TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – The Florida Department of Education has released the average salaries for all of Florida’s public school teachers, showing the highs and lows for experience, employment, and yearly income for the state’s educators.
Across Florida, the average salary for a teacher is $51,166.57 per year. That average comes in from data for all 176,549 educators that Florida employs, according to the document from FLDOE. The average employment length is reported at 10 months for the 2020-2021 school year.
Some Florida counties pay their teachers, on average, as low as $41,000. This comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill in June 2020 setting minimum teacher salaries at $47,500.
In Tampa Bay, the county-by-county numbers are a little different.
Here’s how each of our county’s pays, what their average years of experience teaching are and how many teachers they employed for the 2020-2021 academic year:
| County | Average Salary | Number of Teachers Employed | Average Years of Experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citrus | $50,087 | 997 | 12.6 |
| Hardee | $47,447 | 318 | 10.4 |
| Hernando | $49,758 | 1,548 | 11.5 |
| Highlands | $49,980 | 700 | 13 |
| Hillsborough | $54,025 | 14,135 | 11.6 |
| Manatee | $51,102 | 3,179 | 9.9 |
| Pasco | $46,649 | 4,951 | 10.5 |
| Pinellas | $52,186 | 6,604 | 12.3 |
| Polk | $46,151 | 6,609 | 9.6 |
| Sarasota | $61,640 | 2,927 | 12.8 |
Looking closely, Polk County has the lowest average salary among the 10 counties reviewed, while Sarasota has the highest.
For these 10 counties, Sarasota County teachers make $61,640 on average. Polk County teachers, make $46,151 on average.
Sarasota County’s teachers are also the highest paid educators in the state, on average. Across Florida, the county with the lowest paid teachers is Madison County, where its 150 teachers make $40,965 per year on average and have an average 10.2 years of experience.