SerpApi.Org
The third round of negotiations between the Pinellas Classrooms Teachers Association and the Pinellas County school district honed in on one thing: affordability.
At Tuesday’s meeting, negotiators for the association requested a 1% raise that would come from district funds and pleaded for revisions to the healthcare plan previously presented. Negotiators say that if teachers don’t make more money this year, they are willing to reach an impasse with the district.
Negotiations were led by association president Tracey McConnell and Michael Vigue, the chief human resources officer for the district.
The district’s current offer on raises relies on the referendum tax voters increased in 2024 and state funds. The referendum tax is expected to bring an additional $1,824 per teacher this year for a total of $12,905 each. Money from the state will bring $1,124 to teachers with 10 or more years experience in Florida classrooms.
The district is offering from their funds a nonrecurring payment of about $406 per teacher.
Combined, the raises offered by the district would be $3,354 on average for teachers with 10 or more years, averaging 6.17%. For those with fewer than 10 years, it would be $2,230 on average, or a 4.55% average increase according to a document presented to the teachers association by school board officials.
Negotiators don’t see the referendum tax as a raise.
“We want the district to recognize the referendum comes from the voters. The voters are helping teachers while the state is letting them down,” McConnell said.
The teachers association is requesting an across the board 1% raise from the district to accompany the referendum tax and state mandated funds.
The raise would help teachers meet increased housing, food and inflation costs, McConnell said.
Healthcare prices is also top of mind for teachers. Insurance deductibles, out of pocket maximum payments, copays and premiums are poised to go up, according to information shared with district employees.
Urgent care copays would double and deductibles for individuals and families would at a minimum increase by $1,500, as outlined in the plan presented by the district.
According to negotiators, the health insurance options provided would dissolve any possibility of teachers’ making more money than they made last year even with referendum, state and district funds.
“People get sick working in schools. You get exposed to all kinds of germs from kids... people should be able to go to the doctor without having it cost them half their paycheck,” McConnell said.
The proposed plan is not set in stone, and a meeting to discuss healthcare prices is scheduled for today.
A complication for negotiations is the amount of money the state is sending to districts, as well as stringent regulation regarding how the money can be spent.
“We know that the district is really constrained with their funding because the state has put the constraints on them,” said Janet Cunningham, a science and special education teacher at Calvin Hunsinger School in Clearwater.
“Even though we have historic education funding... public schools have been starved of money and since the major expense of public schools are the employees, that puts teachers where they are now, which is why teachers have been saying for many years that their salaries are not keeping pace,” Cunningham said.
Florida is 50th in the nation when it comes to average teacher salary, according to the National Education Association.
“Public schools could always utilize more money,” Vigue said when asked if the district feels the state could have distributed more money. “We’re here to support public schools. We’re also going to work within the budget that we allocated.”
If the district and teachers association are unable to negotiate a contract ahead of the July 31 deadline they will reach impasse. Impasse is a deadlock in negotiations between workers and employers. Though this has not occurred since 2009, association members and officials are saying that this year, impasse is not an impossibility.
If an impasse is reached, Florida’s Public Employees Relations Commission will appoint a special magistrate who will make recommendations on disputed contract items.
If those recommendations are not approved by both parties, it will head to the school board which will make a final ruling on any remaining disputes.
For McConnell, impasse comes down to teachers having more money in their pocket this year than last.
“I can’t sign off on something that leaves teachers in the red,” she said. “If we’re in the red, We’re going to wind up going to impasse.”
McConnell said healthcare costs are a large part of whether or not teachers will end up in the red.
“Teachers that are telling me that they have to come off of insulin pumps because they can’t afford the care,” she said. “We are not going to be any worse off than what we are now if we wind up going to impasse.”
Eric McClendon, a special education teacher at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg and association member, thinks impasse could be a lucrative strategic gamble.
“The impasse could help us in that it would inform everyone in the public about what’s going on because you have sessions that the public is allowed to view,” he said. “The issue that I do have with impasse is that it is a gamble because you don’t know if the person that’s going to make a decision is going to positively impact us or negatively impact us.”
