TAMPA, Fla. – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a roundtable discussion on Wednesday morning to praise the state’s education achievements, while heavily criticizing teachers’ unions.
During the roundtable in Tampa, DeSantis announced that Florida has reduced teacher vacancies by 17.7% for the 2025-2026 school year, and mainly attributed that reduction to the $5.9 billion allocated toward teacher pay increases.
However, the governor mentioned there have been delays in giving the salary increases to teachers and blamed “some of that” on unions.
“We got in a situation where, like last year, you had six, seven, eight months went by where some of these unions were holding up the pay increases for the teachers. That is not right, and so we don’t want that to happen this year,” DeSantis said. “It’s important to get these pay increases out the door now, especially leading into holidays, people need to have the resources.”
DeSantis was joined by Florida Department of Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, New College of Florida President Richard Corcoran and Florida’s 2025 Teacher of the Year Jaime Suarez.
Officials also accused national teachers unions of having a “sharply partisan agenda.”
“We’re going to continue to shame these unions, because the world needs to understand what they’re doing for teachers. They purport to represent teachers, but in fact, they actually do the opposite,” Corcoran said.
News4JAX reached out to Duval Teachers United regarding the remarks made at the roundtable, and we are waiting for a statement.