On Monday, the Collier County Public School Board approved a collective bargaining agreement with the Collier County Education Association that includes more than $9 million to be used toward salary increases for district teachers.
Under the pay increase, each of Collier County’s nearly 3,200 teachers will see at least a $950 increase and up to a $3,150 increase depending on their most recent yearly evaluation.
Collier School’s executive director of communications, Chad Oliver, said the increase is retroactive starting the beginning of this fiscal year, which began July 1, 2019.
"This represents the largest increase in six years for Collier County public school teachers," Oliver said.
Every three years the union’s contract with the district is open for renegotiation, but salaries are eligible for negotiations every year.
Union executive director, Jonathan Tuttle, says the organization has a good relationship with the district and compromises are easily made while bargaining.
"But the problem, as you can imagine, always comes down to money," Tuttle said. "They say they don’t have it and can’t spend it and we say, 'you need to spend it,' and that becomes a bit of a problem but we’re able to work through it pretty well."
Collier county public school teachers are the second highest paid in the state, after Monroe county teachers, with an average annual salary of $55,211.
Given that the Collier school district has an A rating from the Florida Department of Education, Oliver said the district wants to pay teachers fairly for their hard work.
"I think we’re at the point in our culture, in the education world and beyond where everyone agrees teachers need to be paid more," Oliver said. "You know, the challenge is finding how do we do that, collectively as a community, as state, as a society."
Tuttle said the Education Association will begin negotiating next years' salary with the district this upcoming spring.
"We've got to keep the teachers we have," Tuttle said. "They're hard workers and they do a great job and we've got to be able to incentivize them to stay here in Collier and teach our kids."
