Louisiana lawmakers have approved a 48 billion dollar budget that includes a two thousand dollar stipend for teachers and hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure projects. House Appropriations Chairman Jack McFarland says teachers can expect their two-thousand dollar stipend earlier next school year.
“We did hear some complaints from teachers that it took almost a whole year to get the money to them. We’re trying to get it to them by December this year and not at the end of the year for schools,” McFarland said.
McFarland says the goal is to make that two-thousand dollar stipend a permanent raise, but they need to see what future projections look like first.
McFarland says another highlight of this budget is what they decided to do with 771 million dollars in extra money they had to spend. He says instead of putting it into the Rainy Day Fund, they will spend it now.
“We are going to put 390 million in infrastructure. We are going to put almost 100 million into the deferred maintenance in our college campuses. We have a 1.8 billion dollar deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed,” McFarland said.
Early childhood advocates are not happy with this budget as nine million dollars in funding to assist low income families pay for pre-k classes was cut. McFarland says part of the reasoning behind this…federal dollars from the pandemic that went towards early childhood education has expired.
“We know when those programs, just like this one, begin. They’re temporary. You can’t continue to always take advantage of federal dollars, knowing that you don’t have the State general fund to backfill it,” McFarland remarked.
