Orange school board rejects adding teacher pay hikes to school property tax

A divided Orange County School Board agreed Tuesday to again put its special property tax to voters in November, but it rejected a proposal to use the tax money for teacher raises.

Board members and the district’s teachers union clashed last week over a proposed addition to the school tax referendum that would guarantee some of the money be spent on “increasing teacher pay.” Some other Florida school districts, including Brevard, Lake and Miami-Dade counties, include such proposals in their school tax ballot language.

The board discussed, but did not vote on the proposal last week. Then Tuesday, it voted 5-3 to put the special schools tax on the ballot, using similar wording as has been in place since 2010. Board members Anne Douglas, Angie Gallo and Stephanie Vanos voted against the measure because they wanted to specify some funds would go to teacher raises. Board members Maria Salamanca, Alicia Farrant, Vicki-Elaine Felder, Teresa Jacobs and Melissa Byrd voted for the measure.

Superintendent Maria Vazquez urged the board not to add the teacher raise wording, however, arguing that Orange County Public Schools needed the tax money - now about $230 million a year - to maintain current programs and staff.

The special tax was initially put to voters 16 years ago, Vazquez said, to prevent layoffs in the wake of the 2008 recession. The tax saved OCPS teaching jobs, and it now funds the salaries for about 1,200 teachers, 740 drama and music teachers, and 50 athletic coaches and trainers, according to district data. It also helps pay for extracurricular activities, athletics and field trips.

The district would have to terminate "hundreds of positions" to accommodate using referendum funds for teacher raises, she said.

"We may not have deans, we may not have resource teachers, we may have schools sharing art teachers and music teachers," Vazquez said.

Orange County voters have overwhelmingly approved the tax every four years since it was first on the ballot in 2010.

School officials say continuing the tax is crucial as the district deals with significant enrollment declines and a subsequent loss of per-pupil state funding. This school year, OCPS lost about $41 million in funding from enrollment losses, and anticipates a similar loss next school year.

If voters approve the referendum again, OCPS expects to collect about $261 million each year for the next four years from the one-mill tax, according to the ballot language, which represents a $1 tax on every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Vazquez said the district would look to add an additional tax increase two years from now, earmarked specifically for teacher pay increases. District polling shared with board members indicates this year voters are more supportive of continuing the tax than increasing it.

Gallo, who wanted to add teacher pay hikes to the referendum, said the pressure should be on the district to give teachers raises every year.

“Our feet do need to be held to the fire, so that we find solutions on how to pay our paraprofessionals and our educators a living wage,” Gallo said.

Clinton McCracken, the president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, said in a statement following the vote that the union would “continue pushing for educators to be treated as a priority and for referendum dollars to directly support the people who work with students every day."

Jacobs, the board's chair, said adding teacher raises to the referendum would go against its original intent of saving extracurricular programs and put the district's teachers at risk.

"We all know we really should not be offering raises with a funding source that is not guaranteed or reoccurring," she said.

Salamanca, the board’s vice chair, agreed that putting teacher raises on the tax referendum would “handcuff” the district, as it could be on the hook to provide raises though income from the tax could drop.

“You can replace me as a board member, but you cannot replace 1,000 teaching positions overnight. You cannot replace what happens to those people’s lives,” Salamanca said.

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This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 7:38 PM.