I haven’t even started working yet and I’m so close to quitting.
I am “fortunate” to have snagged a job as a special education paraprofessional with a focus on behavioral/social emotional learner students in a well regarded and “well paying” district in a fancy part of the north east in Connecticut. I know there are paraprofessionals that hardly make $17-18 starting, so making $24.80/hr sounds, on paper, good.
BUT IT IS NOT.
Doing the math, at 6.5 paid hours a day (30 minute unpaid lunch where you at required to clock out even though 30 minutes is barely enough time to catch your breath let alone leave the building or something for lunch) times 180 days a year (but really almost a full 10 months of your life employment wise from late august to early June) is $29,016 BEFORE TAXES.
I go in to see HR this morning and find out that there’s also a 6% MINIMUM required deduction from every pay check off your gross pay for a mandatory etirement fund, on top of deductions for health benefits (I know, I should consider myself lucky…).
All of this combined means I’ll be taking home, after retirement funds, health insurance and taxes approximately a whopping $2,290 a MONTH between august 24th-June 15th. And I’m one of the BETTER PAID special education paraprofessionals.
I love working with special needs students and those who need help learning how to regulate their emotions, but this makes me want to quit. It makes me want to quit every year. I wish I could quit. But I don’t know what else to do or where I can go because the work force, from what I’ve heard, doesn’t consider teaching as comparable experience for… whatever market they’re in. Maybe someone else can convince otherwise lol.
This country needs to get its shit together ASAP.