(Photo by Will Stone - KJZZ)

Mohave Valley School District Superintendent Whitney Crow and elementary school teacher Jennifer Sampson.

(Photo by Will Stone - KJZZ)

Only a quick drive from California and Nevada, schools like Fort Mojave Elementary struggle to hold on to teachers because of low salaries.

Jennifer Sampson first started writing lesson plans and keeping her grade schoolers on task eight years ago.

“They still come back to me and give me big hugs: ‘Hi Ms. Sampson, how are you?’” she said.

It’s an opportunity most graduates of Fort Mojave Elementary School don’t get. The student turnover rate is around 50 percent at this small, rural district wedged in the northwest corner of Arizona — only minutes from California and Nevada.

“It’s like a sliding door. I’ll have a student come in and might not even make it through the whole year,” Sampson said. “They may be here two weeks, they may be here two years, so the area is just very transient.”

That’s partly tied to the casino and tourism industry, which is the main source of employment in this region. As those jobs have declined, so has school enrollment. But keeping students isn’t the only challenge.

It’s retaining teachers, too.

“Maybe they get better pay in Needles. They get better pay in Laughlin. They get better pay at a charter school, whereas, we are what we are here, but Fort Mojave Elementary School is my home,” Sampson said.

But Sampson is an exception. Most teachers leave after a couple years because nearby schools in places like Needles, Calif., or Laughlin, Nev., are offering a lot more. It’s a dilemma superintendents along this border region bemoan, said Mohave Valley School District Superintendent Whitney Crow.

“We’ve gotten to a point where there’s just not much else we can do,” Crow said.

The cards are already stacked against them: a rural district, in an economically depressed area, in a state where uncertainty often surrounds education funding. Meanwhile, California schools are offering generous benefits and salaries that make competing against them “almost impossible.”

“We’ll find we have seasoned teachers who will be offered positions there. And I can’t blame them. It’s an easy move for them. They don’t really have to pick up and move,” Crow said.

Some teachers will see their salaries go up as much as $20,000 by moving from Arizona to Nevada, he said.

Crow’s district recruits most of its teachers from the Midwest or even as far away as the Philippines. Recently, the district finally raised the starting pay from $31,000 to $34,000. But every time a teacher leaves, that has a ripple effect. The issue has led the district to potentially pursue a budget override this coming November.

“Parents who have been faced with long-term subs all year, or when we have had a teacher leave and couldn’t fill the position and had to either absorb those kids into other classes or move a teacher and increase those class sizes, I think parents who certainly have been affected by that will understand,” Crow said.

But before that happens, Crow’s district will have another shot at new funds. On May 17, Arizona voters will decide on the fate of Proposition 123: Gov. Doug Ducey’s plan to tap the state land trust for $3.5 billion over the next decade for money owed to school districts from back during the Great Recession.

“They can use that Prop 123 money for teacher salaries and many districts undoubtedly will,” said Dan Hunting a policy analyst at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. He said go back to 1985 and teacher salaries in Arizona were equal to the national average.

“Since then it’s dropped down quite a bit and our teacher salaries now are probably about 20 percent lower than the national average. And that’s even if you correct for local cost of living,” Hunting said.

This exacerbates the teacher shortages across the state. The allure of better pay isn’t only affecting far-flung districts.

“I have friends who are moving to Texas who are going to make $10,000 more just going to Texas to teach,” said Josh Buckley, who teaches in Mesa. “[They’re] doing the same exact thing that they love, but just in a state next door that funds education not at the bottom of the barrel.”

Many opponents of Prop 123 concede Arizona schools need to pay teachers more to stay competitive, but they argue this ballot proposal isn’t a sustainable way to do that.

Back at the Mohave Valley School District, teachers could see a raise of $2,000 if Prop 123 succeeds.

Sampson admits that would be nice, but not just for her pocketbook.

“I would take part of that money and return it right back to the classroom. For me, it’s all for the kids,” she said.

Whether teachers like Sampson have that extra cash is now up to the voters. 

Arizona Education Expenses vs. Classroom Ratios Compared Nationally

Source: The Statistical Abstract of the United States, provided by Dan Hunting of ASU