TEACHER UNION REJECTS RAISE
County group’s leader calls initial proposal ‘entirely unacceptable.’
Palm Beach County’s public school leaders offered teachers a 2.4 percent average pay raise during contract negotiations Tuesday, a proposal that the county teachers union rejected as “unacceptable.”
The School District’s first salary proposal of the year called for public school teachers rated “highly effective” to receive $1,200 raises this year, while teachers rated “effective” would receive $975 raises.
About 60 percent of the county’s current teachers are expected to be rated highly effective this year, with most of the rest rated effective.
New teachers and a handful of teachers with lower ratings would receive a $325 cost-of-living increase.
Teachers union President Justin Katz called the proposal “entirely unacceptable,” and district leaders called a union counterproposal to raise teacher pay by an average
of 5.8 percent “too pricey.”
Negotiators are scheduled to resume talks on Dec. 19, but the School District’s chief financial officer said that the two sides are still “worlds apart,” raising the prospect of prolonged negotiations.
The result of the contract talks will determine the pay of the School District’s roughly 12,000 teachers. The contract does not affect the pay of charter school teachers.
The district’s initial offer is smaller than the 3 percent average salary hike agreed to last year, which granted highly effective teachers $1,715 raises and effective teachers $1,365 raises.
District officials blamed the lower proposal on what they called a disappointingly low financing increase from state lawmakers, one that gave the School District a 2.3 percent increase in state dollars this year while setting aside millions of dollars for teacher bonuses, which will be paid directly by the state.
After the district’s offer, union officials countered with a proposal that would give highly effective teachers $2,400 pay boosts and effective teachers $1,925. Other teachers would receive $500 costof-living hikes.
The union’s proposal also would give teachers extra money based on their years of service, an attempt to undo a gradual flattening of the pay scale that has left many experienced teachers making only a few thousand dollars more than rookies.