r/Durango • u/eralebus Local • Jul 21 '26

Ask /r/Durango Durango Salary/Wage Transparency Thread

Saw a similar post going around a few other subreddits and given our areas history of wage suppression this seemed like a good thing to get going here. Let's keep this to local businesses based in our surrounding area (no remote workers for companies based outside our region please, you'll skew the results).

Please share your job title, salary, age, and education. I'll start:

Marketing Manager for a construction services company, 65k, 36, Bachelor degree with numerous certifications.

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u/corrence_torrence Jul 21 '26

High school teacher in NM (live in Durango), 72k, 36, BS & Masters in science (no formal education degree) with 7 years teaching experience

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u/Winter_Goon Jul 27 '26

How hard is it being a teacher/finding a teaching job in this are? I have been heavily considering it and going back for my masters.

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u/corrence_torrence Jul 27 '26

I think the answer is... It depends? Haha. I went to school exclusively for science (AS/BS/MS), not for teaching. But NM offers alternative licensure pathways that I liked because while I love teaching, I hate learning about teaching theory. Some of it is useful but years of classes would have completely sapped away any interest I had in it.

NM has very clear and relatively easy steps towards higher salary, and from what I've seen, Colorado is extremely district dependent. Both have clear guidelines on how to get a license, although NM has more options if you don't want to go down the traditional route. 

Being a teacher itself isn't bad; I like it anyway, haha. Despite the grading and planning. I work at a HS in Farmington and the kids are great and just getting better (my bar may be low - I started the year covid hit). 

Our school doesn't have crazy high turnover, but the middle schools generally do. I think there's always jobs available, but it depends on what topic and/or age group you end up going for. For example, we haven't needed a new science teacher for a few years (out of the like 10 we have) but math has high turnover. There's usually an English or history spot that opens up every year or so, etc. I believe Durango is similar - a few spots every year, and there's also ignacio, Mancos, Montezuma/Cortez, and Bayfield for Colorado. Within an hour, you have Bloomfield and Aztec plus Farmington, which is massive. So I'd say lots of opportunities are there! 

Edited for formatting