What Do Hourly Paid School Staff Do During Summer Break? A Teacher’s Perspective
Last May, I was leaning against a cafeteria table five minutes after the final dismissal bell, peeling the wrapper off a lemon popsicle, when I ran into Mia, the part-time para who supports our 4th grade students with learning differences. I waved and called out the same line everyone does: “Have the best summer! Enjoy all that time off!” She wiped a smudge of red popsicle off her jeans, laughed a little awkwardly, and tapped her work schedule app on her phone. “Sure,” she said. “First shift starts tomorrow at 5 a.m.”
I’d been teaching at the school for six years at that point, and I’d never really stopped to ask what summer looks like for our hourly paid staff. I’m a full-time, salaried teacher, and I spread my pay out over 12 months, so summer break is built into my income. It’s easy to forget that for almost half the adults working in our building, that just isn’t the case. Hourly paras, cafeteria workers, custodians, part-time front office staff, and substitute teachers only get paid for the days they work during the school year. When the building closes for 10 weeks, that paycheck stops too.
A couple of weeks into summer, we met for iced coffee at the local rec center, our kids off chasing each other around the splash pad, and she walked me through her typical week. Three mornings a week, she cleans the downtown YMCA, clocking in at 4:30 a.m. so she can finish wiping down equipment and restocking locker rooms by 8 a.m. Two afternoons a week, she watches her sister’s two toddlers while her sister works full-time at a local dentist’s office. Three evenings a week, she’s at the community pool front desk, checking memberships and selling day passes. Add it all up, and she works 38 hours a week in summer—five more hours a week than she works during the school year.
She said she’s lucky. She can shift her hours around her kids’ summer camp and soccer practice, and all her gigs are within 10 minutes of the house. Other hourly staff at our school aren’t that lucky. Our head custodian Bob does residential yard work for 12 different families around town all summer, waking up at 6 a.m. to beat the heat. Our part-time cafeteria cashier Linda drives for a food delivery app four nights a week after her kid goes to her mom’s house. None of them are lounging by the pool for 10 weeks straight.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve realized how few parents know this. Most people I talk to assume all school staff get three months of paid vacation. They see the school parking lot empty most days, and they assume everyone’s off barbecuing or vacationing. That gap in understanding leads to small, unintentional oversights that add up. But there are simple, low-lift things any parent or caregiver can do that make a real difference.
For example, when you’re picking out end-of-year gifts, skip the branded school mugs and scented candles for hourly staff. A $25 gift card to the grocery store or a gas station goes so much further. This year, my son’s class chipped in for a $100 Target gift card for Mia, and she told me that covered her oldest son’s soccer camp registration fee, which she’d been stressing about covering for weeks. If you’re part of your school’s PTA, ask about setting aside any leftover end-of-year budget for small summer stipends. Our PTA had $800 left this year after field trips and class parties, so we split it into eight $100 gift cards for hourly staff who said they needed extra support. It’s not a lot, but it covers a month of utilities or back-to-school shoes, which matters more than we think.
If you need extra help this summer—occasional childcare, pet sitting, help with yard work, even just someone to drive your kid to practice a couple days a week—ask your school’s hourly staff if they’re looking for extra work. They’re already background checked, they know kids, and they’re actively looking for ways to fill the income gap over break. A parent at our school hired our part-time art sub to watch her two kids three mornings a week this summer, and both sides said it worked out perfectly. It’s a win-win that most people never think to arrange.
Most of all, just pause before you default to “enjoy your time off.” It’s an easy line to say, but it can sting when you’re working 60 hour weeks just to make rent. I still catch myself saying it out of habit sometimes, but now I usually follow it up with “What does your summer look like this year?” More often than not, it opens up a conversation I never would have had otherwise.
I’ve also found this is a simple, honest lesson to share with kids. After my first conversation with Mia, I talked to my 9-year-old about why some school staff don’t get paid when school’s out. He helped me put together the gift card basket for our school’s hourly staff, and he asked all kinds of quiet questions about how work and pay work for different people. It didn’t need to be some big, dramatic lesson; it just helped him see that not everyone’s summer looks like his, and small gestures go a long way.
Last week, I saw Mia at the community pool. She was sitting at the front desk, fanning herself with a pool menu, her feet propped up on a cooler when there weren’t any customers waiting. We chatted for five minutes, and she said the YMCA job is already covering most of the new school clothes her oldest needs for fall. She still wakes up at 4:30 three days a week, and some weeks she doesn’t get a single full day off to just relax. Our little gift card fund is a drop in the bucket, and the district still doesn’t have a plan to let hourly staff spread their pay out over 12 months. It’s not a problem that will get fixed this summer, or even next. But just knowing what’s really going on, and doing one small thing to help, makes more of a difference than I ever used to think.
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