St. Johns County teachers are making more, but is it enough?

As the school years begins, teachers in St. Johns County are making more than they did last year. But the head of the teacher’s union wonders if it will be enough to keep teachers in classrooms.

Last November, St. Johns County voters approved a measure that raised property taxes to provide teachers with higher salaries. The St. Johns County School District said the move was an effort to retain current teachers and make the district an even more attractive place to work.

After contract negotiations with the St. Johns Education Association, the teacher’s union, the school district settled on a series of supplements offered to teachers depending on educators’ years of experience. 

New teachers will still come in making a base salary of $48,642 as they have since 2022, but the supplement means a teacher with zero to four years of experience will receive an additional $4,500. That will bring their salary to approximately $53,000 before taxes. 

The salary supplement scales with years of experience too. A teacher with six to 10 years of experience will receive a $5,555 supplement, while teachers with 11 to 15 years of experience get $6,666. The increases continue all the way up to teachers with 21 years or more of experience, who receive $8,888 in addition to their base salary.

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St. Johns Education Association President Kate Dowdie says that giving a larger supplement to more-experienced teachers will help with salary compression that educators across the state have struggled with.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have previously worked to increase salaries for new teachers in an effort to combat statewide teacher shortages, but the same funding has not always been made available for longtime teachers, Dowdie says.

“There was a lot of unhappiness, because not only did suddenly your coworkers get a $6,000 raise and have zero experience,” she said, “but also you were told there’s no money to give you a raise because we have to, by state statute, put the majority of all money into this pot for brand new teachers.”

While the increases in take-home pay for St. Johns County’s teachers will be a boon, Dowdie said, the property tax increase that funds the salary supplements will have to be approved by voters again, or it will fund salaries for only the next four years.

“What I have to keep saying over and over again to people, especially my colleagues that work in the school district, is that this money has an expiration date on it,” Dowdie said. “We are very grateful for it. We are thrilled, but it cannot take the place of regular increases because, God forbid, in four years, the voters don’t vote to extend it another four years, you can’t have people going back to what they (made) in 2025.”

The school district has estimated that the voter-approved property tax will bring in just under $60 million in funding. 

Of that, 85% will fund salaries for employees including teachers and the district’s paraprofessionals like teacher’s aides. The remaining 15% will be spent on health and safety initiatives like hiring more nurses and school resource officers.

How it all stacks up

While the goal is to boost hiring and retention, St. Johns County still doesn’t pay as much as neighboring Duval County. 

A first-year teacher in Duval County begins their career making $56,430. That salary is made up of a $48,700 base salary, with a supplement of $7,730. Like in St. Johns County, the amount that a teacher receives as a supplement to their base salary increases along with the base salary.

There’s more to a teacher’s experience than just raw salary numbers, Dowdie says. The St. Johns County School District, for example, offers medical benefits that she believes trump nearby counties.

As for whether she thinks St. Johns County voters will vote to extend the tax that funds the latest round of pay increases, Dowdie said the union is hopeful. 

Still, she said funding at the local level is ultimately only a Band-Aid for a problem districts across the state are reckoning with.

“The union is always cautiously optimistic; however, our current Legislature and governor are not putting money into public education, and we can’t get blood from a turnip,” Dowdie said. “We need Tallahassee to make public schools a priority.”