Leon County Schools and the Leon Classroom Teachers’ Association restarted contract negotiations this summer, discussing salary, benefits and working conditions.
WATCH FULL REPORT BELOW:
LCS, LCTA restart contract talks with salary and benefits on the agenda
A key issue in this year’s talks is how to distribute Florida’s $200 million in new funding for teacher salary increases funding LCTAs President Scott Mazur says won’t reach everyone.
“In terms of actions, it’s not meeting the mark. You don’t stay 50th ranked in teacher salary by accident,” Mazur said.
The state funding is limited to teachers with 10 or more years of teaching experience, leaving a significant portion of the workforce without a raise.
“There’s only 55-percent of the teachers that are actually captured by this teacher salary increase allocation, which means 45 percent of our teachers almost half aren’t a part of this raise,” Mazur said.
The LCTA is also asking the district to examine how other counties are able to build salary increases into their budgets before the school year starts.
“What we’re asking the district to do is, you know, in a collaborative way this is not a finger pointing or anything like that but to look at all of the different avenues by which they could make a budget that meets the needs of the people that are serving the students,” Mazur said.
Leon County Schools issued a statement saying they’ve begun negotiating and will continue to work together this year. The renewed talks follow last year’s impasse which didn’t reach a full resolution until March.
The district is also facing roughly $7.8 million in cuts to make up for budget shortfalls.
A clearer proposed budget is expected later this month.
LCTA and Leon County Schools have two more negotiating sessions scheduled, with the next one set for Thursday.
***This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.***
Want to see more local news? Visit the WTXL ABC 27 Website.
Stay in touch with us anywhere, anytime.