County teachers vote overwhelmingly against ratifying contract

For the first time since collective bargaining began, Santa Rosa County teachers have voted overwhelmingly against ratifification of their contract language.

 The controversial contract language came out of the negotiations impasse between them and the school board in March. The key issue was that the school board accepted a special magistrate's recommendation not to include automatic in-step pay raises for teachers, thus breaking with a tradition of over 30 years.

The contract language calls for in-step raises to be an item of negotiations annually.

In an e-mail to the media, Santa Rosa Professional Educators President Rhonda Chavers reported the following: "The ratification contract election held this week has resulted in history being made in Santa Rosa County. This was the first time the bargaining unit members of Santa Rosa Professional Educators that are also employees of the Santa Rosa School Board overwhelmingly voted to “withhold ratification” of the Master Contract between the Santa Rosa County School Board and the Santa Rosa Professional Educators. There were 1787 ballots cast, 1670 voted NO and 117 voted YES."

The ratification  vote was taken on Thursday, April 22.