My sister was a special ed. teacher in San Diego--when she started, she was making somewhere between $30-40K/year. Teacher's salaries are public, so we could l

My sister was a special ed. teacher in San Diego--when she started, she was making somewhere between $30-40K/year. Teacher's salaries are public, so we could look up what the current salary scale is, but I doubt it will have changed significantly. During the summer, teachers often take classes towards their certification. Later, some may take a job somewhere like a bookstore or home depot, which offers seasonal work. Many pay for supplies for students out of their own pocket. Tell me, is that a princely salary? Is that over compensated? In the past, you had a trapped population (women), so even with modest salaries, you could attract good people--now, many teachers are not that strong academically (and yes, I know that you need to be skilled at teaching--but subject matter competence is part of that--I did some volunteering during grad. school with a local middle school and even among some very motivated teachers, their math skills were very poor--at even the basic algebra level. One had trouble going from distance=rate*time, to finding time given distance and rate). Sure, you'll get some good people who still will go into the field for love, but I doubt that you would argue that just because you can find some software developers who will work for 25K/year and there are some unemployed developers, that you're going to get GOOD developers living in LA working at that salary (and no equity).