JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The state budget will soon include more money for Florida teachers.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Monday he's approving $800 million in the state's budget toward increased teacher compensation.
The budget, which Florida lawmakers approved earlier this month, boosts the minimum salary for teachers to at least $47,000.
During the 2019-20 school year, the National Education Association reported Florida ranked No. 30 in terms of starting teacher salary ($38,724). If it were raised to at least $47,000, it would rank among the top 10 based on the previous years' data.
“We're also supportive of making sure that the veteran teachers continue to get pay increases, so (school districts) have a lot of money in this pot as well to be able to do that," DeSantis explained during a news conference at Fleming Island Elementary School.
Nassau Teachers’ Association President and longtime educator Chris Pagel recently made a trip to Tallahassee to meet with lawmakers to discuss how to recruit and retain teachers.
The foundation, he says, is the money. However, there's more to it than the dollar sign.
“The number sounds great. The number is marvelous," Pagel said. "It's just what hoops are we gonna have to jump through to actually use it in an equitable manner?"
Pagel says the association just recently came to an agreement with the Nassau County School Board for the 2021-22 school year, because they had to get creative with how to fairly pay veteran teachers while also trying to meet the current requirement for starting teachers.
“Here in Nassau County, if we would have followed the guidance from Tallahassee to the letter of the law, we would have had about 18 years of compression in our salary schedule. So, that means a teacher in year one would have been making the exact same paycheck as a teacher in year 18," Pagel explained.
“Let’s hope we can get on the other side of this. If the strings aren't attached the way they had been with the past pot of money, that's great. We know for a fact that there have been some changes, but we don't know all of them yet," he added.