Student loan debt has teachers turning to porn to pay it all off

Some teachers are quitting their jobs and turning to porn to pay off their student loan debt, which exceeds $50,000 on average.

Two teachers from the same high school in Missouri were placed on leave after their bosses found out the educators were operating OnlyFans accounts. Both said paying off student loan debt was one of their top reasons for selling racy content.

Brianna Coppage was an English teacher at St. Clair High School when administrators pulled her into a meeting in September and asked if she was secretly running an account on OnlyFans.

"They specifically said they got a report from an adult in the Sullivan School District, and they asked, do I have any other income streams, like outside of teaching? And I said, ‘Yes, I do have an OnlyFans.’ They asked how long I had been doing it, if it was during my own time or … anything at school, which I told them," she told Fox News Digital.

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Coppage said her work on OnlyFans was "completely separate" from her professional life at school, where she made $42,000. She said the account was opened to help pay down student loans from her advanced education degrees.

Weeks after being placed on leave, Coppage decided to resign. Since opening the OnlyFans account over the summer, Coppage claimed in an interview with Fox News Digital to have made nearly $1 million.

A second English teacher at the same Missouri high school was also placed on leave Oct. 27 after her bosses found out she was also running an OnlyFans account.

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Megan Gaither, 31, said she needed the money to pay down over $125,000 in student loans.

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"Teaching does not financially support a person," Gaither said. "It’s really hard to stretch those paychecks during the summer. That’s why I did it."

According to the report, Gaither's pay, which includes a stipend for coaching the school's cheerleading squad, was around $47,500. On average, students take out $55,000 in loans for a teaching degree, according to a National Education Association report.

Gaither had an OnlyFans previously but took it down. When Gaither took the account down, she claimed to have had around 1,500 subscribers and was bringing in an extra $3,000 to $5,000 per month.

"I LOVE education and teaching, and I loved seeing my students and cheerleaders learn and grow into themselves. I’m damned good at helping them do that," Gaither said in a Facebook post. "I’ll be telling my story. And hey. At least I didn’t try to neglect my duties of paying back what I borrowed to get educated, right? I made the adult choice of getting a side hustle. And guess what? It’s working out ok so far."

Coppage and Gaither aren't the only teachers who have recently turned to OnlyFans to make more money.

Kristin MacDonald, a former special needs teaching assistant in Canada, was fired from her job in June after refusing to take down her OnlyFans account after it was discovered by school administrators. MacDonald went by "Ava James" on OnlyFans.

"I was advised to deactivate all Ava James social media platforms immediately, including [Instagram], TikTok and OnlyFans, or possibly be terminated," MacDonald told Fox News Digital. "I did not comply." 

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The school district's contract with James included a clause regarding "off-duty conduct being ‘appropriate,’" which MacDonald believed was "up for individual interpretation."

In the school's reasoning for firing her, administrators said she posted content that "involves the sexualization of the school environment" and also disparaged the district in news interviews.

Samantha Peer, a former middle school teacher in Arizona, resigned after students came across her OnlyFans account. Some of the content was allegedly being recorded in a classroom setting.

"I created content at the beginning of the summer in order to earn extra money on the side to help pay for our basic necessities that our salaries were no longer meeting," Peer said in a video on Facebook. "I chose an anonymous name as well as blocking the entire state of Arizona on my OnlyFans so that it wasn’t accessible to anyone living in the state."

Peer made videos under the alias "Khloe Karter" on OnlyFans and was initially placed on leave Oct. 24, 2022.

The Lake Havasu City Police Department in Arizona said the teacher might have recorded some of the content in a classroom setting.

"Additionally, it was reported that some of the pornographic image(s) of Mrs. Peer depicted her in a classroom-type setting, presumably on Thunderbolt School Property. The superintendent of schools was advised of the report, and it was learned at that time that they had also received the same information that was initially forwarded to the police department," police said.

The school district wrote to parents in an email that "the images depicted did not happen during the school day and the person depicted no longer works for LHUSD."

Courtney Tillia, a former Arizona high school teacher, also turned to OnlyFans after ditching her teaching job in 2018.

"Back when I was a teacher, my family really struggled financially," Tillia told the New York Post, "OnlyFans allows me financial freedom. I can provide everything my family needs and more."

She told TMZ that she has made over a million dollars from her three OnlyFans accounts and has been able to provide more for her family.

FOX Business' Peter Aitken, Andrew Mark Miller and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.