More Spin Than Historic
On Monday, June 10, 2024, held a press conference at a Hialeah charter school, standing behind a “Raising Teacher Pay” podium.
According to his press release: “Governor Ron DeSantis announced his commitment to approving a historic teacher salary funding increase of $1.25 billion in the budget for Fiscal Year 2024–25. Since 2019, Florida has invested over $4 billion in teacher pay increases and has raised starting teacher pay by nearly $10,000.” This image accompanied the press release:
During the press conference, besides discussing “Raising Teacher Pay” and celebrating Florida as “the Education State,” DeSantis, Lt. Governor Jeannette Nunez and Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. also bashed unions, saying they have been weaponized, union dues are now primarily used to push a political agenda and, instead of representing teachers, they have become focused on woke ideology and protecting pornographic materials. Nunez specifically attacked United Teachers of Dade, saying union dues are “wasted on UTD leadership,” and encouraging teachers to “give themselves their own raise” by not sending their teacher dues to UTD. She said “From my perspective, I think teachers can continue to fight the good fight, give themselves a raise, and stay far away from UTD.” Of note, UTD President Karla Hernandez ran as Charlie Crist’s Lt. Governor candidate in their failed bid to defeat DeSantis and Nunez’s re-election in 2022.
At the end of the presser, a journalist tried to ask DeSantis about Florida’s recent ranking of 50th in the nation for average teacher pay. DeSantis interrupted saying:
“Basically, I can’t hear exactly what you’re saying, but I do know National Education Association is a very partisan teacher union. They are obviously going to generate things that are going to be reflective of positive views for a union dominated states and negative for people that have actually beaten the teachers union like we have in Florida.“
https://thefloridachannel.org/videos/6-10-24-governors-press-conference-on-raising-teacher-pay/
You can watch the entire press conference here.
It is primarily political propaganda.
Why so much union bashing during a press conference focused on raising teacher pay? I believe the message was intended to suggest that unions are entirely unnecessary when you have a governor and legislature willing to earmark funding for teacher salaries and to encourage teachers to leave their unions, resulting in their de-certification. Or perhaps they just really, really hate the teachers union.
If you learn nothing else from this blog, please understand this: This year’s teacher salary funding increase, while welcomed by cash-starved districts, is not “historic.” DeSantis IS NOT increasing teacher salary funding by $1.25 billion this year, he is increasing it by $201.8 million. The remaining $1.05 billion is needed to maintain current salaries. This year’s increase isn’t even the largest increase in the last 3 budget cycles – Last year the increase was $252.8 million, the year before it was $250 million. This year’s increase is welcomed but not historic.
With approximately 200,000 instructional staff in Florida’s public schools, each teacher’s share of that $201.8 million increase calculates to about $1,000/teacher, just barely a 2% increase for starting salaries and a significantly lower percentage increase for higher paid veteran teachers. In contrast, this year’s state budget includes $134 million for a 3% pay increase for 96,863 state employees. This is the third year in a row, and the fourth in the past five years that state workers have received raises.
Also, Florida has not invested over $4 billion in teacher pay increases. It has, over the past 5 budgets, invested $1.25 billion in teacher raises, the other almost $3 billion has been used to maintain salaries and, since the 2023-24 shifting of the Teacher Salary Increase Allocation (TSIA) from a categorical to base funding in the state’s funding formula, all TSIA funding increases are now shared with voucher recipients, including private schools under no obligation to apply the funds to teacher salaries and homeschoolers who don’t have teachers at all.
In addition, since DeSantis’ focus has been on starting teacher pay, experienced educators in many districts have been left out of DeSantis’ “Raising Teacher Pay” entirely, resulting in salary compression where new inexperienced teachers are making nearly as much as the veterans.
Still, DeSantis has been successful in increasing starting teacher salary, which now ranks 16th in the nation and has raised average starting teacher salary by just over $8,000 (to $48,286) since DeSantis was elected (not the “almost $10,000” reported in the press release). Sadly, this celebrated increase doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
Similar increases have not been experienced by veteran teachers who, as the NEA demonstrated, now have the lowest average salary in any state other than West Virginia.
Again, calling these increases “historic” or implying all $1.25 billion can be used for raises this year is pure spin.
A few hours ago, Gov. DeSantis signed the 2024-25 budget. More on that to come…