WASHINGTON — The only reason John Arthur is able to be a public school teacher is because his wife makes much more money than he does.
Arthur — the 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year — testified on Thursday at a hearing in the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the challenges facing public school teachers.
Arthur, who is also a member of the National Education Association and holds National Board Certification, pointed to pay as the main reason for both teachers leaving the profession and parents not wanting their children to become teachers.
“The No. 1 solution to addressing the issues we face must be increasing teachers’ salaries,” said Arthur, who teaches at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Gemayel Keyes, a teacher at Gilbert Spruance Elementary School in Philadelphia, told the committee that even as an educator, he still has an additional part-time job.
The special education teacher spent most of his career in education as a paraprofessional. At the time he moved into that role, the starting annual salary was $16,000 and the maximum was $30,000.
“It’s still pretty much the same,” he said.
Minimum teacher salary
Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, introduced a bill in March 2023 that would set an annual base salary of $60,000 for public elementary and secondary school teachers.
“We understand that the children, young people of this country, are our future and there is, in fact … nothing more important that we can do to provide a quality education to all of our young people, and yet, for decades, public school teachers have been overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and maybe most importantly, underappreciated,” Sanders said in his opening remarks.
“Compared to many other occupations, our public school teachers are more likely to experience high levels of anxiety, stress and burnout, which was only exacerbated by the pandemic,” he said.
Sanders said 44% of public school teachers are quitting their profession within five years, citing “the extremely low pay teachers receive” as one of the primary reasons for a massive U.S. teacher shortage.
For the 2023-24 school year, a whopping 86% of K-12 public schools in the country documented challenges in hiring teachers, according to an October report from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Maryland sets $60,000 minimum
But a minimum annual teacher salary of $60,000 is not far off for every state.
