Society has trained us to not talk about money and to view such an act as gauche. Unfortunately, this could prevent transparency and hinder fair compensation.
That’s why Arizona teacher Elisabeth Milich is saying the heck with it.
She posted a picture of her pay stub for the whole world to see in light of a her governor’s comments and a teacher’s strike in West Virginia. Her aim was to show that, despite all the schooling that is required to become a teacher, they don’t make a livable wage.
Milich’s Facebook post, which has been removed according to TODAY, showed that she only received a $131 raise within a year as her salary went from $35,490 to $35,621.
“I actually laughed when I saw the old salary versus the new one,” she wrote. “I need a college degree to make this? I know I don’t make a lot of money, but then when I see it in black and white I’m like ‘wow!’ I mean, I love teaching, absolutely love it, but when you see what the salary is, you cannot live on it.”
Millich, who has been teaching for seven years, is a second-grade teacher at Whispering Wind Academy in Phoenix, Arizona, a state where there are some of the lowest-paid public school teachers in the country.
Their average salary is $47,218 compared to the national average of $58,353.
In addition, Milich says that teachers are often left to pay for supplies for students like markers and tape without being compensated. She’s also still paying off her student loans 20 years after graduating from college.
Milich says she was empowered to share her salary after she saw teachers in West Virginia strike last month.
They wound up winning a 5 percent raise for teachers.
Though Milich says she is fortunate to only have one teaching job because of her husband’s salary, she says some of her fellow teachers aren’t so lucky.
“My teacher friends that I work with, they work three and four jobs to make ends meet,” she said. “I know teachers that teach kindergarten all day long and then they leave and they go waitress at Applebee’s.”
“If you are a single person trying to make it on what we make, you couldn’t do it,” Milich told KTVK.
And studies show that Milich is correct and found that teaching has become an unsustainable profession.
A 2017 study by the Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy said that teacher recruitment and retention levels in Arizona are at “crisis” levels.
The study also found that almost half, or 42 percent, of Arizona teachers who were hired in 2013 left the profession after three years and that the state’s elementary school teacher are paid the lowest in the country.
Milich posted her salary after Arizona’s Gov. Doug Ducey made what she said were incorrect claims about teacher salaries, according to CBS News.
“Our teacher pay last year went up 4.4 percent to an average pay of $48,000.” He added, “Now, that’s not enough and I want to see it rise from there.”
Milich says she had to take her postdown after all the negative feedback she was getting from it.
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