Healthcare costs for teachers, counselors and other staff in Orange County Public Schools could be going up in the near future, but how much is still to be determined.
The Orange County school board last week postponed a vote on approving recommendations from a special magistrate, who was appointed as an independent party to help settle a dispute between the school district and the teachers union.
Both parties are at odds over what to do about teachers’ wages — Florida ranks nearly dead-last in average teacher pay in the nation — and changes to health insurance costs in teachers’ next union contract.
“I do think we’re in a difficult time,” Orange County Classroom Teachers Association president Clinton McCracken told Orlando Weekly after the school board meeting last Tuesday.
The vote on how to move forward with union contract provisions was postponed until Friday, Nov. 13. The board will meet to discuss the issue that day at 9:30 a.m., despite pleas from the union’s legal counsel to have a later meeting in the afternoon that teachers themselves would be able to actually attend.
“This is a hearing between these two entities,” school board member Melissa Byrd said at the tail end of a two-hour meeting, waving hands toward representatives of the school district and union. “It’s not a hearing for testimonies from other people that are outside of that, so I don’t think that the later time is needed.”
Bradley Herb, a behavior specialist in Orange County Public Schools, however, took issue with Byrd’s framing of union members’ participation. “For those of us whose livelihoods are directly affected, that message was deeply dismissive,” Herb said in an email shared with Orlando Weekly.
“Our salaries, our health coverage and our families’ financial security are at stake. How could our presence possibly be treated as unnecessary?”
McCracken, a former middle school art teacher himself, similarly condemned the remark. “We are teachers, the whole bargaining team are teachers, and it’s outrageous that she said insinuated that the very people who are going to be negatively impacted by a pay cut and an insurance increase aren’t needed in the room.”
Navigating budget woes
The school district is concerned about balancing the budget, amid steep declines in student enrollment and a subsequent drop — to the tune of millions of dollars — in per-pupil funding that the district receives from the state. The school district serves a population of roughly 170,000 students and employs nearly 24,000 staff.
“District leaders continue to prioritize finding a path forward that addresses employee concerns while maintaining the financial stability of the school system,” the district said in a statement, following the Oct. 20 school board meeting.
The teachers union and the school district reached an impasse over health benefits and wage proposals in April. A special magistrate heard from both sides over wage and health insurance issues, and released recommendations on how the two parties should move forward on Oct. 16 — about a month later than expected.
The special magistrate’s recommendations for ending the dispute more closely aligned with proposals from the union. The special magistrate recommended wage increases of 2.5 percent for teachers and other instructional staff, which is less than what the union asked for (3 percent) and more than what the district had offered (1.98 percent).
The special magistrate’s recommendations on health benefits — specifically, changes to health insurance deductibles and premiums — also more closely aligned with the union’s demands, if not matching them entirely.
Under the district’s original proposals, medical deductibles would have increased 500 to 650 percent for certain health plans, according to the special magistrate’s ruling, which noted the proposed changes “would create undue financial hardship on enrollees and instability in the workforce, especially on lower-paid employees.”
The recommendations from the special magistrate, ultimately, include higher deductibles for health plans, but they’re less than half of what the district proposed. The ruling also recommends a 20 percent cap on premium increases, while the district had requested no cap at all.
“These recommendations do not give us everything we sought, and accepting them was a difficult decision,” McCracken said in a statement. “But we have been willing to compromise since bargaining began. We are asking the district and school board to demonstrate that same willingness.”
The district did not.
Just a day after the union somewhat reluctantly accepted the recommendations, the district rejected them, arguing that accepting them would add $105.1 million in costs to the district’s budget, including $36 million in insurance concessions already made by the district, $57 million in additional healthcare costs and $11 million for employee compensation.
“We realize this long process has caused real frustration and uncertainty to employees who play an important role in our students’ success every day,” the district shared in a statement. “We remain committed to reaching a fair and financially responsible resolution as quickly as possible.”
‘Gun put to our head’
The school board is in a position to accept or reject the special magistrate’s recommendations independent of the district. Union representatives argued during last Tuesday’s meeting that, under state law, they should have had 20 days after the magistrate’s ruling to prepare for the final hearing by the school board.
Mark Richard, the union’s attorney, however, said they’d felt threatened by district representatives to attend last week’s hearing — scheduled just five days after the Oct. 16 ruling — or potentially see further cuts to the district’s pay increase offer.
“We had a gun put to our head,” he told the school board. The district claims every month of delay, however, costs the district $20 million just to maintain current health benefits.
“This isn’t a decision about the district wanting to push something on the employees,” argued outgoing school board chair Teresa Jacobs (soon to be replaced by school board member Angie Gallo). “We only have so much money.”
Other school board members, including Gallo, also sympathized with the district’s financial position. “There will be hard decisions that will have to be made, that’s just the truth,” said Gallo. “Like, I can’t grow $20 million in my backyard.”
Richards, however, told the district they were prepared to file an unfair labor practice complaint with the Public Employees Relations Commission — the state agency that enforces public sector labor law in Florida — if they weren’t given the time they should have had to prepare for a hearing on the ruling, in accordance with state law.
Jeffrey Mandel, an attorney for Fisher Phillips who serves as contracted legal counsel for the district, acknowledged the union’s position. But, in the district’s defense, he claimed they’d expedited the process to find a quick resolution, not to put the union in an unfair position.
“The special magistrate put us in this position,” he argued. The special magistrate was statutorily required to issue his ruling Sept. 15. The actual ruling came a month late, but it’s not clear why.
“It wasn’t until I reached out to the PERC that we were able to actually get it,” Mandel said, referring to the same state agency that has seen its workload more than triple following the passage of a state union reform law (described as “union busting” by critics) in 2023.
The same law (SB 256) has threatened the continued existence of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, which is now required to convince a larger share of the school employees it represents to pay union dues — at least 60 percent — or else go through annual elections where workers vote on whether they want to continue to be represented by the union.
So far, Orange County’s teachers union, and most others across the state that have been forced to go through the same process, have prevailed.
The local teachers union negotiates contracts for teachers and other school staff — a process informed by their feedback — to help ensure fair pay, that health insurance remains affordable, and address other issues in schools, like health and safety and disciplinary procedures.
Without union representation, teachers would be left in a position to have to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment, without the collective strength they have in numbers.
According to the National Education Association, teachers in states that afford them union rights earn 24 percent more on average compared to teachers in states that ban collective bargaining.
Unclear path forward
McCracken, who’s helped increase the union’s dues-paying membership since the 2023 law took effect, said he and other union representatives have tried to help the district find cost-saving solutions. But the district, he said, has rejected them.
According to McCracken, they’ve proposed cost-saving changes to the district’s health plan. They’ve suggested an expansion of free breast cancer screenings, since the teaching field is female-dominated and treating cancer in advanced stages can be more expensive than catching it early on.
There’s also a top-heavy discrepancy in the six-figure salaries afforded to the district’s top-paid officials, including more than 150 senior administrators who make upward of $100,000 annually, and dozens of other senior positions whose salaries only go up from there, according to public data shared with the Weekly.
Minimum pay for teachers in Orange County Public Schools, meanwhile, is $50,000. “Our teachers have been fighting for months and months,” said McCracken. “They love this work that they’re doing, but everybody outside the classroom seems to keep doing things over and over that makes it harder and harder for them to stay.”
The school district has already seen seven schools shuttered, as a result of declining student enrollment attributed to various reasons including declining birth rates, the impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown, and the expansion of Florida’s taxpayer-funded voucher system for private schools.
For now, McCracken said the union is trying to answer teachers’ questions about the current state of affairs and plans to internally mobilize members of the union for the Nov. 13 hearing. He expects some members may request personal leave in order to attend the early morning meeting themselves.
The union, he explained, is currently in a “cone of silence” where union officials aren’t legally allowed to talk to school board members about the special magistrate’s ruling or its recommendations.
But the union will be encouraging its members to wear black on Nov. 13, and to work to contract — meaning, they’ll perform all of the work they’re legally obligated to do, but won’t go above and beyond as they’re often expected or compelled to do.
“I have spoken to so many teachers in tears, who, when they were kids, wanted to be a teacher, and they’re looking for jobs because they can’t afford to take care of their own families,” McCracken admitted.
“So I just, I think the community needs to understand this isn’t theory. This is happening in real time, where professionals who — some of them don’t even consider this a job, they call it their calling — are having to leave because they can’t afford it.”
