Teacher Retention & Recruitment

Florida veteran teachers are leaving the education profession in droves. Low salary is at the top of their reasons why. While new teacher salaries have slowly increased, veteran teacher pay continues to lag behind. Lagging average teacher salaries demoralize veteran teachers who find themselves working side by side novice teachers with significantly less years of experience, but very little difference in pay.  Kids are left without teachers for core subjects such as math and science.  Their education and instruction suffer with teacher vacancies remaining unfilled for months at a time.  

Various credible sources* cite average teacher salary ranking at 46th in the nation.  

While legislators continue to muddle through reems of numbers that the average voter finds confusing, the 30,000-foot view is as follows:

Florida’s education budget has just allotted up to 4 billion taxpayer dollars * towards subsidizing vouchers for private schools, which traditionally operate with little oversight and accountability.*

This petition calls for re-allocation of these funds.  Instead of siphoning billions of taxpayer dollars from public schools to private schools, these funds should go to increasing average teacher and supporting personnel salary and bringing Florida’s ranking into the top 10 in the nation, while addressing the state’s critical teacher shortage. Sign TODAY!