Texas gets an F in teacher support

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be … teachers.

Wait. What?

OK, that’s not how the song goes, but that’s how it feels in Texas these days.

Who will teach and mold doctors, lawyers and cowboys? An annual education poll by the Charles Butt Foundation found the share of Texans who want their child to teach in public schools dropped 10 points this year to 39 percent.

It’s no mystery why.

Consider the data, the burdens teachers must shoulder and what we pay them. More Texas teachers left their jobs in 2021-22 than ever before: 42,839 teachers, or 11.57 percent of the state’s 370,431 teachers, decided the job wasn’t for them.

The poll concluded the teaching profession “is under duress.”

I’m a former teacher, but it doesn’t take classroom experience to understand how we got here.

Teachers, still feeling the effects of the pandemic, are overworked and underpaid. The

Uvalde school massacre and other school shootings, including one in Virginia in which a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher, despite warnings to the school he had a gun, are horrific reminders of how unsafe schools have become. Abundant political rhetoric that thrusts teachers into our culture wars doesn’t help.

But I found hope in state

Rep. James Talarico’s House Bill 1548, which would use some of the $33 billion in state surplus funds to give teachers a $15,000 raise.

Talarico, a Williamson County Democrat and former middle school teacher, said hoarding the surplus while educators and children are suffering is immoral.

“This moment demands bold action, and that’s what our state is known for,” Talarico said. “House Bill 1548 would be the biggest teacher pay raise in Texas history. In Texas, we go big or we go home. Let’s go big on teacher pay.”

Many parents will attest to the challenge of teacher shortages in their schools, so paying teachers is also about supporting kids and parents.

Texas teacher salaries trail the national average by about $6,000, according to the National Education Association. A

2018 Texas State Teacher’s Association study found 56 percent of teachers had second jobs during the summer and 39 percent of respondents said they needed second jobs during the school year to pay their bills.

In San Antonio in 2021-22, the average teacher salary was $58, 634.

Teacher pay varies among urban, suburban and rural school districts, but according to a Texas Education Agency’s most recent snapshot data, the average teacher salary for teachers in 2020 in major suburban districts was $59,951, in major urban districts it was $57,980 and in rural districts $51,012.

The state minimum salary schedule for classroom teachers, full-time librarians, fulltime counselors and full-time registered nurses begins at a paltry $33,660 for those with no experience and maxes out at $54,540 for those with more than 20 years of experience.

A Teacher Incentive Allotment program, established in 2019 as part of the Legislature’s historic school finance package, House Bill 3, pays some teachers more based on their performance, but the scope is narrow. All 373 districts and 1,600 teachers participated in the program in the 2021-22 school year, according to TEA. But the program is partly based on standardized test scores, which are lower in low-income schools.

Lawmakers might need convincing to support Talarico’s bill, but that’s not the case for most Texans. The most recent Charles Butt Foundation poll found three-quarters of respondents believe teachers are undervalued by society and 89 percent of respondents support boosting teacher pay.

Maybe you know a teacher or a student, or simply remember the difference teachers made in your life. Perhaps you just know how vital teachers are in our society.

There is a silver lining in the state’s attrition data: There were 42,973 new hires in the 2021-22 school year, which is slightly above attrition. But those teachers won’t stay if they don’t get paid or if they find themselves caught in endless culture wars.

Texas mamas should want their children to grow up to be teachers. If our state’s lawmakers don’t deliver on Talarico’s bill, our children will suffer the consequences. Without teachers, babies can’t grow up to be, well, much of anything.