Become a Member
You aren't covered until you join, so become a member of your local chapter of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers today!
Senate Finance Fails to Increase Teacher & School Employee Raises
On Sunday afternoon, the Senate Finance Committee met to deliberate and approve the budget bill, along with supplementary appropriations legislation. The Minimum Foundation Program, which is the funding formula for Louisiana public schools, is a part of the $39 million budget discussed on Sunday. The current MFP proposal includes a $1,500 raise for teachers and $750 for support staff. The Governor’s office, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education as well as educational stakeholders like LFT have requested that the legislature invest part of the additional revenue recognized at the May REC meeting into additional raises for teachers and school employees.
Despite outcry from thousands of teachers and support staff, the Senate Finance Committee did not vote to increase the educator raise.
Week 9 in the Legislature
Senate Finance Set to Determine Your Raise
On Sunday afternoon, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to deliberate the budget bill (HB 1) and they will determine how much money to allocate for teacher and school employee raises. If the Senate doesn’t fund raises in the budget, then teachers and school employees aren’t getting raises this year, so this is very important!
Click here to ask the Senate Finance Committee to support additional raises for teachers & school employees.
REC Recognizes Additional Funding – Will it Go Towards Your Raise?
On Monday, May 9th the Revenue Estimating Conference met to review and revise the Official Revenue Forecast for FY22 and FY23 as well as recognize FY21 year-end balances. The REC recognized an additional $350 million in revenue for this year (and $104 million for next year).
Now, the question is: how will the legislature choose to use this additional funding?
Week 8 in the Legislature
On Monday morning the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) will meet to review and revise the Official Revenue Forecast for FY22 and FY23 as well as recognize FY21 year-end balances. It is widely expected that the REC will recognize additional revenue. The question is, how will the legislature choose to spend this additional revenue.
LFT has long advocated that some of these additional monies should go towards teacher and school employee pay raises. We have asked legislators to boost the pay raise from $1,500 for certified staff and $750 for classified personnel to $2,500/$1,250 as a minimum. In truth, teachers and school employees deserve even more and as neighboring states continue to boost pay for their educators, Louisiana falls further behind. Next week, legislators will know how much additional revenue they have to work with and the horse-trading will begin.
Week 7 in the Legislature
It is widely acknowledged that there will be funding available for additional pay increases. To increase the pay raise, the Legislature would have to vote to return the MFP to BESE so that BESE can amend it. BESE has already agreed to the increase, so the decision rests with the Legislature, and some are already pushing back against further increases, claiming there isn’t enough money to go around.
Meanwhile, the legislature has taken up a number of bills that limit or redirect funding that could otherwise be used for our public schools...
Will School Employees Receive a Pay Raise?
On June 1st, Governor John Bel Edwards issued his line item vetoes of HB 1, the budget bill. He shifted appropriations to provide further pay increases for higher education faculty. It has been a long time since our college and university faculty got the raises they deserve, so this is a great re-appropriation. Unfortunately, the Governor did not have the political support or funding to increase the raise for K-12 school personnel beyond $1,500/$750.