Front Page  »  

Paso Robles teachers protest for higher pay

October 14, 2021

Paso Robles Unified School District Board

By JOSH FRIEDMAN

Despite receiving pay of more than $70,000 a year on average, Paso Robles teachers say they are in dire need of a wage increase. [Tribune]

More than 100 teachers, parents and community members demonstrated Tuesday evening outside of the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District administration building. The teachers and their supporters called for district officials to grant the educators a pay increase.

The Paso Robles Educators, the local chapter of the California Teachers Association, is currently in salary negotiations with the school district.

In the 2019-2020 school year, Paso Robles teachers received the fourth highest average pay among educators working for nine different school districts in SLO County, according to the California Department of Education. San Miguel Joint Union School District did not send teacher pay data to the state.

That year, Paso Robles teachers collected an average salary of $71,640. By comparison, Lucia Mar teachers received an average salary of $70,945, and Templeton teachers received $72,841 in average pay.

Most SLO County districts have given teachers raises in the past couple years. Paso Robles teachers say they have not received a salary increase in three years.

Kate Luster, a first grade teacher at Kermit King Elementary School, said teachers are just asking for a cost-of-living increase. Kristin Usilton, who teaches at Glen Speck Elementary School, said every district colleague she knows is working multiple jobs outside of teaching.

During Tuesday’s school board meeting, district officials said they are worried about declining enrollment impacting the budget in the future. Like most districts in SLO County and in California, Paso Robles Joint Unified has for several years had fewer students enroll and attend class. The district is down 221 students from the previous school year, and officials are expecting to lose another 59 students next year, followed by 114 students the year after that.

The Paso Robles district had a reserve fund of $14.3 million, or 15 percent, as of June. State regulations only allow the district to carry a 10 percent budget reserve.

As with all districts statewide, this year, Paso Robles received a 5.07 percent cost of living adjustment from the state of California. The slightly more than 5 percent increase to the district budget is intended to compensate for rising costs schools in California are enduring.


Loading...
Related:


20 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

1. Paso Teachers made over $99K (on average) total compensation in 2019. I don’t think it’s fair to just evaluate base salary when we’re talking about public sector jobs — we need to evaluate the whole package.

2. Teachers work 185 days/year. I also accept that many teachers work more than their contracted time. This is in-line with private industry exempt positions, which require extra work to ‘get the job done’

3. Estimating that teachers work a full 8 hour day, for 185 days/year, Paso teachers average total compensation of roughly $67/hour.

4. Evaluate for yourself whether this is appropriate.


Backing up my comments:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/scubj6mc1sgbtnx/PR_TeacherSalary_2019.csv/file


-1

Clearly you don’t know any teachers Matt, the number you state includes retirement and health insurance but more importantly they spend 8 hrs at school then go home and grade for 3-4 hrs every night and then lesson plan for the next day. I get it you don’t like your job at Walmart but those are the choices you made.


0

Damnit Jon, you’re making it hard for me to dislike you. You are exactly correct on this one. Teachers have been underpaid in this society for decades.


1

I agree that 70K a year is not enough to buy a house these days unless you are single and a hermit but there is the opportunity to get a summer job. Teachers are very important to everything but they get about half of the annual working days off. I always assumed in my youth that teachers had a second job but this is difficult for some that I know who are teachers because of the time off to travel. Then again that is todays problem, everyone wants time off and free money. Are we learning by example?


7

How many employees want to train 40 or 50 year olds for 2 months? The corndog stand at the fair? Uber?


0

Top pay for a teacher in Paso with maximum experience is about $90k while teachers in the San Luis Coastal, Santa Maria High School and Santa Maria-Bonita Elementary all top out at over $106K. So give them a raise.


-5

The first eleven words reveal the prejudice of this so-called “journalist.”


2

When you factor in that teachers only work 9 months per year $70k seems like a pretty handsome salary.


12

You might as well say teachers only work 6-7 hours/day as well. Any decent teacher works 7 days/week, 365 days/year. The summers are like a vacation for teachers because they’re only working 20-30 hours/week compared to the 60-70 hours per week during the school year. Teachers are the ones in the trenches doing the actual work. If you’re worried about salaries, focus on the top-heavy, overpaid, do-nothing academic administrators.


4

A 16 yo working 40 hr per week at Coldstone makes 24000 dollars in 9 months, A teacher with 4 to 6 plus years of specialized education in a subject and 15 plus years experience is paid handsomely by making triple said 16yo? That’s assuming the teacher puts in no hours beyond 40.


1

What is administrator average pay?


45

Social Security just gave out a 6% COLA for everyone collecting SS . I can’t imagine why the school board can’t agree to that number. The actual cost of living in PR is skyrocketing which is why several tenured teachers have left the district or teaching all together. Maybe the school board can trim the budget by eliminating all the extra administrative positions the last administration brought in making PRSD very top heavy.


41

And all those past raises in years that were greater than any increase in SS should be? decreased or removed?


4

Proof?


0

With all of the federal spending going on one would think they could do a hell of a lot better than 6%….you would think that the feds would want to retire us 60 somethings in style so they will have jobs for the new Hattians and south Americans crossing our border…


10

Given them a raise…….but…….need to work over

1. Christmas Break (2 weeks)

2. Spring Break (1 Week)

3. Summer (8-16 Weeks)


7

Average pay is misleading. Lumped into that are a lot of senior “step and column” pay earners which skew these numbers. $50k is where most start. Which isn’t a lot of dough.


16

Also there is the part about~180 work days per year compared to private sector working ~250 days per year.


17
1 2