An Arizona teacher called Elisabeth Milich who works at Whispering Wind Academy posted her salary to Facebook alongside an exasperated message.
She claimed to be sick and tired of working for meaningless pay and claimed her pay did not cover her living expenses
A picture of paperwork, apparently revealing her pay of $35,490 per year, showed her getting an additional $131 in pay the next year after taking developmental classes, reports say.
Milich has since deleted the photo.
“This is my new pay after taking a few professional development classes,” she wrote in the post.
“I actually laughed when I saw the old salary vs. the new one. I mean really, I need a college degree to make this? I paid $80,000 for a college degree, I then paid several hundred more to transfer my certification to Arizona.”
Milich continued later: “The reality is, without my husband’s income I could never be an educator in this state! I’m sad for my single mom teacher friends working three jobs to make ends meet! Something must be done.”
Doug Ducey Arizona’s governor, responded to the post
The governor said: “Our teacher pay last year went up 4.4 percent to an average pay of $48,000. Now, that’s not enough and I want to see it rise from there.
“My hope is that our state takes a hard look at this crisis. There are vacancies all over the state because they can’t find teachers,” Milich responded.
In 2016-17, teachers in Arizona made an average salary of $58,950, according to data from the National Centre for Education Statistics. Arizona was well below the national average at $47,403.
Teachers in West Virginia recently went on strike that resulted in them earning a five percent pay raise.