To recruit teachers, school districts are building homes

ReactiveJelly

A land value tax would fix this

AvAn12

Could just, you know, pay more…

andyferris

We are very fortunate that my wife got to work at the local school. She now walks to work and I work from home about 4 days out of 5 workdays. The benefits are huge in terms of time available and costs, and not needing childcare before or after school. It’s hard to solve couples having two jobs in different places, but having at least one person get to work basically instantly and for zero cost is a massive boon to society. The issue I saw is that the government department in charge of education is not the one in charge of housing and infrastructure, and there are no incentives to hire locally or make it easier to move locally. Instead you get teachers in suburb A travelling to suburb B and vice-versa, and no way that they can choose to swap roles. We lucked out.

wewewedxfgdf

The core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed away entirely for many people.

morkalork

It used to be like this in rural communities even up into the 70s and 80s. The town's branch manager would be young, shipped out for a few years and live in a house the bank owned and given a stipend to maintain it. Same with the postmaster and other professions.

apparent

Teacher recruiting wouldn't be so hard if pay weren't lockstep, as it is in so many places. Unions demand this, and it keeps some potentially-effective teachers out of the profession (and keeps old lousy ones in, unfortunately).

Balgair

My SO was a teacher before moving on and would see offers like this all the time. A few of the rural school districts here offer this incentive to move out there. Sometimes they include a car too. Note they tdo not do repairs though. The issue with taking one of these rural offers is that it's a dead end. Your schoolhouse of many grands gets smaller and smaller over time until they don't need you anymore. And then what? Your career as a teacher is essentially useless for any larger district as they do not care at all about teaching multiple grades at once and barely (or not) making state standards. And then you don't even have a house left over to sell (likely for a loss), it's the district's. I know it's the reverse of the article, but the incentives are the same and they don't make sense for any of the parties.