By LINDA CHION KENNEY
The drive to secure a property tax increase to support teacher salaries highlights the dramatic history of a profession underpaid, according to Hillsborough County school leaders then and now.
The issue is current again as Superintendent Van Ayres defends the call to raise the millage rate by one, which for the homeowner of the average-priced home in Hillsborough County would account for an additional $350 in taxes annually. In turn, Ayres said, that would pay for a salary boost of $6,000 for every teacher, new or veteran, and a $3,000 boost for support staff, including lunchroom workers and bus drivers. Administrators also would get a $6,000 boost.
Especially compelling in his call to increase real estate taxes by $1 for every $1,000 in assessed property value is that surrounding counties and many others throughout the state have already moved to do so, making it that much more difficult to hire teachers in a competitive landscape. Officials say the average home value in Hillsborough is $375,000, not counting the homestead exemption.
According to data presented at a school board workshop in February, voters have approved millage increases for schools in 24 counties, including Hernando, Pasco, Pinellas, Manatee and Sarasota. As a result, starting salaries in four of the five counties rank above Hillsborough, where the teacher salary schedule starts at $47,500 a year and reaches $72,500 after 25 years of service.
According to school officials, the starting salaries in Manatee, Sarasota and Pinellas counties are higher than Hillsborough, respectively, by $10,071, $4,499 and $5,499. Pasco’s starting pay is $1,499 higher. According to some reports, Florida ranks 48th in the nation for average teacher pay.
To level the playing field, Ayres, at a school board meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 2, was to ask the seven-member school board for its blessing to put the 1-mill matter before voters at the general election in November. By law, Ayres said, such an ask must be made at a general election, which was not the case in 2022, when a millage increase for schools failed in the August primary.
With or without school board blessing, the matter sheds light on the history of teacher salaries in Hillsborough County, which Ayres addressed in an interview before the board vote, as did Jim Hamilton in a separate interview. Hamilton spent his career in Hillsborough schools and rose through the ranks from teacher to deputy superintendent under Earl Lennard, who entered the Hillsborough school system as a first-grader and retired as its superintendent in 2005.
Likewise, Ayres entered the school district as a kindergartner at Mort Elementary, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High and started his career as a teacher at Blake High, earning about $25,000 a year. “They had just started raising teaching salaries,” Ayres said, “with Earl doing so in 1997.”
Hamilton, who first met Lennard as an intern assigned to Lennard’s classroom at East Bay High, said he started teaching in 1968, with a beginning salary of $6,000, which had increased from $4,800 the year before, after a 1 percent sales tax increase from 3 to 4 percent. Meanwhile, inflation, based on the consumer price index has increased about 800 percent over the past 56 years, Hamilton added.
“So, a 33 percent increase in taxes 56 years ago drove a 25 percent increase in teacher salaries in Hillsborough County,” Hamilton said. “And from then until now, 56 years later, starting teacher salaries generate the same purchasing power as they did after that 33 percent tax increase 56 years ago. We’ve made no progress, and that’s verifiable.”
Ever the numbers man, Hamilton’s assessment supports Ayres’ drive to increase teacher pay, and, especially so, in a tight labor market marked by a nationwide teacher shortage. According to a February report, Hillsborough vacancy counts were 220 for bus drivers, 116 for student nutrition, 315 for support staff and 422 for teachers.
That number of teacher vacancies this time of the school year is unusual, said Hamilton, who said he based his assessment both on his experience as a Hillsborough school administrator and as an education consultant over the past 15 years. “More likely this time of the year, for a district this size, you would expect under 200 vacancies,” Hamilton said.
All of which feeds into Ayres’ push to raise money for salary increases with a millage increase to ensure highly qualified teachers in Hillsborough classrooms. The Florida Education Finance Plan (FEFP) is the primary mechanism for funding a school district’s operating costs, for both charter and traditional public schools.
Superintendent of Hillsborough County schools, Van Ayres, at a school board meeting last year.
“It’s a good system for equalizing funding across the state for both property rich and property poor districts,” Ayres said. But what has happened over the past 15 years, he added, has resulted in glaring discrepancies nevertheless, “because state statute allows counties to levy an additional millage for operating costs, which is on top of the FEFP.”
A millage is one-tenth of a percent, which equals to $1 in taxes for every $1,000 in home value. According to a county report, should the 1-mil increase pass, the Hillsborough school district would receive an estimated $177 million for the 2025-26 school year, the first year the funds would be available. Based on enrollment as of Jan. 23, 2024, that would amount to $150.4 million for traditional schools and $26.6 million for charter schools.