Hy and Christopher take on the issue of whether Killing MFP To Pay Teachers Is a Terrible Trade.
Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, told reporters four days before the May 16 election, “If the public doesn’t vote to give [teachers] a pay raise, then that means they don’t want to give them a pay raise…So the legislature is not going to turn around and do something that our constituents voted not to do.” Hy and Christopher called Henry’s comments “scaremongering” and predicted that there was no way that Gov. Jeff Landry would refuse to grant a permanent pay raise. Equally, some of our listeners objected to us endorsing Constitutional Amendment 3, the measure of which the Senate President spoke, which would have folded for dedicated sources of income into debt repayment, and the resulting freed income would be used to fund a permanent teacher pay raise. Many cried foul, asking why we were supporting one of the Governor’s amendments if we believed that he would keep the $2000 “temporary” teacher stipends in force regardless.
Our support for the proposed constitutional amendment came because our hosts suspected that the method by which the Governor would fund the permanent pay hike would likely be far worse. Jeff Landry is the child of a public school teacher, and he predicated much of his populist-working class appeal on the idea of giving teachers raises. The question is how, and by what method, the Governor would convince the legislature to go along with his proposals. His answer became clear last week, eviscerate the Minimum Foundation Formula. Public school teachers are not state employees. They are not paid in full by the state. Instead, most education funding emerging from the state treasury ends up in the coffers of school boards through a complicated formula—which tends to benefit poorer school districts disproportionately. Impoverished parishes gain extra money for everything from schoolbooks to facilities repair.
Because of the breadth of funding, critics of the MFP have long argued that attempting to fund so many different areas of the educational process through the MFP prevents the state from tackling the nearly ubiquitously-held goal of advancing teacher pay above the southern average. Quite a few legislators have proposed a swap over the years; forgo the MFP and have the state take on full responsibility for teacher and support worker pay instead. Undoubtedly, the pathway to higher teacher pay would be more expeditious to appropriators. Some legislators have even proposed linking legislative pay with teacher pay. Currently members of the LA House and Senate earn $16,800 per year. Some have suggested a grand bargain of raising teacher pay and linking legislative pay directly to it, to provide political cover for legislative pay raises and an incentive for legislatures to keep teacher pay rising through the coming decade. Under most previously suggested models to enact this plan, the MFP would be sacrificed to boost teacher pay. In fairness, Landry’s proposal does not end the Minimum Foundation Program or its Formula, but it cuts it rather drastically to underwrite making the $2000 “temporary” teacher pay stipends ($1000 for support workers) permanent. Such a drastic cut of more than $120 million would have a negative effect on many of the budgets of poor school districts; though critics argue that a legislature without any fiscal surplus for 2026/2027 needs to get the money from somewhere. The public did vote down the use of dedicated funds towards that goal, after all.
The danger of cutting into the MFP to permanently fund the stipends sets a precedent. A total elimination next year in exchange for drastically raising teacher pay becomes a more politically viable option. However, to legislators and a governor who have promised permanent teacher pay increases, the choices of constitutionally undedicated funds remain few. The MFP can be adjusted by statute, and they can fulfill their promise. No Louisianan wants to look into the eyes of an underpaid teacher and say that that educator does not deserve a raise, much less a $2000 cut in pay—no matter how often the legislature claimed those were “one time payments” over the last three years. Yet, does taking away textbooks from poor children in poor parishes prove a terrible trade? Hy and Christopher discuss…