[USA] I just found out my salary for next school year. I can’t pay my rent with it. So I just put my name down for a job interview today.

Hi,<br>First, I want to start off by saying that I love my job. I love being a teacher. I would teach if they paid me 30k a year, just so I could afford to feed my kids and have a roof over my head. I love this job. I spend 80 hours a week doing this. I live and breathe teaching. My lessons are absolutely wonderful. I have more awards for this job than I do for anything else I’ve done in my life. I’m objectively good at my job. And I want to tell the Board of Education to fuck right off.<br><br>I make 66,000 a year with my 2nd masters and 7th year teaching. At the beginning of the year, they told us we would be getting a 6% raise. I was excited. With that, I could maybe afford to take my kids to the zoo once a year instead of once every 2 years. I could finally stop having to shop at dollar stores and dollar general. I could finally afford name brand trash bags. <br><br>Fast forward to today. I find out my new salary for next year will be 67,000.<br><br>That’s not 6%. That’s not even 2%!<br><br>They have the FUCKING AUDACITY to say that’s 6% when THEY KNOW it’s not. They KNOW damn well it’s not 6% and they just don’t care. <br><br>I pay 1400 a month for an apartment that is falling apart. They won’t fix the broken pipes in the walls that leak into the floor. They won’t unclog the drains. They won’t stop the centipedes from getting in. And if you try to get them to do something, they’ll just pretend like you were never trying to get it done in the first place and you just have to wait 6 months to try again. They haven’t replaced the trash cans in 6 years. The sewage smells so bad you can smell it from the parking lot. I can’t afford to move out. I’m on the waiting list for Section 8 but that could be 2-3 years. <br><br>My kids sleep on the floor. They don’t have beds. I can’t afford the mattresses and frames. My kids are 9 and 12. I’m failing as a mom. I’m failing as a teacher. But I’m going to put food on the table. And if the Board of Education doesn’t pay me enough to be able to pay my rent, I will have to move or starve.<br><br>So I guess I’m not a teacher anymore.<br><br>That kind of sucks, but I hear the gas stations pay well. At least I’ll be able to afford food that way.