Katie Paul is finishing up her first year as a first-grade teacher at a charter school in Broomfield. Her salary? About $30,000.
"It's tricky," she said. "It gets you through life, but there's not a lot of extra spending money or anything like that. It's just kind of like the bare minimum."
Paul has summers off, giving her time to work a second job and make a little extra money. She hopes to start saving for a house, for a master's degree -- and to move out of her parents house.
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"I feel like I'm 18 again," she said. "And I don't really feel like an adult because I have to still abide by the rules."
Paul recently joined a new Denver-based website called ByaTeacher.com -- which aims to match teachers looking for second jobs with employers looking for help with everything from tutoring to making meals.
About one in five Colorado teachers work a second job, according to a 2014 study. The site's founder, Denver entrepreneur Bryan Carruthers figures teachers are a particularly attractive group of employees. Most of them have summers off and they've already been through background checks and licensing.
If his site is a success, Carruthers said teachers can spend less time finding clients and managing invoices and more time teaching.
"Teachers are teachers because it's a calling," he told Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner. "They like to be doing things that are along that spectrum."
Carruthers' site charges a 20 percent fee for the service, with 2 percent of that donated back to each teacher's school. He admits that the site has facilitated only a few transactions, but said he expects that to increase as the school year winds down.
"What we're trying to do is to make it easier for teachers to earn additional income if they're looking to," Carruthers said.
He hopes the site will help draw attention to the greater issue of low teacher pay.
