(The Center Square) — The ongoing discussion surrounding teacher pay in Caddo Public Schools continues as Red River United President Jordan Thomas presented a letter by Gov. Jeff Landry while he addressed teacher pay in the state.
Thomas distributed the letter to the Caddo Parish School Board during Tuesday’s meeting.
“For the last three years, including this one, the state has provided stipends — $2,000 for teachers and $1,000 for support staff,” said Thomas. “We were grateful for those, but stipends aren’t raises. They don’t count towards retirement. They don’t grow over time. They’re Band-Aids on a much bigger wound.”
After a raise for teachers on the March ballot failed to pass, the state decided to continue paying specific stipends to avoid cutting teacher pay. This stipend costs the state around $200 million during the budget cycle.
According to reports, lawmakers are going to try again next April for the state constitutional amendment concerning teacher and school employee pay.
The letter from Landry outlines a $2,250 raise for teachers and a $1,125 raise for school employees for the 2026-2027 fiscal year through the proposed amendment in the April election.
“Let’s not mistake this for a transformational raise,” said Thomas in response to the proposed increase. “If this amendment passes, this will likely be the last state-funded raise.”
The proposed raise equates to roughly $250 more for teachers and $125 for school employees for the nine months of the school year.
Other issues heavily discussed with teacher pay is the scale at which veteran teachers and newly-hired teachers get paid.
Carlos McDaniel, a long-time teacher and president of the Caddo Federation of Teachers and Support Personnel, spoke to a salary schedule adopted 13 years ago by Caddo Parish.
The step-based model, according to MCDaniel, “placed current teachers on the step that most closely matched their current salary dollar amount, not according to our actual years of service.”
But now, that is not the case.
McDaniel gave an example saying that if a new teacher coming to Caddo from another parish had 22 years of experience like him, they would be placed on step 22, while he is only on step 17 because of its adoption 13 years ago.
This is a reduction of about $3,000 a year for McDaniel.
Thomas and McDaniel continuously advocate for teacher pay at Caddo School Board meetings.
The board did not comment on their remarks. However, in recent meetings discussing the lack of pay raises in the budget, some members stressed the importance of pay raises for teachers.
“We haven’t given a real raise since 2017,” said Thomas. “That’s eight years of inflation, eight years of growing demands and eight years of asking teachers and staff to do more with less.”
