A total of 5,200 St. Johns County staffers — including 1,604 classroom teachers — have quit in just the last five years, according to a report.
New superintendent Brendan Asplen discussed the exodus in an interview with First Coast News, telling the outlet that meager pay is fueling many of the departures.
The former Sarasota schools chief is taking the reins of one of Florida’s most heralded districts — but a host of challenges loom.
Asplen said 4,200 of the district exits were newer employees with less than five years on the job.
“What is it over those zero to five years that is causing people to say: “I can’t do this anymore,” he said.
With cost of living spiking across the rapidly growing county, many teachers assert that their salaries make it impossible to subsist in the area.
“I get it,” Asplen said, offering an anecdote about a Bartram Trail High School calculus teacher who abandoned the whiteboard despite a stellar work history and legions of thankful students over the years.
“He always had a 100% pass rate in AP calculus,” he said. “He’s cutting trees — and making twice as much money.”
Asplen noted that a voter referendum last year will entitle teachers to supplements worth up to $8,500 depending on experience — and that he expects similar initiatives in the future.
St. Johns County’s teachers union head Katie Dowdie said in a recent interview that teachers are finding that their workloads are increasing at a far higher rate than their paychecks.
She said many are ditching the professions for a host of other gigs — from charcuterie boards to selling real estate.
Dowdie suggested bolstering a mentorship program that would ease some of the burden newer teachers experience in their initial years on the job.
There are currently 3,610 instructional staffers in the district, along with 2,798 support staff, 163 school-based administrators and 91 district administrators.
5 Responses
Good luck on the landscaping then. Have AT it. Meanwhile the Cost Of Living affects EVERY ONE. Not just teachers, not just school district employees.
Everyone wants/needs more money – higher wages.
Net affect? Eventually higher costs of goods, services.
There’s a lot of people who make more than teachers and never went to college. They work all year long, time and a half, all day long. The milage increase will rake in $60 Million a year.Read the CBA for teachers and that’s where the hidden gems are.
Teaching needs to be respected as a profession, and our teachers need to be compensated well. Otherwise we will continue to lose them. Supplements and one time annual bonuses don’t do the trick. Base salary needs to be raised, especially for experienced teachers – base salary affects retirement where bonuses do not. Florida ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in teacher pay, and St. Johns country – the wealthiest county in the state – ranks at the bottom of teacher pay despite having top results in teaching for many years! We want the best teachers for our students, and we have to pay well to get it. We want the best not only because it is the right thing to do for our youth, but because our youth become our workforce for tomorrow. Wake up folks.
Pay is not the only reason our teachers are leaving. As one who regularly speaks with many of our teachers all across the district, I can say with certainty that bad principals; inconsistent enforcement of the student code of conduct; parent misbehavior; lack of work/life balance; and lack respect of respect by district leadership. All of these things are solvable without money. District leadership just needs to recognize these things as problems and collaborate with teachers to solve them. It is beyond me why this does not happen, especially when there are so many of us regularly bringing these problems to the attention of district leadership.
I worked in STJ for 9 weeks as an ESE inclusion co-teach. The school district cares nothing about the equality of ESE kids vs non ESE kids. During COVID our schools were full and proper protections were never done. I saw teachers teaching the revised history of America and when I challenged that with real facts–I was immediately observed the next day by the AP and things went down from there. Not to mention how veteran teachers bully and demean new teachers to the district-despite me having a master’s degree from a New England college and had teaching experience. It is the good old boy system. I walked out.