It’s wrong: KC teachers need side hustles to live. Cutting income tax won’t help | Opinion
It’s no secret that Missouri teachers are among the worst paid in the country. What’s shocking and unacceptable is that some teachers — even in Kansas City, which pays some of the highest salaries in the state — live in low-income housing or in their car, or are working multiple side jobs, year-round, to make ends meet.
Salaries differ from district to district across the state, with some of the lowest paid teachers working in rural schools. And now many teachers here and elsewhere in Missouri worry about pending state legislation that could jeopardize their chances of getting a pay boost anytime soon.
Even after the 2024 law that raised the state salary minimum, Kansas City Public Schools’ base pay is just $43,000–$46,500 a year, with average salaries ranging from roughly $55,000 to over $60,000 depending on experience and education. Average teacher pay is higher in every state surrounding Missouri, including Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.
The cost of living is higher in Kansas City than in rural areas, so many teachers here struggle to afford the middle-class life their years of education suggest they should enjoy. It’s mind-boggling to me that politicians, here and across the country, can’t seem to understand the importance of making sure teachers are better paid.
Most kids spend more of their weekday time awake with a teacher than they do with their own parents. So much of our children’s development depends on what they learn in school and the people responsible for teaching it to them. And yet we can’t seem to adequately compensate them for their value.
Poll: 71% of US teachers work second job
A Gallup poll this month, done in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation and Bipartisan Policy Center, found that 71% of U.S. K-12 teachers work at least one side job to make ends meet. Some work several. And 85% of them work these additional jobs during the school year, so it’s not like they are using downtime during the summer to pull in extra cash. What they are doing is trying to survive.
“This is definitely a huge issue,” said David Price, president of the Kansas City American Federation of Teachers and School Related Personnel Local 691. He said it’s especially tough for new teachers.
Over half the teachers in the KCPS district are in their first year of teaching, Price said. “They don’t make enough to even pay rent at a midtown apartment.” That’s just wrong.
Carter Taylor, 26, is a second-grade teacher at a KC public school. She comes from a family of teachers; her mom was one. “I watched her struggle to feed me and my siblings,” Taylor said. “But Mom was so resourceful.” She said her mom and uncles, who were also teachers, worked second jobs, including tending bar, to pay the bills at home.
Now she finds herself in the same situation, only she is not married and doesn’t have children like many of her colleagues, who are also struggling to get by. Taylor, who works closely with the AFT Local 691, said she works a second job as a pharmacy tech and does gig work as a seamstress so she can cover the minimal costs of living, including rent and paying her $1,000-a-month school loans.
“I live in low-income housing in a building run by a slumlord,” she said. Taylor said she lives in the same building as some of her students from the poorest households.
When I interviewed her last week, she told me that at that very moment, her building had no hot water.
‘I know one living out of her car’
As tough as her situation is, working full-time in the classroom, bringing work home and putting in time at a second job, Taylor said school para professionals, “who make the schools function,” have it worse. “They barely make minimum wage,” she said.
“I know one living out of her car, and she still comes to take care of the kids at school every day. It’s desperate.” And that should be unacceptable to all of us.
But she worries things could get worse for the state’s teachers if Missouri legislators get rid of the income tax and rely on an increase in sales tax, which she and others don’t believe will generate equivalent revenue. They worry that would mean less money for schools and no boost for salaries.
A Republican-backed bill proposing a state constitutional amendment that would replace the state’s income tax with higher sales taxes passed in the House last week and will need approval by the Senate before getting to Gov. Mike Kehoe’s desk for his signature.
Should that happen, voters would decide whether to give lawmakers the go-ahead to eliminate the income tax eventually and raise sales taxes.
Income taxes account for about 65% of the state’s general revenue, which means the state would need to overhaul its current taxing structure substantially to fill that revenue hole.
Higher prices, larger class sizes
A rally last week drew hundreds opposed to the elimination of income taxes, a move that would likely further hurt people with the least disposable income because raised sales taxes would mean they’d pay more for goods and services.
Teachers turned out to speak against the proposal, which they say would mean jobs lost, larger class sizes, and would directly hurt students and teachers. If indeed eliminating income tax and replacing it with sales tax increases is bad for schools, students and teachers, then it’s bad for the state — all of us.
Star reporter Jack Harvel covered that rally at the Central Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, where educators argued that getting rid of income tax revenue could cost the state the loss of some 27,000 teachers, although supporters of the income tax plan dispute those numbers.
Clearly, Missouri has a problem when it comes to paying its teachers what is truly a living wage. No workers with a job so vital to the well-being and future of our children should be so disrespected with pay so low they can’t afford to live in decent housing — or are even sometimes relegated to living out of their car.
Instead of taking steps that have any chance of making this situation worse for teachers, law makers should be looking for ways to ensure that districts can pay their teachers more money, and voters should demand it. The education of our kids depends on it, and teachers deserve it.
This story was originally published March 24, 2026 at 5:06 AM.
