The people of Dartmouth have an important decision to make: approve a Prop 2 1/2 override to pay for increases in teachers’ pay — or continue short-changing teachers, especially those earning the least.
Dartmouth teachers are still working without contract while escalating healthcare costs are actually reducing their take-home pay. The town’s contract with the Dartmouth Education Association does not include steps or cost-of-living increases. And some of Dartmouth’s most economically vulnerable workers are teachers’ aides who not only have to worry about declining earnings — they’re already making sub-poverty wages.
According to the now-expired agreement between the school district and the Dartmouth Educators Association (DEA), a first-time aide without a bachelor’s degree earns $16,614 a year and the position pays a maximum of $24,206 for a six year aide with a bachelor’s degree. These salaries represent gross wages of between $9.89 and $14.30. The Massachusetts minimum wage is $12 an hour. The lowest-paid teachers’ aide — typically a woman — makes $16,614 a year in pre-tax earnings, and her estimated take home pay is $14,259.
To put this economic and gender wage inequality in perspective, a typically male county correctional officer with only a high-school degree earns between $56-$60,000 a year. And there is currently a bill in the legislature to give Massachusetts correctional officers (the fourth best paid in the country) a $100 million raise.
Even with the town picking up 52% of the cost of her HMO Network Blue family plan, our first-year teachers’ aide pays $6,407.73 a year for the mandatory town health insurance and she cannot choose a different provider. After paying almost one-half of her sub minimum-wage salary for healthcare, she ends up making only $7,851 a year. That’s $4.67 an hour.
According to Dartmouth Educators Association President Renee Vieira, healthcare costs rose in 2018 by 8.3% and again by 4.3% in 2019. Vieira says that the 52% contribution the school district pays is low compared to other communities.
One option for the union is to demand a higher town contribution for healthcare. Raising the town contribution from 52% to 60% would put another $1,068 in every teacher’s hands. With this adjustment, instead of living on just $7,851 a year, our first-time teachers’ aide would then be bringing home just $8,919 a year — for a family.
Addressing healthcare alone won’t help a teacher’s aide. What she really needs is better base pay. Dartmouth residents, then, are going to have to decide whether they want to save a few bucks or make their teachers work for declining — and in some cases — poverty wages. This is not only an economic but a moral choice.
Absent national healthcare, which would help town government and small business immeasurably, it’s clear to me that Dartmouth needs to approve a tax override and sign an agreement with teachers providing cost of living increases and more affordable healthcare. Especially if it hopes to retain quality educators.
Both the town and the union must also do something specifically to improve the situation for aides who skate on the edge of poverty helping children in our schools.
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