The Forgotten Underclass of American Education

 

Rodin's The Thinker, Public Domain Wikimedia

 

It used to be a joke among teachers that their pay was low and the job was hard. While teaching is still hard, in relative terms, is it still valid that the payment is low compared to other careers? In America, we have hollowed out compensation and good jobs to the point that the handful of positions that have a union stand out in a sea of low-paid service, gig, and support workers across all workplaces. It is hard for teachers making fifty or more thousand a year to tell a full-timer from just about any nonprofessional workplace that they are not well compensated. We have lowered the bar, leaving teacher pay and overall compensation up and above what the average person gets.

This fact of under-compensation is most accurate for substitute teachers. Substitute teachers are often certified teachers who, for various reasons, must or choose to work part-time. One co-teacher who subs almost full-time does so because her family obligations won't allow her to take a contract. Another is an older, retired teacher who likes to work part-time. Many of them take on long-term subbing contracts that have them working so close to full-time that it feels a little exploitative on the part of the school district. We should compensate these teachers much better than we do.

For around a hundred dollars a day, these professionals do everything a contracted teacher does at Walmart wages. They are below Walmart's wages since there are no benefits. Let alone being able to be part of the protective union that doesn't advocate for substitutes. The irony of a union is that it only supports you if you can afford to be a part of it. It makes me ashamed to make the contracted salary plus benefits while working side by side, doing the same job with those who struggle. 

Having a union representing only a small portion of school staff is unfair. Substitutes and support staff are never part of the contract and salary negotiations and constitute most of the workforce in any school. It is unfair to have such a system where some employees have representation like a gilded elite while most do not. They work with the same students and face the same challenges and threats outside the golden class of contracted teachers.

I worked as a sub in my early teaching days and really enjoyed it. The ability to be flexible and get to work in many different schools at various age levels was gratifying. At that time, in the 1990s, I didn't make much less than subs make today, which is shocking to think about. While working as a sub with no benefits, I carried a low-cost health plan for about a hundred dollars a month. I was young and healthy, and it was all I could afford with other bills. I got sick and racked up medical bills in the thousands that I had trouble paying, setting me back financially for years. I was a certified teacher working as many hours as my contracted colleagues, but I fell behind without benefits or the compensation to afford life.

What about equitable pay for subs? Substitute teachers, especially licensed ones, should be paid a fair wage, and the union should make space for them in their ranks. I once told a friend who was the president of the American Library Association that lowering dues would increase membership and make up lost revenue since many librarians, low-paid and part-time, would join something affordable. Unions and organizations like ALA or NEA are bureaucratic machines with an ossified political class at the top that defy change even if it would be the right thing to do. Unlicensed subs, who work just as hard, should also be paid a fairer wage that respects their work. By paying these workers so low and offering them small wages for doing the same job as higher-paid, protected, and benefited workers right beside them, the idea of a school as an egalitarian ideal of society is nothing but hypocritical fiction. 

Oregon is the only state I have found that even approaches paying subs more fairly. In Oregon, a substitute can't be paid less than 85 percent of a starting teacher's daily rate. This amounts to a salary about twice that of local sub pay and rounds out to around 200-225 per day. Long-term subs in Oregon also qualify for some benefits, which seems like a step in the right direction.