J. Cameron Anglum, Dylan Young, Jennifer Gontram, and Gary Ritter explore the intersection of district financial conditions and the teacher pipeline. As recent reports document the decline of the teaching profession, policy makers and education practitioners have pursued myriad teacher recruitment strategies, many oriented around financial incentives. Representative polling, including the authors' recent poll of high school students, indicates that prospective teachers, the public, and parents alike cite low pay as the most significant barrier to a teaching career. Though one in three states enacted teacher compensation reforms in 2023 and 2024, federal ESSER funding's expiration may frustrate districts' efforts to boost pay, complicating teacher recruitment aims.