One-Third of Texas Teachers Work Second Job to Make Ends Meet

AUSTIN, TX — About one-third of Texas teachers have to work a second job during the school year to survive.

The 13 hours per week spent at the extra job is in addition to the 17 hours teachers spend on work related tasks, such as grading and lesson plans.

During the summer, the number of teachers who take a second job reaches almost 50 percent. The figures come from a recently released survey performed by faculty members at Sam Houston State University for the Texas State Teachers Association.

The survey found that financial challenges coupled with the time spent on standardized testing have led to 53 percent of teachers to consider leaving the profession.

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Of the teachers who work a second job, 86 percent said that they wanted to quit moonlighting but would need a raise of about $9,000 to do it.

For state budget aficionados complaints about teacher pay are nothing really new.

Despite Texas being the second most populous state in the U.S., with the largest number of operating school districts in the U.S. and being able to boast that 26.8 percent of the state's population is under the age of 18 — education funding isn't really a priority. In 2014, the most recent figures available, Texas' state government spent about $8,600 per year on every K-12 student in the state.

Texas has dragged its feet on anything related to education for more than 60 years, the state was the last one to implement the desegregation provisions of Brown v. Board. For almost 50 years parents, teachers and administrators have been suing the state to increase the amount of education funding available.

The various lawsuits challenging Texas' education funding model have met with varying of levels of success. The most recent lawsuit, filed by about two-thirds of the state's 1,200 school districts, went to the Texas Supreme Court.

The state's highest civil court issued a ruling in May finding that Texas' school funding system "satisfies minimum constitution requirements," according to the ruling. In other words, the system is broken but it isn't illegal.

The National Education Association determined that Texas ranks 45th in the U.S. in per-pupil public-education spending.

Texas spends less on educating students than Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, West Virginia, Missouri or Kentucky.

For comparison purposes, Texas spends about $21,400 per prisoner per year. In Texas, the answer to the question "why Johnny can't read" could very well be "because the state government would rather lock him up."

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