Factoring in Cost of Living

I read the article called Teachers’ Cost of Living Matters More by Danielle Georgiou. I thought that this was a very informative piece because too be honest I didn’t realize that cost of living was not factored in to teacher pay. I have always been told how teachers don’t make a lot of money and I have looked at several school districts websites to examine the highest teacher pay in the area. However, I did not realize that those charts do not give any indication about the cost of living in each area. Too be honest I thought that teacher pay depended on how large the district was and that larger districts would have higher cost’ of living. Apparently this is not the case. Is education the only area that salaries are not dependent upon cost of living? My father is an industrial engineer and has moved 3 times because of his career and each time his pay was agreed upon after the cost of living in each area was discussed. In one instance he moved somewhere that the cost of living was lower therefore; on paper he did not get a pay raise however when the salaries were compared with cost of living he actually was making more because of the move. My boyfriend also just recently moved because of work and cost of living was a factor in the salary decision. I suppose I just assumed that this was the way salary settings were in every job.

It seems to me that it would only make sense to think about the cost of living in an area when analyzing teacher’s salaries. I certainly will be careful to examine the cost of living more carefully when I start applying for jobs. I recommend checking out the cost of living calculator at http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/cost_of_living/cost_of_living_calculator.asp . For instance, I found out that the cost of living in Chattanooga is higher than the cost of living in Murfreesboro. If you make $100,000.00 in Murfreesboro and move to Chattanooga, you will need to make $105,646.04 ($5,646.04 more) to maintain the same buying power. You can compare any two cities in the US. Another good website to check out would be http://www.teateachers.org/cms/Average+Classroom+Teacher+Salaries+%28by+system%29/896.html This is a link off of the TEA website that provides a list of average teaching salaries in different Tennessee school districts. I think it would be a good idea to compare different cities in these districts with the cost of living calculator to determine whether or not the teacher pay is fair.