Louisiana lawmakers in the House reduced teacher stipends from $2,000 to $1,700 for the 2024-25 Fiscal Year. And while the budget has yet to be heard in Senate Finance, House Appropriations Chairman Jack McFarland said the Revenue Estimating Conference figures could allow for those cuts to be restored.
“Which is great because it will help us close a gap on the teacher stipend and some shortfall on the MFP and a couple of other priorities we needed to backfill,” said McFarland.
The REC found an additional $88 million that can be added to the next budget year which begins July 1st.
McFarland said when the House received the budget, they were given X amount of dollars and had to make cuts accordingly. But he points out that they did that with the anticipation that the REC would find extra monies to restore those cuts and the originally proposed teacher stipends of $2,000.
“That we would have an opportunity to meet that shortfall. So, the perception to the public and unfortunately the message that got out was that we were actually cutting teacher pay and that was not accurate at all,” said McFarland.
The original amount set aside in the Executive Budget was $198 million for teacher pay stipends. Governor Jeff Landry proposed a second round of stipends for teachers instead of a permanent salary increase because of anticipated budget shortfalls. McFarland said now with additional funding from the REC for the next fiscal year…
“Now that opportunity to backfill that will be made whole and teachers will get that stipend that was proposed in that executive budget,” said McFarland.
The current legislative session is scheduled to end June 3rd.
Comments