[THEFERMANATOR]

Originally Posted by phatdaddy

florida is trying to make some changes along those lines. our schools are county based and teachers are county employee's with different pay rates, benefits, etc. according to the county they teach in. my daughter has just graduated with a bs in history & a masters in education. if she gets a job, it starts @ $32,000. not great, but it's the field she chose and we knew the pay going in. current hires will not get continuing contract and will be hired on a yearly contract, which can be on renewed or not every year. a lot of older teachers are upset, but if you do your job, you should be fine. hell, most of the people i know have a one week contract. all administrators have yearly contracts that are renewed or not annually. we also have superintendents that are elected, so top administrators are subject to non renewal if they back the wrong horse. union representation in our district is about %25, florida is a right to work state.

The part you missed though is teachers that had a contract BEFORE the hiring process for the 11-12 school year KEPT tenure. ONLY new hires lost tenure. ANother key note is that the state has the option to come in at any time they choose if your test scores are not high enough and take over the counties educational program. My wife is also a history teacher, but opted not to get a masters as having a masters right now makes you less desireable as that means you get $2K more per year for that(she got her last teaching over somebody with a masters because teh county didn't want to pay the extra money out for the teacher with a masters). It's all screwed up down here. I feel there should be tenure, but they should also have a testing system to evaluate the teachers. they have one now, but from what my wife said it is school employees doing teh evals, and it just doesn't sound right to me from what she told me of her first eval. If they are going to do evals, I feel it should be done by a NON affiliated evaluator who has nothing to gain or lose by there evaluation. With the current system this is just not the case.