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On Tuesday, October 11th, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will hear public recommendations regarding the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) for next year (2023-2024). As we do each year, LFT will advocate for the largest raise possible for teachers and school employees.

Despite pay increases in recent years, Louisiana teachers and school employees remain below the Southern Regional Average and National Average for pay. In fact, recent state-wide pay raises have been canceled out by increases to insurance premiums from the Office of Group Benefits (OGB). This has

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After receiving emails from hundreds of LFT members, LDOE announced that they would give teachers until December 16th to get all their information into the glitchy eSER system. Teachers are still required to get in all their IEPs by October 1st, the only difference is that now you're allowed to submit them on paper, as long as you re-enter the information into the electronic system by December 16th.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t help teachers who have already sunk hours into navigating a broken system and are still under enormous pressure to submit everything by the end of the week. LDOE’s

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Louisiana's new electronic Special Education Reporting System (eSER) isn't working. It's the new platform that the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) implemented to track Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for special education students. The rollout of this new electronic database has been riddled with bugs and defects that make it difficult, if not impossible for the special education teachers forced to use it.

The annual fall deadline to submit new and expiring IEPs is October 1st, but many special education teachers have not been able to input the data, despite spending hours

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Are you getting all the planning time that you are legally entitled to?

The law governing teacher planning time was recently amended to guarantee "a minimum of forty-five minutes daily uninterrupted planning time, or its weekly equivalent, for every teacher actively engaged in the instruction and supervision of students in the public schools." Louisiana Revised Statute 17:434.

How many times you have been required to perform tasks during your planning period so far this school year? Click here to take the survey.

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This legislative session we saw an onslaught of damaging bills, aimed at weakening public education and undermining teachers’ voices. Many of our elected legislators who praised teachers as heroes at the beginning of the pandemic are now working to defund schools and micromanage teachers’ lesson plans. Thankfully, many of these bills failed to pass, but make no mistake, these attacks will continue.

Funding

This year the legislature approved a $1,500 raise for teachers/certified personnel and $750 for support staff. This is the third pay raise in four years, totaling $3,300 for teachers and $1

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Under John White’s tenure, LDOE created this problem by not fully understanding the law and passing a series of legislation that contradicted federal standards as late as 2018. Now, LDOE is working to pass this legislation that would allow them to process background checks for all current teachers and all future teachers at the time of certification or recertification, in addition to the background checks teachers already get when they become student teachers and when they're hired. This means that new teachers would have to get the same background check three times, and they’d have to pay for it out of their own pocket. As Dr. Brumley said in his letter, “we should listen to classroom teachers” – so use this opportunity to let him know what you and your coworkers really need to be successful educators. MORE