The Pinellas County School Board concluded its pay negotiations Dec. 16 with the approval of raises for all employee groups who hadn\u2019t yet gotten increases in their paychecks this year.<\/p>\n
Groups now set to see their salaries rise with the mid-January pay cycle include educational support staff, district police, professional-technical workers and administrators.<\/p>\n
The action comes two months after the board completed contracts with teachers, bus drivers and nonbargaining, nonadministrative employees. These latest groups had not worked through all the terms of their agreements at that time. And the administration traditionally waits until all other deals are finished before getting its own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it should go without saying we\u2019re able to give these increases only because the citizens of Pinellas County passed overwhelmingly our referendum in the last election,\u201d board member Laura Hine said.<\/p>\n
In 2024, voters agreed to double the district\u2019s local-option property tax in support of teacher salaries. For the first time, the referendum also included pay supplements to aides and other district employees who aren\u2019t teachers.<\/p>\n
The result has been adding thousands of dollars to annual paychecks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the only reason,\u201d Hine said. \u201cIf you look at the increases in salaries that are given to K-12 education across the state, they don\u2019t come even close to this, less than 1%.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the current year, the Legislature increased its base student allocation by 0.78%. That\u2019s the money school districts can use flexibly for expenses such as pay.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers also authorized an extra $101 million in teacher raises statewide. This year, Gov. Ron DeSantis has proposed adding another $200 million to the mix.<\/p>\n
With the referendum revenue, district raises average between 3% and 13%, superintendent Kevin Hendrick told the board. \u201cIt\u2019s only possible because of the referendum.\u201d<\/p>\n
The added pay is retroactive to July 1, which was the first day of the district\u2019s fiscal year.<\/p>\n
The agreements approved Dec. 16 also include one-time $300 bonuses for full-time workers in all the employee classes except administrators. They also extend the district\u2019s revised health insurance plan to all employees, beginning Jan. 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope there is more we can do in the future,\u201d Hine said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pinellas County School Board concluded its pay negotiations Dec. 16 with the approval of raises for all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[113,3376,596,33993,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-89631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-pay-raise","10":"tag-pinellas-county","11":"tag-pinellas-county-school-board","12":"tag-st-pete","13":"tag-st-pete-headlines","14":"tag-st-pete-news","15":"tag-st-petersburg","16":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","17":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89631","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=89631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}