ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — The St. Johns County School District and the teachers’ union, the St. Johns Education Association, are starting over negotiations for teacher pay raises after teachers voted against the contract changes proposed to them in October.
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Action News Jax has been covering the back-and-forth between the school district and the union since negotiations started in August. These are the teacher pay raises that were recently turned down:
- Teachers with 1-5 years of experience: between $647 - $723
- Teachers with 6-10 years of experience: between $682 - $758
- Teachers with 11-15 years of experience: between $717 - $793
- Teachers with 16-20 years of experience: between $752 - $828
- Teachers with 21+ years of experience: between $927 - $1,003
The district and the union met on Monday for the first time since the pay raise proposals had been turned down, but the district came back to the table with the same compensation offer.
Some teachers walked out of the meeting room after the district didn’t budge.
“[We are] certainly mindful of all the tears, but this is where we’re at financially,” one of the district’s negotiations leaders told the union.
Some teachers tell Action News Jax they’re frustrated with how negotiations have gone, especially after learning some of their proposed insurance cost increases could be higher than the raises themselves. They’re worried about the chance that more teachers will leave the district if a higher raise can’t be worked out.
“There’s got to be something, there’s got to be something that changes,” one St. Johns County teacher, who wanted to stay anonymous, told Action News Jax, “They do lose teachers all the time. It just seems like the district is more interested in bringing people to the table and then not valuing them once they’re there.”
Action News Jax told you earlier this year when we learned teachers are already getting another set of raises baked into their salaries from a voter-approved property tax increase on last year’s ballot. Those raises go from $4,500 - $8,888, depending on how long a teacher has been with the district, but some teachers don’t feel like they’re seeing much more since many teachers are already paying the increased property tax.
The anonymous teacher we spoke with told us her property taxes went up between $300-$400 with the increase. She told us she’s been working with the district for longer than 10 years, and feels like the higher property tax alone is taking more than half of what her raise would be.
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“I work a part-time job and, thankfully, I could leave that part-time job and it’d be okay, but others [at my school] can’t,” she said.
The Florida Department of Education’s most recent teacher salary data shows that St. Johns County teachers are making around $52,500 per year, on average. Research from the United Way shows that, to make a living wage in St. Johns County, a single adult without kids would need to be making more than $55,000.
The anonymous teacher we spoke with hopes that more is done to make sure she and other teachers are making a wage they’re happy with.
“I feel like sometimes I sit there and I complain, but I’m not leaving either. I’m not walking out. But I applaud the teachers who make that decision,” she said.
We contacted the St. Johns County School District and, although nobody could interview with us for this story, the district has arranged an interview between us and its lead negotiator later this week.
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