SAN FRANCISCO — Bus drivers shuttle America’s children to schools where cafeteria workers feed them and teacher aides assist students who need the most help.
And their pay is notoriously low. School support staffers earn, on average, about $25,000 a year in Los Angeles, barely enough to get by in one of the most expensive cities in America.
The pay is a driving factor behind a three-day strike that has shut down the entire Los Angeles school system and put a spotlight on the paltry pay of support staff that serves as the backbone of schools nationwide.
Even outside pricey California, the school gigs often don’t pay enough to live on.
Arthur Anderson, a school worker in Virginia, says it’s a shame it took a walkout to draw attention to the longstanding problem, but he hopes it helps.
“People are so frustrated. We all are,” said Anderson, a teacher’s assistant in the Chesapeake Public School System where he has worked for 30 years and makes $32,000. He works three other part-time jobs to make ends meet. “I struggle to pay my rent. I struggle to pay my bills,” he said. “I love what I do. I just don’t love what I get paid.”
Anderson works 36 hours as a special education aide in his school’s science department. But he is also asked to fill in as a bus driver and a custodian. When a science teacher is absent, he fills in as a substitute, which pays an extra $10 per class. “I did that today. I got an extra $20.”
The strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District that started Monday has been led by the teachers’ assistants, custodians and other support staff who are among the district’s lowest-paid workers. They’re demanding better wages and increased staffing. Teachers joined the picket lines, in a show of solidarity that forced the district to close schools in the nation’s second-largest district that serves a half million students.
School support staff around the country tell stories of spending entire careers in public…
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