Salaries

Salaries

Compensation for Rappahannock s early teachers was not princely. Anne Keyser recalls making $45 each month that she taught. “And I spent sixteen dollars for a pair of shoes,” she said. "My father was furious but my mother stood behind me. I can still picture those shoes—they were beautiful—two toned brown shoes with high laces. I worked hard for them and wore them until they wore out.”

When Pauline Bruce’s mother started teaching at Hazel Mountain School in 1908, she made $30 a month. She lived with Mr. and Mrs. Jim Burke (Weldon Burke’s parents) and paid $5 a month for her room and board during the week. Pauline followed her mother into the ranks of country teachers and during the depression, earned $85 a month for her work at a little one-room school in neighboring Warren County, which operated its public schools jointly with Rappahannock under a single superintendent. In 1936, when Pauline returned to Rappahannock to teach at the three-year Amissville School, the principalship there carried an extra $5 a month. "But you had extra duties, like sweeping the floor and lighting the fires every morning.”

Miss Elsie Dodson’s annual salary was $1,800—‘‘without deductions”— when she started teaching at Flint Hill in 1954. As a teacher at Forest Grove, she brought home $20 extra a year, compensation for custodial duties.

Commencement

Commencement exercises, an elaborate event began in the 'twenties, were a trial for the teachers. "We prepared for them the whole year,” Mrs. Keyser said. The huge display of projects and exhibits, the marching of the students through the county scat to a brass band, served a worthy purpose. Public education was a controversial topic in its early years. Taxpayers wondered if they should be paying to educate other people’s children. The commencement exercises were designed to prove that