![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Leon-High-Picture-1024x463.png\")
Leon County High School exterior. (Shayla Jones\/The FAMUAN)<\/p>\nLeon County High School exterior. (Shayla Jones\/The FAMUAN)<\/p>\n
The Leon County teachers\u2019 association is engaged in ongoing negotiations with the school board, pushing for higher wages.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Teaching has been an\u00a0overlooked\u00a0profession for decades,\u00a0challenging\u00a0entry-level\u00a0and seasoned\u00a0teachers to\u00a0go\u00a0above and beyond\u00a0without the proper compensation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tamerah Williams, a second-grade teacher for Leon County Schools, shares how many teachers find themselves struggling with intense workloads and pay that often\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are getting burned out, but their pay is not equally how burned out they are,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s\u00a0a lot of young teachers going in, but they are also coming out just as fast. Our generation\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0staying in a place where\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0unhappy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The National Education Association\u00a0ranked\u00a0Florida No. 50 in average teacher salary nationwide.\u00a0These\u00a0concerns have been echoed\u00a0in meetings with Leon County Schools\u00a0officials, yet\u00a0continue\u00a0to widen\u00a0the gap\u00a0between\u00a0the cost of living and the demand for teaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joyous Booker oversees and helps all first- through third-year teachers in the district understand their contracts and interprets her understanding of negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTeachers want more money,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want more respect,\u00a0all of\u00a0the above. With negotiations, it feels like the district\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0want to move with providing us more funds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Booker first heard of the county\u2019s proposal, which would equal about a $40-a-month increase to teachers\u2019 salaries, she was agitated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was upset,\u201d she said. \u201cAs educators, we do a lot. My contract ends at 3:15 as an elementary school teacher\u00a0\u2026 most days, I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0leave work until almost 5 o\u2019clock. The other things we\u00a0have to\u00a0do [besides teaching, such as] putting in grades, grading papers, making phone calls to parents, and sending emails are things we\u00a0have to\u00a0find time for. Sometimes we can get it done inside of our contract hours, but most times we\u00a0don\u2019t, and when I say most times,\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0talking about 98 percent of the time we do not have time to do those things, and those are basic education duties.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Booker\u00a0describes what the teachers\u2019 association is fighting for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRespect, pay, and responsibilities\u2014that\u2019s always our three major points,\u201d she said. \u201cWe deal with a lot of in-class behavior, and the district has created this discipline matrix\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0pretty vague. It outlines the action and the consequences, but then says a student may receive one to three days of in-school suspension or three to five. It\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0align with the extremities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Booker\u00a0conveys what the community can do to support the association.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need everyone to rally together,\u201d she said. \u201cWe really need everyone to have conversations with educators and see what educators are doing [outside and within] those contract hours. For example, we started \u2018Work the Contract,\u2019 where teachers create a list of everything they\u00a0have to\u00a0do after 3:15 or before 7:45 [which is outside of contract hours for elementary school teachers].\u00a0So\u00a0the district understands that what you all are paying us doesn\u2019t constitute the amount of work that we have to do.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0not saying the contract needs to be extended to 6 o\u2019clock at night, but\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0saying pay us our worth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Booker lays out\u00a0what\u2019s\u00a0next for the association.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, we\u2019re going to impasse,\u201d she said. \u201cA third-party judge will come in and look at all the information that LCTA (Leon County Teachers Association) has and all of the information that Leon County School District has, and they will make a ruling on what they see fit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leon County High School exterior. (Shayla Jones\/The FAMUAN) The Leon County teachers\u2019 association is engaged in ongoing negotiations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-140295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-tallahassee","9":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","10":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}