JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The finish line is fast approaching on change for high school coaches in Florida for a path to better pay.
I should say the first finish line.
The next race will begin just about as soon as a pair of bills arrives on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for him to sign.
House Bill 731 and Senate Bill 538 have sailed through every stop on the legislative process, garnering bipartisan support and little to no resistance. Those bills address two massive holes in the athletic framework of high school sports here: Coaching pay and transfers.
Help is long overdue on both.
The Senate passed its version of the bill by a 38-0 vote on Thursday, moving it one step closer to the desk of DeSantis, a former college baseball star at Yale University, who has touted the need for better pay for coaches for years.
Those changes appear to be only a matter of the calendar now.
That’s the positive news. It also sets the stage for a new type of race after that. Since the state isn’t slapping a mandate across the pay portion of the bill to force districts to implement raises, the fight for better wages will now fall back on coaches at the county level.
It’s past time for coaches to speak up on it and fight for their worth.
I’ve heard from coaches in and out of our coverage area who have all relayed the same thing — that they’ve been told don’t expect this bill to change anything. That’s ridiculous and wrong.
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As much as they would love to do it, lawmakers know that there’s no realistic way to directly channel more money to coaches, especially with teacher pay and shortages in Florida as bad as they are -- and getting worse. It would be terrible optics to do that right now.
It doesn’t apply to just coaches, although that is who it is geared toward.
Any person who supervises an extracurricular activity (band, drama, and debate club supervisors, etc.) would be eligible to gain from the bill, but it is unquestionably tied to coaches. So many lawmakers in this process played sports in their lives and were shaped by teachers and coaches. Sen. Corey Simon (R-Tallahassee) played at Florida State and was a first-round draft pick of the Eagles.
He has mentioned his high school coach at Blanche Ely, Carl Walker, every time I’ve seen him. Pro Football Hall of Famer Cris Carter played for legendary coaches throughout his career, but said none were better than his high school coach, Bill Conley.
Wages have lagged for decades in some districts (it has literally been decades since Duval County coaches last saw a supplemental pay raise) for coaches, as responsibilities have soared. It’s beyond a fair ask for coaches to get more money.
The problem with asking for more money now
It’s never a good time to ask for a pay raise, and now may be the worst ever.
Public schools are losing student enrollment by the thousands every year as parents pull their children out of that system and take advantage of school choice and vouchers to go the charter or private school path.
In Duval County alone, enrollment has gone from 101,469 in 2023-24 to 100,456 in 2025-26. A loss of 1,013 doesn’t seem jarring, but consider that each student is equivalent to roughly $9,000 in state and local funding.
St. Johns County has been infallible when it comes to all things school, but the district says it is going to have a $15 million budget shortfall in 2026-27. It announced this week that it is closing St. Johns Technical High School and merging it with nearby St. Augustine High.
The pains are real, and it starts with teacher salaries and student money walking out the door. There is no easy fix, and there’s no doubt that those issues will continue to accelerate. According to the National Education Association, Florida ranks 50th in the country in average teacher pay ($54,875), ahead of only Mississippi ($53,704).
It’s a polarizing topic across the board. Why fight to get coaches paid more when full-time teachers barely make enough to keep the lights on? Why not pay more for yearbook, debate, and band supervisors?
All fair and valid questions.
Coaching is equivalent to a second full-time job for many who do it the right way, and pay for the workload is sharply worse on an hourly level than the pay for teachers. The Florida Coaches Coalition asked for a minimum wage for high school coaches here and tabulated the hours of a head varsity football coach to be 1,500 a year.
Using the area’s highest supplement, Nassau County’s at $7,217, works out to $4.81 an hour.
What do head football coaches make in the area
This is a common question because of how much is expected of high school coaches now. Many see coaching salaries at the college level or in states like Georgia and Texas, and assume coaches here are compensated well. That’s a myth.
Some districts do have coaches on 11- and 12-month contracts instead of the traditional 10, so that helps coaches earn pay in the summer months. But those 10-plus contracts are more the exception than the norm.
Here’s a look at what the 11 counties in the News4JAX coverage area make in football head coaching supplements on just an apples-to-apples comparison.
Area football head coach supplemental pay
| District | Fall pay | Spring | Total | Playoff $ | Raise since ‘15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nassau | $5,414 | $1,803 | $7,217 | No | Yes |
| Bradford | $7,000 | NA | $7,000 | Yes | Yes |
| Clay | $6,752 | NA | $6,752 | No | Yes |
| Union | $6,318 | NA | $6,318 | Yes | Yes |
| St. Johns | $4,600 | $1,150 | $5,650 | Yes | Yes |
| Duval | $3,994 | $705 | $4,699 | No | No |
| Columbia | $4,616 | NA | $4,616 | No | Yes |
| Flagler | $4,500 | NA | $4,500 | No | No |
| Baker | $3,045 | $1,305 | $4,350 | No | No |
| Suwannee | $4,345 | NA | $4,345 | Yes | No |
| Putnam | $3,809 | NA | $3,809 | No | Yes |
Playoff pay
Bradford, 3% of supplement for district title; 5% for regional title; 10% for state title), Yes
Union, 5% of supplement for district title; 7.5% for regional title; 10% for state title; 15% for national title
St. Johns, 5% of supplement per extra week
Suwannee 10% of supplement for each round
Nassau County has shot up the list, moving from $4,751 10 years ago to an area-high $7,217 today. Four of the 11 counties have not given supplemental pay raises over the last decade. And only four area counties pay anything additional for reaching the playoffs.
Some districts in the state do and have gone above and beyond what is listed as the supplement pay to bring in a quality head coach or compensate their coaches better. In almost all of the cases that I do know about, those have occurred in much smaller counties than the main ones here (Clay, Duval, St. Johns). One-high school districts like Baker, Bradford, Suwannee and Union counties are better positioned to go above and beyond for their coaches simply because of the singularity. They’re the only show in town.
I asked Rep. Adam Anderson, who has co-sponsored HB 731, on Wednesday if he thinks this makes a real difference a year from now?
“I do. I really do. 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. 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,” he said.
Many lawmakers share Anderson’s hope and also have their own trepidation that districts will be slow to react to it.
How can it get done in reality?
This is the popular question.
The decision-making power will go from the state to the districts, and that has gone over about as well as you can imagine. School districts have already voiced their displeasure with the bill to lawmakers. Individual coaches are being told this will never happen.
Rep. Shane Abbott, co-sponsor of HB 731, said he knows that there is no way every district will embrace it and many will resist it entirely should it become law. But he said if there are even 10 districts in the first year that look at the law and find ways to get it done, then it’s a step in the right direction. Abbott said he feels good about a domino effect across school districts in Florida as counties initiate it.
The bill allows extracurricular administrators to negotiate pay above and beyond their current supplement with the superintendent or district powers that be. This is the free market that lawmakers feel is the modern-day version of equitable. When I’ve mentioned to lawmakers in Tallahassee that the head coach at Raines, who just won a state title, is paid the same as a coach who went 0-10, they’ve been shocked. It doesn’t make sense. By trying to make everything equitable, districts have done just the opposite.
I think this works in smaller districts with a handful of schools better than it would in a Broward, Duval or Miami-Dade. But with that option on the table, could a coach in a Duval or St. Johns head to the superintendent, make his or her case, and come away with anything extra?
It has happened in other counties. It needs to happen here.
I mentioned on social media that St. Johns would be an ideal candidate to set the pace on this. It is the top school district in the state annually. And bluntly, it’s jarring that such a strong district in so many facets ranks fifth in our 11-county area in coaching pay.
How to boost pay without taxpayer money
It’s a question that superintendents are going to be and should be asked, especially by successful coaches who have tenure in their positions.
The more likely avenue for many programs will be to swivel to the booster club option. Districts in our area are extremely hesitant to allow this to happen for a number of reasons. The equitability argument is a key issue. Oversight is another. But booster clubs provide something that school districts currently don’t have a lot of — money. Much like college programs who have alumni bases with deep pockets, there are area booster clubs flush with cash who would absolutely help financially.
A school with enormous booster support and wealthy donors could pay a coaching staff additional money in one part of a district, but not at a less successful program in another part of the same district.
That isn’t new. It already happens in some pockets of the state. One lawmaker on Wednesday said that it absolutely should not be an issue because we are long past the equity issue in sports here. The state allows high school athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness, so why is it an issue for a coach to earn additional pay from a third party? At the very least, a district should come up with a booster club scale that allows it to pay coaching staff up to a certain point.
Maybe it’s $10,000 maximum in one county and $5,000 in another that’s able to be spread across the coaching staff as an extra incentive.
Something has got to give. For far too long, the coaches have been the ones giving. The end of one race is in sight, and that’s progress a long time in the making. The one coming after this will be even bigger.