Dear Governor Hobbs and Arizona State Legislators: We Need To Pay Teachers and Aids More. Period.

*Shaping Tony’s willingness to do functional tasks in his art specials, his least favorite subject at school. Photos by Ariana*

Right now as I’m starting to type this post, it’s 6:30 pm MST. Instead of planning to wind down, I’m soon to be heading out the door to walk out to do a therapy walk with Tony to help him re-acclimate to Halloween displays before the holiday itself arrives. That’s for one of my jobs, as my son’s habilitation therapist.

As I have mentioned before, I now have a second job as the one-to-one instructional aid for our son in his public school. Because I’m working two jobs, I don’t really have a lot of time, so I’m going to be more succinct than I otherwise would.

There is a staffing crisis that is only going to swell and grow in our public school system. Right now, I make $5 an hour more doing hab than I do as my son’s one-to-one aid, but I have to tell you, I’m working every bit at hard. And, neither pays enough to support myself alone much less a family. I could currently get paid more at some retail or fast food jobs than as an instructional aid in the school system.

Shown above I am using token boards for certain tasks like sitting or not touching light switches (I make and implement those myself), he needs sensory breaks and constant supervision because occasionally he gets overwhelmed and walks out of his classroom and needs someone to direct him to a bench and sit with him until he feels ready to walk back in. He needs more intensive support learning the routines, behavioral expectations, and how to do the functional tasks required of this environment.

Some parents think that’s not their problem because the law requires a free public education, but I feel like soon it’s going to be everyone’s problem. Unless we can pay the people who support and teach our children more, turnover and vacancies could continue to increase. I’m going to quote Axios Phoenix here, but I have read the same information in more than one place:

“The average nurse, first responder or teacher doesn’t make enough to afford a home in metro Phoenix…in Phoenix, you need to make $116,300 annually to afford the median home…the typical waiter or retail worker doesn’t make enough to afford any type of housing in any valley city.”

Not any. And that’s a serious problem in my opinion.

When his ABA team needs to take the day off, sometimes we do public therapy work at an ice cream store across the street right after he’s done so we can expand his sitting tolerance with a more preferred task first.

Again, I’d like to reiterate I could make more at jobs where I wouldn’t have to work nearly so hard than I can as an instructional aid. I really love what I’m doing there and I think his school really has an awesome staff. But if I had to support even myself alone I couldn’t do it in this economy, much less as a family.

And I’ve witnessed turn over that has already occurred in the first month of school alone when it comes to the other instructional aids. If we can’t pay the people who support our teachers and our children enough to live on, I think we can only expect to see fewer and fewer people willing to step into that role to the point where some day, there won’t be enough teachers or aids to get the job safely done.

And that is when it will truly be everyone’s problem.