TAMPA, Fla. – Hillsborough County Public Schools announced Wednesday it has reached a tentative agreement with the teachers' union for the upcoming school year.
The deal would give teachers pay raises, bonuses, a reduction in childcare costs and other benefits.
"{It was} a long negotiation cycle, obviously, longer than any of us would've wanted," Superintendent Jeff Eakins said. "We know there were dynamics that were in play throughout this entire process, but I just want to take them and thank the negotiating teams working collaboratively along the way."
It's not the full raise teachers hoped for, but Brittni Wegmann says it’s better than nothing.
“There was nothing. There was no answer, no movement. It was clear that nothing was going to happen,”
The state gave the school district only $100,000 more to work with last year. It doesn’t add to much when you break it down per student.
“Our state has funded us an extra 47 cents per child this year and so it’s a real struggle,” said Stephanie Baxter-Jenkins with the Teachers Union
The Hillsborough County School Board must vote on the agreement before it can take effect. The Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association (HCTA) must agree to it too.
Teachers would receive about a $4,000 raise as part of the agreement.
Teacher's aides and other instructional support staff would receive a 6.25 percent pay raise and a one-time bonus of $150.
Experienced teachers at the top of the pay scale would receive a one-time payment of up to 2 percent of their salary, according to a release from the district.
At a news conference Wednesday, Eakins urged Florida lawmakers to provide more funding for districts across the state. Eakins said he'd continue to raise awareness "to end underfunding of education in the state of Florida."
"You can't put districts in this position every single year to continue to try to take two pennies and to try to create millions of dollars on behalf of our great employees, and the resources that our students need to be workforce ready and college ready," Eakins said. "We can't continue to do that in the state of Florida.
Wegmann agrees. “A lot of this is coming from Tallahassee. We need people there who are going to understand what’s going on in our school district and vote for full funding. The security of school, that’s important, that needs to happen but when it’s at the detriment of having to choose between an air conditioning in a school or paying employees fairly, that’s an impossible decision.”
When it comes to paying for school security, Hillsborough County’s budget allocates for a school resource officer in every middle and high school. This district will use an additional $6 million from the “safe schools allocation” to hire and train more than hundreds of officers who will be placed in elementary schools in the fall.
The district has cut 800 positions since January, Eakins said.
In March, Eakins was among several Tampa Bay-area superintendents to express concerns over the state education budget's impact on students, teachers and staff.
Eakins spoke at Wednesday's news conference along with HCTA executive director Stephanie Baxter-Jenkins and HCTA president Jean Clements.
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