Average Salary for Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Employees

Pros: There are MANY great things about working at a Catholic School, especially if you are a religious person. Even if you are not, there are still numerous reasons to teach there. First and foremost, I love that there is a distinct “family” atmosphere beyond what you would typically see at a secular school. The amount of personal support is tremendous, and the teachers who stay are there because they love the job, not the money. Secondly, there is so much less “red tape”. I think there’s more freedom to express myself, create my own curriculum and to acquire materials I need to teach. Along those same lines, one of my favorite things about it is our ability to celebrate all holidays which is now taboo in public schools. I hated that I couldn’t say “Merry Christmas” to a child when I was at a public school. I always felt like you had to walk on eggshells with everything you did there. Being at a non-secular school has been much less stressful of an environment in that regard. The last thing I’d say that I like the most is that the students are generally better behaved and there is more parental support. The small class sizes make it easier to manage behavior and I am better able to meet the needs of diverse learners.

Cons: The negatives of the job are that we make MUCH less money and have fewer “rights” than public school teachers. With no HR department, the principal is basically where the buck stops. If there’s something you’re not happy about, there’s nowhere else to go. No union means no bargaining power and we are constantly losing precious prep time. There are no substitutes for specialists, so if one of them is absent we lose our prep that day. Same if an assembly or other activity is scheduled during our prep. If we have lunch duty there’s no separate lunch time given to us. There has been countless days where I’ve had no preps plus lunch duty, meaning I get ZERO breaks all day- and I’m pretty sure that’s against Federal employment laws- but nobody ever says anything about it. There’s an attitude of “oh well, that’s just how it is at a Catholic school”. Nor are we compensated financially for any of that time lost or any of the “above & beyond” time required of us. I wouldn’t mind so much if we made even CLOSE to the same salary as public school teachers. I know a teacher who started at a public middle school in the city at the same time that I started at mine, and this year she will be making over $70k to my $38k. It’s a hard pill to swallow, and I won’t even get started on the lack of a pension... So is it a fair trade-off? Having worked at both types of schools, I really don’t think it is. But it’s hard for me to leave such a good working environment-obviously since I’m still there!