When Luscia Moreno traded her journalism career for what she viewed as a more stable job as a fifth-grade social studies teacher, she never thought she would end up at a food bank. But last year, Moreno's finances were in a pinch after buying cameras and equipment for her school's new journalism program.

"It came out of my credit card at a time I was also moving," the Rucker Elementary School teacher said. "These students have seen me struggle. They've seen me without. They've seen my car be repossessed."

Moreno and about two dozen other Houston ISD teachers and support staff crowded the district's board of trustees meeting last week to ask for a 5 percent pay raise. Teachers said two years of virtually flat salaries, coupled with increasing health care costs, have left them struggling to make ends meet and have tempted them to defect to neighboring districts that offer better pay.

A Houston Chronicle analysis of teacher salaries in the greater Houston area found that HISD lags behind neighboring suburban districts.

A Houston ISD teacher with 20 years of experience typically earned about $57,650 this school year, the lowest salary for a teacher with that experience level among 20 local school districts, the survey found. By contrast, in nearby Alief ISD, a teacher with 20 years of experience typically earned about $63,748.

Of other large districts locally, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD teachers with 20 years of experience receive $62,277 and Katy ISD educators get $60,200 annually. Spring Branch ISD offered similar salaries for veteran teachers as HISD, paying them $58,000 a year.

Fewer veteran teachers

Houston ISD also ranked among the bottom third of 23 local school districts for starting pay, with a salary of $51,500. That's the same starting salary as in the Conroe and Clear Creek ISDs. HISD no longer offers bonuses for teachers with master's degrees or doctorates, while its neighbors offer bonuses of $500 to $4,000 for advanced degrees.

Teachers in the nation's seventh-largest school district last received a pay raise in 2015, of 2 percent.

Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said low pay has led to a shortage of experienced teachers in HISD. About 60 percent of Houston ISD teachers had 10 or fewer years of experience during the 2015-2016 school year, according to the district's Texas Academic Performance Report, while about 15.5 percent had more than 20 years of experience. That dearth of veteran teachers also affects newer teachers, Capo said, because they cannot lean on or learn from those with more years in the classroom.

"It is the master teacher - it is the mid-career teacher - that is the support level for new teachers in our buildings," Capo said.

Money for 'recapture'

But finding money to enact - and sustain - pay raises will become an increasingly tall order for HISD officials. That's because the district must begin paying tens of millions of dollars to the state under Texas' school-funding formula, known as "recapture."

Under the policy, districts that meet a certain threshold of local property value per student must pay the state in order to subsidize districts with lower property values.

HISD will have to pay $77.5 million in those fees this year, but could be forced to pay the state about $376 million by the 2019-2020 school year, which would be equal to about 19 percent of the district's current budget.

An HISD spokeswoman said district staff would not comment because pay raises were not on Thursday's board meeting agenda.

HISD trustee Anna Eastman stressed that the district should still see its revenues rise even with recapture, leaving little excuse to leave teacher pay stagnant. She said she'll push for a pay raise when budget discussions begin in June.

"We did not keep up with pay increases in the area; over time we got really behind those other districts," Eastman said. "I'm concerned about where we're spending our money. If other districts around us who get less money per kid give a 3 percent raise a year, and we can't, we need to do a deep dive into the budget to see where we're spending money."

Out of their pockets

During public comment at last Thursday's HISD board meeting, teacher Lakeitha Ford said she took a $2,700 pay cut when she relocated from Fort Bend ISD to teach fifth-grade English at Whidby Elementary.

She also has diabetes. She said rising health care premiums, the elimination of HISD's health savings account and the district no longer offering free services through Diabetics of America have all made it more difficult to manage her health condition.

Moreno, the social studies teacher, said teachers' low salaries are further strained by the fact that they often pay for school supplies and extracurricular expenses themselves so their economically disadvantaged students can have more opportunities.

"What administrators forget is that we pay out of pocket," Moreno said. "Teachers are having to pay for the soccer team, teachers are having to pay for the cheerleader team, because there's no money in the budget."