As the school year starts, teachers return to their classrooms. But that’s not the only place they’re working.
A new survey from the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA) reveals that nearly half of Maryland teachers work a second job to make ends meet. MSEA President Cheryl Bost said this data is a call-to-action to pay educators more.
With a livable salary, teachers “can spend their time and their energy and their efforts planning lessons, working with families and students, and not worried about making ends meet or going to that second job,” Bost said.
The July 2023 survey of nearly three thousand public school educators points to one reason why teachers are seeking additional employment: over half of them accrue personal debt on-the-job.
Bost said student loans and high costs of living likely attribute to this debt.
“I know many of our teachers say that they can’t afford to live in the districts where they teach, so they may be taking on housing debt,” Bost added. “These are stressors on our educators which may deter people from coming into the profession or cause people to leave the profession. And we can’t afford that to happen right now.”
Statewide, school districts are struggling to recruit and retain teachers. In Baltimore City and county, 600 school staff resigned over the summer. Many of them had only worked in schools for one year or less.
According to MSEA survey data, 61% of young educators work a second job in Maryland. Over half of Black and Hispanic teachers do the same, a higher percentage than the overall 44%.
The percent of Maryland teachers accruing personal debt is up six percentage points to 52%, from 46% of survey respondents in 2019. This trend is significantly higher among those working in higher poverty schools (57%) — and Black and Hispanic teachers, at 65% and 61% respectively.
“This data is one more indicator of the societal, structural racism in our country,” Bost said.
Cindy Sexton, president of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County, said the MSEA data holds true in her district’s schools.
Sexton remembers working four different positions in her early teaching days — from tutoring to night school classes — to pay off housing costs and student loans.
She also bought students supplies with her own money, which 90% of MSEA survey respondents said they do, too.
“It’s not just school supplies,” Sexton said. “Many of us have bought food for our students or clothes or other things they need. So it’s really about working to meet the needs of our students as well.”
Bost said legislators and school leaders need to focus on how to retain and recruit teachers, using this data.
“Salary is a big thing,” she said. “But it’s also the workload that we’re placing on our educators, who have to serve as coaches counselors and social workers because we don’t have enough of those positions in our buildings.”
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a multimillion-dollar education legislation package, requires that all starting teachers make $60,000 per year. Bost said this is an important step — but supporting teachers who have been working in schools for years is crucial, as well.
Sexton said the question leaders should be asking is, where is the teacher's money going?
“And if it is something like student loans, what can we do to assist with that?”
