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We\u2019ve seen teacher strikes across our country, time and again, as our educators demand more pay.<\/p>\n
When one teacher decided to join in the debate, she posted her pay stub,<\/p>\n
revealing her salary online. And, it caused quite the uproar.
\nElisabeth Coate Milich did something most people won\u2019t do. In a country where we don\u2019t typically talk<\/p>\n
about our finances and earnings in public, the Arizona school teacher decided to post<\/p>\n
her pay stub on social media for the world to see because she wanted to make a point about the pay teachers receive.
\nMilich wanted to show that, despite all the schooling that is required to become a teacher,<\/p>\n
she and her colleagues don\u2019t make a living wage. Although it was removed because of<\/p>\n
all the negative feedback she received, Milich\u2019s Facebook post showed that she only received<\/p>\n
a $131 raise in a year as her salary went from $35,490 to $35,621, according to TODAY.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually laughed when I saw the old salary versus the new one,\u201d Milich wrote in her post.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need a college degree to make this? I know I don\u2019t make a lot of money, but then when<\/p>\n
I see it in black and white I\u2019m like \u2018wow!\u2019 I mean, I love teaching, absolutely love it,<\/p>\n
but when you see what the salary is, you cannot live on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Milich, who has been in education for years and is currently a second-grade teacher at Whispering Wind Academy in Phoenix,<\/p>\n
says she debated over whether or not to post her paycheck, according to CBS News. In the end,<\/p>\n
she decided that she wanted to show what a teaching salary really looks like in her state, but Milich\u2019s picture is bleaker than most.<\/p>\n
Although Arizona does have some of the lowest-paid public school teachers in the nation,<\/p>\n
the average salary for those educators is not the $35,621 that Milich\u2019s check stub reflects.<\/p>\n
The average salary is instead $47,218, but compared to the national average of $58,353 a year,<\/p>\n
according to National Education Association Research, that\u2019s still low.<\/p>\n
While those numbers sound much better than the picture Milich\u2019s photo painted, she made<\/p>\n
sure to point out that teachers are often left to pay for supplies for students like<\/p>\n
markers and tape without being compensated. She\u2019s also still paying off her student loans, 20 years after graduating from college.<\/p>\n
If it wasn\u2019t for her husband\u2019s salary, Milich says she\u2019d be in bad shape, and she knows this because some of her fellow<\/p>\n
teachers aren\u2019t so lucky as to have a second household income. \u201cMy teacher friends that I work with,<\/p>\n
they work three and four jobs to make ends meet,\u201d Milich explained. \u201cI know teachers<\/p>\n
that teach kindergarten all day long and then they leave and they go waitress at Applebee\u2019s,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are a single person trying to make it on what we make, you couldn\u2019t do it,\u201d she claimed,<\/p>\n
and studies seem to indicate she\u2019s correct about teaching becoming an unsustainable profession. In fact, a 2017 study by the Arizona State University\u2019s<\/p>\n
Morrison Institute for Public Policy said that teacher recruitment and retention levels in Arizona<\/p>\n
are at \u201ccrisis\u201d levels. The study found that 42% of Arizona teachers who were hired in 2013<\/p>\n
left the profession after three years and that the state\u2019s elementary school teachers are the lowest paid in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019ve seen teacher strikes across our country, time and again, as our educators demand more pay. When one teacher decided to join in the debate, she posted… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n