Which Houston area school districts pay their teachers the most?

#13 Aldine ISD Average base pay for teaching staff: $57,163 Number of full-time-equivalent teachers: 4,644.28

Elda Guadalupe Pacheco, Aldine ISD's bilingual teacher of the year, comes from a long line of educators in Yucatan, Mexico. She teaches bilingual pre-kindergartners, including five-year-olds Carolina Real, left, and Evelyn Perales. less #13 Aldine ISD Average base pay for teaching staff: $57,163 Number of full-time-equivalent teachers: 4,644.28

Elda Guadalupe Pacheco, Aldine ISD's bilingual teacher of the year, comes from a long line of educators ... more Photo: Tony Bullard, Tony Bullard Photo: Tony Bullard, Tony Bullard Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Which Houston area school districts pay their teachers the most? 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

Barbers Hill ISD may not be well known inside the 610 loop.

The Chambers County school district of roughly 5,250 students is wedged between Baytown and Anahuac on the east end of the Houston metroplex. School administrators there still use wooden paddles to smack some of its students for misbehaving.

But it stands out in a surprising metric: It pays it's teachers, on average, the highest salaries in the region.

Across the Texas Education Agency's Region 4, which encompasses the greater Houston area, the average base pay for teachers varied by nearly $20,000, according to TEA salary data from the 2016-2017 school year. Teachers, on average, got paid a base salary of $65,639 in Barbers Hill ISD in Chambers County, while the average teacher's base pay in Hempstead ISD was $45,573.

On average, teacher base pay region-wide was about $54,949, according to the TEA's data.

Teacher pay can vary for a number of reasons, including the number of veteran (and more expensive) teachers in a district, the number of new (and less expensive) teachers, local funding and more.

Among the region's largest school districts, only Houston ISD's and Pasadena ISD's average base pay fell below that average. Houston ISD's average teacher base pay was $53,472, the 35th highest base pay out of 50 districts. It was sandwiched between Stafford MSD (average base pay: $53,497) and Texas City ISD (average base pay: $53,385). Pasadena ISD's average teacher base pay was $54,351.

The other large districts had the following average teacher base salaries:

Spring ISD, $58,334

Alief ISD, $58,263

Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, $57,877

Klein ISD, $57,778

Aldine ISD, 57,163

Humble ISD, $56,763

Katy ISD, $56,390

Fort Bend ISD, $55,827

Click through the slideshow above to see which school districts paid their teachers the highest average salaries.