The School Board has voted to give the school superintendent a raise and extend her contract.
“$275,000 isn’t what it used to be,” Board Member Cindy Pearson said in reference to Superintendent Diana Greene’s current salary.
So the board decided to boost Greene’s paycheck to $300,000. Several members wanted to raise it to $310,000 but Greene declined.
Five board members voted for the increase and a three-year extension of her contract, lauding her for efforts to improve school achievement and security..
Greene came to Jacksonville four years ago after having successfully promoted a tax increase for schools in Manatee County, where she was superintendent. Since coming here, she has succeeded in getting one tax increase and currently is promoting another.
The school budget this year is more than $2 billion, up 8.5 percent from the previous year.
On Greene’s watch the board also has adopted a policy allowing boys to use the girls’ bathrooms, and produced a pamphlet all employees are drilled in to facilitate the
homosexual/”transgender” fad liberals are spreading nationwide. A number of speakers at the meeting spoke in opposition to this movement.
The new tax Greene is asking for is needed for teacher compensation, she says, claiming there is a shortage of teachers.
The Republican-led legislature and Republican governor in Florida have addressed the alleged shortage with measures that include higher pay for teachers. (They got no congratulations from the Democrat-aligned media, which has demanded such increases repeatedly.)
Specifics on the need in Duval County are hard to come by. Eye on Jacksonville asked the critical question: how many applicants there are for teaching positions and we were told that number is not available. We were amazed that either applications are not in writing or are not counted.
In the past, there were hundreds of applications for every vacancy. If that still is true, it would not indicate a lack of teachers or a critical need for higher salaries.
We can report, however, that the ratio of teachers to students has increased from 16.26 in 2012 to only 17.78 last year.
Most people would support higher pay for the best teachers but the rich, powerful teacher union bosses don’t allow school boards to reward good teachers. When merit pay was put into effect a few years ago they lobbied long and hard to get it repealed, and prevailed.