Somebody Has to Say It: You Don’t Respect Teachers by Raiding the Formula that Funds Schools

Why does this man continue to play in the faces of both Louisiana’s taxpayers and its dedicated educators? With a last-minute executive order, Gov. Jeff Landry wants Louisiana teachers to believe he is fighting for them. He is not.

What he signed this week is not a real teacher pay raise. It is a political maneuver dressed up as respect for educators. It takes $168 million already dedicated to public education through the Minimum Foundation Program, and directs school districts to redirect those dollars into stipends for teachers and support staff.

That is still a shell game, and somebody needs to say it.

If the governor is truly serious about cutting waste in education, he ought to start with the tens of millions Louisiana spends on testing contracts, test preparation systems, accountability schemes, data platforms, outside vendors and all the machinery built around measuring classrooms instead of supporting them.

Money flows freely to companies that produce tests, score tests, analyze tests, package test data, sell intervention programs based on test data, and then turn around and tell classroom teachers what they already know: our children need smaller classes, more support, more stability, more resources and more time to learn. But when it is time to find money for teacher pay, Baton Rouge looks at local school districts and says, “Cut administration.”

Let’s be clear. Nobody is defending waste. If there are bloated contracts, duplicated services or unnecessary bureaucracy in school systems, cut them. But do not insult teachers by pretending every dollar outside of a classroom teacher’s salary is expendable. Counselors are not waste. Paraprofessionals are not waste. Social workers are not waste. Nurses are not waste. Payroll workers are not waste. Bus coordination, student records, special education compliance, discipline support and school operations are not waste.

Those things make classrooms function.

And in New Orleans, where the public school system has been fractured into a collection of charter operators, this conversation gets even more complicated. Perhaps there is money to save by consolidating services that should have never been scattered across charter schools acting as their own local education agencies. Transportation, food service, janitorial contracts, communications, back-office operations — yes, examine that.

But do not pretend that cutting $168 million out of the MFP is harmless simply because the governor says “classroom instruction” will not be touched. Teachers know better.

This is the same old trick. Praise teachers in public, shortchange public education in policy, then blame local districts when the numbers do not add up.

For the umpteenth time, Gov. Landry: If you want to give teachers a raise, then give teachers a raise. Fund it with new recurring money. Make it permanent. Put it into salaries. Stop playing games with stipends. Stop pretending that shifting money around is the same thing as valuing educators. And while you are searching for waste, have the courage to look beyond local school board offices. Look at the testing industry. Look at the contracts and the vendors that the state Department of Education has engaged. Look at the money spent proving, over and over again, what we already know — that under-resourced schools are often under-performing schools.

Louisiana cannot test its way to excellence, no more than it can cut and slash, pillage and plunder its way to teacher pay raises.

Somebody has to say it.