routes being cut. But they don’t know what’s happening inside the classrooms. They don’t see how many positions go unfilled all year, or how often classes are just split up when a teacher calls out — overcrowding the ones that are already at their limit.”

Even for those who stay, Barnhart said, burnout is inevitable.

“You have algebra teachers covering trigonometry. English teachers covering history. Some days, they still can’t find someone to cover,” she said. “When that happens, learning just stops.”

Andrew Fincham, a health and physical education teacher at Martinsburg High School in Berkeley County, has seen the pattern repeat itself year after year.

“It’s only getting worse,” he said. “And with the population growth in the panhandle, we’re running out of room. Classrooms are overflowing, and we’re sticking kids in trailers to make it work — but the turnover rate with teachers is staggering.”

Currently, Berkeley County’s student population alone —  — exceeds the of 26 entire counties in West Virginia. As of the start of the current school year in August 2024, Berkeley County had permanent substitutes hired.

“We’re losing an alarming number of teachers every year throughout the county — whether it’s retirement or leaving for more money,” Fincham said. “And the impact on students is undeniable — all schools, all grade levels.”

Fincham doesn’t see the “revolving door” getting any better without major policy changes.

“All the nearby states — Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania — adjust salaries based on cost of living. West Virginia doesn’t. It’s easy to see where this is headed. If the state doesn’t start thinking about this in a new way, in five years, it’ll be catastrophic.”

The impact on retention, added Barnhart, can’t be overstated.

“Berkeley and Jefferson counties, especially, have become steppingstones. Teachers come here, get a few years of experience, and then leave for better pay — often nearby.”

For Barnhart, the predicament is both personal and professional. “I have kids in this school system; I see it as a parent and as an educator,” she said. “It’s frustrating because I don’t want to leave, but at some point, I might not have a choice.”

Considering almost all those choices are within 30 minutes or less, Barnhart admitted it’s hard to ignore the disparity.

“If I left for Frederick County Schools [Virginia], I’d make over $6,400 more per year,” she said. “In Washington County [Maryland], over $11,500 more. And Loudoun County [Northern Virginia], almost $25,000 more.”

The numbers don’t lie

At the end of the day, however, this isn’t a new conversation for people like Barnhart, Fincham, and thousands of others within the region. In recent decades, West Virginia’s education landscape has been punctuated by significant teacher strikes, notably in and 2018 — both primarily driven by concerns over inadequate compensation and escalating health care costs.

The , in particular, saw approximately 20,000 educators and school personnel shutting down schools across all 55 counties, culminating in a 5% pay raise for all state workers.

And yet, in 2025 — as in most years previous — West Virginia sits either nationally or perilously close to dead last on just about any average teacher salary list you come across — jostling for position between Florida, South Dakota and Missouri year after year. Be that as it may, according to the most recent data available from the National Education Association, the estimated national average annual salary for teachers — while West Virginia shuffles in at .

That said, the Eastern Panhandle’s three core counties — Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan — are the fastest-growing in the state, and closest to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, making them highly susceptible to issues like cost-of-living disparities and teacher-pay inequities.

According to the most recent data from the West Virginia Department of Education, the in Berkeley County lands at $55,412; the average for Jefferson County comes in at $54,153; and Morgan County sits at $55,624.

Compare that to West Virginia’s poorest county, McDowell, where the average teacher salary is . However, the average home value in McDowell County hovers with the median home sale price standing at approximately $41,000. Accordingly, almost all cost-of-living data is lower or significantly lower in . To that end, $53,296 goes a long way there, as it does in numerous other counties in West Virginia that boast similar cost-of-living data.

By contrast, average home values in Berkeley County climb into the . In Jefferson County, it’s even higher, with values . In Morgan County, values can . The cost of living within these three counties is commensurate with those values. But the average teacher salary within the Eastern Panhandle comes in at $55,063 — not even $2,000 more annually than West Virginia’s poorest county.

Talk to anyone close to this issue, and they will tell you in no uncertain terms — it’s becoming all but impossible to work as a teacher or education service worker in the Eastern Panhandle and pay the bills. And when extra money does arrive, it’s in the form of a statewide raise — without consideration for locality pay — which keeps that allotment relatively small in proportion to the ever-widening economic gap between the Eastern Panhandle and the rest of the state.

Bargaining power

“It’s economics 101,” said John Deskins, director of West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. “If salaries remain the same across the state, schools in more competitive job markets like the Eastern Panhandle will struggle to attract and retain teachers. It’s a matter of supply and demand — higher costs and a stronger labor market require higher pay.”

Berkeley County Schools Superintendent Ryan Saxe, formerly superintendent in Cabell County, echoed the sentiment — and admitted to not fully grasping the depth of the problem until taking his current job.

“In my previous county, we competed with Ohio and Kentucky for teachers, but the disparity wasn’t nearly as severe as what we see here with Maryland and Virginia,” he said.

Saxe doesn’t believe West Virginia needs to match those salaries dollar for dollar, “… but we must close the gap,” he said. “Right now, we have around 200 permanent substitute positions because we can’t fill them with certified staff. That depletes our substitute pool and leaves us constantly reposting vacancies for high-need areas.”

Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, believes part of the issue is Charleston’s reluctance to even acknowledge cost-of-living disparities.

“The federal government has already done the research to determine appropriate salary increases for employees based on regional economic conditions,” she said. “A similar approach for public employees in high-cost areas in our state makes sense.”

But the push for locality pay has failed repeatedly, she said, primarily due to opposition from lawmakers outside the Eastern Panhandle.

“The Senate has passed similar measures three times, only for them to fail in the House,” Rucker said, “The last time, we were 14 votes short. That’s a big gap.”

The resistance comes from a long-standing belief in uniform pay across all 55 counties, said Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association.

“But that resistance mindset ignores an economic reality,” Lee said. “A few years ago, an attempt to secure locality pay for state police was soundly defeated. The challenge is that while it would benefit a few counties, the majority wouldn’t see any advantage — so their delegates aren’t inclined to support it.”

Instead of direct locality pay, some legislators are exploring alternatives, like reducing the “local share,” which would allow high-growth counties to keep more of their tax revenue to fund education salaries.

“If that money is earmarked for salaries and benefits, it could be a real solution,” Lee said.

As Lee indicated, the shortage isn’t limited to teachers — state police, social workers and other public employees face the same problem in high-cost areas.

Former West Virginia delegate John Doyle has been advocating for locality pay for over 30 years, first proposing a housing allowance in the early 2000s as a way to soften opposition.

“The state would provide a housing allowance based on cost-of-living data,” he said. “Every county would be ranked from 1 to 55, with the median county serving as the baseline. Any county ranked above the median would receive some level of housing allowance — smaller for those just above, larger for the highest-cost counties.”

He recalled that when cost-of-living data was first released to legislators, some were stunned by the housing prices in the Eastern Panhandle. “They assumed we all lived in large homes. I had to explain that I lived in a 1,000-square-foot FHA rancher, and it was worth almost double the state average.”

Doyle also warned against the idea that raising salaries in border counties would simply cause a ripple effect of teacher migration.

“Salaries don’t need to match Maryland and Virginia — just get close enough. If the gap is $20,000, they’ll leave. If it’s $10,000 or less, they might stay.”

But the state has spent decades failing to act. Doyle pointed out that in 1990, West Virginia was ranked 26th in teacher pay after a major statewide raise under former Gov. Gaston Caperton. By the late 1990s, Maryland and Virginia had surged past it once again.

“Every few years, the issue reaches a boiling point, like the 2018 teacher strike, which resulted in a 5% statewide raise — but failed to address the Eastern Panhandle’s unique economic challenges,” he underscored.

With legislative momentum reliably sluggish, greater political action might be required, said Rucker — who also chairs the Government Organization Committee.

“If we don’t have enough qualified teachers, we are failing to meet our constitutional obligation to provide an efficient education system. A class action lawsuit could force the state’s hand,” she said.

On the economic side, Deskins sees another consequence of inaction: economic decline.

“If schools decline due to this crisis, the region becomes far less appealing. People don’t want to move to areas with struggling schools, which would ultimately slow economic growth,” Deskins said.

Essentially, explained Deskins, West Virginia’s fastest-growing region — the only part of the state successfully attracting new residents — is being left to fend for itself.

“From a broad economic-development perspective, we’re making one of the state’s most promising regions less attractive — ultimately working against ourselves,” Deskins said.

The political fight will only continue, and will hopefully play a prominent role in the current legislative session, said Doyle — who believes the Eastern Panhandle finally has strength in numbers.

“The Eastern Panhandle now has more than 10% of the legislature,” Doyle said. “That gives our delegation real bargaining power. If they unify and make this a non-negotiable priority, they can trade support on other bills to get it passed.”

Rucker agreed.

“The delegates from this region have better strength in numbers, and are working hard to educate their colleagues and emphasize that this benefits the entire state, not just the Panhandle,” she said.

Nonetheless, Lee remains skeptical.

“In my experience, when the legislature makes something a priority, they find the money for it,” he said. “If this becomes a priority, a solution will follow. But that remains to be seen.”

Doyle, however, was more blunt: “At the heart of it all is the fact that the state doesn’t want to give money to teachers because they want to be able to give a giant tax break to corporations.”

Repeated requests for comment from State Superintendent of Schools Michele Blatt went unanswered.

The cost of inaction

Imagine a moment in the near future in the Eastern Panhandle — likely Berkeley or Jefferson Counties — when a brand-new high school opens with all the pomp and circumstance that comes with such occasions. And on day one, as the doors open and the students pour through them en route to homeroom and the new year ahead, not a single certified teacher is there to greet them. Rather, every room, and every subject, is being covered by a substitute.

Sounds crazy? Many education professionals in the Eastern Panhandle are calling it something else: inevitable.

“I can easily see that happening — we’re drowning,” said Jana Woofter, a chemistry and physical science teacher at Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg. Woofter also serves as president of the Berkeley County Education Association.

“Bills are often triple what they are in other parts of the state,” she said. “Housing costs are through the roof. Berkeley County tries to help with a housing allowance, but Jefferson and Morgan counties don’t have those same benefits. Even with the assistance, my members are struggling — especially with PEIA [West Virginia’s Public Employees Insurance Agency] .”

The struggle isn’t just with the state. Clay Anders, a physical education teacher at C.W. Shipley Elementary in Jefferson County’s Harpers Ferry, is frustrated that even as property values have doubled, teachers haven’t seen a county-based raise in over a decade.

“The local levy passed again, and there’s millions in additional revenue coming in — but none of it has gone to us in quite a while,” he said. “Meanwhile, the board office has added new positions and given themselves raises every year.”

As of Nov. 6, 2024, the passed with ease — totaling $25,427,656. According to Jefferson County Schools, the bulk of the levy — $19,376,035 — will go to “salary assistance for teachers and service personnel.”

At the same time, Anders pointed out, extra-pay options that once existed for Jefferson County educators have disappeared.

“The county cut a program that allowed teachers to earn up to 3,000 extra dollars per year. That was real money that made a difference. But then they phased it down to $1,500, and now it’s gone completely.”

The level of participation in that program told him everything he needed to know.

“Nearly 98% of eligible teachers took part in it,” Anders said. “That should tell you how much we need the money.”

He believes that if the county won’t act, teachers may have to take matters into their own hands.

“Maryland and Virginia have county-based unions that fight for local pay,” Anders said. “West Virginia doesn’t. We only have state-level unions, and they aren’t fighting county battles.”

Additionally, Anders and a group of teachers are preparing a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover exactly where the money is going.

“The board claims there’s no money for teacher raises, yet they’re increasing salaries at the top. If every million dollars in new revenue could mean an $800 to $900 raise per teacher, then where is that money going?”

The answer, at least in Berkeley County, according to Board of Education member Damon Wright, is complicated.

“Most of our budget already goes to salaries,” Wright said. “And we’ve denied requests for new administrative positions to keep costs down. But we continue to have growth needs — especially when it comes to mental health services for students, which require more funding.

“That said, every time we dip into reserves, we run the risk of the state stepping in and questioning our financial management. We’ve increased the housing allowance, and we’ll keep looking for ways to supplement pay, but we can’t solve this alone.”

The challenges only get more complex, he said, when Charleston refuses to act.

“The state doesn’t believe in cost-of-living adjustments. They think if we raise salaries in high-cost areas like the panhandle, teachers from rural counties will flood the region. But that’s not realistic. Most teachers in McDowell and similar counties are among the highest-paid professionals in their communities. Here, teachers need roommates just to afford rent.”

Michelle Pereschuk, a special education teacher at South Middle School, called the system broken and confessed that teachers are running out of reasons to stay — including herself.

“I’ve been at the tipping point for years,” she said. “I was born and raised in Berkeley County. My kids are in the school system. I want to stay — but I can’t afford it much longer.”

Like many in the county, Pereschuk’s mortgage swallows her paycheck. She once considered a position in nearby Washington County, Maryland, that would have paid her $11,000 more in the first year and up to $17,000 more over time. She ultimately stayed due to personal reasons, but the pull to leave grows stronger every day.

“Winchester City Schools and Frederick County, [both in Virginia], are 20 minutes from my house. Maryland and Virginia also allow out-of-state teachers to send their kids to school there. For the first three years, you pay a small tuition fee, then your kids attend for free. If I move, I could take my youngest with me and give him a better-funded education while making a lot more money.”

Such decisions aren’t just being measured in Pereschuk’s household, she assured, but rather, in many homes across the region.

“Off the top of my head, I can name at least 10 people in my school alone who are seriously considering leaving,” she said.

Woofter, who works multiple jobs to make ends meet, added that, even for those who choose to stay, survival requires sacrifices.

“I run the science fair for my school and the county, coordinate academic competitions, tutor, sell tickets at events — anything to make extra money. If I moved across the border, I wouldn’t have to do all that. But I stay because I love it here.”

As for rising insurance costs, Wright said, whatever raises the state offers at this point are quickly wiped out by PEIA increases.

“The misconception is that a raise actually means more money,” he said. “It doesn’t. When insurance premiums jump 40%, and co-pays triple, as they’re set to do, it’s actually a pay cut. Later this summer, when those PEIA increases hit, I think we’ll see a mass exodus — not just teachers, but public employees across the board.”

Without action, warned Woofter, the situation will only deteriorate. She’s already seeing it play out at her own school.

“Spring Mills High School opened in 2013. In just over a decade, fewer than 20 original staff members remain. That kind of turnover is devastating.”

Moreover, Wright said, Charleston’s inaction is feeding into another, larger movement — the privatization of education.

“Rather than addressing the crisis in public schools, the state is using the decline as an excuse to push private schools, charter schools and voucher programs,” he said. “The problem is, 25% of Berkeley County’s students have special needs, and public schools are required to serve them — private schools are not.”

West Virginia doesn’t fully fund those services so counties cover the gap.

“If lawmakers shift funding away from public schools to private options, that burden grows,” Wright said. “They’re letting the system fail so they can justify alternatives.”

At the end of the day, he said the community is the last line of defense.

“We’re already in crisis mode — whether the state chooses to address it or not. The public needs to understand just how bad this is getting. And the only way any of this changes is if the public demands it — loudly. If people in the panhandle make enough noise, Charleston can’t ignore it forever.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.

For example, teachers in districts with the highest concentrations of poverty are almost three times more likely to be early in their career, with less than three years of experience. And students in these districts are 16 times more likely to learn from a teacher with temporary or emergency credentials than their peers in Michigan’s wealthiest school districts.

“The teacher shortage crisis that we hear a lot about here in Michigan is far worse for our students with the greatest needs,” said Jen DeNeal, director of policy and research at EdTrust-Midwest and lead author of the report. 

DeNeal noted that research shows that novice, not fully credentialed teachers are generally less effective in the classroom.

While the national teacher shortage in certain subjects has been as an intractable issue that’s worsened since the pandemic, the EdTrust study released last month uniquely zooms in on district-level data and demonstrates the scope of the problem.

“Having gaps is, of course, not a surprise,” said Michael Hansen, a senior fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. “Having gaps of this magnitude is pretty stark.”

DeNeal and her team at EdTrust, which advocates for educational equity with a focus on children who have been traditionally underserved, spent two years analyzing educator workforce data from public and non-public sources, conducting focus groups and reviewing previous research.

They used Michigan’s a state funding formula passed in 2023 that includes an index for concentrations of poverty, to divide school districts into six bands. Band one includes districts with fewer than 20% of students living in concentrated poverty while band six includes districts where 85% to 100% of students live in these conditions. 

Researchers then looked at how highly qualified teachers — defined as those who were fully certified with more than three years of experience teaching in their certification or more refined speciality areas — were distributed across these districts.

They found that in the 2022-23 school year, more than 16% of teachers in high-poverty districts were teaching a subject or grade not listed on their license — that’s twice the state average. These districts accounted for more than a third of all out-of-field educators in the state, despite only employing 13.5% of Michigan teachers. 

While out-of-field teachers are typically a stop-gap resource preferable to a revolving door of substitutes, they may lack the content knowledge and skills needed to effectively teach, and students who learn from them tend to have in that subject. Those with emergency credentials are also able to fill teacher vacancies when more qualified ones aren’t available, though they’re more likely to be rated as when compared to other new teachers.

Hansen noted that being trained and fully licensed makes a teacher more likely to provide quality instruction in the classroom, but “it’s no guarantee.” And while these findings do likely point to a “more effective teacher workforce in these more affluent settings, and … a less effective workforce in the high-needs settings, it’s probably not the case that it’s going to be 16 times more effective.”

Yet, “of all these different factors and characteristics that they’re highlighting in this report, experience is the number one that’s documented to show an impact across multiple studies and multiple grades,” he added.

Persistent vacancies may be particularly hard to fill in Michigan, where teacher attrition is slightly worse than the national average, and teacher turnover is far higher for students living in poverty. For example Black students, who account for only 18% of the statewide student enrollment, make up 45% of where teachers were most likely to leave.

In districts where a majority of children are Black, students were nearly four times more likely to learn from an out-of-field teacher, four times more likely to learn from a teacher with emergency credentials and nearly twice as likely to learn from a beginning teacher than in districts serving primarily white students.

In focus groups, teachers pointed to a number of factors contributing to the shortage, including the pandemic, discipline challenges and chronic absenteeism. They also reported that their classrooms are overfilled, they have less one-on-one time with students and less planning time because they’re being called on to substitute teach. One issue, though, came up again and again: pay.

“We’re not competitive regionally and we’re not terribly competitive nationally,” DeNeal said.

Between Michigan’s inflation-adjusted teacher salary fell more than 20%, representing the second-largest teacher salary decline in the country. First-year teachers in Michigan earned, on average, about $39,000 a year, rendering it 39th nationally and last among Great Lake states. And researchers found that teachers in the wealthiest district are paid, on average, about $4,000 more annually than those in the poorest districts.

This is exactly the opposite of what the pay structure should look like, according to Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institute of Research and the University of Washington. He argued that teachers in more challenging environments should be paid more than their peers to compensate for the additional hurdles.

“I don’t think this is an issue where we need a lot of research to know that this problem exists and to know at least what some of the potential solutions are,” he said. “This is an issue where the politics I think make it challenging to implement at least some of the solutions.”

DeNeal said that although these challenges are “troubling and extremely persistent, they are not insurmountable.”

The report put forward five recommendations, based on teacher focus groups and previous research: prioritize fair and equitable funding; improve state education data systems to increase transparency; provide greater support for school administrators; focus on making teaching an attractive and competitive career and increase access to high-quality professional development for teachers.

Thomas Morgan, spokesperson for the Michigan Education Association, emphasized the importance of incorporating teacher voice in the solutions.

“When you want to know what to do to fix our schools,” he said, “the first people you should talk to are people working on the front lines: those teachers working in our schools. They see things, they live it, they breathe it and they should be consulted.”

Indiana’s largest teachers union listed educator pay boosts, increased public school funding and consolidated training requirements among its top asks for the 2025 legislative session.

The Indiana State Teachers Association, which represents roughly 40,000 Hoosier educators, released a priority agenda on Tuesday — just weeks before state lawmakers are set to return to the Statehouse.

Jennifer Smith-Margraf, ISTA’s vice president, emphasized that “equitable funding for Indiana’s public schools” is of highest concern to the union.

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The 2025 session will see state legislators craft the state’s next biennial budget, about half of which has historically been earmarked for education.

In recent years, however, Indiana’s Republican-dominated legislature has opted to grow the state’s private school voucher system at a faster rate — a shift ISTA has long opposed.

“We’re here to speak for educators and every student whose future depends on a fair, safe and supportive learning environment,” Smith-Margraf said during a Tuesday news conference. “Hoosiers value strong public schools that provide equal opportunities for all students. Whether Black or white, Latino, Asian, Native (American) or newcomer, every Hoosier child deserves a quality education, and that starts with well-funded schools.”

Top priorities focus on funding increases

A two-page agenda released by ISTA officials breaks the union’s priorities down into five categories.

A section on funding emphasizes increased funding to “efficiently support” Indiana’s public schools. That includes greater funding for early childhood education, as well as additional dollars to ensure that schools can adequately afford students’ textbook costs.

In 2023, the General Assembly mandated K-12 schools to cover the cost of textbooks and a range of other curricular materials, but district officials have since expressed concerns that the state dollars they’ve received .

“What we’re asking (lawmakers) to do is to not just cover the textbook portion of it, but the fee portion of it, because we don’t believe that parents should be responsible for that, especially if they’re out working two, three and four jobs,” Smith-Margraf said.

The union is also advocating for Indiana’s compulsory school attendance age to drop to six, meaning kindergarten would become a requirement for Hoosier kids. Currently, Indiana students are not required to attend school until age seven, when first grade begins.

“Every child deserves a solid start,” Smith-Margraf said in reference to mandated kindergarten. “This funding will help make that possible.”

Another bundle of ISTA requests center around “fair compensation and benefits for educators.” The union wants to see teacher salaries aligned with “inflation-adjusted” benchmarks — which Smith-Margraf said would close the 22.8% pay gap with other professions. ISTA is also asking for all public school employees to receive 12 weeks of parental leave.

The showed the average teacher salary in Indiana during the last school year — up from $58,531 the year prior.

ISTA is not recommending a specific minimum salary, however. Baseline educator pay in the state currently sits at $40,000.

“We’re looking at how inflation has affected all of our different locals across the state, and we are looking for an increase in funding that will help make sure that we are paid competitively,” Smith-Margraf said. “We also know when we look at our surrounding states that we are not keeping up with salary increases with them, and we continue to lose folks across the border to Michigan, to Ohio, to Illinois and to Kentucky. And so we know we have work to do in looking at those metrics to make sure that our pay is competitive.”

“We have a critical educator shortage,” she continued. “We just have so many good people who are either retiring early or who are leaving the profession because they’re burnt out from many different things … we can all see from the numbers that there are too many of them leaving, and there are too many openings statewide. And that’s affecting those things that the legislature has talked about being really important: making sure that every kid can read by third grade, making sure that we have numeracy skills in fifth grade, making sure that we have folks around who are qualified to implement these new high school diplomas.”

‘Hopeful’ about new administration

Reduced training requirements via the creation of a five-year cycle for state-mandated professional development is among the union’s other priorities, too. That would “reduce redundancy and improve efficiency,” and affect trainings around suicide awareness and child abuse prevention, according to ISTA officials.

Smith-Margraf also noted teachers’ request to exclude veteran teachers from the state’s new — and controversial — literacy licensure requirement, allowing for the completion of an 80-hour science of reading course, instead.

After the requirement was approved by the General Assembly earlier this year, the “unfair” and “overwhelming” 80-hour training. Many pleaded for to be made available for teachers to complete the professional development course — or that it be removed as a requirement altogether.

The state’s education department has since adjusted and added training options. Some educators have already been exempted from the licensure requirements, as long as they aren’t teaching literacy to students past fifth grade.

Additionally included among ISTA’s priorities is:

The addition of 500 school counselors statewide to lower Indiana’s counselor-to-student ratio from 694:1 to 500:1, and to reduce non-counselor duties.

Establishing “clear reporting mechanisms” for violence against school staff, as well as penalties for non-compliant districts, especially in light of a in which thousands of Hoosier teachers and other school workers said they were hurt by students on the job during the last academic year.

Promotion of restorative justice programs over suspensions for non-violent offenses among students.
Giving teachers mandatory collective bargaining rights in “decisions impacting their safety and working conditions.”

Increasing funding for diversity scholarships and programs to recruit and retain minority educators.
Allowing the bargaining of schools’ reserve funds that exceed 25% of a district’s budget.

Smith-Margraf said many of the union’s priorities are aligned with those in Gov.-elect Mike Braun’s agenda. She noted that ISTA is actively meeting with the new Republican governor’s administration and other state officials ahead of the legislative session.

“Gov.-elect Braun and various members of leadership from both parties have talked about all of these things as being priorities, and so they’re priorities for them, and they’re priorities for us,” Smith-Margraf said. “We’re looking forward to working together with them as we go through the legislative session to figure out how we’re going to fund these and implement these different priorities. But since these are priorities for all of us and for our state, we believe that’s how it stays top of mind for everyone.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

One day after the 2024 election, Gov. Bill Lee and lawmakers rolled out a recycled “universal” private-school voucher program designed to gain support from teachers and school districts with extra spending.

The measure doesn’t have a funding estimate attached, but lawmakers placed $144 million in this year’s budget for a plan that failed to pass, and the new proposal could cost another $275 million, plus funds to give teachers a one-time $2,000 bonus. In addition, 80% of all sports wagering money is to be dedicated to building and maintaining K-12 public schools.

Lee’s plan would provide 20,000 “scholarships” worth $7,075 for students to enroll in private schools in 2025-26 with 10,000 of those for students from families at or below 300% of the maximum income to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches — which is estimated to be nearly $175,000 per household income. Students with disabilities and those in the state’s education savings account program would be eligible too.

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Some 350 private schools would be eligible to participate in the program and would be required to administer the state’s standardized test or one that fits their curriculum, but the bill says they would maintain educational freedom.

The state would add 5,000 “scholarships” each year once 75% of them are provided to students.

In introducing the bill, Lee and key lawmakers said they want to offer students a chance at educational success “regardless of their ZIP code.”

“Giving parents the ability to choose for their child will provide more opportunities and reduce poverty throughout our state,” said House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who opposed the school voucher program in 2019. “Increased competition for a student’s enrollment will make schools, school systems and administrators meet the need for a higher quality of education.”

Lawmakers failed to pass a similar bill proposed by the governor earlier this year when the Senate and House couldn’t agree to widely disparate versions. The House bill contained funding to give teachers more money for insurance as well as for districts to maintain school buildings. The Senate version allowed students to transfer to any public district in the state.

Lee told reporters Wednesday this is the legislation’s “next step” and said he believes lawmakers are “moving in that direction” to pass the bill. General Assembly leaders have tried to address members’ concerns in writing the bill, he said.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth said in a statement the bill “leaves no stone unturned when it comes to providing the very best educational path to set the next generation up for success.” He said the measure will allow public schools to remain the foundation for Tennessee’s education system while enabling parents instead of the governor to determine which route helps their children the most.

The press release also says the bill “ensures state funding to school districts will never decrease due to disenrollment,” and the governor backed that up Wednesday.

One of opponents’ biggest complaints has been that private-school vouchers will drain money from public schools.

Yet the bill says a school district’s funding “shall not decrease from one year to the next year due to the disenrollment of students.” If districts lose students, the state would have to pay additional funds to those districts to cover those transfers for just one year.

In addition, the bill denies “scholarships” to undocumented students, even though a 1982 Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe, prohibits states from denying students a free public education based on immigration status.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville said it is clear the governor is trying to buy teachers’ support with bonus pay.

“It’s offensive that this voucher con job, which quite clearly will make it nearly impossible for Tennessee to keep paying teachers what they deserve, is being accompanied by this one-time token money,” Yarbro said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on and .

Financial dysfunction is plaguing many city school districts.

is the most concerning. The district’s current $300 million budget gap is set to triple next year, which isn’t surprising since enrollment dropped 10% over six years as the district added staff. Now, it won’t close schools, won’t reduce the workforce and is being told by the mayor to give in to union demands for big raises. How would the math work? The mayor wants the district to take out a short-term, high-interest loan. Oh, and the city and district still need to work out how to .

is a close second. Two years ago, leaders agreed to a costly labor agreement that they admitted would require major cuts. But then they didn’t make those cuts. Instead, leaders exhausted all reserves and are borrowing money they’ll have to pay back by 2026. What’s the plan for the $100 million budget deficit? None yet. 

Why are financial crises suddenly common among large urban districts? Federal relief funds are part of the issue. Despite warnings that the money was temporary, many city districts used those one-time funds for salary raises and new staff hires.  

Some never had a plan for what would happen next. For example, when the federal relief funds ended, leaders in seemed surprised by a glaring $143 million hole in their budget forecast.

Of course, it’s never easy to cut labor. But avoidance makes it worse over time. In a recent hostage-like negotiation, the superintendent demanded $10 million from the city within 24 hours or the district would start issuing pink slips.

Falling birth rates are another factor. Over the long term, fewer kids means fewer dollars and a need for fewer schools. Closing schools is tough work, and many city districts especially aren’t up for it. In , schools are down to capacity. After pressing pause on its school closures, now has until Dec. 15 to come up with an alternative or face a potential .

Sometimes it’s basic financial mismanagement. For months, , inadvertently overpaid its staff, which, not surprisingly, has created a drain on the budget.

got behind on filing its financial reports and ended up with a state-imposed “corrective action plan” that involved repayment of $43 million. After the state imposed an external financial audit, the district has since .

In , where Las Vegas is located, “miscalculations” keep shifting the budget gap by tens of millions. And because New Orleans dragged its feet on surfacing a $20 million miscalculation of local tax revenue, each of its schools must cut some six or more staff midyear.

In St. Louis, the issue appears to be an unwarranted spending spree by a newly hired — and now fired — superintendent.

All these financial messes are leaving kids in the lurch. The dysfunction destabilizes the district, often leaving little time to make consequential decisions like staffing cuts or school closures. Employees are demoralized. Trust in the system erodes. Families with means pursue other options. Most of all, the financial upheaval takes all eyes off the district’s primary responsibility: student learning.

What is it about city school systems that predisposes them to such financial dysfunction? One obvious factor is that leaders are underprepared to manage complex financial operations that can involve upward of a billion dollars — or more — in public funds. Coming off a that outpaced inflation, few of today’s leaders have any experience with making hard budget tradeoffs. As forecasts change, leaders ignore the signs, stall or, in the case of , pass off major budget-cutting to a task force of 40 volunteers.  

Another reality is the intense, unbalanced political dynamics common in today’s urban centers. Powerful labor groups make unaffordable demands. Vocal parents resist program reductions or school closures. Some elected board members reverse planned cuts, imagining they’re defending constituents from the heartless bean counters in the district’s finance office. The good finance leaders flee the turmoil. Eventually, the district runs out of beans.

Strong district leadership should be an antidote. Leaders need to be , sharing options and explaining financial tradeoffs. They need to make hard choices, laser-focused on what’s best for students. They need to safeguard their schools’ financial integrity, ensuring that today’s decisions don’t erode the education of tomorrow’s students.

Missing in action are states. Typically, legislatures throw up their hands and bemoan local control. Many are wary of state takeover policies in part because of their of impacts on students.

But there are . Requiring multi-year budget forecasts and minimum levels of fiscal reserves are a start. States can then adopt policies that get triggered when districts overspend and deplete those reserves, each with the goal of helping the district get back on track. With some 80% to 90% of expenses going to personnel, states could mandate that labor contracts be reopened for renegotiation. They could appoint a financial auditor to communicate honestly about district finances. Also triggered could be a requirement that the board and leaders undergo finance training and hold more frequent meetings until budget gaps are addressed.

Standing by while finances erode further in these urban districts is unfair to the many students who depend on their leaders to manage the billions being deployed for their education. Continuing to look the other way will make things worse. City kids need the adults to figure this out.

Jamie Epps did not expect to spend a lot of her own money on school supplies when she decided to take a teaching job for the fall of 2023.

Her mother convinced her to teach as a source of income while Epps attended nursing school. A retired teacher herself, Epps’ mom also gave her some advice.

“She told me I probably would have to buy classroom decorations with my money, like bulletin boards and posters,” Epps said. “But that is not what happened.”

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Epps was surprised when she first stepped into her Florida classroom and found there were no supplies available: no paper, no staplers, not even dry-erase markers. In the following months, she spent over $6,000 to stock basic supplies and materials to teach science.

Epps’s experience on her first days as a teacher is an extreme but generally familiar version of what almost every American teacher goes through. The reported that 95% of public school teachers reported spending their own money to buy supplies for the classroom in the most recent data available — without getting reimbursed.

Many teachers can in classroom expenses from their taxes, but they often spend way more than that. In a survey conducted by the crowdfunding platform DonorsChoose of 2,500 teachers who used the platform, educators reported .

Like Epps, most teachers spend most of their money on essential materials such as paper, pencils, and markers. Chalkbeat asked educators to share how much they and what they spend it on. More than 120 teachers across the country responded.

They reported spending anywhere from $65 to $6,000. Their purchases included items to make students more comfortable and learning more enjoyable. Many said they expected to spend more on students this year than last.

Below, some of these teachers share in their own words how and why they spend money out of their own pockets on their classrooms.

A comfortable place for students is teacher’s goal

Judy Hall is an English teacher at Barringer High School in Newark, New Jersey

I’ve been teaching for 25 years and am used to spending my own money. Part of my expenses are resources for teaching: I subscribe to some newspapers since I use articles to teach English, and I buy books for my classroom’s library.

I also buy décor items: It is important that the classroom is comfortable and cozy for the students and for myself, since I spend most of my day there. Many of my students are food insecure, so I try to keep snacks and protein bars with me. I also keep menstrual products, a sewing kit, a full body mirror, and first aid supplies.

Last year, I paid around $1,500, and I expect to spend the same amount this year. It is more than I was used to, mainly because the price of food has increased so much.

I like that kids feel like they can drop by for additional help. I am a very strict teacher. In my class, everyone has to follow the rules and do their work. Having this kind of homey experience helps build a stronger connection.

Students with disabilities need appropriate equipment

Ellen Brody-Kirmss is a special education teacher at Clara Barton High School, in Brooklyn, New York

I have been teaching for 19 years and, in the beginning, I spent much more money than I do now. I didn’t have lesson plans, or a curriculum, or even my own classroom. Because of that, I had to buy a rolling cart that I could bring from one place to another.

I am a special education teacher, and both my parents were, too. Back in their day, which is ancient history now, the materials that would help the students they were teaching weren’t available: They had to be inventive. I am part of that tradition.

This year, I am teaching a course to students with intellectual disabilities who are part of the [Academics, Career, and Essential Skills] Program. In high school, there’s nothing in ready-made equipment appropriate for them, and each student has specific needs. I bought calculators, headphones, different writing instruments, and tools to help kids read. I got a lot of pictures and word games for students too, because they struggle with discourse. I expect to spend up to $800 from my own pocket this year.

I’m trying to get the school to buy a particular online curriculum for math. If they don’t and it’s cheap enough, I’ll buy it, but I don’t want to have to do that.

Teacher wants classroom to be ‘best place on Earth’

Mindy Gunderson is a first grade teacher at Hayden Canyon Charter in Hayden, Idaho

This year, I spent about $2,000 to get started. My biggest expense was in supplies for an independent workstation and classroom decorations. When kids finish their work, they can pick an activity from a chart where I list the independent workstations: There are building pieces, sensory boards, STEM toys, math manipulatives, and so on.

I don’t know if everybody agrees with me, but these items are essential to me. I wholeheartedly believe that learning takes place through play. So, in a first-grade classroom, I want to incorporate as much play as possible. Through this, kids also develop a sense of community because they get together to play, build things, and do work at the stations.

I want students to love coming to school. When I incorporate things they enjoy, they want to go to school and learn. Once that happens, I can teach them anything. And if that means I have to invest a little bit of my money, I’m OK with that because I want the relationship and my classroom to be the best place on Earth.

‘I don’t ever want to go back to teaching’

Jamie Epps is a science teacher at Hialeah Senior High School in Hialeah, Florida

On my first day as a teacher, I didn’t bring anything because I heard teachers are given a little starter pack. My mom, who had been a teacher for over 20 years, also told me that I would probably have to buy classroom decorations, like a bulletin board.

That’s not the situation I lived in when I walked into the classroom: there were no pencils, paper, or markers. I had to buy everything, from staplers to printer ink. Over the 2023-2024 school year, I spent over $6,000, including materials for science experiments. I bought a class pet, a rabbit, and a fish tank so that we could study marine science.

This year, the district provided a little kit with a dry-erase marker, some hall passes, and a package of post-its. I am finishing nursing school, and I don’t ever want to go back to teaching after this experience.

Teacher salary raises headed back into classroom costs

Polly Franklin is a Spanish teacher at Lowell Senior High School in Lowell, Indiana

As a Spanish teacher, most of what I spend out of my own money goes to subscriptions to technology that give my students the best chance of learning and save me an abundance of time. These subscriptions can add up — I spent about $300 last year and am thinking I’ll spend closer to $500 this school year.

There’s a lot on the Internet for Spanish educators, but I don’t have time to sift through all the materials in the world to find ones appropriate to my class. The ones I pay for on my own include , a website [specifically] for Spanish teachers, that gives me games and authentic songs and lyrics to bring into my classroom.

Like all teachers, my time outside of school is stretched thin during the school year. I am a full-time caretaker of a family member and I’m getting a master’s degree. Even though I spend my own money reluctantly, I know it’s worth it for the kids’ enjoyment of lessons and also for my own sanity. It is sad to me that, for a lot of us, any small salary raise we get seems to just go right back into the classroom.

Classroom supplies take priority over helping student clubs

Ceretta Morris is a Language Arts and social studies teacher at John D. Shoop Academy in Chicago

This year has been particularly challenging. In the past, I taught only one grade level; now, I teach three. This has led to me needing a wider variety of materials and resources. I teach four classes of 25 kids daily, so I buy a lot of stuff. I ordered a box of 500 pre-sharpened pencils, heavy-duty pencil sharpeners, folders, and boxes of copy paper.

I’m the queen of taking advantage of all available donations: Donor Choose, AdoptAClassroom, GoFundMe … I do all of those, but I still spent about $600 out of my pocket. I also tried to put some of the material in a supply list, but getting middle school parents to shop for school supplies is hard.

If I didn’t have to spend money on essential supplies, I would love to support the funding for our school clubs. I co-sponsor our school’s Junior , which [gathers] high achieving students to perform services to the community, and I see how much funding they still need.

Wellington Soares is Chalkbeat’s national education reporting intern based in New York City. Contact Wellington at wsoares@chalkbeat.org.

Caroline Bauman is Chalkbeat’s deputy managing editor for engagement.

This story was originally published on Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

As the brother of a recent graduate from the University of Wyoming’s College of Education, Rep. Landon Brown (R-Cheyenne) has seen firsthand how lagging teacher salaries in Wyoming affect the state’s pool of educators. 

“The offer that he received from Arizona was $22,000 more a year than what he was offered for any school district here in the state of Wyoming, including Cheyenne, where his home was,” Brown told his colleagues on the Joint Education Committee Thursday. 

“He picked up and moved to the state of Arizona, where he’s going to pay income tax, because he can make $22,000 more a year,” he continued. 

In the face of such anecdotes, as well as empirical evidence that Wyoming is , the Joint Education Committee recommended an 8.5% “external cost adjustment,” or temporary increase in funding, for teacher and other school staff salaries for the 2025-26 school year. The body voted 11-1 to recommend the increase.

The recommendation, which also includes shifts in funding for school materials and utilities, would increase funding by approximately $66.4 million in total. That would bring the funding in alignment with Wyoming’s “evidence-based model.” That funding model was implemented after the Wyoming Supreme Court in 1995 declared the state’s K-12 school finance system unconstitutional for failing to “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction.” The new formula relies on consultants using complex economic data to periodically define appropriate funding levels instead of elected officials. 

The pay bump still has hurdles to clear. The Appropriations Committee will make its own recommendation on the matter to Gov. Mark Gordon by Nov. 1. 

But the Education Committee’s decision could represent a response to critics who say Wyoming has lost its ability to recruit and retain quality educators because it hasn’t kept up with the high relative pay it once offered. 

Background 

Wyoming periodically “recalibrates” how much the state is willing to spend on education and how the funds should be split — a complicated undertaking done with the help of consultants. The next recalibration is scheduled for 2025.

During the non-recalibration years, lawmakers decide whether inflation and cost models demand an external cost adjustment to appropriately fund staff, supplies and utilities. Any changes are then reflected in Wyoming’s Educational Block Grant Funding, a spending measure approved by the Legislature.

The committee’s discussion last week honed in on pay for teachers and other school staff. 

In 2010, teaching salaries in Wyoming were about 25% higher than salaries in adjacent states, according to a  by economics researcher Christiana Stoddard. But over the next decade, the state’s average teacher wage didn’t increase much, going from $59,268 in 2012 to $60,650 in 2020, the report states. 

Today, Wyoming still exceeds many Western states for teacher pay, but its edge has slipped. It’s ranked No. 26 in the nation for its average teacher salary of  $61,979, 

Teacher pay in surrounding states is creeping up, Stoddard told the committee Thursday, including in Utah, which now surpasses Wyoming. Teaching wages have also fallen relative to salaries in other comparable occupations in the state, she said. 

“Cost pressures matter because they affect the quality of teachers, and we know that teacher quality makes an enormous difference in terms of student outcomes,” Stoddard said. Many Wyoming school districts, she said, have opted to hire fewer personnel at a higher pay to remain competitive. 

Stoddard noted another concerning trend: “a pretty sharp drop in the number of bachelor’s degrees from the University of Wyoming who are graduating in teaching.” UW has been a major source of new teachers to Wyoming schools.

In an effort to sustain teaching levels, districts are coming up with creative solutions. Wyoming reported 190 teachers using emergency or provisional credentials and four teachers working outside their licensed subject area for the 2021-22 school year, according to a Learning Policy Institute  on the state of the teacher workforce. 

Keeping constitutional 

After listening to reports on the state of school funding Thursday, Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) made a motion to recommend an external cost adjustment that includes the 8.5% increase for both professional and non-professional staff. 

The total $66.4-million difference in the funding that adjustment would represent is “not an arbitrary number,” Rothfuss said. 

Instead, it’s the figure legislative staff identified to ensure Wyoming follows its constitutional mandates, he said. “It is the amount that it takes to make a constitutional, statutory model equivalent to the evidence-based model.” 

Sheridan County School District 1 Business Manager Jeremy Smith encouraged the 8.5% recommendation. The conversation leading to it, he said, had a consistent theme: high teaching salaries can attract quality candidates even when they have alternate employment opportunities. 

One only has to look at the University of Wyoming graduation data to see that Wyomingites are being dissuaded from the profession, Smith said. He also pointed to a 2022 survey conducted by the University of Wyoming’s College of Education and the Wyoming Education Association that found 65% of Wyoming’s teachers would quit if they could. 

“Teachers aren’t very satisfied in their profession right now for a whole host of reasons, but one is certainly salary,” Smith said. “You’ve got to give the ECA, it’s got to be substantial and substantive in order to turn the ship around.”

Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) was the sole lawmaker to protest, calling the adjustment “out of line.” 

Rep. Brown of Cheyenne, meanwhile, spoke in support of it, saying that failing to sustain external cost adjustments has already proven to be unwise. 

“We’re not funding our school districts with the valuable resources they need to teach these kids,” he said before the committee passed the recommendation. 

How could a system millions rely on simply not exist?

Wuori’s answer: That a “crisis of misunderstanding” has turned early childhood centers into an exceedingly expensive and “industrialized form of babysitting” based on the false idea that child care is somehow separate and distinct from education. Instead, Wuori says babies learn from birth — and some research suggests even before that — and their time outside the home should be treated as schooling, not as a place for them to be watched over while their parents work. 

In not embracing learning as an essential purpose, the current child care system, Wuori says, is harmful both educationally and economically for children, their parents, child care workers and society at large.

“All environments for young children are learning environments,” he said. “The question ultimately comes down to, “Is your child in a good one?”

Wuori, who espouses a “transformative” investment of public funding in early child care, began his own career in the field over three decades ago in the classroom. Teaching in an afterschool program “lit the fire” in his interest in child development and inspired him to return to graduate school.

After teaching kindergarten in South Carolina public schools for five years, he moved into school district leadership before spending 14 years as the deputy director of South Carolina’s Early Childhood Education Agency, . 

He eventually founded a public policy consultancy practice, , focused on the needs of America’s young children and their families. Through his work, he partners with state elected leaders and advises them on early childhood policy topics. 

But Wuori is perhaps best known for his social media presence on where he posts delightful videos of babies, using them to explain key child development concepts. His feed, which has amassed a prominent following, was recently described in a New York Times as “educational, but also, simply put — ‘awwwww.’”

Your baby learns to speak – not just from listening – but from watching.

I’ve written many times about the keen observational powers of babies. Infants are expert observers of their parents’ faces, which (among other lessons) provide important clues as to how mom and dad…

— Dan Wuori (@DanWuori)

Days before the official release of his book, The Daycare Myth: What We Get Wrong about Early Care and Education (and What We Should Do about It), Wuori spoke with The 74’s Amanda Geduld.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

The 74: Your book makes the argument that day care doesn’t exist. I think readers will hear that and say, “Well, my kid is in day care. So what do you mean that it doesn’t exist?” Can you explain what you mean?

Dan Wuori: What I mean by that is that for the better part of 100 years, we have had a policy in place — one that has really created services that are designed to support parental employment more than they are designed to support the optimal development of young children. The central thesis of the book is that we have fooled ourselves into thinking that there is this thing called day care, or child care, that is separate and distinct from education… 

What we know from decades of science at this point is that that’s simply not the case. We know that young children are learning, not only from day one, but increasingly, we have this understanding that some very powerful early forms of learning actually may begin in utero. And so that’s a very different proposition, right? 

… This artificial distinction between care and education is really what I’m talking about … We have conceptualized child care as almost like a holding facility, right? We’re thinking about very custodial forms of care, and that translates, in many cases, into policy. We have states that are proposing, for example, as a solution to the financial crisis that the child care industry finds itself in, deregulating in ways that sort of strip away any requirement other than those that just entail the very basic health and safety of those kids. And that is a very low bar, and, frankly, a dangerous bar, and one that frankly, we end up paying for in the long term.

You also note that the vocabulary we use matters. If we’re getting rid of the term day care, what should we be using instead?

The truth is the term day care has fallen very much out of fashion even in the field in recent years and been replaced with child care. What I would love to see is an acknowledgement that this is all either early childhood education or early care and learning. Because some acknowledgement that ultimately these are not simply holding facilities for children, [but[ that these are powerful learning laboratories, and developmental spaces, and that’s true regardless of what the sign out front says. 

All environments for young children are learning environments. The question ultimately comes down to “Is your child in a good one?”

You talk also about how our current model, “Simply doesn’t work, and it doesn’t because it can’t work.” Can you explain a little bit of what you mean by that? 

What I’m talking about in that section is our current economic model for child care. What we know about child care is that it is sort of like a broken, three-legged stool. We know, for example, that parents are paying more for child care in most every state at this point than they pay for in-state college tuition or for their housing costs. And so that it is unaffordable to parents in really significant ways. 

We know concurrently that for the business owners themselves, this is not a profit-making venture … Providers are scarcely keeping their doors open, and the whole sad thing is sort of cobbled together on the backs of a low-income workforce that is almost exclusively female, and in many states, majority women of color, who are literally subsidizing the cost of care to families in the form of their low wages. 

They are highly dependent on public assistance programs themselves, making at or near minimum wage in most states. And in fact, according to some recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, making roughly 60 cents an hour less than we pay dog walkers in this country.

The whole thing gets down to: we talk about all of those different forms of crisis that the field is in. There’s a compensation crisis, and there’s an access crisis, and there’s an affordability crisis. But the book makes the case that all of those crises are really a side effect of the fundamental crisis in the field, which is a crisis of understanding. 

That we are failing to acknowledge these settings for what they truly are, and that as a result not only are we sub-optimizing this incredibly powerful window of human development, but we are saddling taxpayers … for decades to come for the result of our inaction and our failure to get things right in the early years in ways that are ultimately far more costly than doing things right in the first place.

Throughout the book, you make arguments for why we need to shift this system — for economic reasons, for educational reasons and just because it’s the right thing to do. What would a shift in this system look like, both practically on the ground and in terms of outcomes?

Yeah, I think about that question in two categories, really. The big picture message of the book is that we need transformative public investment in young children and families. I have also worked in the public policy space and with policymakers long enough to know that transformative system change very rarely happens in one fell swoop. So while making the case, for example, that early childhood development needs to be seen as a public good instead of a private market service, the book … also suggests then both some low-hanging fruit in terms of things that we could do proactively right now in ways to help improve compensation, for example, but also there’s an entire chapter that is dedicated to what I have labeled sort of forms of public policy malpractice — examples of federal and state policy where maybe with all the right intentions, the execution of our policy is actually exacerbating some of the financial crisis in the field. 

… I see policymakers increasingly saying to me, “You know what I get the brain development pieces of this. I know this is important. I know we need to do better. What I don’t know is, how do we pay for it?” 

And one of the major messages in the book is we are already paying for it. We’re just doing it in the dumbest possible ways. We are very much taking out, at scale, a payday loan that we are meeting our very basic immediate financial needs at the highest possible long-term cost to taxpayers … We’re paying more in terms of remediation and retention and special education throughout our K–12 system. We are paying for worse health outcomes … that could be mitigated against by doing right in the early years …

There’s an anecdote later on in the book that was recounted to you about how much some of these early child care and education teachers are struggling financially. Can you share that?

I had the good fortune two summers ago to partner with the state of Kansas on a listening tour as they were assessing the strength of their early childhood system. I traveled across the state, talking with business leaders and early childhood providers and parents, and got into a conversation with a child care provider. 

We’re there, and I was asking her, “What do you need most? How could state policymakers help support you?” And she said, “Oh, well, you know, the thing that I really need the most is a floating substitute who could sort of go from classroom to classroom.”

And I said, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like, somebody to help give teachers a break or use the restroom or have lunch to themselves?” And she said, “Oh no, we mostly have that covered. I’m worried that I need to give them time to get to the bank.”

… And so I said, “Oh, you know, to deposit their checks?” And she said, “Oh, no. Not that kind of bank. I can’t pay them enough to feed their families, and so I try to make time for them each week to be able to visit the local food bank.”

And boy, that just — I mean, to this day, that’s one of the most upsetting stories that has been conveyed to me in this field in my career. These women, who are literally being entrusted to help co-construct the brains of young children, are making so little that we would have to be sending them to a food bank despite their full-time employment in what I could argue is the world’s most critical profession.

One framing motif that you use throughout the book is the food pyramid (released in 1992 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on what turned out to be of healthy eating). Can you explain why you chose that motif and how it reflects what’s happening in this day care myth?

I use that food pyramid example as sort of a framing around an area of public policy that we got boldly and catastrophically wrong and raise the question for readers: Where might we be doing that currently? What’s happening in our public policy that 20 years from now, we might look back at and say, “Wow. We can hardly believe we ever got something so wrong.” 

And the book really makes the case that right now in our approach to young children and families we have created … this bizarro world for children that — in so many ways unexamined — is precisely the opposite of what we know from the science of early development …

One good example of that is that we know that the earliest weeks and months of life in particular play an absolutely critical role in attachment … And so then we juxtapose that against knowing that this is a country where 1-in-4 American mothers have to return to the workforce within two weeks of giving birth. And you know that in our early childhood settings we are seeing data that suggests that the teachers in those programs turn over to the tune of about 40% a year … And so during precisely the weeks and months of life that young children most need continuous, stable, nurturing relationships, we are seeing those relationships interrupted — both by a lack of paid family leave provisions and through our terrible misunderstanding of the importance of out-of-home, early childhood settings, in ways that are bound to fail us later on. 

… My hope is that the book is an opportunity for us to press pause and to really rethink some of the underlying assumptions around how we have structured provisions for young children and families in this country and to come together on a bipartisan basis. One thing that I feel very strongly about — and I’m very proud of in the book — is this idea that … if ever there was an issue that really should bring us together across the partisan continuum, this ought to be it, because it makes sense for children, it makes sense for the strength of nuclear families, it makes sense in terms of our economy, it it makes sense for taxpayers … There really is something for everyone — hopefully in this conversation and hopefully in the book.

According to a survey of more than 3,000 teachers conducted by AdoptAClassroom.org, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform, teachers received a median classroom school supply budget of $200 last school year – an amount that 93% of the respondents said was not enough to cover their in-class needs.

Many teachers choose to subsidize the remainder of the costs, but it comes at a steep price. Out-of-pocket spending among teachers has increased by 44% since 2015, the survey found, with teachers reporting that they spent an average of $860 of their own money on supplies and other expenses during the 2022-2023 school year.

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“Teachers spend their classroom supply budget fast,” Melissa Hruza, Vice President, Marketing & Development at AdoptAClassroom.org, told The 74. “Even though they are willing to provide basic items like food and supplies for their students, their ability to pay for it is decreasing.”

One big reason: teacher pay has failed to keep up with the sky high rate of inflation in recent years. Adjusted for inflation, teachers are making $3,644 less than they did a decade ago, according to the National Education Association.

Communities and parents appear to be recognizing the challenges teachers face. AdoptAClassroom.org said its site has received more donations to teachers for the 2024-2025 back-to-school season than last year.

“Comparing July and August 2024 to the same period in 2023, the number of contributions to educators on AdoptAClassroom.org is currently up 13% from 2023 to 2024 so far this year,” Hruza said. “There’s also been a 9% increase in the number of both new fundraisers and total number of teachers with active campaigns.”

GoFundMe has seen a similar bump. So far this year, more than $12 million has been raised for K-12 education on the crowdfunding platform. In 2023, total funds raised for educators reached over $24 million — a 7% increase from the previous year.

“[P]eople don’t always see the hidden costs that end up on teachers’ hands, like providing additional resources for students who can’t afford small items like pencils,” Shawn An, a first-year earth and environmental science teacher at Julius L. Chambers High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, told The 74.

To ensure he and his students were fully prepared for this school year, An launched a GoFundMe campaign called A Classroom for Future Scientists, with a goal to raise $1,000. He ended up receiving $1,045 in donations.

“What this funding created is the opportunity for me to bring the basic necessities into the classroom I need to succeed, like organizers and writing utensils to grade with,” An said. “It’s helped me create a space where I can be efficient and to find resources for students to engage in the work we’re asking them to do.”

Lightening the load

To help teachers afford the supplies they need, GoFundMe launched its own fundraising initiative called the Education Opportunity Fund. Since the fund’s launch in 2020, GoFundMe has raised more than $240,000 and has distributed more than 550 grants to teachers in order to help them afford classroom supplies and other educational resources, Leigh Lehman, GoFundMe director of communications, told The 74.

“The grants were an additional step to offer help to educators and lighten their load a bit, and there are still grants available for teachers who are in need,” Lehman said.

Grants of can be put toward common classroom items like school supplies, books and class decorations. Funds can also be used for other educational resources or items like field trips, playground equipment, updated technology and extracurricular activities.

Similar to GoFundMe’s grant initiative, AdoptAClassroom.org provides funding through their Spotlight Fund Grants program. This program targets classroom initiatives that address things like social-emotional wellness, Indigenous language, arts, STEM education and racial equity. Eligible teachers can apply for grants of $750 or more on AdoptAClassroom.org.

“People all around the country want to find ways to help more teachers,” GoFundMe’s Lehman said. “They understand there is a gap in funding and that teachers are incredibly stressed.”

Keeping kids engaged

Hana Syed Khan, a fourth grade teacher in New Jersey’s South River Public Schools district, started her own GoFundMe campaign, A Classroom Built on Kindness, in August to support her efforts to make her classroom “as useful, accessible and hands-on as possible.”

Entering her fifth year of teaching at a new school in a new district, Syed Khan knew she had to be more creative with the amount of classroom space she has, materials needed and the resources available.

Her campaign raised $1,920 in funds, which she used to purchase a spin-the-wheel device, a carpet for reading time, books for the classroom library and the classroom staple Better Than Paper.

“The [kids] want to touch everything, and they should be able to. It’s their room,” Syed Khan told The 74.

Through sharing via family group chats, her husband’s LinkedIn account, word-of-mouth and other social media platforms, like and , Syed Khan said she “feels fortunate to have set up the fundraiser and leverage community support for her classroom.”

She plans to keep her fundraiser open to donations so she can continue to afford classroom activities and incentives with hopes to keep students engaged through the year.

“Students in this district suffer from chronic absenteeism, which may stem from lack of transportation, parents’ schedule or a lack of motivation for themselves,” Syed Khan said. “Classroom incentives, like parties at the end of the month, are a really big part of what I want to use the funds for next.”

Drawing from his own school experience, An said he understands that many of his students face challenges outside of the classroom. Bringing smaller tools and supplies like writing utensils and paper to class is not the first thing on their mind.

“That can be a real barrier for students to access what teachers are asking them to do,” An said. “Using the donations to directly address those barriers helps students stay engaged to do their best in the classroom.”

He used a portion of the donations he has raised to purchase a rolling cart that allows for easy access to classroom supplies.

An and Syed Khan hope their efforts inspire other teachers to overcome the fear of asking for help. For Syed Khan, it was difficult to find the right words for the campaign and the video she included to go along with it. She wanted to ensure her classroom needs were as clear as possible to potential donors.

“Trying to figure out what to say to grab people’s attention was the most challenging part,” Syed Khan said.

“It definitely wasn’t easy,” she said. “But when people see someone speaking and explaining what the funds will be used for, it can attract many people because they see a real human.”

An experienced similar doubts about asking for help. He credits his family for providing feedback on his campaign narrative and helping him to frame his message.

“My family and I went through a co-writing process to get the point across that this was me, just as a person, asking a personal favor of people who were available,” An said.

GoFundMe currently hosts webinars for educators and education-related organizations to help them learn how to effectively fundraise. They’ve also updated their with tips for teachers to share their campaign and keep communities engaged.

“Seeing more teachers turn to external sources of funding to help support their students’ needs is definitely eye-opening,” An said. “It highlights the fact that not as much care is funneled into education as I think it should be.”

And the pay? It  doesn’t compare, she said.

“We’re underpaid, overworked and we’re not appreciated. We’re seen as, ‘Oh you’re just a day care. No, I’m not a day-care person. I’m a teacher.’ ” 

Muñeton started off as an aide and worked her way up to full-time teacher and president of the , an American Federation of Teachers local union in California.

Muñeton said when she was an assistant teacher, more than half of her paycheck went to health insurance, and her husband was forced to work a second job to help support their two kids, who are both Head Start students. This year, Muñeton said she reached a breaking point and considered leaving her decade-and-a-half -long career in early childhood education to apply for a job at Target.

Muñeton is far from alone: child care workers nationally have one of the lowest-paid occupations, with 11% to 34% living in While the average salary of a public preschool teacher and a kindergarten teacher is about $49,000 and $60,000, respectively, the average annual salary for Head Start and other preschool teachers is about

But this could all change over the next several years according to a recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start and aims to raise annual wages for teachers in the program by about $10,000 and increase access to benefits such as high-quality, affordable health care coverage and paid leave. The rule is largely in response to the struggle to hire and retain qualified staff, which has ultimately led to classrooms closing.

Head Start organizations must comply with some elements of the ruling by October but have until August 2031 to begin providing increased pay. There is an emergency exemption for the 35% of agencies with fewer than 200 funded slots, but they must still make “measurable improvements in wages for staff over time.”

Some agencies may also be eligible for waivers for wage requirements in 2028, if the funding does not increase at a sufficient pace, which could be the rule’s greatest challenge. In order to qualify, they would need to demonstrate that implementing the pay raises would force them to cut occupied seats and show that they’re meeting certain quality requirements.

a nonprofit organization that represents Head Start families, providers and educators, welcomed the federal announcement in an Aug. 16 press release, but expressed disappointment that the edict does not address the need for significant additional funding to fully achieve its goals and could end up forcing operators to slash staff to meet the salary mandates.

“The organization remains concerned that, if Congress and future administrations do not agree to such increases, the impact of the final rule could prove devastating, by significantly reducing the number of children and families served by Head Start programs,” the organization wrote.

While the rule is an important step forward from a policy perspective, it is a “double-edged sword” in terms of funding, according to Dan Wuori, the founder and president of and a former kindergarten teacher and South Carolina school district administrator. 

“They’re sort of stuck either way,” he said. “If they can’t attract teachers then they can’t serve kids. But if they have to compensate at a higher level to draw qualified staff then that — in the absence of new funding — could mean serving a much smaller number of children.”

Katie Hamm, deputy assistant secretary for Early Childhood Development at the which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an Aug. 30 interview that she believes the administration can partner with Congress to increase Head Start appropriations over time while simultaneously restructuring the current budget to put more money toward wages.

Khari Garvin, the director of the office of Head Start, told The 74 the hope is that the changes will position the program to recruit, attract and retain the “best and brightest talent in this field,” which “translates into better developmental outcomes for children and families.” 

“The great irony … is that for too long we’ve had individuals — committed staff — working in what is an anti-poverty program, many of whom have made either poverty-level wages, or close to poverty-level wages,” he said. “And so now we’re correcting that.”

Muñeton doesn’t think Head Start teachers should have to wait so many years for this potential shift in pay, benefits and working conditions. But when — and if — it does happen, it’ll be life changing, she said. 

“I’ll be able to afford maybe purchasing a house rather than renting out of my parents’. I’ll be able to tell my husband, ‘Hey, quit the other job so we can see you more often.’ I’ll be able to pay off the debt that I’m still trying to pay off monthly,” she said.

‘A really important stake in the ground’

Head Start began as an eight-week demonstration project in the 1960s, as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s . Since then, the programs have reached more than 38 million children and their families, the majority of whom meet federal low-income guidelines. Currently, it serves about 650,000 children from birth to age 5 and their families, in urban, suburban and rural areas in all 50 states.

They also connect families to community and federal assistance and can help provide a career pathway for parents into early care and education: As of almost a quarter of Head Start’s 260,000 staff were parents of current or former Head Start children. The vast majority of Head Start center-based preschool teachers nationally had a bachelor’s degree or higher in early childhood education or a related field with experience. About of education staff members are Black, 30% are Latino and the vast majority are women. 

The 1,600 local agencies are funded by the federal government, though many also tap into state and local revenue sources. For years, these agencies have struggled to hire and retain highly qualified educators, with turnover hitting 17% in

“We really have a crisis on our hands,” Hamm said.

For a single adult with one child, median child care worker pay does not meet a living wage . Salary and benefits were cited as the top reason why almost 1 in 5 staff positions were vacant nationwide in a 2023 National Head Start Association . Of the 20% of Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms that were reported closed in the survey, 81% attributed the shutdowns to staffing vacancies. 

These persistently low wages come from a century-long history of falsely dichotomizing care and education, according to Wuori, the policy expert and former kindergarten teacher.

“We think of early care as being almost an industrialized form of babysitting,” he said, “whereas education kicks in — from a policy level — maybe a few years later. And one of the side effects of that then is that the people who work with the youngest children are not respected as the professionals that they are. And a primary way that that is the case is through their compensation, which … lags well behind that of fast food workers and employees at big box stores.”

This new federal rule, he said, serves as a “really important stake in the ground” to rectify that mindset.