Education
Teachers Union: We Got the District Its A—Now We’re Being Ignored
Carol Cleaver, president of the Escambia Education Association, says fewer than 1,000 teachers will see a raise from the state’s new pay plan, and the district still hasn’t budged on duty-free lunch or bereavement leave.
Escambia County’s public schools just earned an A grade from the state—and the teachers who delivered it say they’re being frozen out of contract talks instead of thanked for it.
That’s the message from Carol Cleaver, president of the Escambia Education Association, who joined me on Rick’s Blog Live this week. Cleaver, who taught in Escambia County schools for 13 years, says the union has been asking district and school board leadership for the same things for months—and getting nowhere.
“We’ve been asking the same things for a couple months now and we just keep getting told that the school board members don’t have enough time to meet with district leadership or us,” Cleaver said.
Only a fraction of teachers will see a state-funded raise. The legislature’s new pay raise sounded good on paper. In practice, Cleaver says roughly 930 to 940 teachers will actually qualify—a small slice of the district’s workforce. The catch: the raise only goes to teachers who’ve been in a Florida public school classroom for 10 years or more and who currently have a classroom roster attached to them.
That narrow window leaves out entire categories of school employees who work with students every single day, including:
- Guidance counselors
- Media specialists
- Behavior deans
- Instructional coaches
“The stipulations seem to be completely arbitrary. They seem to be completely just being enforced upon us by the legislators that wrote this bill.”
What the union actually wants. Cleaver says the fix isn’t complicated: let each county decide how to spend its own teacher salary money, instead of Tallahassee attaching strings to it.
“The Florida constitution guarantees us the right to collectively bargain, and we deserve to have the freedom to bargain with the taxpayer dollars that are given back to our counties from the state legislature,” she said. As it stands, she argues, the strings attached “do nothing but divide our workforce and pit us against district leadership.”
Two zero-cost asks are still stuck. With voucher payments draining public school funding, Cleaver says the union came into this round of talks with modest, low-cost requests meant to signal that employees are valued. Both are still stalled:
- Duty-free lunch—Escambia is the only county in Florida that doesn’t guarantee teachers an uninterrupted lunch break. Other districts have found a way to schedule 25-30 minutes free of student supervision. Escambia hasn’t.
- Bereavement leave—Escambia is one of the few counties where employees must burn through all their sick leave before they can use bereavement leave after losing a family member.
Her message to parents and grandparents: Cleaver wants families to know how much Escambia’s teachers care about their kids—and she wants them to speak up.
“I would love for parents and grandparents to contact their school board members and ask what the holdup is in recognizing these teachers that do so much for their children and grandchildren every day,” she said. She also encouraged families to get involved directly—joining the PTA, chaperoning field trips, or volunteering in classrooms.
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