Bus drivers take America’s children to school where cafeteria workers serve food and teacher aides help students who need the most help.
And the pay is notoriously low. School support staff earn an average of $25,000 a year in Los Angeles, barely enough to make ends meet in one of America’s most expensive cities.
The wages were a driving factor in the three-day strike that shut down the entire Los Angeles school system and called attention to the salaries of support staff who are the backbone of schools nationwide.
Even outside of expensive California, school shows often don’t pay enough to live on.
Arthur Anderson, a school employee in Virginia, said it’s a shame that it took a walkout to draw attention to a longstanding problem, but he hopes it helps.
“People are frustrated. We all are,” said Anderson, a teacher’s aide in the Chesapeake Public School System who has worked for 30 years and earns $32,000. He works three other part-time jobs to make ends meet. “I’m struggling to pay the rent. I’m struggling to pay the bills,” he said. “I like what I do. I just don’t like what I get.”
Anderson works 36 hours as a special education assistant in her school’s science department. But he was also asked to fill in as a bus driver and custodian. When the science teacher is absent, he fills in as a substitute, who is paid an additional $10 per class. “I did it today. I got an extra $20.”
A strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District that began Monday was led by teacher aides, custodians and other support staff who are among the district’s lowest-paid workers. They demanded better pay and more employees. Teachers joined the picket line, a show of solidarity that forced the district to close schools in the nation’s second-largest district serving half a million students.
School support staff across the country tell of spending their entire careers in public education, filling jobs that keep schools running. However, many are not getting paid and like the striking workers in Los Angeles are unable to live in the communities where they work.
“The problem in Los Angeles is not just in Los Angeles. It’s a statewide problem and it’s been decades in the making,” said Princess Moss, vice president of the National Education Association, which represents about half a million education support staff.
The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, last year released data showing full-time school support staff earned an average salary of $32,800. Delaware has the highest salary for full-time K-12 support staff ($44,738), while Idaho has the lowest ($25,830), but salaries vary by state. They can also vary by metro area and even by school district, depending on how long a person has been working.
Amid growing staff shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have struggled to hire amid a strong labor market, adding to the burden on existing staff.
A RAND survey of school leaders last year found that about three-quarters of school leaders said they were trying to hire more substitutes, 58% were trying to hire more bus drivers and 43% were trying to hire more tutors. In recent years, staff have also been on the front lines implementing pandemic protocols or helping students struggling with mental or behavioral health.
More than half of the state’s public schools are starting this school year feeling short, with many struggling to fill key support staff jobs, especially in transportation and custodial jobs, according to a Department of Education survey. Asked about their biggest challenge, about four in 10 said candidates felt insufficient pay and benefits.
Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union represents about 30,000 LAUSD teacher aides, special education assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other support staff. The union says many are living in poverty because of low pay or limited working hours while struggling with inflation and high housing costs. Support staff, including many who work part-time, earn about $25,000 a year, according to the union, which is asking for a 30% raise.
The school district is offering a cumulative 23% raise, beginning retroactively at 2% in the 2020-21 school year and ending at 5% in 2024-25. The package will also include more full-time positions and an expansion of health benefits. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said it was ready to meet at any time.
Leaders of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, which represents 35,000 educators, counselors and other staff, have pledged solidarity with the strikers.
Experts say it’s unusual for unions in the same school district to join forces, but the joint labor action in Los Angeles could mark an inflection point.
“The idea of the teachers union and the service union saying that we can do better if we stick together, it can be contagious in other communities that look at it and say, ‘Hey, they did it in Los Angeles – maybe we can do it,'” Lee said. Adler, a lecturer and expert on education union issues at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations and Labor Relations.
The fight for higher wages has taken place in other school systems.
In one example, food service workers in Hastings, Minnesota, have been on strike for six weeks over higher wages and other issues. A union representing 35 workers said starting wages are less than $15 an hour in the suburban school district, which serves about 4,300 students.
“There is a growing movement to fight the living wage,” said Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. “Schools cannot function without workers in these roles. And it is a fiction to suggest that people do not need to live off the wages they earn.
With 26 years of experience as a bus driver, Carl Kirchgessner earns $20.35 an hour driving for a school system outside of Rochester, NY’s Rush-Henrietta Central School District that is still struggling with a shortage of drivers emerging from the pandemic, when many have to double up. on the route. She said that she can make ends meet only because her husband also works.
“If it’s just me,” he said, “nothing.”