TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida Coaches Coalition had a whirlwind day at the state capital, making the rounds with lawmakers as it tries to get a potential game-changing bill that could boost coaching pay in the state across the finish line.
A six-hour day in Tallahassee ended with Pro Football Hall of Famer Cris Carter and ex-Florida State and Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher adding their voices to the growing list of prominent figures advocating for change.
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“Listen, coaches are educators. They’re teachers. They need to be compensated for what they’re doing and what we have, and our kids are our greatest resource,” Fisher said.
“And if you don’t compensate these coaches, your programs are going to deteriorate, which makes your whole school. My mama was a teacher. I grew up with a family full of teachers. But coaches need to be appreciated for what they do and compensated for what they do.”
The Coaches Coalition has fought for better pay for public school coaches in Florida since 2021 and has grabbed the ears of lawmakers in Tallahassee. House Bill 731, co-authored by Rep. Adam Anderson (R-Palm Harbor) and Rep. Shane Abbott (R-DeFuniak Springs), is a massive piece of legislation that is targeted to two growing issues in Florida.
Coaching pay and transfers.
The FHSAA has asked the state for better guardrails to help combat the collision of school choice and parents who send their children to multiple schools in the same year to benefit from athletics.
“As we get to the floor, I’m confident we have a really good product that we can get across the finish line and get it to the governor’s desk,” Anderson said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has said on multiple occasions that he would sign legislation on his desk to boost coaching pay. The new law doesn’t force districts to implement it, but both Anderson and Abbott said that their hope would be a snowball effect across the state as better paying coaching jobs start to pop up in districts here and there.
Coaching pay is one of the worst in the country and has the potential to be addressed through the bill of Abbott and Anderson, as well as the Senate bill authored by Corey Simon. It has sailed through committee after committee with little resistance, something that isn’t common in today’s hyper-partisan political environment. Florida Coaches Coalition executive director Andrew Ramjit said that Democrats have been far more conversational with the coalition during this session than in the past on the topic.
Abbott’s changes from the initial draft put coaches alongside others in the school system who handle extracurricular activities like band or theater or even debate club leaders. They would be classified as extracurricular administrators, and would have the option to approach a superintendent and ask for more money outside of what they are paid through their supplement.
“This bill, it may not give coaches everything they want right away, but guess what it does? It cracks open the door, a door that has never been cracked open before,” Ramjit said.
“So our goal is to continue to fight and advocate for every coach here in Florida. That way, a few years from now, the door is not only cracked open, it’s torn down.”
Some smaller counties already have that option, or something similar. That would afford successful coaches the option to make additional money over less successful colleagues in the same county. Numerous districts in Florida do not pay anything extra for the playoffs, meaning a head coach and their staffs could turn in a perfect season with a state championship and be paid the same as a coach who finished winless.
“What we’re really doing here on the coaching side is that we’re building the framework so local districts will have the tools that they need to be able to make good decisions to support their athletic programs,” Anderson said. “And it’s not on the back of the taxpayer. They’ll be able to raise these funds through the booster organizations, the club associations. This goes beyond athletics, too. … And our ultimate goal really is where we’re going to be graduating more well-rounded students in Florida.”