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I am a special education teacher in W. TX. I prefer working with Emotionally Disturbed students, but have been working with students with severe learning disabilities for the past 2 years. I am considering relocating. However, I am looking for a school district that is willing to pay relocation expenses.
I'm not aware that any school districts pay for relocation. Your specialty is in demand and teacher's pay starts at around $40 yr where I am. There are a lot of teacher's colleges in the state. Did you have a particular area of the state in mind?
You will need a master's degree within three years of starting.
I think the only school districts that MIGHT pay for relocation are the inner city districts. Not even small cities will do that. It would have to be like New York City. I live across the river from the city of Poughkeepsie and they have tons of teachers applying for jobs. Do not look in the Hudson Valley for a teaching job. You DO have a little more of an advantage because you have special education certification, but no one around here will pay for you to move. They have too many applicants to choose from. For gen. ed. jobs, some districts have received 500 applications for one job. Special education positions are harder to fill; my district had a hard time filling one or two leave replacement positions. Are you dually certified? Dual and triple certification is becoming what school districts are looking for in New York State. Check out the BOCES websites: http://www.dcboces.org/ and http://www.olasjobs.org/
These organizations only work with the severly handicapped or severe behavioral problems in my area. I have been trying to substitute for them, but they don't seem interested (though their website says otherwise).
How far upstate are you looking?
As for the Master's...the state has gone back to five years to get one...as far as I know, but it IS mandatory. They pay in this area can be from $33,000.00 a year to the low forties for first year teachers.
I want to move south, to the warm weather. Why are you moving from Texas?
Not for nothing...but the south is overrated. And having a wife that is a former teacher....the pay for teachers is WAY higher in the north than in the south.
You'll be very hard-pressed to find any school district upstate that's going to pay for relocation. School districts are cash-strapped beyond belief. You could be the one person that they're looking for, and they still wouldn't be able to foot the bill for the relocation.
Like Ushighlanders said, the only places that might consider that would be in the city.
Not for nothing...but the south is overrated. And having a wife that is a former teacher....the pay for teachers is WAY higher in the north than in the south.
How does pay work in the south (SC, GA, FL)? I am a little jaded about NYS since I was paid $33,000.00 as a first year teacher then lost my job to budget cuts. I have been subbing for the last year, so I have made about $13,000.00 this year. It rots! Talk about trying to pay my school taxes. I understand why people say no to school budgets in this area.
VERY sorry to hear that you were laid off. Would you mind saying where were you working?
And in broader terms of the NY state teaching situation:
*What areas have been laying off teachers?
*Which ones seem stable to you (in terms of the job situation)?
*Which areas outside of the NYC metro region are actually hiring or likely to need to be hiring?
In terms of job opportunities and teacher pay in Virginia (my wife and ex-wife are public school teachers, and a lot of my students go into public school teaching):
As you'd expect, it's hottest, with the best pay, around the metro regions, and particularly up around Washington, D.C., in the vast Northern Virginia ("NOVA") sprawl. Some counties up there pay top-dollar (I've heard 34-38,000 for a new teacher) and are still really needing teachers since the areas are growing wildly. Housing is quite expensive up there, etc., so it's a trade-off. But you're close to DC, Baltimore, Philly, not too far from NYC, the Atlantic beaches. And you can escape westward into the mountains on weekends, there's skiing nearby, and of course ENDLESS shopping.
Around Richmond, Virginia Beach, and a few other areas, there's a lot of teacher hiring, and the pay is pretty good.
Though a lot of people love Virginia's college towns (I think Lexington is by far the best of these), it can be VERY hard to land a teaching job there since most of the college pump out a lot of teachers who want to stay put, many teachers are the spouses of college faculty or grad students, etc. The pay tends to be pretty low in college towns since it's such a buyers'/hirers' market. And in college towns, you have to put up with the often-inescapable barbaric behavior of the college students.
One thing that I can't be definite about, much less quantify, is that even in Virginia's faster-growing areas, the growth isn't truly nutty, as it has been in NC. So Virginia schools tend to be pretty good quality, and curricula, etc., tend to be pretty coherent. Plus our new governor is quite devoted to public education, and the Legislature is gradually catching up with the 20th century. (It will be in the 21st century when Richmond is seafront.)
Do remember, though, that public employees *can't* unionize in Virginia--and I think also not in NC, SC, & GA. So while you don't have union dues and union politics here, you also don't have union protection and leverage.
You also have a real retro power situation. Generally, the county school superintendents in the South can rule over things like feudal chieftans, hiring and firing whomever they want on near whims. There's a lot of politicking that develops because of this, with people sometimes ruthlessly caving in and clamoring for The Boss's attention and approval. Add the fact that public schools DO tend to be seriously underfunded in the South, and sometimes you're stuck trembling in a trailer outside the main building because The Boss is in a snit.
Hope your job-search goes well--I well know how anxious that can be....
Westchester and Dutchess seem to have good paying teacher salaries. There's a hiring event going on at the Arlington School district in the next week or so. They are in the phone book(anywho.com). Give them a call for information on the event. I don't believe they'll pay for relocation expenses. But it never hurts to ask.
Thanx to everyone. It's been good reading people's comments and feedback. I'm not sure what new hires make here in El Paso. It's got to be around the mid-30's, but I wouldn't swear to it. I have a friend that is a first year in New Mexico, just about 20 mi from here and is making something in the low-30's. Housing here is much, much cheaper than out by you all. Unfortunately, word got out, and now they feel obligated to raise housing prices although the median salary is minimum-wage. Go figure. I guess the grass isn't always greener.
I have never heard of a school district paying for relocation.
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