The Leon County School Board unanimously approved a tentative contract agreement for a $5.12 million dollar salary raise for teachers during a meeting Tuesday night as it moved to bridge chronic wage gaps in teacher pay.
“I’m really excited about this offer,” Superintendent Rocky Hanna said. “We had the teachers come and talk about a 15-year teacher making the same as a beginning teacher and this deal does something about that.”
In an all-day bargaining session Friday, after 10 months of negotiating between the school district and the Leon Classroom Teachers Association, the multi-million-dollar budget for raises was agreed to by both sides to address salary compression.
Compression is when salaries don’t accurately reflect the experience and skills of longer-term workers, and employers are pressed to provide fair compensation, most times with an overwhelmed budget.
The agreement reached at the end of a seven-hour bargaining session Friday would give all teachers a raise of $575 a year and an additional $100 for each year of teaching experience.