TALLAHASSEE — With Florida facing a severe teacher shortage, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that he plans to propose a teacher pay increase next year and eliminate a controversial bonus that that was never fully embraced by educators.

DeSantis confirmed what Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran has been saying in appearances this summer — that a big pay raise is coming. Corcoran’s been touting a “massive” or “landmark” salary hike in the works.

The governor provided no specifics, but pledged that something new — and at least, relatively big — was coming.

“It’ll be something that’s more than just a little token, throw a few dollars here,” DeSantis said following a state Cabinet meeting. “But I think it’s not just saying we’re going to use money, but what’s the overall plan to improve education.”

DeSantis said that at least some of the money for the pay increase would come from the “Best & Brightest” teacher bonus plan, created in 2015 and financed with $285 million in the current budget.

The bonus plan has been the subject of a lawsuit filed by the state’s largest teachers union. The Florida Education Association and the state asked a federal judge this month to approve a $15.5 million settlement in the class-action suit over the program’s use of a teacher’s college entrance exam scores as a qualifier for bonus awards of either $2,500 or $1,000.

FEA argued that the provision had a “disparate impact” on black, Hispanic and older teachers.

The Legislature this spring removed that SAT and ACT requirement. But DeSantis on Tuesday said that changes made to the program continued to leave it “complicated,” and that Best & Brightest would be “folded in” to the new compensation plan he plans to unveil in coming weeks.

The Legislature’s 2020 session begins in January.

When the school year began last year, there were 4,000 teacher vacancies across the state. A host of subject areas also were commonly filled by instructors not certified in the field, according to Department of Education data.

Average teacher salary in Florida last year was $48,486, according to DOE. WalletHub, the financial survey site, ranked Florida 48th among the states in teacher pay.

Many say low salaries contribute to the high number of vacancies and rapid turnover of teachers that plagues most Florida counties.

“It is long past time for this state to act, in a meaningful way, on teacher salaries,” said Fedrick Ingram, FEA president.

Ingram also cited the state’s 48th ranking, saying of DeSantis, “We hope he understands that one-time bonuses are no substitute for fair, competitive salaries. Teachers need pay they can count on, the kind of income that helps a person qualify for a mortgage and live a normal middle-class life.”

With a more robust pay proposal, DeSantis could be borrowing a page from his predecessor’s playbook. Fellow Republican Gov. Rick Scott in 2013 successfully pushed the Legislature to set aside $480 million to give each teacher a $2,500 pay raise, a year before his re-election to a second term.

While DeSantis won’t be on the ballot next year, 2020 will be a big election year and Florida is the nation’s largest toss-up state in the presidential contest.

“I look around now and I think teaching is viewed not as favorably as we’d like it to be with young people coming out of college,” DeSantis said. “And I’d like to be able to get more people going into the profession.

“You can talk about bells and whistles, this classroom and this technology, but if you have a really great teacher in front of the kids, that’s probably the single best thing that can happen,” DeSantis added.