Should teachers get hazard pay?

Teachers are highly educated and trained professionals and their salaries should reflect that, and rates should definitely reflect hazard situations. The ignorance of the American public about how important the profession actually is kerflummoxes me.

Define hazard pay. I would not consider teaching to be hazardous. Construction, trucking, law enforcement, firefighting, high voltage electrical work.. that’s hazardous. Average teacher pay around here is just shy of 60k a year. That’s not really bad or far out of line for someone with a generic bachelor’s degree. The average general salary here is roughly 35–40k. I don’t think a single parent could live with only 40k though. It’s not just teachers that need a pay raise. I did a little math with salaries for several jobs I worked that have public salaries. Most of us where I live have silently lost 40–50% of our salaries buying power in the last 20 years.

@Blackwater_Park I’m talking specifically here about the fact that they have to face the possibility of being murdered at their jobs and have to prepare their charges for the possibility of being shot at. That stress to me could warrant hazard pay.

Despite recent events, this is a very, very rare thing for teachers who work with children in an intrinsically safe, climate controlled environment free of lethal voltages, toxic chemicals, biohazards and rotating machinery. There are people out there who face this every single day as a part of their job. They don’t get hazard pay either.

I think they do get hazard pay or higher pay in high risk areas. I’m fine with that. I don’t think they should get it in general in every school. Although, a couple of years I might argue that because of covid they deserved some extra pay.

Whether we call it hazard pay or simply fair compensation, teachers need to be paid much more than they are.

With a minimum of a masters degree and often a doctorate, their required education is very expensive. Which is to say nothing of the required licensures which they often pay out of pocket.

Salaries are a joke, often starting in the 20’s or 30’s. Sure they get summers “off”, but I’ve never met a teacher who hasn’t had additional jobs over the summer (and even weekends).

And I’m not even getting into the job expectations and related stress. Oh, and the possible shootings.

Here, there are cops in each school building and there are locked doors and so random people cannot come in without going through Security with ID. I’d say where I live, it’s not hazardous and teachers make over 100k. I think a better solution than offering hazardous duty pay would be as I described – locked doors, police and armed guards in each building (we call them SRO’s – school resource officers). If the bad guys can’t get in, they can’t kill.

I read that there have been 27 school shootings so far in 2022.
I don’t understand why, after Colombine and Sandy Hook especially, that all schools are not locked down. No school is in a safe place. It just takes one mentally deranged person in the best of school districts or in the quietest suburb to kill many, many tiny humans.
Yes teachers should get hazard pay. They have to do lock down drills and know what to do in the case of an active shooter. And be willing to put their life on the line for their students.

The teaching profession can I suppose be dangerous. As far as that goes, it appears equally dangerous these days for the kids. But I think the greater crisis is now that teachers are increasingly undervalued as the responsibilities they are expected to fulfill have multiplied beyond reasonable expectations. It is a profession requiring considerable investment in advanced learning with dismal prospects regarding remuneration, financial security or even tolerable social status. This is another one of those issues on my list that makes me question my own mental outlook. Formerly, I would have never judged myself vulnerable in the least to depression. But I swear I can’t remember a time when there were so many things afoot to engender pessimism. This topic is another of those crucial to our existence ; the teaching profession declines in viability as my country visibly and indisputably is dumbing down before my eyes. Just imagine the chances that Florida or Texas will attract gifted or talented people to teaching in those places.

Teachers in some states deserve more pay but not for any hazards they or anyone else faces every day in the normal course of things.

Sure. Children shouldn’t go hungry either.

It’s rhetorical and won’t happen anyway.

If we are just talking hypotheticals, I’d say no.

Teachers should not get hazard pay. They should definitely get paid more. But because they are grossly underpaid. And they shouldn’t have to deal with any of this shit.

I think teachers in TX and other ammosexual states should get whole-cost relocation pay. ;)

@Brian1946 Connecticut isn’t an ammosexual state, these things happen anywhere.

American teacher.

@Brian1946 Yes, and in another post, a teacher said, “You can’t trust us to choose books but you want us to wield guns!”

^Wow. Good point.

MN is in the process of rolling out one-time hazard pay to school/medical/nursing home/first responder/ daycare employees. This is specifically COVID related. Our school with 400 staff and student had 150+ cases, so yeah, I consider that hazardous. But shutting down schools was hazardous to kids, so every building had to weigh those risks.