SAN FRANCISCO – As the days get shorter, first grade teacher Esmeralda Jimnez watches the dimming afternoon sky outside her classroom window the way her pupils watch the clock at dismissal time.
The studio apartment Jimnez rents for $1,783 a month, or 43 percent of her salary, is located in one of San Francisco’s sketchiest neighborhoods. Getting home involves running a gauntlet of feces-strewn sidewalks, popping crack pipes, discarded needles and menacing comments — daily irritants that become more daunting after dark.
“If I lived in a better area, I wouldn’t feel so scared going home and I would be able to stay at school a little longer,” Jimnez, 26, said. “You have so many things to do to prep for the next day, but it’s gotten to the point where even if I leave at a decent time I will walk three blocks out of my way to avoid some streets.”
It’s a scenario that has Jimnez wondering if she should find a profession that pays more, and public officials here and in other cities looking at housing as a tool to prevent the exodus of young educators like her.
Inspired by the success in the heart of the Silicon Valley of a 70-unit teachers-only apartment complex, school districts in high cost-of-living areas and rural communities that have long struggled to staff classrooms are considering buying or building rent-subsidized apartments as a way to attract and retain teachers amid concerns of a looming shortage.
To continue reading this article by Associated Press reporter Lisa Leff, go to: http://www.ocregister.com/arti...school-district.html
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