What Do Paraprofessionals Do For Income When School Is Out? Teacher Explains
I was grabbing a half-gallon of milk and a bag of ice at the grocery store 10 minutes after the last day of school last year when I ran into Mia, my classroom paraprofessional, wedging a discount seedless watermelon into her cart next to three cans of her cat’s prescription food. I wiped sweat off my neck and smiled, said “Finally, two whole months of no 6 a.m. alarms, right?” She leaned on her cart handle and laughed, then tapped the screen of her phone to show me a color-coded weekly schedule. “Three cleaning shifts a week, plus one day a week watching my neighbor’s toddler,” she said. “Gotta make rent when the school checks stop coming.”
I’d worked with Mia for three years in my 4th grade inclusion classroom, and I’d never stopped to ask what she did for income over long breaks. She’s the one who meets our nonverbal student at the bus every morning and helps him to his seat, who cuts up sensory bin materials after school, who stays 20 minutes late every Wednesday to pull reading intervention groups. She makes $18.25 an hour, which is actually higher than the average for paras in our state. But when school lets out for summer, that paycheck stops cold. For 10 weeks, there’s nothing from the district.
The district does offer to split 9 months of pay into 12 equal checks to smooth out income over the year, but like most paras I know, Mia can’t afford that option. When her rent went up $300 last year, her monthly 9-month check was already barely covering expenses. Cutting it another $150 a month to save for summer just wasn’t feasible. She’d end up short on rent during the school year just to avoid being short in the summer.
I started asking other paras at our building what they do to cover off-period income, and the answers are as varied as the people who do the job. Jake, the para who works with 2nd grade students with behavioral needs, runs a small lawn care business out of his pickup all summer. He mows 12 yards a week, and coaches 8U rec baseball for a $500 stipend that covers his daughter’s cheerleading fees for the fall. Lila, who works in the resource room, does full-time childcare for two of her former students whose parents work full time. She gets $150 a week per kid, which covers her mortgage for the summer. Only about a quarter of the paras at our school get picked for summer school positions, since districts run really lean programs these days; Lila applied two years in a row and never got an opening, so side work is her only option.
A few months after that grocery store run, I needed my back deck stained before we had family over for Fourth of July. I remembered Jake mentioned he did odd jobs, so I texted him. He showed up at 8 a.m. the next day, got it done by 3 p.m., and charged me $20 less than the quote I got from a local company. When I paid him, he told me that job covered his daughter’s asthma inhaler copay and her back-to-school shoe shopping. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but it stuck with me: I was going to pay someone to do that job anyway. It might as well have been someone I already know and trust, who needs the work.
That’s when I realized most parents, and even a lot of new teachers, have no idea this income gap exists. A lot of people see paras as part-time school staff, or assume they get paid year-round just like full-time teachers. The truth is, for most paras, summer and other long school breaks aren’t vacations. They’re 8 to 10 week gaps in income that need to be filled with whatever work they can fit around their own childcare and other obligations. Some deliver fast food, some drive for ride shares, some sell baked goods at the local farmers market, whatever pays and fits their schedule.
It doesn’t take big policy changes to help, though that’s what we need long term to fix underpayment for education support staff. There are small, low-friction things parents and teachers can do that make a real difference right now. If you need a babysitter this summer, or someone to mow your yard, or help with a deep clean before a family party, ask your classroom para if they’re taking on side work. Most don’t advertise, because they don’t want to seem like they’re struggling, but they’ll almost always say yes if the work fits their schedule. If you follow a para on social media and they post about a craft business or side service, share their post with your neighbors. If you’re a teacher, keep a simple list of side work your paras do and share it with parents who ask for local recommendations. I started doing that two years ago, and half of our paras have gotten regular repeat clients from it.
Last week, I saw Mia in the teacher’s lounge before school let out for this year. She told me one of the parents from our class reached out after seeing the list I shared, and booked her for a weekly cleaning all summer. That extra $200 a month covers her increased AC bill (she’s home all day with her 10 year old) and leaves a little extra for a day trip to the lake at the end of summer. The district still hasn’t adjusted pay to make 12-month scheduling feasible for most paras, and the income gap is still stressful every single year. It’s not a perfect solution, and it doesn’t fix the bigger problem of under valuing the work education support staff do. But it’s something. For now, it helps.
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