In the dystopian hellscape that is public education funding in Texas, add “homeless teachers” to our long list of horrors that we’ve accepted for tax cuts.
One such Texas teacher has attracted national attention after he resorted to crowdfunding to pay his bills. Bill Atkinson, who describes himself as a fourth-year educator in Austin, wrote on GoFundMe that he resorted to living out of his car while teaching “as that is the best I can currently do.”
His plight went viral, and Atkinson, who teaches at NYOS Charter School (short for Not Your Ordinary School), was recently interviewed on ABC’s Good Morning America. He said that he started living in a car this summer because he couldn’t afford rent on his $54,000 salary.
“No matter how much I borrowed or scraped, there was no catching up,” he told Good Morning America, adding that his housing applications were denied due to bad credit. Atkinson also said he owes more than $2,600 for a grant he received from the University of North Texas for his undergraduate degree.
“No matter how much I try, I’m still living paycheck to paycheck,” he said.
But Atkinson is hardly the only schoolteacher in Texas having this problem.
Ovidia Molina, the president of the Texas State Teachers Association, told Good Morning America that Atkinson’s situation is, sadly, not unique. “Unfortunately, we have a lot of educators that are almost in that position, if not in that position,” she said. “We have educators that can’t live in the same area where they teach, even if they wanted to, and so it’s just very frustrating to know that as an educator, we’re not valued enough to be paid, and this isn’t by our districts, this is by our state.”
Molina said about a third of her group’s members have a second or third job to support themselves and their families.
NYOS Charter School, which receives public funding, started in 1998 in Austin. According to its website, the school has more than 1,800 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
The job site Glassdoor says that salaries at the school, based on 25 submissions, range from $57,000 – $78,000. By comparison, the average salary for U.S. public school teachers for the 2022-23 school year was $69,544, according to the National Education Association. There have been increases over the last few years, but still, the NEA says that “even with record-level increases in some states, average teacher pay has failed to keep up with inflation over the past decade.”
“Chronic low pay is plaguing the profession,” the NEA added.
Statewide, Texas school districts are facing massive budget shortfalls. KXAN reports that Houston ISD has a $211 million deficit, while Dallas ISD has a budget gap of $187 million. Austin ISD has a more than $59 million budget shortfall .
Meanwhile, the state itself recorded a record $33 billion surplus last year and didn’t increase school funding. Because, you know, why pay for basic stuff like educating kids?
Not surprisingly, teacher shortages in Texas are a chronic issue, and the Texas Tribune reports that districts are hiring more teachers without formal classroom training to fill the gaps. Because when the state won’t pay for kids’ education, you have to do stuff like this.
As for Atkinson, he said his total debts are about $13,500, which he attributed to “mistakes and bad luck.”
As of this morning, Atkinson had raised more than $17,000 on his GoFundMe, which hopefully will help get him on his feet.
He told Good Morning America that the ensuing attention has had some positive consequences: one kind soul gave him a temporary place to stay, and he eventually got a room through a rental agency.
But really, none of this should have been necessary in the first place.
