Ann Arbor Teacher Making $77k Complains His Salary Is 'Embarrassing'

Teachers complaining about pay is nothing new. In some places, it might even be understandable. However, when a teacher in Ann Arbor complained about his pay, it didn’t take long for it to be revealed that not only is he unappreciative of the fact that he has a job in a still less-than-ideal economy, but he’s also a grade “A” putz.

Ann Arbor Public Schools teacher Trevor Staples says teachers in the district aren’t paid enough. At a June 14 school board meeting Staples said it was “shameful, embarrassing” to have to speak every year about teacher compensation, according to the news site Annarbivore.com.

Staples is reportedly paid $77,729 currently. He’s also had a 20.7 percent increase in his pay over the last five years.

That’s not all, however. This “shameful, embarrassing” wage he receives is a good $6,000 over and above what the average teacher makes.

Of course, maybe Ann Arbor is just incredibly expensive and the average teacher wage of $71,564 per year just wasn’t all that much, so I decided to look at the average household income for the city.

Doing so does not help Staples’s case.

The average household income in Ann Arbor is $75,440. That’s more than $2,000 less than Staples makes, and only a few thousand more than the average educator’s salary. In other words, it’s entirely possible for a single-income family trying to survive on just the average teacher’s wage to live a fairly average lifestyle. Add a second income in and it becomes very difficult to muster sympathy for the pay problems of Ann Arbor’s educators.

Don’t get me wrong, teachers have a tough job to do. They have to deal with kids who simply don’t want to be there, irritating bureaucrats who think they know best how to educate students despite never having set foot in a classroom as anything but a student, and parents who are convinced their kid is intellectually gifted despite his new and creative ways to misspell “dog.” I get that.

However, you aren’t going to get a lot of sympathy when your average wage is right around the average household income for your community. When most people need two working adults to make what you do all on your lonesome, your pleas of being “embarrassed” about salaries fall on deaf ears.

Next, you’ll complain that you can only afford a McMansion, and not a real one.

If Staples wants to complain, find something legitimate to gripe about and I may be willing to listen. This complaint, though? It just makes him look like a selfish ass.