Published: March 10, 2008 11:53 am      

Preston educators weigh pros, cons of working in W.Va.

KINGWOOD - Ann Robb, 61, of Terra Alta, has taught 34 years in her native Preston County, raising her son here. But if she were a young woman just starting out, she isn't sure she could afford to make the same choice in today's economy, when she could drive across the border to Maryland and make more.

She appreciates having medical insurance in an era when many Americans don't, but Preston County school teachers lost their optical and dental insurance about 15 years ago, when voters flunked the special levy that paid for it.

Robb would like to see a multiyear pay package to bring West Virginia teachers into the middle, in comparison to teaching salaries in other states. The National Education Association ranks the state at 48th.

"Where will the teachers of the future come from if we're 48th?" she wondered.

When Robb asks students in her Preston High history classes how many would like to teach someday, it's "incredibly rare" to see a hand raised, she said. Robb's mother was a teacher, and "I don't know that I even considered any other option."

When a divorce left her with a child to raise alone, teaching was also a family friendly career. That was one of the motivating factors for her entering the field, she said.

When she worked in an office, before becoming a teacher, finding child care was always an issue, paying for it another.

Now her son is grown, but she cares for her mother, the woman who inspired her to go into teaching. And with only herself to support, she spends much of her summers preparing for the next school year. When she was younger, she would take college courses to retain certification or obtain advanced degrees in the summer.

She worked on her master's degree in the summers and after school. For her, the annual debate on teacher pay is a litmus test.

"I don't think for me it's so much the pay as it is the future of education in the state," Robb said. "Who will teach our grandchildren? Where are we going to get highly qualified teachers?"

She could retire, but Robb isn't sure whether she will, because the best thing about her job is still there.

"I love my kids," Robb said. "I should call them my students, but I always think of them as my kids."

Jane Hornyak

Jane Hornyak doesn't teach in West Virginia anymore.

Twenty years ago, she started teaching in Preston County. From 1995-2003, she taught in Monongalia County, and in 2006-'07, she was at Central Preston Middle School.

"I loved being a part of educating our own West Virginians," she wrote in an e-mail.

In the summer of 2006, she returned to this part of West Virginia after marrying and relocating to another part of the state. The single mother of a teenage daughter, renting instead of owning a home, she lived paycheck to paycheck.

"I always thought of West Virginia teacher pay as decent pay, but was always let down by promises of pay raises, because any raise that came our way was quickly diminished by raising the cost of PEIA premiums," Hornyak wrote. "There was always some string attached to offset the pay raise by another cost."

Nor were there a lot of other benefits.

"Summers off is also a joke," she said. "I either spent my summers in summer employment, pursuing my further degree, or staff development with Monongalia County Schools."

The extra studies paid off, but not for West Virginia schools. Hornyak took her master's degree in special education plus 60 additional hours to Maryland, where she now teaches. She continues to live in Morgantown and hopes to eventually relocate her home to Bruceton Mills - but not her skills.

"I don't know of any other career that requires as much continuing education for recertification as teaching, for so little monetary gain," Hornyak wrote. "I loved teaching in West Virginia, but I hated the pay."

Debra Morell

Debra Morell will be 50 this year. She's taught 27 years, including a stint in the Preston County Schools central office with the Safe and Drug Free Schools program.

All her time has been in Preston County. Not by choice, but because her husband, who came from a metropolitan area and now works in Monongalia County, wanted to live in a small town.

"I guess everybody wants what they don't think they had," Morell said.

She hasn't regretted her time in the classroom, though, and finds it gratifying when former students stop her to say she has made an impact on their lives.

"You realize a part of you is going to go on into the future," Morell said.

But she worries about the future of her profession. She and other teachers for years have gone beyond the work day, not just with papers but clubs and after-school events.

"In elementary, the amount of paperwork and the different activities like Young Writers, spelling bee, I spent a lot of evenings and weekends on school," she said. "I was always one to go to work early and stay late."

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.