Legislative Session Earns a D-
The new state budget approved in the last hours of the legislative session, includes a small, apparently permanent pay raise for public school teachers and a significant expansion of the school voucher program.
The salary supplement originally proposed by the Senate would have been a one time salary supplement and would have added additional burdens on local school systems to fund related costs such as retirement contributions without adequate state funding. The compromise budget includes a promise by Jindal that he intends to ask BESE to make the MFP increase and the pay supplement permanent. The salary increase should average approximately $580 per teacher. I am concerned that we can still expect Jindal and White to try to convince school boards to exclude some teachers from the raise as explained in my previous post.
The voucher program which this blog and many others have criticized for having little accountability and sloppy implementation will double. In my opinion this program should have been killed or at least frozen in size. It is a
The salary supplement originally proposed by the Senate would have been a one time salary supplement and would have added additional burdens on local school systems to fund related costs such as retirement contributions without adequate state funding. The compromise budget includes a promise by Jindal that he intends to ask BESE to make the MFP increase and the pay supplement permanent. The salary increase should average approximately $580 per teacher. I am concerned that we can still expect Jindal and White to try to convince school boards to exclude some teachers from the raise as explained in my previous post.
The voucher program which this blog and many others have criticized for having little accountability and sloppy implementation will double. In my opinion this program should have been killed or at least frozen in size. It is a