Teachers, school advocates want details on Landry’s teacher pay plan

Gov. Jeff Landry says he intends to keep his promise to avoid a teacher pay cut this year, but Louisiana teachers unions and other school advocates want more details about how he intends to do so, Louisiana Illuminator reports.

“Until we get more details, we still have quite a few questions,” Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, told Louisiana Illuminator in an interview Friday. “We don’t know how it’s going to be done, when it’s going to be done, we don’t know any of that yet.”

The budget that the Louisiana Legislature approved Friday does not renew the $2,000 and $1,000 annual stipends teachers and support staff have respectively received for the past three years.

But Landry said earlier last week that he was going to “find a way to give them a stipend for this year” as soon as the Legislature sent him a budget.

Louisiana Illuminator has the full story.

Last Tuesday, Landry and legislative leaders announced that they will be convening a 15-member bipartisan task force to conduct a “top-to-bottom review” of the Minimum Foundation Program formula, the primary state funding formula for public elementary and secondary schools. The goal is to develop a “long-term, sustainable funding structure for teacher pay raises.” Senate President Cameron Henry said the task force will complete its assignment by Dec. 31.