Somebody Has to Say It: Landry is Insulting Our Intelligence with His So-called Permanent Teacher Pay Raise

The Amendment 3 Proposal that would permanently raise teacher pay in Louisiana is more or less a shell game that pits education priorities against each other. And Somebody Has to Say It.

On Monday (Mar. 9), Gov. Jeff Landry opened the legislative session by pushing Amendment 3, a May ballot item that, if approved by voters, would create a permanent teacher pay raise. Before anyone gets too excited, let’s not pretend this is bold leadership on education.

What Governor Landry is proposing isn’t a real investment in teachers or schools — it’s a shell game. And Louisiana educators have seen this trick before.

The governor wants teachers to celebrate a “permanent” $2,250 pay raise — about $112.50 per paycheck once it’s spread across the school year. But let’s look a little closer at how that raise is supposed to be funded.

The money is NOT coming from a new commitment to education.

It is NOT coming from a serious effort to increase state investment in the classroom.

Instead, it’s coming from moving money around inside the same education bucket — draining trust funds, shifting dollars tied to early childhood programs, classroom initiatives, and other education priorities in order to free up pension savings that can be redirected toward salaries.

In other words, the state isn’t adding money to education. It’s forcing different parts of education to fight over the same limited pot.

And that’s right there is some first-rate bullcrap.

You cannot claim to be strengthening education while simultaneously cannibalizing the programs that support it. Early childhood programs matter. Classroom innovation funds matter. Investments that help struggling students matter. Teachers’ retirement security matters. These things are not optional extras — they are part of the ecosystem that makes schools work.

So when state leaders propose funding teacher raises by dipping into money that supports those programs, what they are really doing is pitting teachers against their own students and colleagues. It’s like telling a family: You can afford groceries or you can afford the light bill — but not both.

That is not a real solution. That is budgeting by musical chairs. Someone’s butt is going to hit ground.

This isn’t the first time teacher pay has been tied to a complicated constitutional maneuver instead of a straightforward budget commitment. We’ve seen attempts before to wrap pay raises inside larger structural changes, hoping the promise of a raise will make everyone ignore the fine print.

But teachers aren’t fools. Neither are voters.

We know that $2,250 a year — roughly the cost of a few utility bills and groceries in today’s economy — is not some transformative windfall. And we also know that if the money funding the raise comes at the expense of programs that help our students succeed, then the state isn’t actually investing in education at all. It’s just shifting the burden from one pocket to another.

If Louisiana truly wants to stop ranking near the bottom nationally in teacher pay and educational outcomes, then the answer is not financial gymnastics. The answer is political courage.

It means acknowledging that education costs money.

It means deciding that competitive teacher salaries are worth paying for.

And yes, it may mean asking the public to support that commitment through a stable, honest funding source — even if that requires a few more dollars in taxes.

Because the truth is simple: you cannot build a world-class education system with spare change and accounting tricks.

Louisiana’s teachers, students, and families deserve better than another budget shuffle dressed up as progress.

And somebody has to say it.