The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) voted to ratify a 1.3% teacher salary raise during a special meeting on Thursday, ending over a year of negotiations with the Alachua County Education Association (ACEA).
With Board Members Janine Plavac absent from the meeting and Tina Certain attending via Zoom, the amendment passed with a 4-0 roll call vote following 88% of ACEA union members ratifying it with 1,153 yes votes and 158 no votes on Wednesday.
The agreement to amend the 2024-2027 collective bargaining agreement for instructional personnel and the 2024-2025 compensation package for instructional personnel also reinstated weekly early release Wednesdays at the district’s elementary, center and K-8 schools.
Staff signed two memorandums of understanding following the meeting to notify parents of early release Wednesdays beginning on May 7. The new raises are retroactive to July 1, 2024, or to the day an employee began working during the school year, and are expected to hit payrolls May 15.
“Negotiations always have to progress or else you’re not negotiating in good faith,” ACEA president Carmen Ward said. “We’re very gratified that we retained our early release Wednesdays. That’s the real good, and that this will be a raise that occurs in the school year.”
In December 2023, the SBAC and ACEA tentatively agreed to a 3.5% salary increase and step increases for ACPS teachers and support staff, one year after implementing a $10.5 million salary package deal—ACPS’s largest. The SBAC approved the increase in January 2024, following 2,230 yes votes from ACEA teachers to 31 no votes.
After 12 negotiation meetings and ACEA’s relinquishment of weekly early release Wednesdays to a monthly frequency, the union declared an impasse last September over ACPS’s insistence on a 1.6% raise instead of the union’s original 5% pitch or the 3.5% agreement.
Although teachers voted down the 1.6% raise in January, they agreed to a 1.3% deal reached by SBAC and ACEA last week.
“It’s been a long process for everyone,” ACPS superintendent Kamela Patton said. “It was the first time I think we hadn’t ratified something, so it was a very unusual time. But I want to say thank you for everybody being able to cross over that bridge together.”
Board Chair Sarah Rockwell said school district budgets across Florida are in a tenuous period between school choice and the uncertainty of federal funding. She said she finds hope for the future in Patton and the board’s commitment to making corrections on past mistakes with more efficient operations to “right this ship.”
“This is not the salary offer I wish we could give,” she said. “I apologize for what my role has been in some poor decision making…but again, I’m very pleased that we’ve reached an agreement and I hope that we can move forward for next year with a fresh slate.”
ACPS spokesperson Jackie Johnson said district staff worked to be transparent with its members about its financial difficulties by presenting them with videos, graphs and presentations of budget numbers, and this likely influenced the votes on the raises.
She said that although the state was supposed to present the district with their general fund budget in January, which supplies 70-80% of raises, they didn’t find out until March that they would have only $6.5 million to use.
“This is a tough year,” Johnson said. “We did our best to share that information with ACEA and with our teachers and staff. I think that’s probably reflected in the results of the vote.”
Ward said now that these negotiations are finalized, she hopes to start working on the next ones for the 2025-26 school year with a goal of improving collaboration between ACEA and the district on the collective bargaining agreement language.
She said she hopes to refocus the negotiating parties on their collective mission to serve the students by retaining the best teachers and employees who support them with the best rights.
“Our strength is negotiating at the table,” she said. “We’re going to continue to really push for better use of our public funds to support our mission, which is the success of every student.”