More than 100 Louisiana Federation of Teachers members from New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, East Baton Rouge and other Louisiana cities and parishes turned out for an AFT town hall meeting at a downtown New Orleans hotel on Feb. 12. The town hall gave the members, as well as parents, community activists and others, an opportunity to hear from AFT President Randi Weingarten and Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and to provide feedback on the Reclaiming the Promise program.

Find all things legislative on this Web page. The LFT Weekly Legislative Digest, the Federation’s legislative agenda, bills filed on our behalf and those we are following, and much more.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers has endorsed a set of general principles that a number of public education stakeholders have pledged to honor in the upcoming legislative session.

“For the past six years, education reform has been defined by politicians, corporate profiteers and ideological extremists,” Federation President Steve Monaghan said. “The result has been an avalanche of unconstitutional laws, a raid on public education funds and baseless attacks on teachers in our public schools.

No mandatory salaries in the new MFP

This week the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved an MFP Task Force report that recommends a 2.75 percent increase in the $3.5 billion formula, but does not specify that half of the increase should go to teacher salaries.

(Baton Rouge – January 16, 2014) Some 7,000 teachers and school employees who were wrongfully terminated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were vindicated Wednesday by a five-judge panel of the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal.
 

(Baton Rouge – January 14, 2014) To no one’s surprise, an organization dedicated to promoting school vouchers for private and religious schools is heaping praise on Louisiana’s voucher scheme.

(Baton Rouge – January 8, 2014) For the second time in less than a year, a Baton Rouge district court judge has ruled Act 1 of 2012, the so-called “talent act,” unconstitutional.

(Baton Rouge – January 6, 2014) Concerned about the legality of some changes to education funding as well as its lack of guaranteed pay raises for educators, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan today cast one of the only two votes against a plan proposed by the state’s Minimum Foundation Program Task Force.

Audit slamming voucher schools is no surprise, LFT president says

(Baton Rouge – December 17, 2013) A legislative auditor’s report criticizing state oversight of the controversial school voucher scheme was foreseen by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers more than a year ago, Federation President Steve Monaghan said today.