School Board Votes This Morning on Teacher Raises of $1,200 to $2,400

The St. Johns County School Board meets at 9 a.m. today in the auditorium at Orange Street in St. Augustine to ratify the 2026-2027 contract with the St. Johns Education Association, a vote that sets base pay for more than 2,500 teachers across the county's 44 schools. If it passes, the raises show up on the Oct. 15 paycheck.

The increases are tiered by years of experience.

Experience	Base increase
1-5 years	$1,200
6-9 years	$1,300
10+ years	$2,400

Veteran teachers get double what the newest hires get. That is a deliberate reversal of the pattern in recent Florida bargaining cycles, where state money earmarked for minimum starting salaries has repeatedly pushed new-hire pay up while compressing the gap with 15-year teachers.

The district and the union reached the tentative agreement Aug. 6 at the Fullerwood Training Center. SJEA members voted on it Aug. 18, 19 and 20 and ratified it. Today's board vote is the last step.

What else is in the package

The base raise is not the whole deal. The same round of bargaining produced a paid parental leave supplement, a differentiated pay agreement, a new teacher cadre supplement and a mentor supplement, along with changes to Article XVI, the section of the contract governing professional employee compensation.

It also produced an agreement on insurance plan design and premium increases. Teachers are getting a raise and paying more for coverage in the same contract year.

Separately, instructional staff continue to receive the supplement funded by the voter-approved 1-mill property tax referendum, which is paid in regular paychecks and scales with years of service. The district's ratification materials show that supplement topping out at $9,600 for the most experienced staff.

The $23 million backdrop

This vote lands about three weeks into a school year that started smaller than the one before it. The district closed a $23 million budget gap before the first bell, including roughly $8 million out of the district office, about 20 district office positions, and 120 to 130 instructional positions. Around 150 relocatable classrooms, the portables that have absorbed St. Johns County's growth for two decades, were removed.

Class sizes went up as a result. Officials said in late July that the district was still filling about 60 teaching vacancies, a number they expected to fall to roughly 20 by the opening day of school.

So a board that spent the spring cutting is spending this morning approving new recurring payroll costs. Salaries and benefits are the largest single item in the general fund, and whatever passes today gets folded into the spending plan the board finalizes next month.

How to watch, and how to comment

Both sessions today are open to the public in person at Orange Street and on Webex. The 9 a.m. special meeting has one item on it: the contract. A board workshop on other district business follows immediately at 10 a.m., and the district did not list the workshop topics in its notice.

Dial-in numbers, access codes and Webex links for each session are posted on the district's meeting notice. If you want to make a public comment and run into technical trouble, the district's main line is 904-547-7500. Webex admits attendees who join early and drops them into the meeting automatically once it begins.

The next date to watch is in September, when the board holds its required public hearings on the final budget and the millage rate. That is where the cost of this contract meets the tax roll, and it is the meeting where residents, not just union members, get a formal say.

For more coverage of St. Johns County schools, visit St. Johns Community Website and browse our education stories and government and politics coverage. Follow us on Facebook for updates as today's vote is called, and join the conversation in our Community Forum: teachers, parents and neighbors are all welcome to weigh in.

Header photo: Michael Rivera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)