BARTOW — Officials with the Polk Education Association and Polk County Public Schools remain at impasse on what to pay teachers, paraeducators and clerical staff — all as those employees continue to work through a pandemic that has landed at least two Lakeland teachers in the intensive care unit with COVID-19.
On Monday and Tuesday, the union and district officials are scheduled to sit down with a special magistrate and present their cases for formal review.
At issue are:
• Increasing paraeducator, secretarial and clerical pay to $10 an hour, which PEA officials said would cost the district an additional $2.2 million. It would also put the district in compliance ahead of schedule with the recently passed Amendment 2, which requires minimum wage be increased to $15 an hour incrementally over the next five years.