I Have Served on the Committee That Gives Teachers Awards. This District Gives Them Another Class.

A Lee County teacher is now covering two grade levels and two subjects because her school is short a teacher, with classes of 28 to 30 against a legal cap of 22. The district's answer to teachers this year has been recognition. We heard "kudos" numerous times during yesterday's workshop. My daughter is the kind of student who falls through the cracks first. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.

By Ali Olivo · August 4, 2026

Eighteen years ago, I moved to Lee County. Six years ago, I pulled my daughter out of a private school in March of her pre-K year, after the headmaster told me she belonged in an ESE classroom. The public school was all we had. It was the only option we had for our child at the time.

Then Edison Park called. The resource teacher got me on the phone and said she was going to be with Sophie the whole time she was there.

Sophie was never placed in a separate classroom. She stayed in general education, scored fours and fives on her FAST tests, earned A's, and learned to advocate for herself well enough to tell me where she wanted to attend middle school. That did not happen because a district office wrote a plan. It happened because there were enough adults in that building to see my child.

I have served on the Golden Apple Selection Committee for more than 6 years, because it matters to me to recognize teachers and give them the praise they deserve. So I want to be precise about what I am watching this district do. It is very willing to hand a teacher an award. It is not willing to hand her a colleague.

What a teacher wrote this week

She was told she would split her schedule across two different grade levels and two different subjects, because her school is short a teacher in a subject that is not hers. She now plans two curricula and preps completely different materials for two different courses. Her load in her own subject was cut roughly in half, and sections of it came off the schedule entirely.

She thought that meant enrollment was down. It did not. The classes that were left simply got bigger.

Class sizes will just be 28-30 each hour instead of the legal and manageable limit of 22 students. Its easier to just pay the yearly fine to the state for the over class limit and kill us teachers than to just hire another body I guess?

A Lee County teacher

She is not the only one in her building teaching a new subject. A colleague certified for a different grade range has been handed multiple sections outside her own field on top of a full load, and is now running a department while only half present in it.

Just 1 human could change everything in my situation.

The same teacher

One human. That is the entire ask.

We were told this was coming

This board closed a $92 million gap by cutting 457 positions, 275 of them teachers. What happens next is not a mystery, because a Lee County teacher told us in advance. Speaking before the school year started, she said that with those layoffs our classroom sizes are going to go up, and that there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. She also said which students get hurt first: the kids with learning disabilities, the kids with accommodations, the English language learners.

Those kids are the first people who fall through the cracks.

A Lee County high school teacher, July 2026

That is my daughter's category. That is why I am writing this instead of minding my own business.

What got funded while teachers got cut

In the budget adopted this summer, Organizational Development and Retention drops 65 percent, in a year when Focus on Employee Retention is printed in the district's own list of General Fund priorities. Benefits and Wellness drops 49 percent. Teaching and Learning, the department that builds what teachers are handed, drops 66 percent, from $9.7 million to $3.3 million. Business Intelligence, the office that defines the only measurable outcome in the district's entire Lee in 3 plan, goes from seven positions to four. Workforce Intelligence goes up 210 percent.

So teachers get a smaller benefits office, a smaller retention office, fewer colleagues, more students, and more subjects. What they get in exchange is recognition. Awards. Certificates. A plan with their name in the mission statement and a bonus structure instead of a raise. Teachers in this county start under $55,000, and many of them work a second job to stay afloat. One told us she took a restaurant job to pay off unpaid maternity leave and quit when her mental health, in her words, took a nosedive.

You cannot fix that with a golden apple.

What I am asking

I am not asking this board to love teachers. I am asking it to staff them. Fill the position that is missing. Fill the sections that came off the schedule. Put the money where the child is, and stop sending a graphic instead.

My daughter got the version of Lee County schools where a teacher had room to see her. Every family in this county deserves that version. Most of them are not getting it, the reason is not a mystery, and it is not the teachers.

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