Superintendent Broskie 'Offended' By Employees Advocating For Better Wages
Speakers Also Cite Untenable Workloads (Video)
During the Clay County School Board’s May meeting, the public comments portion was filled with people highlighting the pay and working conditions for the school district’s Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs). The comments were quickly dismissed by Superintendent David Broskie.
The comments came from the district's SLPs, concerned parents, union president Vicki Kidwell, and community members. They highlighted the extensive time and effort required to become a Speech-Language Pathologist, their wide range of responsibilities and services, and the higher-than-normal number of students serviced by each SLP.
The comments paint a picture all too common for Clay County Schools. Staff and resources are stretched thin beneath an ever-growing administrative bureaucracy. Recently, teachers and other staff have left the district, creating a vacuum of hundreds of positions that need to be filled.
Speech-language pathologists advised the same outcome for their profession, as vacancies are anticipated to rise due to low pay and untenable workloads. Speaking after the SLPs, community members passionately echoed their calls for more pay and better working conditions in county schools.
Long hours with no overtime pay, increasing discipline issues within schools, lack of administrative support, and low pay have led to a crisis in Clay and all over Florida.
Later in the meeting, local teacher’s union president Vicki Kidwell discussed the low pay teachers across the state receive. In a recent study, Florida ranked 50th among states and territories in the US.
Neither the School Board nor Superintendent David Broskie typically responds to public comments. But this time, Broskie offered his thoughts on teacher pay in Clay County before his scheduled presentation.
Broskie was ‘insulted’ by the commentary on low teacher pay in Clay, as, according to him, the county has increased teacher pay by $44 million in recent years. Stating ‘everyone agrees teachers should be well paid,’ He offered no specifics on what level of compensation he would consider ‘well paid.’
The next Clay County School Board meeting is scheduled for June 6th at 6 p.m. in the teacher training center at Fleming Island High School.
Ask Broskie why he's not a teacher anymore if they are "well paid"
They aren’t just teachers.
Speech pathologists and school psychologists have advanced clinical degrees and licensing. They are service clinicians and federally approved evaluators.
Occupational therapists do as well, but they are compensated as clinicians.
Why aren’t Speech Pathologists and Sch. Psychologist in Clay County paid on the OT scale?