$10,000 Plus More a Year, But Take Home Pay is the Same?

The Port Huron Area School District is in negotiations with its teachers after the existing contract expired in 2014. Holland Woods Middle School teacher David Dazer wrote an email to the Times Herald complaining about pay cuts he had to take.

"I still love working with the kids, but the politics of this career are becoming unbearable," he wrote the newspaper in November. "No one I knew went into teaching to get rich, but given the great responsibility that teachers have, the modest pay we were receiving did not seem out of line. I am now bringing home what I did 14 years ago."

ForTheRecord says: According to payroll information the district sent after receiving a FOIA request, Dazer’s salary was $58,845 in 2000-01. In 2013-14, his salary was $69,140. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income from 2009-2013 in the city of Port Huron was $32,940, about $16,000 below the state average.