A Jewish Answer to the Teacher Shortage Crisis

“Yehoshua ben Perachyah said: Make for yourself a teacher; acquire for yourself a friend; and judge every person on the positive side” (Avot 1:6).

Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called for a minimum salary of $60,000 for public school teachers, capitalizing on the push by President Biden in his State of the Union speech to give public school teachers a raise. “We should be paying public school teachers a minimum of at least $60,000 a year,” Sanders said at a town hall at the Capitol with national teachers’ union leaders. “I am proud to tell you I will soon be introducing legislation to do just that.” Low pay, highly stressful working conditions and the political battleground that has rendered the classroom ground zero have resulted in a nation-wide teacher shortage that threatens the fabric of public education at all levels and across all demographics.

Yet, there is another force behind the mass-exodus of highly qualified educators from the field and that is the regressive and highly predatory nature of student loan debt and how this debt has resulted in an extreme housing affordability crisis that makes it impossible for teachers to live in the communities they serve. According to Jewish tradition, while we may not ultimately solve a problem, it is incumbent upon us to make every effort to attempt to find a meaningful solution and we must approach the teacher shortage crisis by drawing from our sacred tradition as well as exploring viable and practical political responses.

How did we get here as a nation?

As Jews, we are taught to elevate the role of the teacher to the highest level, placing reverence and obedience at the center of the student-teacher relationship. Yet by the late 1980s, government divestment from higher education financing had resulted in a massive shift of the cost of post-secondary education to the individual laying the foundation for what is today a close to two trillion-dollar crisis. Albert Einstein once famously said that “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” But today, the career of a teacher is regretfully mired in overlapping crises that result from poor and myopic policy decisions at the local and national level. Moreover, teachers often find themselves at the epicenter of overlapping crises such as student debt, housing shortages, and political posturing at the expense of our children. Specifically, according to a 2021 study, 42 percent of educators, including students planning to enter higher education faculty positions, took out at least $65,000 in student debt. Moreover, faced with low wages in their early career, it takes teachers much longer to pay off their student debt, allowing it to grow with interest. The same study found that 42 percent of educators with more than 11 years of experience still have student loan balances, with 29 percent having a remaining balance of at least $65,000. Further, although public service workers have been eligible to pursue debt relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program since 2007, the program’s success was long stunted by administrative issues, resulting in a 98 percent denial rate despite the recent limited waiver, which, according to 2022 data from the Department of Education, has seen scant single-digit improvements down to a 92% denial rate. These statistics, compounded by the removal of the constitutionally guaranteed right to declare bankruptcy uniquely from student loan debt, creates a spiral of negative amortization that can trap teachers into a lifetime indentured servitude.

But today, the career of a teacher is regretfully mired in overlapping crises that result from poor and myopic policy decisions at the local and national level.

The average public school teacher salary in Los Angeles, CA is $62,900 as of January 26, 2023 with the median private Jewish school teaching salary at $67,246. Yet, according to a 2022 survey done by Gobankingrates.com, the income needed as a homeowner in Los Angeles is $191,142.92 while the income needed as renter comes to $83,238.92. The result of this tremendous imbalance between income and cost of living is that teachers are either forced to live in much more remote communities resulting in hours-long commutes, sky-high gas bills and high carbon emissions, or our teachers must apportion much higher percentages of their incomes to afford ever-increasing rents for increasingly smaller cramped living conditions. This data highlights that while admirable and progressive, Senator Sanders’s plan is not a solution that will have uniform effects in raising teachers’ standard of living across all states. Akin to a necessary but insufficient question on the SAT, we need local solutions to broader political initiatives.

What else can be done both locally and nationally to address this urgent crisis?

Start local and think global. Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered city officials on Friday to prepare a list of the city’s surplus and unused properties over the next three weeks, the first major step in identifying which ones will be used for building homeless housing. According to a study conducted in January of 2022, there were 26 vacant and unused city properties spanning the valley to the city, not counting abandoned parking lots and underutilized public spaces. Wealth inequality is destroying our city, hitting the working and middle-class the hardest as they are faced with stagnant wages in a climate where home ownership is only attainable through either massive wealth transfer or high six-figure salaries with teachers being shut out of homeownership and even affordable rent. For this reason, in addition to addressing the urgency of housing Los Angeles’s unhoused population, Mayor Bass might consider identifying vacant properties and underutilized spaces, renovating and modernizing them, and subsequently allocating them to much needed faculty and staff housing for both public and private school employees. Criteria for allocation should take into consideration proximity to schools, both public and private, and should be offered at subsidized rents far below market rate housing, which will remain permanently subsidized for future educators and staff. On the transportation front, Mayor Bass might consider carpool lane passes for educators and school staff to use the carpool lanes on the freeway as solo drivers, free Metro passes for all faculty and staff, and electric and hybrid vehicle stipends to apply towards the cost of energy efficient automotive transportation.

On the national level, the response to the teacher shortage crisis must be swift, resolute and permanent. The number of years required to receive Public Service Loan Forgiveness must be halved from ten down to five and all student loan payments must be paused with zero interest accrual, throughout the time that a teacher is actively employed at a non-profit establishment. Further, credit on a sliding scale toward public service loan forgiveness must be on a sliding scale whereby public servants receive loan cancellation annually for each year completed so that if circumstances prevent the completion of all five years, public servants will receive credit for all time served as opposed to the current all or nothing regressive plan. Such action would result in an increase in monthly take-home wages within the rage of $200-$1000 depending on the size of the loan and since teachers usually have master’s degrees, student loan payments can destroy the ability to ever own a home, live close to one’s work, save for retirement and even have children.

On the national level, the response to the teacher shortage crisis must be swift, resolute and permanent.

Teacher shortages are the result of policy choices that have placed profit, rather than people, at the center. To quote Rabbi Jonathan Saks, Z”L, “Throughout the centuries, when the vast majority of Europe was illiterate, Jews maintained an educational infrastructure as their highest priority. It is no exaggeration to say that this lay at the heart of the Jewish ability to survive catastrophe, negotiate change and flourish in difficult circumstances.” His words ring true today as we are tasked with this tremendous work of tikkun olam that will have reverberating effects on the lives of our esteemed educators and consequently on our children’s futures for generations to come.

Lisa Ansell is the Associate Director of the USC Casden Institute.