Education concerns play role in the Florida midterm election
By Kevin Fielder
For a long time, teachers have been concerned about their annual salaries.
In Florida in general and Palm Beach County in particular, the annual salary for teachers is considered too low. According to the Palm Beach County School District, the minimum salary for a public school teacher with a bachelor’s degree is $47,500 a year. The maximum a teacher can make is $90,029.
As Florida prepares for the Nov. 8 midterm election, education has become a focal point in the race between incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger.
“Florida is 48th in teacher pay — and we’re facing a massive teacher shortage,” Crist said in a tweet on Aug. 17. “Give our teachers a damn raise!”
In Palm Beach County, however, some public school teachers believe that neither DeSantis nor Crist is the answer to addressing some of the burning questions that face teachers daily.
One of those teachers is Robert Weiner, a government and politics teacher at Santaluces High School in Lantana, Fla.
Weiner believes that multiple problems exist inside his classroom. He says that the main problem in education is student engagement. But he also mentioned “lack of stability” and “teacher pay” as other concerns that currently exist.
While Weiner, a registered Democrat, does not believe that either candidate will do an effective job in solving these problems, he does believe that one candidate would make some of these issues worse.
“[DeSantis] will only make it worse,” said Weiner.
Although Weiner believes that Crist would not change some of the problems that exist, he does feel like Crist would be the better option.
“When left between the choice of suffering and not suffering as much,” Weiner said. “Not worse is better than worse.”
Dorothy Schroader, an English teacher at Santaluces, echoes many of the same problems in education as Weiner.
Schroader believes that the biggest problem in education, especially at Santaluces, is funding. Whether it’s the lack of teachers for full classrooms or teacher pay, which she says are both problems, she believes there isn’t enough money for schools.
“Particularly in my school, we don’t have enough teachers. There’s nobody showing up for work,” Schroader said. “These kids are hungry for anything.”
Schroader admits that she doesn’t know if there’s a solution to paying teachers more or addressing the funding issue but one fix that she believes could help solve some problems is to allocate funds for the problems that the school has.
In March 2022, DeSantis announced that he would be approving $800 million in pay raises for teachers. In 2020, he also signed a bill that raised the minimum teacher salary to $47,500 — the minimum in Palm Beach County. The bill rose teacher salaries by approximately $10,000 compared to the 2017–18 school year, where the minimum salary was around $37,600.
Despite some of these changes, Schroader believes that the problems in teacher pay still have not been addressed by legislation.
Schroader says that some teachers are leaving the classroom to take jobs outside of education because the pay is better. By doing so, she add, the education field is missing out on many quality teachers who leave to pursue other opportunities.
“You have awesome, solid teachers who are leaving the profession,” Schroader said.
Schroader, though, doesn’t believe these issues are exclusive to just teachers though.
Alongside teachers, guidance counselors in schools are facing some of the same problems. In one instance, Schroader said that a guidance counselor switched to teaching full-time because the work for the guidance counselor was not what was expected, with paperwork beginning a large part of the job.
Instead, Schroader said that teachers are expected to do more tasks to help their students.
“The average teacher has too many tasks,” Schroader said. “They’re expected to know their students’ problems.”
