It’s time to listen to the teachers.
The results of our sixth annual NBC6 teacher survey are in. More than 1,200 public school educators from Miami-Dade and Broward responded. It is not a scientific survey; it’s a random poll, and it was distributed to teachers by the unions in each county.
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To no one’s surprise, their biggest concern is affordability.
We watched veteran teacher Anthony Schmieder on his side hustle, a job he does every day in addition to teaching at Whiddon Rogers Education Center.
“I’m a teacher from 7:30 to 3. I go home and freshen up, and then I go do deliveries at night with Shift, where I go shop for people and deliver their groceries to their home,” Schmieder explained. “Because the schools don’t pay us enough and I have three children.”
Schmieder is not unique among teachers. Thirty-nine percent in our survey said they have year-round second jobs, 15% have summer jobs, and for some, a second gig is always a possibility.
“Every so often I worry and go, maybe I need to get me a little job at Publix after school, I don’t have a problem with that, I could stock shelves or somewhere else, and get that extra because the bills keep coming,” said Nancy Howard, a teacher at Homestead Senior High School.
The bills are always coming, which is why 62% in our survey said they’re worse off compared to one year ago, and, surprising no one, 98% of teachers said teachers are not paid fairly.
“I mean gasoline has gone up, food has gone up,” said Adrienne Kahn, who teaches at Bayview Elementary School.
“If my house wasn’t paid off, I would not be able to live down here, but I have looked at definitely moving out of the area because of just how expensive everything is,” said Kahn, who has been teaching for more than 30 years in Broward County.
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Every teacher we spoke to is acutely aware that Florida is last in the nation for teacher pay.
“It’s like a slap in the face,” said Thais Garcia, who has taught more than three decades at Henry Filer Middle School. “And younger people are either not going into teaching, they’re leaving teaching, like we had a fabulous teacher at our school, young guy, who at the end of the year just quit and went on to become a financial advisor.”
Every teacher seems to have a colleague who is no longer a colleague because they left the profession for a higher-paying job.
“Many, many colleagues have left,” said Yvonne Poldo, who teaches at Devon Aire K8 Center.
Primarily, they leave teaching because they can’t enjoy life in South Florida while making a base salary as low as $52,000. Many of the teachers in our survey told us they rely on the supplements from the referendums each county has passed to help teachers afford to live here. Those referendums are up for renewal on the November ballot.
“Miami-Dade County Public Schools deeply values the dedication of our educators, who are the backbone of our schools,” district officials said in a statement sent after this story aired. “As our region faces unprecedented cost-of-living pressures and national demographic shifts, we hear our teachers loud and clear and are taking direct, decisive action to support them, including asking the voters to consider renewing the Secure Our Future Referendum to pay and retain exceptional instructional personnel.”
NBC6 has reached out to Broward County Public Schools for a statement and is waiting to hear back.
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