The School District of Lee County is offering starting teachers $4,000 more next year.
As they negotiate with the local teachers’ union, the base salary isn’t the only issue the two cannot agree on.
After starting this year with more than 300 vacancies, director of employee relations Ron Iarussi said the school district wants to give teachers some extra money to work at high-need schools.
“These are the schools that need the most help and these are the areas that we've had vacancies in that we need to incentivize teachers to be in there,” Iarussi said.
That’s why they are offering bilingual and subject-specific teachers an extra $7,500 at the lowest-scoring schools.
Other teachers at those schools will earn an extra $5,000.
Bilingual and subject-specific teachers at the second-highest risk schools would get an extra $5,000 as well.
President of the Teacher’s Association of Lee County Kevin Daly said that’s demoralizing for teachers who do not fall into those categories.
“The fourth grade reading teacher that's in that tested subject also benefits from our great third grade reading teacher, a second grade teacher, and a first grade teacher,” Daly said.
That’s why the union asked for an incentive of $1,500 a year across the board, plus an additional raise based on experience.
“We are consistently $8 or $9,000 behind Collier County,” Daly said. “The counties around us are finding a way to dedicate the resources necessary to keep and recruit talent to their districts.”
The district said they want to try something new to fix the ongoing issue with filling openings.
“We're still seeing vacancies, even though we've made an attempt to increase starting salaries to increase, you know, the yearly compensation for all of our teachers,” Iarussi said. “I understand what their goal is to get everything on the table. But you know, what we have to consider is that we are not looking at any increases from the state, and we haven't had increases from the state, really, significant increases over the past three years."
The meeting on Monday was the last bargaining session until the fall.
The teacher’s association said their educators deserve a break from negotiations during the summer.
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