School Board votes to give teachers a raise
St. Mary Parish public school teachers are getting a raise.k
The board voted Thursday to raise the starting pay for teachers by $1,500 a year.
Also Thursday, the board heard that its districtwide re-enrollment is 70% complete, more than a month after the targeted completion date.And the board made preparations to call for tax renewal elections and to roll forward property tax rates.
The teacher pay raise was to be $1,200 a year before a work session earlier in the week, Superintendent Dr. Buffy Fegenbush told the board. But feedback from board members resulted in an increase to $1,500 in the proposal.
The raise increases the starting pay for teachers to $47,800, up from $46,300, a raise of 3.3%, almost exactly the inflation rate reported for the May 2023-May 2024 period.
School Board members will decide to raise their own pay to $800 per month at the July meeting.
The search for teachers to fill the needs of school districts has become more competitive in the post-COVD era. In 2023, USA Today reported that Louisiana fell 2,520 teachers short of filling all vacant teacher positions. Nationwide, the vacancies topped 55,000.
Louisiana had less than 2% of the nation's population and more than 4% of the teacher vacancies.
In 2021, St. Mary voters approved a 0.45% sales tax dedicated to teacher and staff pay, but only after the board knocked off 0.05 points off the proposal and eliminated a dedication to a technology fund. The tax was to raise $3.9 million a year for a $3,000 annual raise for teachers and a $1,500 raise for other staff members.
Also Thursday:
--Under the terms of a federal court order in the long-running desegregation lawsuit, the system system launched a re-enrollment of all income 2024-25 students except for those who will be seniors next school year.
The job, which required verifying the addresses of 7,000 students, is even tougher than it sounds.
Assistant Superintendent Dr. Rachel Sanders said the re-enrollment is 70% complete, thanks in part to administrators who set special hours during the school day, after-school hours and even weekend hours to help parents come in to provide proof of residence and other documentation. The process also included home-site verification visits by school resource officers.
But the has been complicated by the living arrangements of many students. The district must also rule on home-site verification for students living with someone other than a custodial parent, mainly grandparents, and students in foster care or otherwise in the custody of Children and Family Services.
School Board counsel Bob Hammonds said grandparents or other relatives can seek a court order giving them custody. But parents should know that such an order involves giving up rights to confidential information about grades, discipline and medical care, Hammond said.
--Chief Financial Officer Alton Perry announced the intention to call for a Dec. 7 election to renew the three property taxes supporting the three School Board maintenance districts.
The official call could come at the July 11 meeting.
Also at the July 11 meeting, the board will decide whether to roll forward five property tax rates based on the 2024 parishwide property reassessment.
Louisiana law requires that, when a reassessment finds an increase in property values, property tax rates must rolled back so that the government receives only the amount of revenue it got before the reassessment.
The local government's board can vote to return the rates to their previous levels. That's what the School Board could vote to do at its July 11 meeting.
None of the five millages -- two for general operations and three for the maintenance districts --would go up by more than 0.15 mill if the board decides to roll rates forward.
A mill is 1/10th of a cent of tax on each dollar of assessed valuation. Residential property is assessed on 10% of its market value. For property taxes other than city taxes, Louisiana's homestead exemption excludes the first $7,500 of assessed valuation -- theoretically, $75,000 of market value -- from property taxes.