Pasco County Schools informs coaches of preliminary agreement of supplement increase
Expect a pay increase coming for coaches in Pasco County in the near future.
In an interview with Pasco County athletic director Matt Wicks, the former Anclote head football coach told SBLive Sports Florida that a deal is in place for a package worth $1.3-million towards increasing coaching supplements for Pasco coaches.
Being a former coach himself, Wicks explained that he had been working vigorously towards getting coaches in Pasco County an increase as he’s seen numerous good ones leave the area to other regions and states for higher paying jobs.
“It’s a huge win honestly,” Wicks said. “It’s something we’ve worked on in the past and it allows us to pay these coaches what they deserve. Now that we have that ability with teacher pay we can up the supplement. We want to competitive with Hillsborough and Pinellas and Polk. I want to be selfish a little bit. I’d love us to lure a really good coach from another county and be able to pay them more. I’ve seen us not able to retain some good coaches. I always wish we could do more.”
The system is layered into six different tiers, according to Wicks. In Addendum B of the master contract in regards to pay raises that was put together, coaches and assistant positions would see increases based on the sport and time period of coaching.
“We felt like with putting it in a six-tier system, it helps them being compensated more,” Wicks said. “Athletic directors are the only one at tier six. We reached out to other counties and it was about 15 others that we spoke to. We wanted to be competitive with all the big players in the state.”
Wicks gave an example of the new tier system that has been introduced as wrestling coaches seeing an increase from $2,383 to $2,550 in the Tier 4. Another example was weightlifting coaches would see an increase from $1,469 to $1,875 under Tier 3. Middle school athletic directors got bumped up from $2,000 to $2,500 per the new addendum.
Coaches being underpaid in high school sports has been a big point of emphasis as of lately all around the state. Just recently, an called the Florida Coaches Coalition publicly put out a ‘what if’ scenario if high school coaches around the state boycotted the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) to Florida Education Association (FEA) president Andrew Spar and the reaction was strong per the group.
Though the FHSAA does not control what coaching wages are in any district throughout the state, the organization has said they’ve not received any support from those in Gainesville in regards to working on pay increases for coaches.
-- Andy Villamarzo | villamarzo@scorebooklive.com | @sblivefl
