ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – A mediator brought in to help settle a pay dispute between St. Johns County teachers and the school district has sided with teachers seeking a raise.
“The District’s teachers have achieved excellent learning results and have thereby earned the pay increases they seek,” special magistrate Mark Lurie said in recommending the pay raises proposed by the St. Johns Education Association (SJEA), the district’s teachers union.
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The school district has been one of the top-performing school districts in the state for years.
The two sides had been at odds over teacher raises and agreed to bring in an outside mediator after negotiations between the teachers union and the district stalled because teachers said the raise that the district was offering wasn’t enough. The district’s final offer was rejected by 77% of teachers last year who said it didn’t increase the pay enough for veteran teachers, especially in a county with a high cost of living.
“The 2,600 teachers of the St. Johns School District are, on average, the most senior of any Florida school district and have produced some of the best student performance results in the state,” Lurie wrote in his decision handed down May 4.
The union argued its members’ annual income is not comparable to that of teachers in nearby and similarly-sized districts and that the district has the funds with which to pay the increases they want.
“SJEA put forth the argument that our district can afford to pay teachers more, and our case has been validated by an objective third party. I know our school board members will do the right thing and accept the magistrate’s recommendation. Our teachers have earned it,” SJEA President Michelle Dillon told News4JAX.
Under the proposal backed by the magistrate, the starting teacher salary would increase by $1,142 to $48,642 and teachers rated effective and highly effective for the year would get a $1,522 and $2,029 raise, respectively.
MORE: In historic first, St. Johns County teachers vote down pay raise because it wasn’t enough
In his conclusion, the special magistrate noted that Florida is ranked near the bottom in the nation’s per-student spending for grade schools and the growth experienced by St. Johns School District and other fast-growing districts in Florida has “exacerbated the difficulties caused by that underfunding.”
To pay for the raises, the special magistrate said the district will have to dip into its unrestricted fund balance but the decision to do so “will not materially alter the District’s financial condition; not nearly as much as will the funding decisions made in Tallahassee.”
“While the district cannot reverse bad legislation that has led to salary compression, they can and should prioritize instructional salaries to recruit and retain teachers in our part of the state,” SJEA lead negotiator Justin Vogel told News4JAX.
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After the decision, the district and the union have 20 days to either approve or deny the magistrate’s proposed resolution.
Any pay raise would first have to be approved by the school board before taking effect and would be applied to the current school year, which would give the teachers back pay. But it’s possible the school board could reject the magistrate’s ruling.
