Lake may cut teacher bonuses at poorest sites

The president of Lake County’s teachers union is in a panic over what he calls a pay cut proposed for teachers at schools with high numbers of low-income students, but school district officials say a tight budget provides little opportunity to dole out more pay.

Lake Superintendent Diane Kornegay said during a recent contract negotiation session that she wants to reallocate the $1.6 million that funds $1,000 to $3,000 in annual bonuses for teachers in the district’s poorest schools. Teachers union head Stuart Klatte said the money is to encourage teachers to remain in “our more challenged schools and to teach our most vulnerable students.”

“The initial response was total disbelief,” he said. “A lot of these schools recognize this as a pay cut.”

Kornegay wants to use that money to pay for a one-time bonus of $350 or $500 for all teachers as a substitute for across-the-board pay raises for this school year. The move comes after the district — including schools with the most lowincome kids — made strides in the state’s most recent report card and administrators

brace for tighter funding as the Legislature shifts more cash to charter schools.

“We are trying to improve our financial position, and that means reducing spending in many areas across the board,” Lake schools spokeswoman Sherri Owens said in an email. “To help curb spending, we are looking at the possibility of a bonus for classroom teachers instead of a base pay increase this year.”

Nearly half of Lake’s 43 schools have a high population of low-income students. Teachers at those schools for the last three years who receive high ratings in their evaluations are eligible for the annual bonus, but no report was available to show how bonuses affected retention.

Other Florida school districts have tried giving extra cash for educators in tough teaching environments to encourage them to stay.

Before Broward County began offering a $2,500 bonus to teachers at some of its poorest schools in 2016, the district had a 30 percent vacancy for those positions. After the program it started, the gap dropped to 2 percent.

Orange and Seminole school districts also offer extra cash to keep teachers at schools with high concentrations of children from poor families. Orange County schools announced this spring that experienced teachers can receive $70,000 in additional pay over three years to teach at F-rated Carver Middle School.

“Where you have the greatest need, where students are struggling the most, you have to have to have the best instructional talent and that’s what we’re trying to balance at Carver,” Superintendent Barbara Jenkins said at the time.

Seminole County teachers can receive up to $800 extra a year if they teach at those schools and receive high ratings on their evaluations.

“This is our third year,” Seminole schools spokesman Michael Lawrence said. “We think it helps, but have no data to prove that.”

While research shows that extra pay can make a difference for teacher retention, it’s not the sole factor for keeping them at their jobs.

A study by the National Education Association found that support from school administrators along with an active parent community and adequate planning time have just as much weight as salary in teachers’ decisions to stay.

School districts have offered bonuses as high as $20,000 only to see half of the teachers they attracted leave within three years, the study reported.

“From what I understand, it’s ineffective,” Lake School Board member Bill Mathias said. “The problem is ... we move into this year with basically flat funding,” he said. “There was a projection that we were going to have [to] go into the reserves more.”

About 17 percent of teachers leave the profession within five years, according to 2015 data from the National Education Center for Statistics.

The rate is similar in Lake, Mathias said.

“It’s not for everyone, and some just leave the field,” he said. “I don’t think teachers’ main reason for choosing the job they have is money; I really don’t.”

But it helps, said Klatte, who also is asking for a 7 percent cost-of-living adjustment for all teachers. The bonuses are an effective incentive to keep teachers in schools with high numbers of students who receive free or reduced-price lunch, he said.

In the state’s latest report card, no Lake school received a D or F. Three Lake schools — Beverly Shores Elementary in Leesburg, Leesburg Elementary and Groveland Elementary — that were among the state’s 300 lowest-performing were moved off the list.

“It [the pay incentives] has worked,” Klatte said. “The keeping of our teachers has been successful.”

Contract negotiations for Lake teachers are ongoing and salaries are revisited every year.

“We want to encourage teachers to stay with the most difficult students in the most difficult schools,” Klatte said. “We’ll try to find a win-win situation for everybody.”