David Ward, speech-language pathologist
See Florida's open K-12 educational interpreter jobs here, plus the state rules, employers, EIPA support, and pay data that matter when you apply.
What Florida law covers
Florida's statute on instructional programs for blind and deaf or hard of hearing students, section 1003.55, tells the IEP team to weigh a student's language and communication needs and their chances for direct communication with peers and staff in the student's own mode. For each deaf or hard of hearing student, the team fills out the state Communication Plan, form 313189, under State Board Rule 6A-6.03028.
Neither that statute nor the State Board's deaf and hard of hearing rule, 6A-6.03013, sets an EIPA score or certificate for school interpreters. Read each employer's job description for the credential it wants.
Help paying for the EIPA
Rule 6A-6.03013 requires districts to make referral links available to students and parents for the Educational Interpreter Project (EIP). EIP is an IDEA-funded state project housed at the University of South Florida, and it works to improve the skills of interpreters serving students who are deaf, hard of hearing, or dual sensory impaired. If you interpret full time in a K-12 school, or an agency places you in one, EIP covers half your EIPA fee: $182.50 of the $365 performance test and $130 of the $260 written test. It also offers tuition and NIC reimbursements.
FSDB and district jobs
The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind (FSDB) in St. Augustine is a state agency. Its Interpreter Services department reports that most of its staff interpreters hold the National Interpreter Certification (NIC). FSDB interpreters work in classrooms, meetings, and health appointments, and they follow students into off-campus programs such as St. Johns River State College. FSDB lists full-time openings on People First, the state job site, under the keyword "FSDB."
For district jobs, the Resource Materials and Technology Center for the Deaf/Hard of Hearing (RMTC-DHH), a Florida Department of Education project operated through FSDB, posts deaf education openings from Florida school districts for free on its job openings page.
Pay
FSDB's careers page sets $18.00 an hour as the minimum rate for its full-time positions. Across all employers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 4,200 interpreters and translators in Florida in May 2025, earning a mean of $58,900 a year and a median of $48,930. BLS counts spoken-language interpreters in that group.
Related roles
Under Rule 6A-6.03013, a teacher of the deaf or hard of hearing, a licensed speech-language pathologist, or both must conduct a deaf or hard of hearing student's communication and language assessment. RMTC-DHH explains the two paths to the teacher certificate under Rule 6A-4.0172: a deaf education preparation program, or a bachelor's degree with 30 semester hours in exceptional student education.
The listings on this page are Florida's open educational interpreter postings.