ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 As students settle into routines in Orange County Public Schools, their teachers and school support staff are working without a new contract. The district remains deadlocked in contract talks with two unions. Many of them worry about how they will make ends meet under the district\u2019s current proposal.<\/p>\n
Bus drivers and bus monitors are some of the district\u2019s 7,500 support staff who clean the schools, serve food in cafeterias and work to keep schools running.<\/p>\n
Takeshia Griffin has been a bus monitor with OCPS for ten years. Griffin says she earns $27,000 a year and her budget is tight.<\/p>\n
\u201cGas prices are up. Food\u2019s going up and you wonder where you\u2019re gonna eat your next meal and how you\u2019re gonna have enough money to get gas to get back and forth to work,\u201d Griffin said.<\/p>\n
Ron Pollard is president of the Orange Education Support Professionals Association (OESPA), the union representing support staff. Pollard says many of them earn $25,000 to $30,000 a year, and they are struggling to pay their bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cRental rates are so high right now in this area,\u201d Pollard said. \u201cThey\u2019re really stressing people out, and we\u2019re losing employees daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pollard adds that with low salaries, many OESPA members cannot afford to add spouses or children to their coverage, and he says many of those workers are single mothers. He has an appeal to the OCPS school board.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou consider that you have people, employees. They\u2019re not numbers. They are not graphs on a PowerPoint presentation,\u201d Pollard said.<\/p>\n
Scott Howat is the OCPS Chief Communications Officer. He says that the support staff workers are vital to the district\u2019s operations. Howat explains the district is offering support workers a 2.5% pay raise and a zero-cost annual premium plan for employees if they are only covering themselves. He says 18% of OESPA workers cover family members.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could opt to go to a zero-cost premium plan and pair that with PeopleOne, which provide preventative care, sick care, also prescriptions, up to 200 prescriptions, for no cost,\u201d Howatt said.<\/p>\n
District officials say they must change the healthcare plan they offer or face a $145 million shortfall this year in their healthcare trust fund that pays claims. They say that the deficit could grow next year, too.<\/p>\n
Griffin says she will try to press on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the job and I love working with kids and I love working with ESE kids, but they just need to have a better rate,\u201d Griffin said.<\/p>\n
The school district, the teachers and support workers unions are waiting for a special magistrate to make recommendations on a new contract to try to break the impasse.<\/p>\n
They expect the recommendation sometime next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 As students settle into routines in Orange County Public Schools, their teachers and school support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4996,9995,113,1337,115,139,141,140,835],"class_list":["post-377289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-education","tag-app-latest-education-stories","tag-education","tag-keith-landry","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377289","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=377289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}