If anyone was looking for Nocatee teacher Tiffany Kovacs at her job Monday, they wouldn’t have found her. That’s because instead of teaching first graders at Valley Ridge Academy, she was at the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee, holding a large, red swim pool noodle with a sign attached, reading: “This is the last straw.”
Kovacs’ sign made it easy to find her among the thousands of other teachers holding signs at the state capitol for the “Fund our Future Rally in Tally” event.
“I came today because I teach students to stand up for themselves and here’s my turn,” Kovacs said. “That means that I think Florida needs to put more into their education.”
Kovacs was one of four Valley Ridge teachers who used personal days to attend the rally organized by the Florida Education Association. The FEA is the federation of teacher and education workers’ labor unions and is pushing for a legislative agenda that it says will reverse Florida’s rankings as 43rd in the nation in per student expenditures and 46th in teacher pay.
“It’s embarrassing. It’s a disgrace and there’s no reason for it. We are not going to attract teachers, and education support professionals to this state if we continue to dwell in the bottom ten numbers,” said Michelle Dillon, president of the teachers union in St. Johns County, the St. Johns Education Association.
Dillon said about 50 people from St. Johns County boarded chartered buses for the trip to Tallahassee. The trip was completely financed by the local union and included parents from St. Johns County as well as teachers and support personnel.
“We want this to be about the community of public ed—the volunteers, the parents, the support professionals,” Dillon said, “because there is a concerted effort to privatize and demonize public ed. So, the more voices, the better.”
One of the St. Johns parents joining those voices was Samantha Baker, mother of two children at Palm Valley Academy in Nocatee. “I wanted to support our phenomenal teaching staff at PVA who are tirelessly working with our children with very little wage and very overcrowded classrooms,” she said. “They deserve more funding.”
Baker said the FEA’s proposal to pump $22 billion into Florida’s education system over the next 10 years would help her kids in Nocatee. “The state isn’t making proper allowances for the high growth in our area, so we’re way behind in building schools, and it’s not funding our teachers in a way that’s making it competitive to come to our county,” she said.
According to the FEA, the state has only increased its base student allocation for public schools about 3% since 2008, while the cost of living is up almost 22 since then. If successful, the union’s legislative agenda would give all public school employees in Florida a 10% pay raise and restore previously-cut electives like art, music and drama.
“Now is the time,” Dillon said. “We are losing teachers. We are losing bus drivers, and we’ve got to speak up.”
Kovacs agrees. “I love teaching. I love the school I work at. I love the county I work for,” she said. She hopes state lawmakers are listening.
