Credit: Classroom photo via Adobe Stock

The Orange County teachers union, representing roughly 14,000 public school teachers, psychologists and other school staff, filed a lawsuit against the school board and district superintendent Monday, arguing the defendants have unconstitutionally abridged employees’ ability to negotiate changes to teacher evaluations.

Teacher performance evaluations are conducted at least once a year, and can be used to determine teacher pay and raises that teachers receive. In 2022, Florida lawmakers changed state law to limit aspects of teacher evaluations that can be negotiated during collective bargaining sessions between labor unions and school districts.

The Orange County Classroom Teachers Association alleges, in its lawsuit, that Orange County superintendent Dr. Maria Vasquez has pointed to the law to claim that they don’t have to bargain with the union over any aspect of teacher evaluations. The union argues that this is a misinterpretation of the law.

“Defendants’ overreaching application of the statute creates an overly broad exclusion from collective bargaining that infringes upon Plaintiff’s constitutionally protected right,” the lawsuit reads.

Florida, a state where just about 6 percent of workers even have union representation, is unique among other states in the “nonunion” U.S. South in that its state constitution actually guarantees collective bargaining rights for workers. Because that right is enshrined in the Constitution, it’s more difficult for anti-union lawmakers to mess with. Some states in the South, by comparison, ban collective bargaining rights for teachers altogether.

Under the Florida Constitution, the “right of employees, by and through a labor organization, to bargain collectively shall not be denied or abridged.” The Orange CTA, representing employees in one of the largest school districts in the country, claims the district’s interpretation of what they can lawfully refuse to bargain over violates teachers’ rights.

“We believe the district’s sweeping interpretation of the law has gone too far in stripping teachers of their rights,” said union president Clinton McCracken in a statement. “The Florida law does not give [Vazquez] unlimited rights, and her actions violate the Florida Constitution,” he continued. “Teachers deserve a say in the conditions that shape their careers and professional futures. The union is calling on the court to reaffirm that teachers’ rights are essential and constitutionally protected.”

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According to the union, the district has proposed changes to teachers’ union contract that would essentially give much more power to the superintendent. The proposal, essentially gutting a section of their union contract, would allow the superintendent to decide how many evaluations can be conducted per year, when they would occur, and what the criteria of those evaluations would be.

The union argues that state law doesn’t remove substantive aspects of teacher evaluations from mandatory subjects of bargaining, just the procedures. According to the lawsuit, former superintendent Dr. Barbara Jenkins had a similar interpretation to the union’s, based on comments made at a 2022 school board meeting.

“Nevertheless, the School Board and Superintendent Vazquez have taken the position that Section 1012.34(1)(a), Florida Statutes, eliminates the legal duty to negotiate with the Union over any aspect of performance evaluations,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, names both the Orange County School Board (which must approve negotiated collective bargaining agreements) and Superintendent Vazquez as defendants.

The district for its part denies any wrongdoing.

“To now file a lawsuit, two years later and after an overwhelming 95.7% vote by teachers to approve changes that would bring contracts in alignment with the law, is unfortunate,” a district spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

More than 90 percent of teachers in the district have received “highly effective” ratings, according to OCPS, ensuring they receive the highest raises offered to instructors under their union contract.

Teacher pay is an issue that’s been at the forefront of contract talks in recent years, due to a higher cost of living in the metro region that risks pricing teachers, and other essential public employees, out of their own communities. Along with issues such as immigration, the economy consistently polled as one of the most important issues to voters in this year’s presidential elections.

Florida’s average teacher pay of about $53,000 ranks nearly dead last in national rankings, behind only West Virginia. And while the Orange County school district agreed to what they described as a “historic” raise for teachers during contract talks last year, this year they dug their heels in, and settled with the union on an average 2 percent raise for teachers.

“It’s nowhere near enough, and yet it’s all we have,” Teresa Jacobs, a former Orange County mayor who now chairs the school board, admitted at the time.

A sore spot

The issue of teacher evaluations in particular has been a sore spot with the union, due to the particularly convenient timing of changes made to statutes in 2022 dictating whether aspects of evaluations can be negotiated during bargaining.

According to screenshots of emails the union shared with Orlando Weekly, the district directly lobbied the Florida Legislature for changes to state law after the union filed a complaint against the district in 2021. The complaint, filed with the state Public Employees Relations Commission in 2018, argued the district was trying to unlawfully and unilaterally change teacher evaluation procedures affecting terms and conditions of employment while refusing to bargain over such changes.

The Commission ultimately sided with the union, finding the district had indeed committed “unfair labor practice” by refusing to negotiate these changes with the union.

The district wasn’t happy. They appealed the Commission’s ruling, which went nowhere, because the appeals court agreed with the Commission. Within a month, district representatives also began lobbying the Florida Legislature for a “PERC fix” via email, specifically to change state law around teacher evaluations and bargaining in their favor.

“We believe the proposed changes to the statute below will cure the issue regarding the collective bargaining of the instructional personnel evaluation,” wrote Scott Howat, chief communications officer for the Foundation for Orange County Public Schools, in an email to then-State Rep. Elizabeth Fetterhoff, R-Deland. “Thank you for your assistance and consideration,” Howatt wrote.

The Orange County school district wasn’t the only entity keeping an eye on the legislation, which ultimately passed with most lawmakers in favor (save for 24 Democrats in the Florida House and two Democratic Senators who voted it down).

Lobbying disclosure records show the proposed changes, inserted into a broader education law, also caught the attention of other school districts, the statewide teachers union, and the Center for Independent Employees — an anti-union South Carolina-based nonprofit, bankrolled in part by right-wing groups like the State Policy Network and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity astroturf group.

The Center has taken partial credit for crafting Florida’s 2023 anti-union law, targeting teachers’ unions (and wiping out dozens of other public employee unions as collateral damage in the process), and is led by CIE president Russ Brown, a professional union avoidance consultant who has been hired by companies like Amazon to obstruct union organizing drives.

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This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2024.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.