Words Matter: “Minimum not Starting”
FULL DISCLOSURE: Sue Woltanski, an elected school board member from Monroe County is a co-founder of Accountabaloney and the primary author of this piece. She attended the FSBA/FADSS Annual Joint Conference mentioned here but was not involved in the discussion between FADSS and FSBA to issue their joint statement.
On Thursday, December 5th, at 6:20PM, while attendees of their Annual Joint Conference were attending a reception on the eve before the end of the conference, a joint statement from the Florida Association of District School Superintendents (FADSS) and the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) was released to the press:
Both organizations are eager to work with the Governor to address the issue of teacher compensation. Sadly, their joint press release misrepresents the Governor’s own plan, spreads a false narrative and the mis-wording suggests the organizations are completely out of touch with the concerns of Florida’s teachers.
For the record, the Governor’s plan is to establish a MINIMUM salary increase for full-time classroom teachers to $47,500, NOT to “raise the minimum STARTING teacher salary to $47,500.”
Establishing MINIMUM salary for teachers, giving substantial raises to more than 101,000 teachers (unfortunately, ignoring the salary needs of large numbers of Florida’s most veteran teachers). Establishing a minimum STARTING salary, would offer new teachers substantially MORE money than the 101,000 established teachers currently earning less than $47,000. Words matter. Since October 7, 2019, when the Governor first announced his plan, raising starting teacher salary (alone) was NOT part of his proposal.
Unfortunately, since October 7th, multiple press reports have misrepresented the Governor’s proposal, referring the starting rather than minimum salary. Likely, this confusion is a result of the Governor’s assertion that “raising the minimum salary to $47,500 will rank Florida 2nd in the nation for starting teacher pay,” which (although true) appears to have led reporters to focus on starting salary in their headlines and reporting (for example, see press coverage here, here and here). We are not aware of any major attempts by the governor’s office to correct this misinterpretation of his compensation scheme despite the amount of social media turmoil caused by the idea of only increasing starting teacher pay.
Again, words matter. The Governor’s office should have corrected the misconceptions.
The Governor’s current proposed plan is not perfect, even Senate Education Chair Manny Diaz Jr admits to as much: “I think if you ask everybody, in general, are they OK with paying teachers more, I think people will say the general answer is, ‘Yes.’ It’s the ‘how’ where it gets complicated.” Diaz filed SB1088 to help start the conversation:
“You [can] talk about categorical, you [can] talk about putting in the base student allocation. And then, do we say that everybody [must reach] a minimum $47,500 or do you try to equalize the money across the state and have it where you raise all boats and it brings the average salary higher?…
This is the very beginning of the conversation. But I think that we should give the Governor the opportunity of having the conversation in the Senate. I’m sure the House will do the same thing.”
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/312700-diaz-teacher-salary-proposal
It is well past time Florida has a conversation regarding teacher salaries. Such conversations should consider salary increases for ALL educators and include essential personnel, like bus drivers, librarians and school psychologists.
We applaud Senator Diaz for beginning the conversation in the Senate. FADSS and FSBA should be part of that conversation, of course, but first they should correct the language in their press release and vow to go to original sources and not press interpretations before they release statements of support for proposals they don’t seem to understand. Words matter.
For the record:
- In the Joint Press Release, FADSS President and Pasco County Superintendent Kurt Browning clearly understands the need to address compensation for “highly effective, seasoned teachers and other education professionals.” It is unfortunate that his quote was tacked on to a statement supporting a raise for “starting” teacher salary increases.
- On Saturday, December 7, 2019, FSBA pulled the original and posted an edited version of the Joint Statement (which refers to “minimum” and not “starting” salary) on their website. Hopefully, a full retraction will be forthcoming.