The Church Should Pay Teachers More

I received a superb education from the Sisters of Notre Dame. I began Catholic school in the third grade and continued until I graduated from La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks in 1983. I earned a degree from the University of California and finally a teaching credential. When I began my teaching career, I did so at a Catholic elementary school.

I could have earned more money teaching in public school, but I wanted to give back to an institution that gave me so much. I worked there for seven years. I will no longer work for the Catholic Church.

During my time teaching at St. Anthony’s in Oxnard, I saw the mounting pressure on principals to ensure that everyone on the faculty had a current teaching credential. There was our fifth-grade teacher, who was excellent. She had been teaching for more than 35 years. Despite her decades of loyal service to the same school, she was being made to go back to school to get a teaching credential. She had never had one. When she was hired, she didn’t need one because she was working in a private school. But now, when she should have been planning her retirement, she was forced to go back to school for an education she does not need. I dare say she could teach the methods classes herself.

Our sixth-grade teacher had had a credential in New York state. She had come to California and gotten an emergency credential, but had let it lapse. She knew that eventually she would have to go back to school to update her credential, but she was in no hurry, because she worked for a private school. She had worked at St. Anthony’s for more than 10 years. In that time, she had two children. But now, because of pressure from the archdiocese, the principal told her that she either had to go back to school or resign her position; she chose the latter.

I am saddened for my former colleagues because I know what a great place St. Anthony’s was to work. I enjoyed my years there.

It is not the archdiocese’s insistence that its teachers must have current credentials that upsets me. It is that once Catholic school teachers have valid California teaching credentials, their paychecks do not reflect it.

The archdiocese is the employer and it has a right to demand properly certified employees. But why not pay them what they’re worth? If you want them to incur the expense of attaining a teaching credential, then why is the salary scale so far behind the public schools?

When I began teaching at St. Anthony’s, my salary was approximately $6,000 less than a first-year public schoolteacher’s. After seven years, the salary difference was more than $10,000. Is it any wonder that I decided to leave? And so will others. There were six new teachers at St. Anthony’s for the 1997-98 school year. Next year, three of them are leaving. Having gotten a taste of teaching and finished their credentials, they are heading to the public schools, where they will be fairly compensated for their education and their work.

The Catholic Church is a wealthy institution. It has the money to build grand cathedrals and other ornaments. Why does it treat its employees so shabbily? If the church wants its schools to remain some of the very best places to get an outstanding education, then it has two choices: Pay the teachers what they’re worth or ease its insistence that everyone have a teaching credential.

Jennifer Kindred lives in Ventura.