TALLAHASSEE – The push to pay all high school coaches better in Florida hit the state Capitol on Tuesday morning as members of the Florida Coaches Coalition spent more than five hours meeting with lawmakers and making their case for better pay.
Their words left a mark.
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Bolstered by a handful of high school coaches in the state along with Florida International head coach Willie Simmons and former Buccaneers fullback Mike Alstott, the jolt of the realities facing coaches drew “wows” and left a few mouths agape.
For the first time since the coalition formed nearly three and a half years ago, members actually left Tallahassee feeling like their voices were heard.
Cocoa head football coach Ryan Schneider detailed during an afternoon session in the Capitol rotunda how much he made for coaching the Tigers to three consecutive state championships. Schneider was a star quarterback at Plantation before going on to play at UCF. He said that the reason he has stayed in Florida is that he loves his community but is torn when salaries in neighboring states routinely jump into six figures.
“I think they’re starting to understand. I’m open [about it], I got paid $3,000 for being the head coach at Cocoa on top of my teacher pay,” Schneider said. “For the amount of hours and the time we put in … today’s age, football is now a yearlong sport, it’s no longer just three months a year. And we’re just trying to get what we deserve.
“… Coming into this, I didn’t feel great, but I’m leaving here with a real sense of things are starting to head in the right direction. I’m excited about what the future holds.”
News4JAX has tracked and detailed issues around high school coaching supplements since 2015. The supplement or stipend is the paycheck for an entire year of coaching. In football, the most time-consuming sport in high school, those range from a low end of $3,038 (Broward County) to a high of $8,317 (Charlotte County). Salaries in Georgia dwarf those at public schools in Florida, an issue News4JAX detailed in 2019.
Several coaches in the area have said they earn less than a dollar an hour when they have averaged out their workload across 12 months. News4JAX broke that down in detail last year.
It’s not just football that’s suffering. Cocoa athletic director David Kintigh said that it’s gotten to the point where coaching positions are becoming difficult to fill.
“We’ve opened some eyes. We’ve opened some ears, but there’s a lot more to be opened up,” said Coaches Coalition executive director Andrew Ramjit.
Rep. Adam Anderson, a Republican from Palm Harbor, has taken up the push to battle for better pay for all coaches in Florida. The Coaches Coalition is seeking minimum wage for all coaches in the Sunshine State, an ask that would climb into the tens of millions of dollars every year.
Coaches in the state’s 67 counties are paid supplements now, some ranging from a couple hundred dollars all the way up to $8,317, the highest supplement in Florida, which is paid to head football coaches in Charlotte County. Lawmakers were surprised to learn that only 23 counties in Florida pay additional supplements for coaches who reach the playoffs.
The question is how and when will that happen?
Anderson said the groundwork is being laid for something to happen on the coaching pay issue in what he calls the legislative “offseason.” As the session in Florida winds down on April 28, Anderson said work will then really start to pick up. The biggest challenge is finding where a minimum wage or a bucket of millions of dollars will come from to help bring the financial floor up.
Anderson said the fact-gathering has included detailed looks at what other states do when it comes to paying coaches. Out of state, Anderson said many coaches are paid on an administrative salary level. In Florida, only three counties pay head football coaches on an administrative salary level. Anderson said funding sources being looked at could be a hemp tax, from the betting and gaming industry, a potential new lottery game and even license plates.
Unions and school districts collectively bargain coaching supplements, so there is also the thorny issue of combing through that. Currently, booster clubs are largely forbidden from paying coaches. Could that change in counties that have large booster support, like schools in Clay or St. Johns?
“I think I’ve had four or five other members already come up to me throughout the day and tell me that, ‘Adam, we want to work on this with you. Let us know how we can help you.’ So, I would say today was a huge success, absolutely,” Anderson said.
Simmons made the trip up from Miami on behalf of the Coaches Coalition, and fielded quite a few questions from House majority members on his vantage point.
Simmons’ view carries massive weight in the halls of the Capitol. He got his start coaching in high school and thrived at Tallahassee Lincoln as a quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator. Simmons has won everywhere he’s been as a head coach, including Bethune-Cookman and Prairie View. He told a room full of House Majority members that his first opportunity to coach high school in Florida was for $40,000. That number was the total of his teaching contract, a head football coaching supplement and three assistant coaching supplements for other sports.
“Everything has grown. Everything has grown but the salaries. The expectations have grown. The responsibilities have grown. The liabilities have grown. So what coaches are tasked with today are year-round jobs. Every sport now is year-round, so it’s not the old days when you coach football one season, basketball the next. If you’re a football coach, you’re a football coach year-round,” Simmons said.
“And so to do that for 365 days a year, the hours we put in for the little bit of compensation that these high school coaches get, it’s really, for lack of a better term, it’s sinful. As a person who has been there, whose seen it, it’s my responsibility to, along with other coaches like myself, to come and advocate for them.”
One member of the committee let out an audible “wow” when Simmons said the four athletic supplements combined didn’t even approach $10,000. Anderson said lawmakers getting jolted by numbers like that Tuesday was needed.
“I’m glad we saw those reactions. Simply put, no, I don’t think that most members and senators know how dire the situation is. In my opinion, it’s an embarrassment,” he said. “And you look at all the things that we do so well in the state of Florida, you look at all the areas that we’re leading the nation in. This is not one of them.”
