Louisiana’s two largest teacher unions are backing constitutional amendment #2 on the March 29 ballot. (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
Louisiana’s two largest teacher unions have come out in support of a sweeping constitutional amendment that is backed by Gov. Jefl Landry and would rewrite large swaths of the state’s public tax and budget policies. The measure will appear on the March 29 ballot.
The unions are backing Amendment 2 because Landry and legislators have tied public school teacher pay to its approval.
“It provides the only avenue to create some kind of financial stability,” for teachers and school support staff, said Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers in an interview Tuesday evening.
A temporary pay stipend teachers and school support staff workers have received for the past two years is supposed to become part of their permanent salaries if voters approve the measure. If the amendment fails, teachers and school support staff would likely lose the stipend, effectively resulting in pay cuts of $2,000 and $1,000, respectively.
“LFT statewide surveys consistently show that increased compensation is the number one issue for teachers and support staff,” the union said in a statement provided Tuesday to the Illuminator.
“LFT has consistently advocated for paying Louisiana educators, both teachers and support staff, a wage that reflects what they are required and called to do—caring for and educating Louisiana’s children. For this reason, we support CA 2,” the statement continues.
The decision to publicly endorse Amendment 2 came from the union board after discussions with local chapters of teachers, Carter said.
The state’s other major teachers’ union, the Louisiana Association of Educators, also supports the amendment, President Tia Mills said in a short phone interview Tuesday.
Amendment 2 would dissolve three education trust funds and use some of the money left over to pay down public school teacher retirement debt for local school districts. The school systems would then be required to use the money they save to give teachers and school support staff salary increases of up to $2,000 and $1,000 respectively.
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For some school districts, however, the retirement debt payoff would not provide all the savings needed to cover the extra pay. Charter schools, which don’t contribute to the state’s teacher state retirement system, wouldn’t receive any finance benefit.
In those cases, Landry and legislators committed to providing other state funding to make sure all teachers, including those at charters, receive the salary bump.
Covering those outliers will require approval from state legislators before those payments can be made, and Landry’s budget officials haven’t said how much extra money would be required yet.
Carter said his union would have preferred to see the stipend become a permanent salary increase through the lawmakers’ approval of a new school funding formula instead of the amendment. But the governor and lawmakers don’t appear to be willing to take that step.
“Without the amendment passing, it would probably be that we would lose that,” extra money for teachers, Carter said.
Amendment 2 features dozens of other adjustments that are unrelated to teacher pay however. For example, it would place restrictions on the state’s overall budget growth, which could make future teacher pay raises more challenging to execute, opponents said.
“This expenditure limit [contained in Amendment 2] is going to make it difficult to increase spending on a large line item like teacher pay,” in future years, said Jan Moller, with Invest in Louisiana, a left-leaning think tank concerned about the ballot measure.
The money being used to pay off the teacher retirement debt also supports other education programs that would face a more uncertain future if Amendment 2 passes. Early childhood education programs, for example, would lose a secure funding source.
Landry has committed to keeping early childhood education funding at its current levels, but removing its permanent source of support would put the programs more at risk for cuts in the future.
Turning out voters who support teachers is a key part of the governor’s strategy to get the amendment passed. It’s likely why teacher pay was embedded into the measure in the first place.
Voter turnout is expected to be low for the March 29 election, when the only other statewide measures are three other constitutional amendments.
Having educators motivated to go to the polls greatly increases the amendment’s chances of passing. There are nearly 53,000 teachers in the state, and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers has over 18,000 members.
The governor is spending this week addressing chambers of commerce to garner support for all four amendments on the ballot.
“How about paying down the state’s retirement debt and using those savings to give our teachers a much-needed permanent salary increase?” Landry said in a recent video encouraging the passing of Amendment 2.
“You get all of that and much more with a yes vote on Amendment 2,” the governor said.
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