House budget makes play to increase veteran teacher pay
By Jacob Ogles
After years of offering incentives and salary hikes to new teachers, a House budget proposal prioritizes pay for experienced educators.
A proposed House budget released on Friday called for $100 million to support a pay increase for “veteran teachers.” The proposed language offers more details on why those teachers could benefit from it.
The budget provides funding to boost pay for any teacher with at least two years of full-time teaching experience in a Florida public school. The language would require each school district and charter school in Florida to use 0.53% of its base Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) funding amount for this purpose.
The House budget sets aside almost $11.3 billion in the FEFP budget, compared to about $8.43 billion in the Senate budget.
Under the budget, more than $1.25 billion in state appropriations for the FEFP would be provided “to maintain prior year salary increases provided to classroom teachers and other instructional personnel through the Teacher Salary Increase Allocation.”
The Florida Education Association, the state’s top teachers’ union, listed teacher salaries as its top priority ahead of this year’s legislation.
The organization pointed to data showing Florida has the second lowest average teacher salaries of any state. For the 2022-2023 school year, the average salary for teachers in the state was just over $53,000 a year, lower than any state but West Virginia. The national average, by comparison, is more than $69,500. California pays teachers an average salary greater than $95,000, the highest average in the nation.
In recent years, Gov. Ron DeSantis has focused on increasing starting salaries for teachers in an effort to address a teacher shortage.
However, unions have said the state has not boosted the budget enough to improve teacher pay across the board.
Jacob Ogles has covered politics in Florida since 2000 for regional outlets including SRQ Magazine in Sarasota, The News-Press in Fort Myers and The Daily Commercial in Leesburg. His work has appeared nationally in The Advocate, Wired and other publications. Events like SRQ’s Where The Votes Are workshops made Ogles one of Southwest Florida’s most respected political analysts, and outlets like WWSB ABC 7 and WSRQ Sarasota have featured his insights. He can be reached at jacobogles@hotmail.com.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/729126-house-budget-makes-play-to-increase-veteran-teacher-pay/