Toro
Diamond Member
For the 2009-10 school year, average teacher salaries in Florida fell to No. 37 among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and estimates for 2010-11 show them falling to No. 47, according to a national report released this week.
Florida's average teacher salary last year was $46,708. The national average was $55,202.
The unfavorable ranking comes as state lawmakers prepare to make sweeping changes to how teachers are hired, fired, paid and evaluated. They may also require teachers to chip in up to 5 percent of their pay towards their pensions. ...
Florida teacher pay, which is set at the district level, has been stagnant for several years. It has dropped in rank as teachers in most other states continue to get small raises. ...
Compared to other states, Florida was No. 28 in 2006-07, No. 29 in 2007-08 and No. 34 in 2008-09, according to annual reports from the National Education Association.
Florida's estimated average teacher salary for 2010-11 ($6 lower than last year's average) puts it behind every state in the Southeast and ahead of only Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah. In the past, the finalized numbers did not change much from the estimates.
The reports do not include comparisons of beginning teacher pay or teacher benefits. They do not consider potentially mitigating factors such as state income taxes or variations in cost of living.
Both Ogletree and Simmons cited a recent Education Week report that put Florida's school system at No. 5 in the country, in part because Florida kids are making big academic gains on national tests.
Both said Florida teachers have been key to those gains. Both said there was a connection between pay and quality.
Florida teacher salaries headed to No. 47 in the nation - St. Petersburg Times
But the skinny bald guy running for President thinks that schools have too much money.
At a highly partisan tea party event Monday, Gov. Rick Scott unveiled his first budget proposal to make sweeping changes to state government by slashing billions in taxes and spending.
Scott proposed spending almost $66 billion $4.6 billion less than this year's budget. Scott also wants to eliminate 7 percent of the state's government jobs, which would mean about 6,700 state-worker layoffs. He wants even more cuts the following year.
Scott's proposal was cheered by conservative activists and businesses, but it provoked a lukewarm response from fellow Republicans in the state Capitol. Democrats, unions and state workers could barely contain their bitterness with Scott's calls to cut billions from schools, pensions and health programs. ...
State Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, noted the big cuts to education: $4.8 billion in the first year. She said that would hurt the state's children, its educational environment and the state's business climate.
"The No. 1 question businesses ask when they come here is how is the education system," Sobel said. "If you're cutting money at that level, you're not going to attract the kind of businesses that we want to have." ...
Scott is reducing per-pupil K-12 spending by $703 a roughly 10 percent reduction from current spending. But school boards say the governor's office has informed them that, because he's proposing to reduce taxpayer-backed pension costs, school boards can use the savings to boost spending.
Scott's budget team has told education groups that the per-student cut would be smaller about $300 if school districts used pension savings and the very type of federal stimulus money that Scott said was a type of accounting "gimmick." Scott, who said Thursday he would "keep the school budgets the same," backtracked on that pledge Monday, when he insisted that he wanted to keep the state's share of education spending the same.
Regardless, his budget cuts the state's share of K-12 school spending by $154 million overall.
BUT ...
... he wants to increase spending on his own staff!
Scott isn't shrinking all government services, though. He's increasing the small size of the staff of the Executive Office of the Governor, for instance.
Gov. Rick Scott unveils budget of deep cuts to spending, taxes - St. Petersburg Times
Well done, Governor. Education is over-rated anyways!