A Veteran Teacher Discloses His Pay, Pension

(Editor's note: Patch columnist Jerry Heverly is an English teacher at San Leandro High. The views expressed here are his own.)

I work for the government, something I never thought would happen to this slightly-anarchistic old man.

That means my salary is public information. But I’m guessing you’ve never taken the time to check so I'll lay it out for you.

Here is the San Leandro Unified School District the salary scale.

I make $82,475.00 per year. That makes me one of the highest paid teachers in the district. I’ve only been at SLHS for eight years. I’ve risen quickly up the salary scale mainly because my pay is largely determined by how many college credits I have.

I’m one of those people who loves school, loves being a student, loves learning. There haven’t been too many times in my life when I haven’t been enrolled in some sort of class.

I took many business classes at Golden Gate University and CSU Hayward (nee East Bay). For about a dozen years I studied horticulture at Diablo Valley College and Merritt College. I even taught at those schools for nearly ten years.

The end result is that I have oodles of credits.

The district also credits me two years on the scale for my days as a tar in the US Navy.

All this allowed me to race up the salary scale.

{By contrast the new teachers we hired in the English department this year make $49,098 per year. It could take them about 20 to 25 years to get where I am.}

I also get a stipend of $475/month for being the chair of the English department.

I spend some of my income on school supplies. I buy books for my classroom library so that kids have interesting material to read. That amounts to about $15-20 per week.

I buy office and cleaning supplies and a few other necessities. My guess is I spend about $2,000 per year.

I get to work every morning between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. I take about fifteen minutes to wolf down some lunch, otherwise I’m working without let up until about 4:30 in the afternoon. I can go home at 3:00 if I want to, but that seldom happens. Occasionally I stay in my classroom till 7 or 8 at night. 

On Saturdays I spend some time finding books for my classroom.

On Sundays I grade papers, plan lessons, and call parents.

I estimate I average about 55 ‘billable’ hours per week.

But, of course, I only work about 38 weeks a year. If my math is correct, I work about 2,000 a year, equivalent to someone working 40 hours aweek, 50 weeks a year.

I belong to the state teachers’ pension plan. If I were to quit tomorrow I’d get about $35,000 a year. I’d also get a couple of hundred bucks a month from Social Security.

After two years with the district I got tenure. That, plus my membership in the teachers’ union, makes my employment much more secure than people in the private sector.

In my lifetime I’ve had eleven non-teaching jobs including janitor, delivery driver, self-employed gardener, radio newsman and laborer. 

I think I have a pretty good perspective on how my present occupation fits into the larger world of work. In some future column I’d like to contrast this job with the others.  

To the extent that my worth can be assessed by numbers I’ve given you the basic data.

It is for you to decide if this all adds up.

(You can read more columns like this in the archives of Strictly Secondary.)

(Editor's note: The San Leandro Teachers Association and San Leandro Unified School District are in contract talks. on May 1 to protest to balance its books in the face of a worsening budget outlook in Sacramento. The two sides met Wednesday. No deal has been announced.)

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