[teach]

I often refer to June (our first month of summer vacation) as "homicide prevention month". I'm only mostly joking.

I do agree that time off should be considered when talking about teacher salaries. I know other states are different, but in Texas I feel like teacher salaries are mostly pretty good now, but they weren't for a long time.

In 1997, when I started teaching, my salary was $24,000 per year. That was about 43% below the median household salary in the Austin area at the time.

A teacher starting this year would make $42,000 per year, which is only 15% below the median household salary.

The median salary for the Austin area has only increased ~20% in the past 15 years, but the starting teacher salary (in my district, anyway) has gone up 75% in that same time period.

So, in my opinion, a lot of the "teachers are underpaid" rhetoric comes from folks who haven't run the numbers recently.