Across the country, teachers and school districts alike are grappling with the latest political and economic realities of educator pay.
The dynamics have been complicated by both the recent national teacher protest movement that's emboldened the workforce to demand higher salaries and better conditions, and the steadily brewing shortage of educators that's forced many school districts to confront the money issue with more urgency.
The National Education Association's latest salary data estimates that the average public school teacher in the U.S. saw a 2% pay raise over the past two years since the national Red4Ed protest movement spread across the U.S.
At the same time, the number of teacher vacancies have exceeded 100,000 jobs in the past four years, said Elaine Weiss of the Economic Policy Institute.
