ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orange County Public School Board approved the new contract for teachers between their union and the district at their meeting Tuesday.

The contract has higher raises and lower health insurance costs than the original deal.

Oak Ridge High School teacher Jenevieve Jackson is excited.

“I was very happy I looked at it and said, ‘Oh my god, this is a lot of great work in the right direction.” Jackson said.

But Jackson says the reason they had to fight for this deal in the first place was because teachers got complacent.

“I’m a victim of it too. You just assume that everything is going well, and then when you start to examine things closely, you start to see, wait a minute what’s going on here?” Jackson said.

Many teachers this summer showed they would be complacent no more when they showed up en masse to school board meetings to protest low raises and insurance hikes.

Then they voted to reject the original pay deal for the first time in district history.

Orange County School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs admits without these efforts, they might not have gotten serious about higher raises.

“I didn’t have that all out gut wrenching passion to fix this until we heard those stories.” Jacobs said.

And now Jacobs is committing to the higher raises even if the legislature doesn’t deliver the funds to sustain it next year.

“If they don’t, we are 100 percent committed. We will cut the budget,” Jacobs said.

Even with the better deal and the commitment from the board, Jackson says they still can’t be complacent. She says if they do, they could end up in the same spot next year.

“As long as we stay engaged, and continue to ask those questions and continue to push, we’re always going to get good results.” Jackson said.

Now that the board has approved the contract, it will go before all of Orange County’s more than 12,000 teachers for a vote.