that it is facing a $23 million budget shortfall<\/a>. The money for raises will not come on the backs of taxpayers, something that helped the bills sail through committee after committee. <\/p>\nThe funding paths<\/p>\n
The legislation creates two paths for extracurricular administrators to see an increase in pay. The first is a request through a superintendent to pay them above what their current union-negotiated supplement is, thus becoming an administrative-type role. Should districts do that with an extracurricular leader like a coach, that salary can\u2019t exceed what the highest-paid administrator in the district earns. <\/p>\n
The second and more likely avenue is pay through booster clubs. Smaller districts already use that option to pay coaches more, but larger ones in the News4JAX coverage region do not allow that. Coaches at districts in places like Duval and St. Johns counties have said that receiving extra pay through a booster club would be the easiest solution.<\/p>\n
Brian Allen, Head Football Coach at Columbia High School, believes that some districts will be affected in different ways because of this bill. He said in his case, his principal doesn\u2019t have the ability to hire another administrator.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had the situation at our school that our principal wasn\u2019t allowed to hire another administrator when the district is going through what they\u2019re going through. So he\u2019s having to get it done with a minimum amount of administrators on campus. So they\u2019re definitely not going to go and say, okay, we\u2019re going to give a head coach an administrative pay. So for me and probably many others that are across the state, that\u2019s something that\u2019s not gonna be the same for some school districts that will do it without the blink of an eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
The transfer element<\/p>\n
The other significant portion of the bill is the much-needed assist with the rampant issue of transferring in Florida. FHSAA executive director Craig Damon detailed the struggles the organization faces in trying to police the systemic issues created by the state\u2019s controlled open enrollment law. <\/p>\n
The eligibility and transfer portion of the bill stand to be the biggest immediate impact. Parents have been able to take advantage of loose transfer rules that allow non-traditional students like those in homeschool or virtual school to essentially have endless opportunities to move schools for athletic reasons. <\/p>\n
Damon has praised the open-enrollment school choice option, but said it\u2019s been taken advantage of for athletic reasons. Students and parents have been able to exploit transfer policy and bounce from school to school simply for athletic purposes. The bill slaps restrictions on the ability to transfer freely and limits a student-athlete\u2019s choice to school hop multiple times a year for sports purposes. When Damon spoke in front of a Senate committee earlier this year, he detailed a football player who changed teams in the playoffs after his original team was eliminated, and singled that out as the abuse the FHSAA needed help to curb.<\/p>\n
Students \u2013 identified in the bill as home education, charter school, private school, Florida Virtual School, alternative school, or traditional public school \u2013 would be limited to sports at one school per year unless unique circumstances.<\/p>\n
Those include dependents of military members who relocate, a change in residence due to court-ordered custody situations or a foster-care-type move. <\/p>\n
Additional situations would require approval from the executive director of the governing body of high school sports. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 After years of News4JAX reporting on Florida coaching pay issues, Gov. Ron DeSantis is visiting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,100,29,2625,99,412,1631,16308],"class_list":["post-280888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-legislature","tag-florida-news","tag-high-school","tag-politics","tag-ron-desantis","tag-sports4jax","tag-varsity-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280888","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=280888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}