Dripping Life

I am a proud product of Texas Public Schools, from first (there was no public school kindergarten in the 1950s), and now that I’ve earned two graduate degrees in education, I can say with some authority, the professionals who taught me were experienced, dedicated and fulfilled as educators. They were mostly all great teachers.

My teachers had chosen to be educators only a few decades ahead of the time when public school teachers were forbidden to be married or to have children, the thinking being that the job of teaching would leave little time for a spousal relationship, much less children.

Sadly, even as far back as the 1930s, when my dad attended public school, many of these single school marms had to find a side gig to make ends meet because their salaries were so low.

As a high school sophomore, my geometry teacher was a guy who drove some kind of dirt moving machine on the weekends, probably earning more in two days than he could, teaching the other five days of the week. He taught because he loved to teach.

Entering college, other than being somewhat naïve to the ways of the world, I was – intellectually and educationally – well-prepared for higher education, thanks to my public school teachers and the learning experiences they provided.

Fast-forward to 2018- 2020. If there was one flashing neon take-away from the COVID pandemic it was this: without public schools and public school teachers (and I am specifying public schools simply because public schools are universally affordable), our national economy becomes imperiled. Put another way, if families can’t send their kiddoes to the safety (?) and care schools provide daily, breadwinners cannot go to work. Put sadly, our schools -- public, private and parochial – usually play the role of babysitters so mom and dad can go to work to pay the bills.

A college student that is a summer nanny/babysitter to three kids is paid $15/hour. If you apply this rate for public school teachers with an average class-size of 20 students, this is the math: 20 kids x $5/hr. per kid x an 8-hour-school-day x 5 days = $4,000/week x about 36-weeks in a school year =$144,000/ year. That’s what the usual nanny-rate would pay.

A first-year teacher I know was paid a whopping $40,000 a year. She was at school by 7 a.m. each morning, taught all day, left school around 5:30 p.m., got home, spent a little time with her husband, who got home before her each day and had dinner or takeout waiting for dinner. They have no kids. After dinner, she spent from around 7:30 p.m. until 11 p.m., prepping for the next day and at least one day out of the weekend was spent writing lesson plans and gathering materials and supplies for the next week.

Her first-year, out-ofpocket expenses were slightly higher (about $1,500). She’ll spend less for the coming year. coming year.

I hope you’re wondering what’s wrong with this picture because it leaves me with lots of questions…like why does Texas pay teachers so little to prepare our precious youngsters for their important roles of sustaining our society over the next generations? And, I know I’m not the first to suggest borrowing a few billion of our so-called “rainy day” fund to pay our educators for the true value they bring, not just to our economy but also to the well-being, future chances of success and effective leadership of our next generations and our city’s, state’s and nation’s citizens’ quality of life.

During the 2020-2021 school year, just under 1,000 teachers resigned from Fort Worth schools. These vacancies were filled with substitutes until there was a shortage. As you would imagine, the quality of education in those classrooms plummeted.

In San Antonio this past semester, substitutes were in such high demand, those certified in critical subject areas — bilingual/ ESL/dual language, special education, math, science, English, and social studies — are paid $200 per day, Tuesday through Thursday, and $225 per day Monday and Friday. A degreed substitute will earn between $135 and $185 per day, while substitutes without degrees will earn between $120 and $160 per day.

Big picture: it appears we’re entrusting our kids to talented educators and indicating, by the pathetic salaries we pay them, that we don’t value these kids at all…that we only give lip service to our values and that our expectations are in direct proportion to the paltry salaries we’re willing to pay.

So, while I want to encourage everyone living in Dripping Springs to write a thank-you note to our hard-working teachers for preparing our youngsters for their next chapters, I think it may be worth a trip back to the drawing board to consider pressuring our lawmakers for adequate funding for our schools and for our teachers, to ask our legislators if our future generations really matter to them to loosen the purse strings, making sure every public school student, whatever their socio-economic environment, is prepared to succeed as a college stu dent, in the skilled trades or a career.

I, for one, have grown weary, seeing our teachers having to work second jobs to make ends meet. As you know, teachers work more than 8 to 5. It’s important they have time to rest and re-energize so they will be able to carry out the demanding work of shaping our kids into well-educated, wellprepared, productive, healthy, happy and wellgrounded human beings.

Our kids spend more time in school than they spend with us. So, it may be time to rethink our values and our priorities. If we can afford a daily, $8 coffee from a drivethrough, we can certainly afford to pay our teachers more!