How much will a 4th year middle school teacher make working in LA?

December 27, 2006 10:54 PM

How much will a 4th year middle school teacher make working in LA?

My wife will be moving from Waco, Texas (where she teaches middle school math) to Los Angeles, California (yes, I'll be moving as well).

Over this coming summer she will get her California Teaching Credential.

She hopes to work for LAUSD. We are trying to make sense of LAUSD's Salary Schedule (direct PDF link).

Bottomline: if she has three years of teaching experience (LA will be her 4th year), how much will she make per year for her first year (according to the salary schedule linked above)? She has a Bachelors degree, is not bilingual, and does not have a National Board Certification.

Please show your work. We have no idea how to read that damn thing.

Also, any general advice on any of the above (getting certified in LA, teaching in LA, etc.) would be much appreciated.

posted by JPowers to work & money (3 comments total)

Wow, that's quite the mess they've got going out there in LA. My take, which is completely uninformed but for a few minutes looking around the LAUSD website, is that she'll rate in as a step 4 (because she has 3 years prior service as a teacher) and schedule number 24 or higher, because she has a bachelor's degree.
My understanding of the schedule system is that it's based on credit hours at college, grad school, or inservices, and that the "minimum" referred to is 60 semester hours. Anything above that (ie, the next 60 hours it took her to get her Bachelors' degree) is the +x points. So she will, at minimum, reach the minimum+56 point level, which is 24.
With no other plus factors like bilingualism, that appears to work out at $47,216. I could, of course, be *entirely* wrong, as the system is quite confusing and arcane. I got most of my additional information from this FAQ, which appears to be pretty useful.
Good luck leaving the land of Lacy Lakeview!
posted by katemonster at 1:10 AM on December 28, 2006

There are a number of decent private schools in L.A. If you want to put an email address up, I'd be happy to tell you what I know about them.
posted by ikkyu2 at 2:14 PM on December 28, 2006

ikkyu2: email me at jpowers at gmail dot com. I'd love to hear about some private schools.
posted by JPowers at 4:14 PM on December 28, 2006