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

[Anonymous]

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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.

I teach AP. You think my degree in my discipline is unnecessary?

A master's degree is unnecessary. And most teachers do not have a master's in the discipline they teach anyway, they have a bs masters in "liberal arts" or education. My BIL teaches AP and he doesn't have a grad degree in his discipline. He barely has a ba in it. "I teach AP" is not the flex you think it is.

Do you have a source for that? I was an elementary teacher and most of my colleagues had degrees in education as I did, but high school teachers likely have degrees in their discipline, as well. Pretty sure many have Masters' Degrees.

I am not sure that an anecdotal BIL is enough evidence to support your opinion.

Pp is saying they don't have a masters in the area, ie subject area, they teach. I've met many teachers with masters degrees in education but not a single one with a masters in a substantive subject, e.g. a history teacher having a *masters* in history, not just a BA in history and a masters in education.

6 figures? A teacher with 20 years in with a BA is not making 6 figures. They have frozen steps so many times that the step number does not correlate to salary.

The 20 year teacher has a good pension, but the 10 year teacher has a pension that is similar to many private sector jobs.

I have a masters degree in a field related to what I teach, 17 years of experience in FCPS, and am not making six figures. I thought I would be by now, but FCPS started to not give step increases regularly soon after I started.

I work far more than 40 hours per week. In the summer at least one week is spent at a training of some sort. I’m teaching a new class next year that I need to prep for this summer, which I will do without additional compensation.

While many other jobs mentioned above do not pay well enough to live alone for the first few years, they provide opportunities for promotion into jobs that pay more. Unless you become an administrator, teaching does not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Well, I am sure of the answer.

The pay does not need to increase. One or both of them need to get a job that pays more if they aren't happy with their lifestyle. Most 30 year olds cannot afford a townhouse in the DMV.

[Anonymous]

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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.

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.

Lol, ok.

You are right though -- I am NOT a high school English teacher. I teach college students (and the occasional grad seminar).

[Anonymous]

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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.

It's a pink job. Your ignorance of that is what is embarrassing. And you need to learn to spell if you are going to get all aggressively pedantic -- your failure to spell embarrassing correctly is also ... embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

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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.

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.

So ... you admit that you aren't really teaching, you are babysitting?

[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.

There is only a short time where both kids will be in day care. You just have to keep afloat during that period.

[Anonymous]

Then they need to take what they spent on daycare and save it for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Lol, ok.

You are right though -- I am NOT a high school English teacher. I teach college students (and the occasional grad seminar).

Frankly, it’s going to be much easier teaching a college course. You have a more mature, more dedicated class that paid for the privilege of sitting there. A high school teacher needs additional skills. Not only do they have to deliver content, but they need to motivate, engage, and manage. They need to differentiate so they can reach a class of widely different abilities. And they need stamina; few college teachers need to present for six hours in a row.

Also, you’ll get time during the day to grade papers when you teach at a college. You may even get an assistant to help you. Teachers get no time at work and no assistance.

So… not quite even.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Well, I am sure of the answer.

The pay does not need to increase. One or both of them need to get a job that pays more if they aren't happy with their lifestyle. Most 30 year olds cannot afford a townhouse in the DMV.

Good point. It is part of the greater housing crisis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Lol, ok.

You are right though -- I am NOT a high school English teacher. I teach college students (and the occasional grad seminar).

Frankly, it’s going to be much easier teaching a college course. You have a more mature, more dedicated class that paid for the privilege of sitting there. A high school teacher needs additional skills. Not only do they have to deliver content, but they need to motivate, engage, and manage. They need to differentiate so they can reach a class of widely different abilities. And they need stamina; few college teachers need to present for six hours in a row.

Also, you’ll get time during the day to grade papers when you teach at a college. You may even get an assistant to help you. Teachers get no time at work and no assistance.

So… not quite even.

DP. +100.
I ran sections and graded college papers as a GA a long time ago, and I now teach. Not even remotely comparable.

[Anonymous]

2500 for a mortgage? Does the townhome have a roof?

[Anonymous]

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.

I teach AP. You think my degree in my discipline is unnecessary?

A master's degree is unnecessary. And most teachers do not have a master's in the discipline they teach anyway, they have a bs masters in "liberal arts" or education. My BIL teaches AP and he doesn't have a grad degree in his discipline. He barely has a ba in it. "I teach AP" is not the flex you think it is.

Do you have a source for that? I was an elementary teacher and most of my colleagues had degrees in education as I did, but high school teachers likely have degrees in their discipline, as well. Pretty sure many have Masters' Degrees.

I am not sure that an anecdotal BIL is enough evidence to support your opinion.

Pp is saying they don't have a masters in the area, ie subject area, they teach. I've met many teachers with masters degrees in education but not a single one with a masters in a substantive subject, e.g. a history teacher having a *masters* in history, not just a BA in history and a masters in education.

That is interesting. I am an FCPS high school social studies teacher and over 1/3 of my department holds a subject area masters/post-graduate degree (history, political science, JD).

[Anonymous]

All of you parents disparaging teachers better not say boo when AI starts taking over teaching. Your K-3 kids could very well have AI teachers in HS. You’ll be wishing you had a human engaging with your kids.

- a parent who works in STEM

[Anonymous]

Now is not the time to prioritize teacher pay.

We need to preserve the FCPS DEIA office, with 60 of the staff members, and fully fund all DEIA efforts in the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now is not the time to prioritize teacher pay.

We need to preserve the FCPS DEIA office, with 60 of the staff members, and fully fund all DEIA efforts in the county.

LMAO!!!!

Actually I think we should expand upon it. Maybe rent them additional space.