What Do Paraprofessionals Do for Income During Off Periods and School Breaks? A Teacher Explains
The school lounge microwave beeped right on cue last Friday, two hours before we let out for spring break. I was grabbing a granola bar off the vending machine, and Mia, my classroom paraprofessional, was stirring instant oatmeal at the counter when I asked what she had planned for the week off. She snort-laughed, tapped her phone screen where her side gig calendar was open, and said, “Mostly working. Gotta make rent.”
I’ve worked with Mia for three years. She supports three of my 4th graders with IEPs, leads small group reading, ties shoes when the nurse is busy, and remembers every kid’s allergy and favorite snack. I knew her pay was far lower than mine, obviously, but I hadn’t ever really asked what that meant for school breaks. Most paras in our district are contracted for 180 days a year, same as full-time teachers, but unlike certified staff, almost none of them get paid for off periods. Many districts don’t even offer the option to spread 10 months of pay over 12 to make budgeting easier. When Mia asked about that option a couple years back, HR told her it was only for full-time certified employees.
She walked me through her routine over oatmeal that morning. For short breaks like spring or winter recess, it’s mostly babysitting. She already knows half the kids in the school, and parents trust her, so she picks up three or four half-day gigs a week, charging $15 an hour. That’s less than a licensed daycare, but more than her hourly rate at school, so it’s worth her time. For the 10-week summer break, she has a standing 20-hour-a-week spot at the local rec department’s day camp. The biggest perk there is her own 7-year-old son gets to attend for free, which saves her almost $600 a summer. On weekends, she does pet sitting and house checks through a local neighborhood Facebook group—she avoids big apps because they take a 20% cut of every payment, so word of mouth works far better for her. One summer she tried a full-time retail job, but after paying for full-time daycare for her son, she took home less than $200 a week, so she quit after two weeks.
I remember running into her at the grocery store last August, right before school started. She was grabbing milk and cereal, a crumpled mechanic receipt crumpled in her pocket, and told me the alternator on her car had died the week before. She’d picked up three extra overnight pet sits to cover the $800 repair bill, and had put off buying her son a new backpack until the first school paycheck came in.
I’ve been teaching 12 years, and I still meet parents who assume paras are just part-time workers, or people between other jobs, or just volunteering their time for fun. That’s not true for 9 out of 10 paras I work alongside. Most rely on this job as their primary source of income, many are single parents, and almost all of them got into this work because they love kids, not because of the pay. The thing no one talks about is that 10 weeks of summer plus all the short breaks in between add up to a huge income gap that paras have to fill entirely on their own.
After Mia walked me through her routine, I started making small changes on my end. When I go out of town over any break, I ask her to sit my dog instead of using a local service, and I pay her $15 a day more than the local average, because I know every extra dollar helps. Last year, when we were staffing our school’s summer program, I asked our principal if we could hire two of our paras as support staff instead of bringing in outside substitutes. He said yes, and this year three paras from our building are working four weeks of steady paid summer school that they wouldn’t have had access to before.
For parents, there are small concrete things you can do too. If you need extra support for your kid over a break—say, a para who already knows their IEP needs to help with homework or social skills—offer to pay them a fair rate, don’t ask for a free favor. If you’re going out of town and need a pet sitter or someone to check your house, ask if they do that kind of work. Most paras don’t advertise their side gigs because it feels awkward to ask people for work, so just opening the question gives them an opportunity they might not have sought out themselves. If you’re active in your school’s PTA, you can even suggest putting together a voluntary directory of paras who do side work over breaks, for families looking for help. It doesn’t cost the district anything, and it connects paras to work that’s already within the school community.
Last Friday, as Mia slung her faded canvas tote over her shoulder and headed for the door, she counted her spring break gigs out loud: three half-days of babysitting, one overnight pet sit. That should cover her son’s soccer league fees and the new dinosaur backpack he’s been asking for. It’s not enough to fix the larger problem of chronically low pay for paraprofessionals, that’s something districts and state education boards have to address. It’s not a perfect system, and she still worries about what would happen if she gets sick and can’t work those side gigs. But right now, it’s what works. Most of us don’t think about what happens when the school building closes for break, but the people who show up for our kids every day still have bills to pay. Small, intentional gestures don’t fix everything, but they take a little of the weight off. And that’s more than most people are doing right now.
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