I taught high school in Los Angeles in the mid-80's. I started when teacher salaries in California had reached their nadir. The job I had just prior to teaching was as a truck driver delivering dairy products to stores and restaurants. That job didn't even require a high school diploma, and as a Teamster, once I had made it through my 60 day probationary period I was making the same amount of money that drivers who had been working for 20 years made and that was $27,000/year.

In order to get the Emergency teaching credential required to teach I needed to have my Bachelor's degree and pass the first incarnation of the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST). I already had a Master's degree in Math and that qualified me to teach for a starting salary of $13,500/year.

There may be some hope on the horizon, though. About the time I started the state finally figured out how to fund schools that had lost their property tax revenues, and salaries rose pretty rapidly for the next few years so that within 5 years I had crossed the $30K barrier on salaries. My hope now is that the GOP has their asses handed to them in the mid-term elections and the MAGA crowd will start to realize that rather than being the massive majority they THINK they are, they are really the dwindling remnants of a culture built on white supremacy.

We need to revoke the license that Trump provided assholes to behave badly. Tides have turned in the past, and I am hoping that the pitiful turnout in the latest "mass" rally at the Capitol is an indication that the Trump tide is ebbing and will carry its trash away with it.