From the chaos of a kindergarten classroom, Maestra Yvette Lanz makes sense of her life.
She shuffles the books into neat rows, straightens the uno, dos, tres number lines and organizes small humans on a rainbow-hued color-blocked rug.
She’s done this for 39 years.
Señora Lanz has executed her day job when her world was overflowing with heartbreak and caregiving: She raised six children — currently ages 16 to 40 — tended to her aging parents and a former partner with Parkinson’s Disease. And almost every morning during the school year, Señora Lanz made her way to a Tucson Unified School District campus.
First it was at Mission View Elementary in the 1990s. Then, at Davis Bilingual Elementary Magnet, where she has taught for 34 years and helped pioneer the bilingual education immersion program.
The two schools bookend a career dedicated to the tiniest learners — in kinder and first grade — almost all of it in a bilingual classroom.
“My classroom was my safe place,” Lanz, 62, said. “I love to work with the kindergarteners because I feel like the little ones, they have the best values and qualities of a human being. They trust you. They love you unconditionally.
“So, to me it’s kind of like I fit with that. Some kids don’t have it easy and have issues so I’m trying to make them feel the love in the classroom, the respect, the belonging.”
Señora Lanz exemplifies the best of what TUSD has to offer. Her career is dedicated to Southern Arizona’s largest school district with just under 40,000 students at 88 sites. She is one of 7,000 staff members, most of whom could get a paycheck bump if voters pass Proposition 414 — a $45 million budget override — on Nov. 4.
The cornerstone of the override is a 4% raise for certified teachers. For example, a first-year teacher earning the base pay of $37,800 today would make $39,312 if the proposition passes on Tuesday.
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Lanz and others like her choose to teach in TUSD and remain in Arizona. These educators seek fair compensation for their investment in our community. It’s a big ask in a state with nearly the worst teacher pay rates in the nation.
The raise could help Arizona lift its national education profile — which is consistently near the bottom. In 2024, Arizona ranked 49th nationally in elementary teacher pay and 42nd in secondary teacher pay, according to data from The Center for the Future of Arizona.
Note: The national and Arizona numbers are from 2025 reports. The TUSD and Chinle numbers are 2024 averages.
Raises have been one solution for the Chinle Unified School District, where the boost has improved teacher retention and led to higher student test scores.
For TUSD, retaining teachers through pay raises is a large motivator for the district — the only one in the Tucson area without a current override.
When voters approve a budget override, they’re agreeing to pay higher property taxes so schools have more money to spend than they would under the state’s regular school budgeting formula.
The override proposal combines two key priorities from the district and the Tucson Education Association, the labor union which represents teachers and most other classified employees: Provide immediate raises to make teacher pay more competitive, and increase long-term career earnings with increases to steps in the salary schedule to retain educators.
No organized opposition campaign has emerged.
“Educators in TUSD are long overdue for a raise and thanks to the state legislature and threats from the current administration in D.C., this override is our best chance to secure money free of a political agenda,” said Tucson Education Association President Jim Byrne.
“It gives educators the best chance to meet the rising cost of living and stay where they want to be: Working with TUSD’s wonderful students.”
“Who can sustain that?”
Supporters say teachers should be fairly compensated to show the value of their work. It would promote retention and that consistency can yield student benefits in attitude and measured student success like test scores, local educators say.
But teachers’ wages are relatively low here compared to other professions that require at least a bachelor’s degree.
Wright Elementary School teacher Krista Conley compares her work with the district’s youngest learners to working at a big box store.
“I have a bachelor’s degree and I’m getting paid less than what you can get at Target,” said Conley, a teacher’s assistant in a pre-K and exceptional education classroom at Wright Elementary School.
“The rate at Target is almost $20 an hour and I make less than that. I have six years with TUSD. Who can sustain that?”
Among 12 comparable metro areas across the nation, secondary teacher wages here ranked last when adjusted for cost of living, according to the MAP AZ dashboard at the University of Arizona.
The median annual wage for secondary school teachers in the Tucson metro area was $49,050 in 2024, the dashboard says. San Diego topped the list at $99,740.
TUSD’s salary schedule for the 25-26 school year will be proposed to the Governing Board next month, as override results are relevant to the conversation, the district says. But in 2024-25, its base pay is listed as $37,800.
Elsewhere in Pima County, the Marana Unified School District offers base pay for the 2025-26 school year of $51,050.87 for a starting teacher with a bachelor’s degree. That is among the top in the area and the priority to do right by Marana’s employees has been a basic tenet of its governing board, member Tom Carlson says.
“Our continued focus on provisioning annual increases in pay and our commitment to smaller class sizes and the employee medical benefits at 100% are reasons why people WANT to work for us,” Carlson said. “We have the same issues with turnover as other districts, but we have always been able to fill those vacancies with relatively little effort.”
Competing with Marana and TUSD — which has 20 schools and about 13,000 students — is base pay at the three other largest area districts: Vail ($49,019), Sunnyside Unified School District ($48,000) and Amphitheater Public Schools ($46,586.65).
“If we do not win this override, then salary and compensation for teachers is part of the general district budget,” TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said.
“And it could mean higher class sizes. It could mean teacher layoffs. It could mean a salary freeze for the employees of the district.”
Average TUSD teacher salary pay was $56,898 for this past school year, according to its website. That’s up 3% from 2024 — but it’s 21% below the national average.
Even as some states pass record increases, average teacher pay has failed to keep up with inflation over the past decade. Adjusted for inflation, teachers across the nation on average make 5% less than they did 10 years ago, according to National Education Association data.
Yet, for some educators, the community and the curriculum is a draw.
Second-year teacher Eliseo Gomez earned a master’s degree from the University of Arizona and teaches at Pueblo High School in TUSD even though he applied at Amphi and Catalina Foothills High School, where he was offered a higher starting salary.
“Catalina Foothills was going to offer $10,000 more starting,” Gomez said. “But I felt that I would have less educational freedom there.
“These kids here are amazing individuals with a culture of resilience and acceptance.
“I like a challenge and so I chose to go with TUSD and specifically Pueblo because I want to move closer to my Latino roots. I wanted to teach in a community where you have that. I’ve loved it.”
Chinle shows pay bump, retention correlate with higher test scores
Rewarding that allegiance and returning to one’s roots show the investment can make a difference in the Chinle Unified School District.
In the Chinle Unified School District, teacher salaries were boosted from $75,017 in 2022 to $88,591 in 2024.
Average salaries approach $94,918 in 2025 and the tiny district within the Navajo Nation is among the top three highest-paying in the state. Chinle’s salaries exceed both the national average teacher salary ($72,030) and the state average ($62,714), according to the National Education Association.
“Our teachers know they are paid very well. And also with the benefits that we have, when we get applicants, they all have already done their research,” said Chinle Human Resources Director Colleen Yazzie.
Chinle has more than 3,000 students and about 500 employees, including 220 teachers, of which about 90 are Chinle High School graduates, Yazzie said.
Yazzie said she recruited throughout the country before the Covid-19 pandemic, including in Tennessee and California. But she does not need to do that anymore, she said.
She focuses now on communicating how rural, vast and scenic the northeastern part of Arizona is, she said.
“The nearest Walmart is 90 miles away in New Mexico,” she says. “We have two options for fast food.”
Chinle’s base pay in 2024-25 was $52,406, according to its salary schedule.
“Expectations are high,” Yazzie said. “We had a teacher here last year who retired after 51 years.”
The pay boost has coincided with improvement in math and reading scores on state standardized tests. Chinle scores increased from just over 20% proficiency to 34% districtwide in 2025. The Many Farms school reached 45% and the district leads the way in Arizona for those that serve tribal communities.
And, rural areas do not have the tax base that more urban areas do, so using bonds to renovate buildings and overrides to raise wages is not an option for districts like Chinle.
Override could be a needed “little injection”
But at TUSD, the override aims to preserve and expand programs like art, music and PE and raises funds that would help keep and develop teachers, educators say. The TUSD override will cost the district $1 million to conduct the election.
Almost all local school districts have overrides in place, but TUSD has not had one in over 30 years. The last time the largest school district in Southern Arizona asked for an override, in 2009, voters said no.
Raising pay is just part of what school districts use an override to do. Additional funding inside schools could also mean added counselors, social workers, librarians and math and reading specialists.
Overrides typically last seven years and are funded through property taxes. The average TUSD homeowner would pay about $200 a year more on a home valued at $200,000, based on a proposed increase of $1.02 per $100 of net assessed valuation.
The override package equals 15% of the district’s revenue control limit — the maximum budget calculated by state funding formulas. It would generate a maximum of about $45 million a year in the first five years, followed by $30 million in year six and $15 million in year seven. Districts typically go back to voters to renew an override in years four or five, TUSD Chief Financial Officer Ricky Hernández said.
The package focuses on six areas:
- Compensation: Increasing teacher salaries at a cost of $7.3 million, all other district employees would get a pay bump, too.
- Student success: Add reading and math interventionists at all schools without the positions, maintain fine arts and add art and music programs at 14 schools, at a cost of $11.2 million.
- Mental and physical health: Fund school counselors, hire social workers at all high schools and hire PE teachers for all elementary and K-8 schools at $12.9 million.
- Future achievers: Help students retake courses for credit and focus on student attendance.
- Early learners: Add five new pre-K classrooms.
- Career and technology investment: Hire specialists and career coaches.
Voters agreed in November 2023, when they approved TUSD’s 10-year, $480 million bond measure to renovate aging schools and update security and safety systems, technology and vehicles. That money comes from bond sales and is repaid over time. An override would increase property taxes for seven years.
“I know it’s not going to be a ton of money, but some money is better than no money,” said long-time Davis Elementary teacher Lanz. “And it feels like it honors the teachers, the assistants, the staff.”
“People need to realize that overrides don’t last forever and ever,” Lanz said. “Only seven years. This is kind of like a little injection that you get. To make sure the teachers are doing better.”
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