The Collier County School District says it is asking voters to help give teachers a raise — without raising taxes.

An early 2024 survey of district employees showed 64% fear that high housing costs would force them to look for jobs elsewhere. Some 45% said high mortgages and rent would rob them of stable housing.

School Superintendent Leslie Ricciardelli and the school board believed the answer was to give teachers a meaningful pay hike. After the school year started with a shortage of 79 teachers in August, the county in September struck a deal with the Collier County Education Association to provide more than $24 million in salary and benefit increases for teachers, said Chad Oliver, the district’s chief communication officer.

Unlike school districts in 44 of Florida’s 67 counties, Collier’s school district did not want to ask voters for a tax increase to give teachers that meaningful pay hike, said Lisa Morse, the district’s director of community engagement and district initiatives.

Instead, Ricciardelli and the school board hope voters will approve a “tax-neutral flexible funding” referendum to pay for this year’s 11.7% pay raise.

To avoid asking voters for a tax increase, Collier County schools rely on what it calls “tax-neutral flexible funding” — the act of transferring money from the district’s capital budget, which can only be spent on new construction, maintenance, paying off the district’s debt and like items, to the district’s operational budget, which can be used to pay teacher salaries.

The school district, however, must have the public’s permission to take from one bucket and add to the other. That’s why Ricciardelli — with the unanimous support of the board of education and county commission — is hoping voters approve a referendum on Nov. 5 that gives the district permission to reduce ad valorem taxes by as much as .35 mills in the capital budget and add up to .35 mills of ad valorem taxes to the operating budget.

“Salary increases are conditional on the referendum for helping that happen,” Morse told The Naples Press. “The salary increases for the teachers don’t happen in the next four years without this passing.”

A similar referendum in November 2023 helped pay for $26 million in raises for teachers and staff, an approximate 13% increase when salary supplements are included, Oliver said.

Morse told the Collier County School Board in April that it doesn’t have to use the entire amount, but .35 mills is the limit.

The voters approved a similar referendum in 2020, which allowed the district to transfer $36.7 million into the operating budget for salaries and benefits for teachers, compensation and benefits for staff, instructional materials, athletics, arts and insurance for school sites.

Should voters approve the referendum in November and the school board use all .35 mills, the district should realize an estimated $266 million in additional operating funding between 2025 and 2029, according to a prospectus Oliver sent to stakeholders.

The roughly 30% of voters who have voted against similar referendums in past years may worry that taking money from the capital budget would make less money available for construction, roof replacements and other building maintenance for the district’s 60-plus schools. They could worry the district would have to go into debt to build new schools.

“That is one concern we have heard when we brief the community,” Oliver said. “The school board does not have to use the full .35 mills. It can adjust that when it needs to spend more money on capital projects. We don’t have to go into debt.”

In fact, Oliver said, the district built Aubrey Rogers High School and is building Bear Creek Elementary School and the future Elementary Q in Ave Maria without borrowing.

“We built them with cash, no new debt,” he said. “We now have a debt service of $37- $40 million on our capital fund. We will pay that down by 2027.”

Meanwhile, the September pay increases may have reduced some teachers’ housing worries.

“If we can have a higher salary, then it allows us to be able to afford living here — and we don’t want to lose teachers, so this is a way of keeping them in the county, which I think is really important,” kindergarten teacher Angel Rafaloff told WINK News in September.

This story was published in The Naples Press on Nov. 1.