Tallahassee, FL — As Rick Scott stumps the state, desperate to persuade voters he’s on the side of students and teachers, you can bet he won’t be talking about the choice he’s given school boards like Marion County. It turns out Rick Scott’s anti-education budget gives school boards a choice: save the jobs of 160 teachers or give only some teachers a raise. 

On Monday, Marion Co. School Board Chairman Ron Crawford told the Ocala Star-Banner that “160 first-year teachers” — and as many as 101 other school district employees — “can avoid June 30 layoffs if all other teachers forfeit their state salary bonuses to the district.”

“After two years of neglecting Florida’s schools by cutting $1.3 billion in education, hundreds of millions from Florida’s colleges and universities, and overseeing thousands of teacher layoffs, Rick Scott said his top priority this year was a teacher pay raise. But as we saw this session the Governor did nothing more than sit on the sidelines as the GOP tacked on a myriad of conditions to the raise. Now he’s forcing school boards to choose between firing teachers or giving raises,” said FDP spokesman Joshua Karp. “Education is key to Florida’s recovery from the recession and no one has done more to jeopardize that than Governor Scott.”