As part of his budget plans for 2025 to 2027, Republican Governor Joe Lombardo recently announced that he wants to make teacher pay raises permanent, including for all charter school teachers.
That would be a welcome step for teachers who feel they don’t get paid enough for what they provide, especially amid the rise in living costs.
Teachers from the local Coral Academy interviewed in a student documentary by the Reynolds School of Journalism’s Vance Russell expressed concern at where the educator profession is going in Nevada with low pay, a lack of respect and standards going down.
Teachers rarely speak openly about their ordeals but the three agreed to do so.
“I feel that we aren’t paid what we should be,” said Kelly Russell, a computer science teacher at the Coral Academy of Science charter school.
“I think a lot of us feel guilty about leaving, because we know there isn't anyone to take our place,” she added saying she heard they were short at least 250 teachers to start the school year within Washoe County.
“It’s hard to find substitutes, which means a lot of us, even if we need the time off, we can't take it because there's no one to fill our our positions. Also, I think a lot of us feel that … some of the new teachers coming in, they are not as qualified as they need to be because of the desperation of finding new teachers. So that definitely has an impact on a lot of us,” she explained in the short documentary.
“Overall, pay for me is very low,” said Diane Swanson, a librarian and ELA teacher. “My background was in the legal field, and I made more money as a secretary than I do … teaching…Teachers are overworked. We are exhausted.”
She said respect for the profession has gone down, and that teachers are no longer supported by many parents.
“If you're going to have low pay and lack of respect and you're getting bullied by parents, it makes it extremely difficult to stay within the education and teaching profession,” she said.
Russell believes that with better pay the quality of teaching and education would go back up. The average teacher pay in Nevada is about $60,000, or $10,000 lower than the rest of the country, while the Silver State’s education system consistently ranks near the bottom of state by state U.S. comparisons.
She feels discouraged when she hears of other teachers working two or three jobs to make ends meet. “They're not giving their students the attention that they need or require, and it's a detriment to our students in our education system,” she said. “So Nevada really needs to step up and start paying teachers appropriately, and I think if they did, it would be a lot better for everyone involved.”
Swanson said teachers barely make more than a fast food worker in California, where that pay is now $20 per hour. “ I work evenings. I work weekends. I get up at 3:30, four in the morning. I grade papers. I'm putting together lesson plans,” she explained as to her heavy workload. “I’m fielding emails to my students after work hours. Parents contact me all hours of the day, every day of the week with questions.”
She calls teaching a calling, but says society should be more helpful to help our next generation of workers.
“I try very hard to be positive and upbeat for my students because I realize that they probably hear a lot of grumbling from their parents about how difficult it is and how hard it is to make ends meet, and then they go to school. And if the teachers are having the same kind of an attitude, I think that we are sending a message to our young people [that] … you're never going to be happy. And I don't want to be that teacher, but the exhaustion rate is making it hard. We're tired… We need some help,” she said in the documentary.
Michael Wallack, a math teacher struck a more optimistic tone in his interviews, about the benefits of teaching as a profession, with longer breaks, but agreed with the need for an across the board teacher pay increase.
“First off, you'd see less people leaving the profession as they are…That would also give people in the colleges a chance to see what teaching can hold for them partly because it is a rewarding profession,” he said.