Six years ago, the average New Mexico teacher earned $180 more than the average New Mexico state employee, notes the Albuquerque Journal in a recent article on the Governor’s 2026 budget proposal.
Today, average teacher salaries lag average state employee salaries by $2,563 per year. State employees certainly deserve proper professional salaries, and so do educators. But wait, there’s more that has gone awry here.
This year, the state now provides employees with eighty percent of the insurance premiums, while school district educators only receive a much lower sixty percent share. The legislature does not yet provide the funds for districts to provide fair benefits the teachers deserve while still delivering essentials for the students.
House Majority Caucus Chair Representative Raymond Lara and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are introducing a bill to provide greater compensation parity for education employees with their state employee cohort.
The bill would provide state funding so every district can provide their teachers and other employees with the same insurance benefits enjoyed by neighbors who work for the state. This move won’t close the growing salary gap, but it will help educators enormously to stay in the profession as health insurance continues to increase.
Our state’s economic growth is held back, say many commentators by our state’s low education rankings. There is debate about the validity of ranking methods, but everyone agrees nothing is more essential for student success than a highly qualified teacher being able to spend time with each student according to their needs.
Students are the first to lose out when teaching doesn’t pay like other jobs with similar qualifications. Offering lower comparable pay packages undermines other initiatives to create a thriving economy. This is doubly true in rural New Mexico where school districts are often the largest single employer.
Teachers deserve a professional salary equal to those paid to similarly qualified professionals. The world’s most advanced education systems like Finland and Singapore pay teachers like attorneys and doctors. That teachers are underpaid in the United States is well-documented.
The teacher pay penalty — the relative gap between the weekly wages of teachers and other college graduates — grew to a record 26.9% in 2024, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
This relative pay penalty, which is adjusted for education, experience, and demographics—has accelerated over the past three decades as teachers’ weekly wages have declined by 5.3% since 1996, while wages of other college graduates have increased by just over 30%. New Mexico educators have recently fared better than most of our colleagues in the US due to significant and greatly appreciated raises in recent years. Yet the pay (and insurance benefit) penalty is still a hindrance to student success.
For this coming year, the Governor proposes the same one percent raise for school employees as for state employees. This will grow the disparity between the two types of employers, further disincentivizing young New Mexicans from becoming teachers. One percent of the state average salary of $73,520 means a state employee raise of $735. The same one percent of the average teacher salary of $70,956.29 means a teacher raise of $710; growing the pay gap.
Providing parity for health insurances (80/20) is absolutely needed to stop the compensation gap from growing even worse. Let’s keep New Mexico’s educators healthy and do whatever is possible to increase compensation so they stay teaching and more New Mexicans will choose the joys of helping our next generation grow and succeed in life as well as in school.
Jarrell is the president of NEA-New Mexico and a teacher from Alamogordo.