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Florida teachers have had a long history of being angry over pay, education policy and school funding. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, current protests over a merit pay bill on the Governor’s desk are similar to battles teachers have one in the past.

As many as half of Florida’s teachers walked off the job in February  1968. Seventeen days later, new legislation, still on the books today, equalizing  funding for Florida schools sent them back to work.

Merit pay has been tried before and has never lasted because there’s never been enough money to fund schools, let alone merit pay.

Teachers’ anger came to a boil in 1982 over the merit pay issue. A thousand angry teachers filled the Capitol courtyard and booed then-Governor Bob Graham who was pushing the idea.

In  these pre-email days, teachers collected hundreds of letters.

Merit pay became law but it lasted just two years. Lawmakers ran out of money. Today, business leaders are citing the ’82 merit pay experiment as another reason for the governor to sign the legislation this year.

“We lost that opportunity nearly a quarter of a century ago,” Dominic Calabro with Florida Taxwatch. “We do not want to lose that opportunity today.”

But like years past, there’s no money for merit pay and that’s weighing on the governor.

“And that is part of the deliberation that I’m going through, in making a determination on the bill and whether or not we can afford it,” Crist said.

The deadline for a decision is Friday, but it could come sooner.

The main funding issue come from a provision in SB 6 that requires schools to hold back five percent of school budgets to develop tests, when schools are already facing state funding cuts.