By Jade DiGirolamo
July 23, 2026
Leon County Schools did not “stumble” into the controversial arrangement with TPG Cultural Exchange. The school board approved the contract on the argument that it fills classroom vacancies the district could not otherwise staff. That argument treats the staffing shortage as the problem when, in actuality, it is a symptom.
Staffing shortages are a direct consequence of the compensation and working conditions the district is able (or willing) to provide over time. So why does the school district not simply compensate educators fairly and competitively to alleviate the so-called teacher “shortage”? One probable reason is that raising the salary schedule enough to draw local applicants to fill staffing gaps can also expose public employers like Leon County Schools to pressure for further compensation increases across the entire pay schedule. Administration maintains that vendor-based staffing arrangements will provide a simplified path to relief from that immediate pressure while filling vacancies.
However, contracts with visa staffing agencies like TPG also change the terrain of the problem while ignoring root causes. Instead of resolving the conditions that produced the vacancy, the district sources labor through a distant mechanism devoid of responsibility while leaving the problematic compensation structure largely intact. Nonetheless, positions get filled with comparative ease, the costs associated with employee acquisition and turnover are absorbed by the staffing agency, and employee related expenses become compartmentalized under its purview. Wages and benefits for local educators, however, are left to stagnate or increase only enough to lag short of the cost-of-living for the area.
Teachers nationally are paid 26.9 percent less than similarly credentialed professionals in other fields. This accounts for the widest gap the Economic Policy Institute has recorded in thirty years of tracking, with teachers earning the equivalent of 73 cents on the dollar compared with similarly educated professionals elsewhere (Allegretto, Economic Policy Institute, September 2025). That gap is one of the primary structural conditions associated with persistent staffing gaps in public education.
This dynamic extends beyond compensation into the structure of the job itself. The International Labour Organization defines precarious employment as work marked by uncertainty, insecurity, and limited control over conditions (International Labour Organization, 2011), and visa-sponsored teaching positions meet that definition by design. A teacher whose legal
presence in the country depends on continued sponsorship has markedly less capacity to leave for a better offer than a teacher hired locally, regardless of how the position is treated day to day. That reduced mobility is not incidental to the arrangement. It is the mechanism through which retention is decoupled from compensation, since a workforce that cannot easily leave does not need to be paid enough to want to stay.
The value of retention is not abstract and it cannot be understated. The Learning Policy Institute found that every thousand-dollar increase in teacher pay, adjusted for cost of living, corresponds to roughly a third of a percentage point drop in turnover, and that increasing a teacher’s salary from fifty thousand to seventy thousand dollars reduced projected turnover from 17.6 percent to 10.9 percent (Learning Policy Institute, Teacher Turnover in the United States, 2024). The same body of research estimates the cost of replacing a single teacher at roughly $25,000 dollars in a large district, a figure worth measuring against whatever LCS is actually paying TPG per placement. If that fee runs comparable to, or higher than the cost of retention plus a modest raise, then the “savings” driving this decision could be negligible. This would confirm that the district would be spending to strategically avoid expanding raises and cost-of-living adjustments. Whatever its duplicitous intent, the international educator arrangement is an exploitative attack on workers, both those sourced locally and through the TPG firm.
Employee health coverage is another area of cost the District makes incredible strides to contain, regardless of the necessity of such benefits to secure a minimum standard of living in the absence of universal healthcare. TPG administers its own State Department-compliant insurance plan for the teachers it places (WCTV, July 16, 2026). The savings run deeper than insurance alone: under Internal Revenue Code Section 3121(b)(19), J-1 visa teachers are exempt from FICA taxes for their first one to two years in the country, and retirement contributions for these teachers frequently do not begin until their second year of service. These are obligations the district would owe in full for any locally hired teacher from day one. While to some this may seem like a strategic way for the district to manage expenses with minimum impact on employees, it comes at the expense of local teachers by shrinking the pool that determines their own health insurance rates. By routing even a small portion of the workforce through a separate plan, participation in the district’s primary health pool is reduced, which may weaken leverage in future rate negotiations, since insurance premiums typically become more competitive as risk pools grow larger. The same logic lets state employee plans and multi-district consortiums negotiate stronger rates than smaller groups acting alone. The arrangement addresses workforce needs through a parallel system rather than by strengthening the infrastructure already in place.
The TPG arrangement also reflects a broader institutional preference for administrative solutions to staffing shortages, since such arrangements are financially favorable to the district, consolidate decision-making authority at the administrative level, and diminish the bargaining unit’s practical influence, whether by removing positions from the pool the union represents or by filling them with workers whose immigration status makes them far less able to exercise whatever bargaining rights they retain, despite legally holding the same right to union membership as any other public employee (Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO).
Florida law is notoriously pro-employer, and public sector employees are not exempt from significant restrictions. The state makes one form of worker leverage especially costly to consider. Section 447.505 of the Florida Statutes authorizes the termination of public employees who participate in a strike and bars them from receiving pay increases for two years afterward. Section 447.507 authorizes the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) to seek decertification of a union, along with the loss of payroll dues deduction, if it determines that a strike occurred. Whatever legislators’ individual motives, the practical effect of these provisions is to increase the cost of collective work stoppages. Laws imposing unusually severe penalties generally exist because policymakers believe the prohibited conduct would otherwise remain a viable source of leverage.
For public employees, including educators, the question is not whether collective action carries risks. Every meaningful improvement workers have ever won carried risk. The question is whether the risks of action are greater than the risks of accepting a status quo that continues to erode compensation, working conditions, and professional respect. Employers often rely on workers believing that they are individually powerless. History shows that the power balance tips when workers act collectively.
Record of such actions carried out in other, similarly restrictive states may be viewed as both inspirational and instructive. West Virginia teachers walked out statewide in 2018 despite having no legal right to strike under state law. Nine days later, they secured a five percent raise for public employees and a commitment to address the state’s troubled Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA), which had become the central issue of the strike. No court first declared the strike ban unenforceable, nor did any legislature repeal it beforehand. The strike proceeded to shift precedents and the political landscape as a whole. Arizona’s Red for Ed movement the same year ultimately secured a 20% teacher pay increase over two years after years of legislative inaction. Los Angeles teachers went on strike in 2019 and won enforceable agreements on class-size reductions and increased staffing for nurses, counselors, and librarians. Chicago’s teacher strikes in 2019 and 2022 secured contractual limits on class sizes and additional staffing commitments that ordinary bargaining had failed to produce.
None of these campaigns began with precedent guaranteeing success, but they also did not face any precedent guaranteeing failure. Each of these actions was predicated on educators’ capacity for collective action and the decision that the costs of inaction exceeded the risks of action. For organizers, the absence of Florida precedent is less an endpoint than a reminder
that labor law evolves through conflict as well as litigation. Whether that conflict ultimately occurs is a question of worker organization rather than existing case law or legislative mechanics. Every example of states who succeeded in striking despite legal constraints first relied on testimony, lobbying, elections, administrative advocacy, and conventional political channels. Only after those avenues proved insufficient did workers collectively withhold their labor.
The efforts of local educators have not yet reached this critical mass, due in part to existing bargaining units’ hesitance to stress-test current regulatory guardrails, coupled with the unavoidable need for creative external organizing to materially support such efforts. By
evaluating issues like the TPG contract, large-scale wage suppression, and contract abuse across local workplaces, the Tallahassee Workers Assembly provides support for workers seeking to make these determinations collectively rather than leave them to attrition. Contact the local chapter to get involved or learn more about the work ahead.
References
Allegretto, S. (2025, September). The Teacher Pay Penalty Reached a Record High in 2024: Three Decades of Leaving Public School Teachers Behind. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-penalty-reached-a-record-high-in-2024-three-de cades-of-leaving-public-school-teachers-behind/
Chicago Teachers Union. (2019, 2022). Collective Bargaining Agreements and Settlement Summaries. See also Chalkbeat Chicago coverage of the 2019 and 2022 settlements.
Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO. Use and Abuse of the J-1 Exchange Visitor Teacher Program.
Green, E. L., & Turkewitz, J. (2018, March 6). West Virginia Raises Teachers’ Pay to End Statewide Strike. The New York Times.
Internal Revenue Code § 3121(b)(19) (FICA exemption for nonresident alien exchange visitors).
International Labour Organization. (2011). Policies and Regulations to Combat Precarious Employment. International Labour Office, Geneva.
Jordan, M. (2018, May 4). Arizona Teachers Approve Deal to End Statewide Walkout. The New York Times.
Learning Policy Institute. (2024). Teacher Turnover in the United States: Patterns, Drivers, and Policy Strategies.
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-turnover-united-states-factsheet
Medina, J. (2019, January 22). Los Angeles Teachers Strike Ends After Deal on Pay and Class Size. The New York Times.
WCTV. (2026, July 16). Leon County Schools Turns to International Recruitment to Fill Teaching Vacancies.
Way too much labor assumptions. LCS doesn’t have the $$. So they’re taking a shortcut. They don’t have the $$ because the area doesn’t have high ad valorem taxes. Also much of our infrastructure is tax free. We don’t have major corps here paying taxes. All of this impacts “Labors ability to be funded at higher levels.” Author seems to feel strikes would help. Nah, area is too low income. That’s the problem.
In each of the instances mentioned in West Virginia and Arizona there was no money either. But, they found the money when the workers went on strike. This was the case when Florida teachers struck in 1968. Now it is probably true that we will have to restructure our funding mechanisms and this may have to happen at the state level.
Tom,
Those are fine points, and I acknowledge the facts you stated to a certain degree. I respectfully depart from the assertion that the article is particularly centered on assumption, as I uphold the inherent value of the relationship between funding, allocation, and labor retention. More than one solution to the educator staffing crisis may co-occur, and in fact the situation necessitates these increasingly advanced, internal solutions with respect to funding.
There are efforts underway currently which will see increases in ad valorem revenue allocation, the majority of which will benefit educators and support staff directly. Internal reorganizations which remove administrative “bulk” and efficiently distribute funds despite unprecedented budget shortfalls serve as opportunities for the district to regard educators as a priority, as opposed to an expendable, infinite resource. Overall, educators deserve the respect of a livable wage and the administration must prioritize their most crucial staff through creative solutions.