The Lafayette Parish School Board voted to raise the starting salary for teachers in the district at the board's meeting on Thursday night.
Under the proposal from Superintendent Francis Touchet, starting teachers with a bachelor’s degree will see their pay increase from $47,607 to $50,000 beginning in the 2025-2026 school year.
"It is not only something we're looking at for starting teachers, but every other teacher across all disciplines will receive raises next year," said Touchet.
"This is going to make us competitive. It's going to help us to recruit and help us to retain the best educators as possible. This measure will put LPSS on the level that no other district is."
The new rate puts LPSS above the $46,000 national average for starting teachers.
The comprehensive incentive package also features new performance- and program-based incentives, including:
- $1,800 bonuses for certified LEAP teachers with good attendance
- $2,000 for those same teachers working at traditionally hard-to-staff schools
- Stipends for coaches, club sponsors, and extracurricular activity leaders — a first for the district
The district says the raises and incentives will be funded through recent “district optimization,” which cut over $1 million from the central office and more than $2 million through strategic staffing.
Lafayette Parish Association of Educators (LPAE) praised the new increase but called on LPSS to consider other professionals within the district.
"Teachers can't do what they do without paraprofessionals so it's important that they be fairly compensated as well too because many of them don't make a living wage," said Julia Reed, president of LPAE.
Touchet said, "We're going to look at our cafeteria workers again, our janitors, we're going to need to look at our clerks and secretaries, we're going to need to look at all those different aspects."
Here's the explanation of the plan from the board's agenda software:
The pay scale adjustment is an across the board salary increase for all teachers and employees on the instructional pay scale. This adjustment brings starting teacher salaries to $50,000, which is more than $2,000 greater than the starting salary in any other district in the area. This comprehensive incentive package includes: co-curricular incentive stipends, clubs and organizations stipends, playoff stipends, stipends for certain teacher assignments, and stipends for meeting certain student performance standards. Compensation for working extended seasons, compensation for work with student clubs and organizations, and compensation for teachers who teach classes with state assessments are all part of the plan to assist with the recruitment and retention of teachers for the Lafayette Parish School System. Throughout the development of this package, feedback was received from two teacher focus groups, four informational meetings at school sites, multiple advisory panels, and four days of public viewing via the LPSS intranet. These salary increases are from savings resulting from the Board-approved District Office Optimization and Consolidation and Staffing Adjustments. This money will now be used to help pay for higher salaries and stipends.
Here's the superintendent's presentation, as well as several documents relating to the plan:
