{"id":248779,"date":"2026-04-27T21:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/248779\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:52:09","slug":"teachers-union-says-florida-is-failing-public-school-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/248779\/","title":{"rendered":"Teachers’ union says Florida is failing public school teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida Education Association (FEA<\/a>) is accusing Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> of failing public schools and not investing enough to support teachers\u2019 salaries.<\/p>\n

FEA, Florida\u2019s largest teachers\u2019 union representing more than 120,000 members, sent out a news release citing the latest study by the National Education Association (NEA<\/a>) showing that Florida teachers are among the lowest paid in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe latest data shows that while average teacher pay in Florida rose to $56,663 in the 2025-26 school year (a 3.3% increase from the year before), it hasn\u2019t come close to keeping pace with inflation. Over the last decade, the average teacher salary actually fell 12.4%, when adjusted for inflation while Florida\u2019s average teacher salary rankings have fallen from 47th to almost dead last in the nation,\u201d the FEA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeanwhile, education staff professionals, who are essential to school operations, are even worse off, earning just $34,645 on average \u2014 well below Florida\u2019s living wage of $63,853<\/a> for a family of one adult and one child to have a modest but adequate standard of living.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s 2026-27 budget is still unfinished. In December, DeSantis proposed spending $1.56 billion on teacher raises in the budget.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe put our money where our mouth is. We did record funding for teacher pay increases for Florida. And this proposal today is the biggest by far,\u201d DeSantis said at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That did not impress the FEA, which has often been at odds with DeSantis\u2019 administration as the two sides take public shots at each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the Governor\u2019s talk of \u2018historic investment\u2019 in teacher salaries, when adjusted for inflation, the average teacher salary in Florida fell by more than $3,000 during Gov. DeSantis\u2019 two terms,\u201d the FEA said in the news release.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, that pattern shows no signs of changing: Florida has fallen to 41st in per-student spending<\/a> this year, and both the Governor\u2019s and the Legislature\u2019s proposed budgets<\/a> keep per-student spending flat, seemingly failing to deliver meaningful raises for teachers, and allowing Florida\u2019s unaccountable voucher program to drain an estimated $4.5 billion from public school funding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida Education Association (FEA) is accusing Gov. Ron DeSantis of failing public schools and not investing enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,15578,30,29,109062,16572,412,18903],"class_list":["post-248779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-education-association","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-national-education-association","tag-public-schools","tag-ron-desantis","tag-teacher-pay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248779","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=248779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}