Governor Edwards addressed the controversy over his decision not to include a specific teacher pay raise in his budget, saying he is confident there will ultimately be a raise in this year’s legislative session.
Edwards says he has not deprioritized K-12 education, noting his budget includes 39 million dollars in new education spending.
“We are going to be working with all of the education stakeholders whether they are teachers, superintendents, school board members, as well as BESE, to move as much of the 39 million dollars as possible into a pay raise,” says Edwards.
Many teachers were shocked at the non-inclusion of a raise, saying the Governor had broken a campaign promise, but Edwards says his plan to get to the southern regional average by the end of the term hasn’t changed.
“My goal remains the same and that is to get at least to the southern regional average in teacher pay. The good news is 21 districts are there, the bad news is we have 69 districts, so we have some work to do,” says Edwards.
Edwards notes teachers received a 1,000 dollar pay raise last session, just over 100 million dollars in new yearly spending.
The Governor says he wanted to invest more into education and a potential raise, but the Revenue Estimating Conference has yet to approve an official revenue number for the upcoming budget.
“We did it based on the most conservative forecasts being provided by either economist who presents that information to that conference, therefore we were not able to do everything that we would like,” says Edwards.
