TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Pasco Schools told 8 On Your Side they had 361 teacher positions waiting for instructors to fill them. So, how much does a teacher or administrator working in Pasco County make?
For the sake of comparison, the average Florida teacher makes $51,166 per year. According to records from the Florida Department of Education, the average Pasco teachers make $46,649.60.
However, the median salary for Pasco is even lower, at $45,013 per year. That dollar amount is pulled from the 4,951 teachers reportedly employed by Pasco County Schools in the 2020-2021 school year.
The Pasco County School District has 104 schools, counting combination schools and virtual programs. On average, the National Center for Education Statistics said Pasco Schools spend $10,374 per student, per year, based on data from the 2018-2019 fiscal year. More current data for expenditures was not available at the same source for the most recent school year.
On its website with open positions, Pasco Schools lists 126 teaching positions, though some are listed as guest teachers and instructional substitutes, and some are multi-hire listings.
Some openings are listed as “general applications,” and have been open since summer 2021. The longest-open full teacher opening was posted in December 2021, for an “Intensive Reading (Graduation Enhancement) position for the 2021-2022 school year.
Amidst a teacher shortage, owed to everything from teacher conditions, to lower pay than other parts of the state, and a lack of new teachers graduating school and staying in Florida, Pasco County Schools set up a program to feed students into instructional roles.
On average, the teachers in their employ had about 10.5 years of experience teaching and made less than the state minimum requirement of $47,500. The Pasco County School District employed just short of 5,000 teachers in the 2020-2021 school year.
In total, the school district currently employs 11,816 full-time staff, counting teachers, administrators, support staff, psychologists, paraprofessionals, technicians and social workers, among other positions. Regarding salaries and employment counts, the FLDOE database with numbers and employee salaries is only current through the 2021 school year.
The Pasco County Schools “At A Glance” dashboard is based on data for the 2021-2022 school year, and shows a higher number of employees and instructors, though the average number of years’ experience is lower. The dashboard combines employee data from charter schools and public schools, plus various adult education groups and technical colleges.
FLDOE’s data focuses on public schools.
Due to record date differences between the Pasco dashboard and the files from FLDOE, there may be some discrepancy between average salary, average years of experience, and total employees by category.
It was not clear if the position was ever filled. Openings in the district were available across all grade levels and curricula, from art to English to math, and from elementary school to high school, at multiple locations across Pasco County. Some openings were also due to “anticipated vacancies.”
An anticipated vacancy is a spot that was created because of either a pending separation or a planned or expected increase in need for a role to be filled. Specific reasons for anticipated vacancies were not listed in position details for the openings posted on the Pasco County Schools hiring site.
Of the staff members listed in the data from FLDOE, 91 are officials, administrators, and managers, according to the state. 101 are school principals and 170 are assistant principals.
Across all grade levels, from elementary to high school, Pasco principals make about $90,442 per year on average. However, the higher grade levels skew higher when it comes to salary. Assistant principals average a salary of $71,708 per year, also skewed higher for higher grade levels.
Some district-level administrators make more than the average salary for principals, but not always. Career and Technical education administrative staff earn $93,533, while administrative staff for “Exceptional Education” earn $75,509. The federal program administrator for Pasco Schools earns $103,317 per year, and student services administrators earn $80,919 per year.
Pasco facilities administrative staff earn $97,823 while district transport administrators earn $76,124 and food service administrators earn $74,120. The county does not employ a media services administrator, according to records available from FLDOE.
When it comes to district-wide leadership, salary levels rise. The Pasco Schools Superintendent earns $158,992 per year, according to FLDOE, while the deputy superintendent earns $137,275 and school board members each earn about $43,698.