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.