Fairfax Co. teachers can’t afford to live near where they work, report finds

[Anonymous]

In Fairfax county could a family of four at age 30 (7 years of experience) both with a masters degree afford daycare and a townhouse mortgage? If the answer is no, the pay probably needs to increase. I honesty am not sure of the answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two of my closest friends are FCPS teachers - before we had kids, they worked retail or waited tables in the summer. Now they just hang out with their kids and go to the pool every day in the summer (our kids are in elementary school, so this will surely change when they are older and don't need supervision).

Yup. Most teachers that are Moms and have working husbands become stay at home moms for the whole summer. They need the childcare and it doesn’t make sense for them to pay high prices of camps in the summer while they do some part time work.

This is what the job has always been ... a mommy job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:So this may be an unpopular opinion and I have many family members who are teachers and agree with me so this is in no way meant to not show support for teachers, but it is a reality.

Teacher contracts are based on a 195-day contract which is 39 weeks. This is 75% of a full year.

Conversely, I am a small govt worker and my contract is based off a 52 week calendar. With more than 25 years of experience, I make about 2/3 of what a teacher with the same level of experience/education makes and receive about 1/2 of the market rate adjustment raises that teachers in FCPS receive each year.

So as a fellow government employee working in the same jurisdiction, I work more weeks, more hours (my job also requires me to work some nights and weekends) and get paid less and receive lower raises than teachers.

Teaching has become a very thankless job and many people like myself acknowledge the challenges and frustrations of being a teacher, but let's stop pretending that teachers are on an island when it comes to being underpaid and underappreciated.

While teachers are only in the building 195 days, they are working more than that. I would say with all the overtime teachers have grading, planning, going to professional development and attending school events it actually is about the same.

This area as a whole is too expensive for most people unless you have two working families. So I agree that many professionals are being priced out of this area but please know teachers definitely work more than 195 days.

I contributed some numbers up thread that nobody commented on.

I work about 65 hours a week, putting in 2,600 hours(ish) in 10 months.

195 days of work without overtime amounts to 1,560 hours.

That difference of 1,040 hours is actually 26 full 40-hour weeks of overtime I’m cramming into my 10 months.

Summer is my one break all year, when I recharge before another 10-month marathon begins.

This is definitely a "you" problem.

Can you tell me how else to grade 140 essays when I don’t have time at work to do so?

Well, I teach English, so yes, I could tell you how to do that. But I won't -- you figure it out. I suppose it's possible you just aren't smart enough.

[Anonymous]

Answer
$72,000 x 2 people x 70% take home \ 12 months = $8,400

Townhouse mortgage = $2,500
Daycare 2 kids = $2,800

= $8,400 - $5,300 =$3,100

$3,100 to live off of for the rest of the month without saving anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this may be an unpopular opinion and I have many family members who are teachers and agree with me so this is in no way meant to not show support for teachers, but it is a reality.

Teacher contracts are based on a 195-day contract which is 39 weeks. This is 75% of a full year.

Conversely, I am a small govt worker and my contract is based off a 52 week calendar. With more than 25 years of experience, I make about 2/3 of what a teacher with the same level of experience/education makes and receive about 1/2 of the market rate adjustment raises that teachers in FCPS receive each year.

So as a fellow government employee working in the same jurisdiction, I work more weeks, more hours (my job also requires me to work some nights and weekends) and get paid less and receive lower raises than teachers.

Teaching has become a very thankless job and many people like myself acknowledge the challenges and frustrations of being a teacher, but let's stop pretending that teachers are on an island when it comes to being underpaid and underappreciated.

While teachers are only in the building 195 days, they are working more than that. I would say with all the overtime teachers have grading, planning, going to professional development and attending school events it actually is about the same.

This area as a whole is too expensive for most people unless you have two working families. So I agree that many professionals are being priced out of this area but please know teachers definitely work more than 195 days.

I contributed some numbers up thread that nobody commented on.

I work about 65 hours a week, putting in 2,600 hours(ish) in 10 months.

195 days of work without overtime amounts to 1,560 hours.

That difference of 1,040 hours is actually 26 full 40-hour weeks of overtime I’m cramming into my 10 months.

Summer is my one break all year, when I recharge before another 10-month marathon begins.

This is definitely a "you" problem.

Can you tell me how else to grade 140 essays when I don’t have time at work to do so?

Well, I teach English, so yes, I could tell you how to do that. But I won't -- you figure it out. I suppose it's possible you just aren't smart enough.

I don’t believe you.

A high school English teacher with 130-150 students is going to spend a substantial amount of time at home leaving comments on essays.

The only way you’re an English teacher is if you don’t teach high school OR you don’t bother to teach writing. It’s easy to stay under 40 hours/week if you aren’t doing your job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Answer
$72,000 x 2 people x 70% take home \ 12 months = $8,400

Townhouse mortgage = $2,500
Daycare 2 kids = $2,800

= $8,400 - $5,300 =$3,100

$3,100 to live off of for the rest of the month without saving anything.

Mortgage is too low - probably $3,500 or more now. So $2,100 left over and that’s not enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:A 20 year career making six figures with a BA in History, having summers off, with decent benefits is not some impoverished existence many make it out to be. I think teachers should be paid more across the country, and maybe they could start a bit higher, but for what they do and where they can go, it’s a pretty good life.

I think a big issue at times can be student loans weighing down early career teachers for too long waiting to move to a reasonable pay band. If you are going to be a teacher, and I get many people don’t always know at the time, but go to CNU, not UVA.

Which teacher do you know making 6 figures? I’ve been teaching over 10 years and make nowhere near 6 figures and don’t know any teachers (excepting those who became admin) who make that much.

This is a thread about FCPS teachers. Take a look at the pay scale. Plenty of teachers making 6 figures.

Teachers CAN make 6 figures, after 15 years of work with a Masters degree. And teachers CAN enjoy a pension… if they last.

But many don’t make it 15 years. Around 44% of teachers don’t last more than 4 years. Nationwide, the average teaching career is 14 years.

If you haven’t figured it out yet: teaching is a hard job. There’s good reason many teachers don’t make much: they choose to leave for jobs that pay more for less stress. It seems those unpaid summers aren’t enough of a perk to keep them.

I agree but adding that it's after 18 years with a master's degree in FCPS that a teacher would break six figures. Step 15 is for 18 years of experience, thanks to all of the step freezes over the years that make the pay scale a bit misleading. 18 years in teaching is a long time, and as PP noted, most burn out long before that.

Making $100,000 at 40 years old is quite respectable. More than enough to make a good living in Fairfax county.

DP. That’s if you MAKE IT to 40 years making $100,000. Most teachers crash and burn out long before that.

Most teachers are making 60-70K while pulling ridiculous, stressful hours for 10 months each year. And then they rest for 2 unpaid months, or they get a summer job to make life more affordable.

God forbid they have to work 12 months out of the year ...

Because it is all so hard they have to rest...

Give me a break.

The fact you let that simple comment upset you speaks volumes. If you’re jealous of those summers and the option of working / not working, then simply switch to teaching. Then, since you think it’s easy, you can cruise into summer after your simple job ends.

Or don’t comment because a teacher’s decision to take additional employment (or not) doesn’t remotely impact you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two of my closest friends are FCPS teachers - before we had kids, they worked retail or waited tables in the summer. Now they just hang out with their kids and go to the pool every day in the summer (our kids are in elementary school, so this will surely change when they are older and don't need supervision).

Yup. Most teachers that are Moms and have working husbands become stay at home moms for the whole summer. They need the childcare and it doesn’t make sense for them to pay high prices of camps in the summer while they do some part time work.

This is what the job has always been ... a mommy job.

Nope.

It used to be a job for young single women particularly at the elementary level. Once they got married it was expected that they would quit, or at the latest before they started showing with their first pregnancy. (This was all around late 1800s early 1900s. Before that it was dominated by men.)


Later on, it became a job that was acceptable for middle class mothers, but in the old days there were still many male teachers, particularly at the high school level.

Your ignorance is embarassing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:So what? Neither can I. It took me an hour and 44 mins to get to work this morning. And I have significantly more education than most teachers.

71% of FCPS teachers hold at least a Masters degree. Many have more than one advanced degree.

I’m curious… what’s your education background?

Np. They don't need it. I'm all for paying teachers more, but they should be paid more because it's a hard job, not because they have an unnecessary masters degree.

That is not true. My undergrad degree was in the subject area that I teach and my masters degree was in education. My masters degree is how I learned how to be a teacher. So it was very necessary. Many middle and high school teachers I know are similar. We didn’t study education in undergrad eirher because we went to small LAC that didn’t offer a bachelors in education or bc we didn’t know at that time that we wanted to be teachers.

-high school history teacher.

Ok. Then we should start requiring a master's in education for all teachers.

Many states do! Generally you have 5 years after you start teaching to get the masters.

The issue is that you legally can’t teach public school without education coursework (they’ve made exceptions with provisional licenses for this severe shortage, but even then you have to be done in 3 years).

If you major in education for undergrad, great, maybe (probably) the masters is silly. If you major in math or art or chemistry like my colleagues and I did though, those don’t automatically translate into being a good teacher. The education courses, while certainly not a mental challenge like my math degree, were really necessary to prepare me to teach. How do you structure a 90 minute lesson to capture multiple ability levels, engage kids who hate your subject, check for understanding multiple times, and assess learning? How do you take a list of 65 poorly worded state standards and order them/structure them/pace them out to insure no one gets left behind when you have no curriculum? How do you build an entire 90 minute lesson (or 6) on “the student will transform rational functions” when that’s all you have to go on—there are no resources? My degree in math didn’t teach me any of that.

I wish the education classes had been all taught by current teachers. They were professors who had been out of the classroom 10 years so that was challenging.

Meh. I teach college students and I'm great at it and I've never taken even one pedagogy course.

College students? Please. They sit there (if they come to class) and don’t cause any behavior issues. Try teaching kindergarteners without any advanced training. I’ve seen people cone in from alternate certification programs and their classrooms are chaos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Answer
$72,000 x 2 people x 70% take home \ 12 months = $8,400

Townhouse mortgage = $2,500
Daycare 2 kids = $2,800

= $8,400 - $5,300 =$3,100

$3,100 to live off of for the rest of the month without saving anything.

Don’t forget their student loans!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what? Neither can I. It took me an hour and 44 mins to get to work this morning. And I have significantly more education than most teachers.

71% of FCPS teachers hold at least a Masters degree. Many have more than one advanced degree.

I’m curious… what’s your education background?

Np. They don't need it. I'm all for paying teachers more, but they should be paid more because it's a hard job, not because they have an unnecessary masters degree.

That is not true. My undergrad degree was in the subject area that I teach and my masters degree was in education. My masters degree is how I learned how to be a teacher. So it was very necessary. Many middle and high school teachers I know are similar. We didn’t study education in undergrad eirher because we went to small LAC that didn’t offer a bachelors in education or bc we didn’t know at that time that we wanted to be teachers.

-high school history teacher.

Ok. Then we should start requiring a master's in education for all teachers.

Many states do! Generally you have 5 years after you start teaching to get the masters.

The issue is that you legally can’t teach public school without education coursework (they’ve made exceptions with provisional licenses for this severe shortage, but even then you have to be done in 3 years).

If you major in education for undergrad, great, maybe (probably) the masters is silly. If you major in math or art or chemistry like my colleagues and I did though, those don’t automatically translate into being a good teacher. The education courses, while certainly not a mental challenge like my math degree, were really necessary to prepare me to teach. How do you structure a 90 minute lesson to capture multiple ability levels, engage kids who hate your subject, check for understanding multiple times, and assess learning? How do you take a list of 65 poorly worded state standards and order them/structure them/pace them out to insure no one gets left behind when you have no curriculum? How do you build an entire 90 minute lesson (or 6) on “the student will transform rational functions” when that’s all you have to go on—there are no resources? My degree in math didn’t teach me any of that.

I wish the education classes had been all taught by current teachers. They were professors who had been out of the classroom 10 years so that was challenging.

Meh. I teach college students and I'm great at it and I've never taken even one pedagogy course.

College students? Please. They sit there (if they come to class) and don’t cause any behavior issues. Try teaching kindergarteners without any advanced training. I’ve seen people cone in from alternate certification programs and their classrooms are chaos.

Exactly. You can’t compare college to k-12 education. The college PP doesn’t need a pedagogy course or knowledge of classroom management. The situation is quite different when the room is filled with 30+ teenagers who are disinterested and/or disruptive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Answer
$72,000 x 2 people x 70% take home \ 12 months = $8,400

Townhouse mortgage = $2,500
Daycare 2 kids = $2,800

= $8,400 - $5,300 =$3,100

$3,100 to live off of for the rest of the month without saving anything.

While I do think 124k is a reasonable salary for 2 30 year olds to live on, your numbers are off. You're not getting a TH mortgage or two in day care at once for $5,300. As someone who had to space the kids out by 5 years, I'm positive about this.

OTOH I know many teachers who took at least a full year off with each kid. The barriers to leaving the workforce and re-entering are not as high as in some other fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many teachers have the problem of paying high rent or mortgages in cities. This is across America, not just Fairfax. They end up sharing apartments or get married. They also are only getting paid for 9 months of work, so, of course, it looks lower than your annual salary.

How many relax all summer vs work in the summer?

Former FCPS teacher and I can tell you I relaxed all summer. I didn’t lift a finger until the first day of my contract.

My first year I do go in about a week early to physically set up the classroom but stopped that when I saw it really didn’t matter that much.

We are a two teacher family (ES) and we worked summer school until our DS was born. Soon after that we stopped doing anything work related between our last work day in June and first work day of the next school year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Answer
$72,000 x 2 people x 70% take home \ 12 months = $8,400

Townhouse mortgage = $2,500
Daycare 2 kids = $2,800

= $8,400 - $5,300 =$3,100

$3,100 to live off of for the rest of the month without saving anything.

Don’t forget their student loans!

Should go to NVCC and a cheaper in-state and can almost pay as you go.

I found a nice TH in Herndon for 450k. Herndon pyramid. 3br/2.5bth.

This is all doable for a couple of 5-10 year teachers in the their early 30s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Answer
$72,000 x 2 people x 70% take home \ 12 months = $8,400

Townhouse mortgage = $2,500
Daycare 2 kids = $2,800

= $8,400 - $5,300 =$3,100

$3,100 to live off of for the rest of the month without saving anything.

Don’t forget their student loans!

Should go to NVCC and a cheaper in-state and can almost pay as you go.

I found a nice TH in Herndon for 450k. Herndon pyramid. 3br/2.5bth.

This is all doable for a couple of 5-10 year teachers in the their early 30s.

That’s -at most- $88K at 10 years with a masters. 5 years with a bachelors is $68K.

I doubt many teachers have had the extra funds to save for a down payment. $450K seems like a stretch.