Ohio teachers struggle with career-related anxieties

By Nadia Ramlagan

Ohio teachers continue to report high levels of job-related stress and poor well-being, according to new data from the nonpartisan think tank RAND.

Nearly 60% of teachers report feeling burned out, compared with 36% of similar working adults. While the number of teachers experiencing job-related stress overall has declined since the pandemic, about 18% said they intend to leave their positions.

Katie Fuller, a fifth grade teacher in the Dayton area, said increasing workloads and long working hours have taken a toll. She stressed low pay is also a major issue, though many mid-career professionals may be less likely to leave than teachers with only a few years of experience.

“Burnout doesn't always look like a teacher saying, ‘I quit,’” Fuller explained. “Sometimes it just kind of looks like us still showing up, us still loving and pouring into our kids, doing the job but feeling emotionally drained and overwhelmed, and disconnected from joy.”

Joe Decker, a high school teacher in Columbus, said lawmakers tossed away the Fair School Funding Plan, a bipartisan effort which would have created a needs-based funding formula to calculate the actual cost of educating a child in Ohio. He believes leaders have given up on public schools, which has affected educator morale.

“What we've seen in the latest budget now is a transfer of over a billion dollars of taxpayer money to non-accountable private and charter schools,” Decker pointed out.

The average base salary for a teacher is slightly more than $75,000 in 2026, compared with six-figure salaries for fields with similar workloads.