Lawsuit: Tax money withheld from awards
Suit argues state wrongly withheld taxes from ‘best and brightest’ program
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Tallahassee argues Florida wrongly withheld some taxes from teacher bonuses awarded under its controversial “best and brightest” program, shortchanging instructors.
The lawsuit seeks class action status for thousands of Florida’s public school teachers but was filed on behalf of a man who’d taught at an Orange County elementary school and won the bonuses the past two years.
Chris Alianiello lost $426.38 from his $6,000 bonus the first year and $511.66 from his $7,200 bonus last year, according to Ryan Morgan, the attorney with Morgan & Morgan who is representing him.
“To me, it did not make sense at all,” Alianiello said at a news conference in Orlando held to announce the lawsuit, which was filed in circuit court in Leon
County.
Morgan said the law authorizing bonuses under Florida’s Best and Brightest Teacher Scholarship Program specified the amounts to be paid in the spring of 2018 and 2019 and did not provide “wiggle room.”
But the Florida Department of Education instructed school districts to subtract the “employer portion of applicable payroll taxes and mandatory payroll expenses,” improperly reducing the payouts to teachers, the lawsuit said.
That violated the “direct and unambiguous law,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed against the department.
The lawsuit wants a court to order the state to pay back the money that was withheld, an amount that could top $25 million, Morgan said.
The reduction was unfair to already underpaid teachers and, he added, “We believe this to be illegal.”
The department does not comment on pending litigation, a spokeswoman said.
The bonus program has been mired in controversy since it was created in 2015, because it partly tied the awards to teachers’ ACT or SAT scores, requiring they had marks in the top 20 percent back when they applied to college in order to earn the extra money.
Advocates said the program would help attract bright college students into the teaching profession, but many teachers argued it made no sense to give bonuses based on exams they took in high school. They also disliked that brand-new teachers, who’d yet to prove themselves in the classroom, could earn money solely by showing they had top ACT or SAT scores. Experienced teachers needed the test scores and a “highly effective” rating.
This summer, the state is settling a lawsuit with the Florida Education Association, which the teachers union filed two years ago on behalf of black and Hispanic teachers it said were discriminated against because of the “best and brightest” program’s test-score ties. Black and Hispanic teenagers, historically, have scored lower on those tests than white classmates.
The Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis this year authorized $15.5 million to settle the teachers union lawsuit, with the money to go to black and Hispanic teachers who otherwise qualified for the award but didn’t have the needed scores.
State leaders also deleted the provision of the law that relied on the ACT or the SAT. But the bonuses will now be tied in part to the complicated A-to-F school grade calculations — prompting new complaints from some teachers.
Alianiello, who taught at Union Park Elementary School in east Orange, was among more than 11,200 teachers who earned the “best and brightest” bonuses this year and among more than 9,200 who won
it last year.
Alianiello said he got the bonus as a first-year teacher in 2018 because of his top college admissions test scores and won it again the next year after he also was rated “highly effective.”
Still, he said he shares many of his colleagues dislike of the program.
“Even though I qualified for it, I would have voted it down,” he said.
After two years of teaching, Alianiello said he was not asked to return to Union Park and has decided not to continue teaching. But before
he knew he wouldn’t be offered another contract at that school, he said he had already contacted Morgan & Morgan about what he viewed as a bonus that offered less than promised, so the lawsuit is not related to his employment status.
Alianiello said he was not told why he was not re-hired at the school.
The education association said it applauded the new lawsuit and viewed it as further proof that “bonus schemes do not work.”
Like many teachers, the union has pushed the state to provide more money to school districts for higher teacher salaries, not bonuses which are provided only for
a year.
The “best and brightest” program, it said in a statement, “has failed completely in the goal of recruiting and retaining,” with Alianiello a case in point.
He earned bonuses two years in a row but then was out of a job, the union noted. “Let this sink in: He was awarded more than $13,000 in bonuses for his exemplary teaching performance and then was asked to leave without even being given a reason why. It’s hard to think of a worse way to recruit and retain teachers than through the Best and Brightest program. ”