Beginning Pay Poses Problems Second-Year Teacher Struggles As Wedding Day Draws Near

Once a month, Lexi Santos visits her wedding dress.

At a shop on East Sprague, she runs a hand across the ivory silk, slips it on to see if it still fits. Always, she makes a $30 payment; the dress has been on layaway more than a year.

As one rookie teacher marrying another this summer, 23-year-old Santos has stretched the engagement to two years while chipping away at the payment-plan wedding. Now she worries she’s committing to a layaway lifestyle, too.

“I cut coupons, just buy generic brands of everything,” says Santos, who teaches developmentally impaired kids at Libby Center.

“We don’t go out and do anything ever - see movies or go out to eat. Ever. We might walk in the park.”

Still, Santos says, she doesn’t have it as rough as many new teachers who, like her, started at $22,950 a year.

She and her fiance, Nathan Van de Veer, are living in his parents’ north Spokane house while they’re away on a two-year job assignment.

The young couple got a break on monthly rent: $600. And they took in a roommate who, like Van de Veer, is a substitute teacher looking for a job.

Santos was fortunate. She landed a job within a year of graduating from Whitworth College in 1997. It’s a tough one. She teaches high school students with impairments ranging from autism to severe mental and physical disabilities.

Several are violent. A girl bit a teacher’s aide, scarring her forearm. Across the hall, a student broke a teacher’s arm. Aides joke that they need fighter pilot instincts.

But Santos’ biggest battle is with her checkbook.

Her salary recently jumped to the second-year level: $23,702, with an option to work seven extra days for an additional $921. She brings home about $1,450 a month.

It goes quickly. The monthly payment for her 1992 Saturn, which she bought used, is $176. Car insurance is another $53. She pays $196 a month on $18,000 in student loans; $100 or so for the electric bill; about $50 for garbage, water and sewer; and another $50 for telephone service. Teachers union dues are $48. Her big splurge: $26 a month for a health club, using her District 81 discount.

The rest goes for credit cards, gasoline and groceries - packed lunches and a lot of pasta.

Santos keeps $75 in savings to cover overdrafts in her checking account, which routinely occur right before payday.

Santos has a plan to boost her salary: She’s starting a master’s degree program on weekends.

But that’ll take another $12,000 in student loans, and she hates to think about how long it’ll take to break even.

Eventually, her fiance will land a job and be able to contribute more to bills than the varying amounts he makes subbing and teaching guitar. And her salary will gradually increase, year by year. But they’ll also have to find another home, probably pay more rent - and suppose they have children?

“I can see why it’s going to get frustrating,” Santos says.

Would she strike or walk out? It’s not out of the question, she says. West Side teachers are in a worse bind, but Santos says she feels obligated to support them.

“We can’t just say it’s not our problem,” she said. “If we never get a raise, well, it’s going to be our problem pretty soon.”

In the meantime, Santos has agreed to coach softball and basketball two nights a week. That’ll bring in an extra $810 this year. She’ll teach summer school for three weeks for another $800.

And when she has time, she drives to Deer Park and cashes in on years of ballet lessons. Santos demonstrates poses for a wood sculptor for $10 an hour.

With this, she just made the last payment on her wedding dress and bought the bird seed that, come July 31, she’ll be picking out of her carefully coiffed hair.

Santos holds the ballet poses until she can’t take it any longer.

Then she lets go. And tries not to think about her college pal, the one who went into computers - and makes $38,000 a year.