In the 2013-2014 school year, Louisiana ranked 34th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia with average teacher earnings of $49,067 per year.
Since then, Louisiana is the only state in either the top 10 or bottom 10 to experience a wage decrease. As a result, the state has tumbled 10 places to 44th (that’s 8th WORST) for teacher salaries.
But since 2013, you’ll be happy to know that 20 unclassified employees in the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE), including the husband of a state senator and State Democratic Chair, who were already making in excess of $100,000 received raises averaging 27.2 percent, according to figures obtained by LouisianaVoice from the Louisiana Office of Civil Service.
Altogether, the 20 unclassified (that’s political appointees, for those who might not know) employees combined for raises totaling $534,600, an average increase of $26,730 each from 2013 to 2018.
Three others who were not employed in 2013 were on the payroll in 2015 had combined pay increases of $49,500, or 18.3 percent.
In all, the 23 individuals had their pay increased from a low of 10 percent for Manager Lisa French and Assistant Superintendent Kunjan Narechania to 61.5 percent for Liaison Officer Dana Talley and a staggering 85.7 percent for Director Shan Davis.
Even Dana Peterson, a Recovery School District (RSD) Administrator and the husband of State Democratic Party Chairperson Sen. Karen Carter Peterson of New Orleans, is along for the ride, having seen his salary increased from $125,000 per year in 2013 to $148,500 in 2018, a bump of 18.8 percent.
The RSD is scheduled to revert back to the control of the Orleans Parish School Board by July but LDOE still lists 94 UNCLASSIFIED EMPLOYEES unclassified employees assigned to various positions with the RSD.
There were seven employees (Davis, Jules Burk, Tiffany Delcour, Jessica Baghian, Bridget Devlin, Rebecca Kockler, and Dana Talley) who received increases of 36.6 percent or more from 2013 to 2018 while three more received raises of 29.4 percent (Laura Hawkins), 29.5 percent (Jan Sibley), and 29.8 percent (Jennifer Conway).
Two employees, Director Jill Slack and Executive Counsel Joan Hunt, might be somewhat offended at all that money flying around since they received raises of only 2 percent and 3.8 percent during that same five-year period. Their raises, however, were more in line with what state employees receive in the way of pay raises—when they get them. Raises for state classified (civil service) employees have been static for nearly a decade now.
For a look at the spreadsheet for LDOE unclassified employees’ pay raises, go HERE. (The salaries for 2013 and 2015 are given as bi-weekly salaries. To get the annual pay, multiply those numbers by 26 (the number of times state employees are paid each year).
Teacher pay is still higher ranking than the student learning rank. We consistently are in the bottom 3 for students and it was not any better when we were ranked 34th. Point is, teacher salary has nothing to do with how well the students are taught or what they learn (or don’t). The entire educational system needs overhaul, especially in school administration, BESE Boards etc.
Zoe, I tend to agree. I never said student performance was tied to teacher pay. But I know from close observation that teachers spend much of their own resources for materials and supplies for their classrooms (I have two daughters who are teachers, so don’t even try to contradict me on this). They work much longer hours than 8 to 3. Try sitting up to midnight grading papers and doing lesson plans sometime. They work much longer than 9 months of the year. Try following a teacher around all year: I challenge you. Try being a teacher, mom, baby sitter, bookkeeper, psychologist, and everything else demanded of a teacher: I dare you.
Unless you’ve walked the walked, don’t you EVER presume to talk the talk.
And I will say that student performance is directly tied to the poverty rate. Children from low-income homes don’t have the emphasis placed on education that they should from the adults. They go to school hungry and with no incentive to perform better. That, I’m afraid, falls on all of us—you and me—whether we admit it or not, whether we like it or not. If you’ve never been poor, don’t try to pretend to know what it’s like. I’ve been there, so I do know.
But I will say this: Increasing teacher pay is certainly an indication that we, as a society, are committed to a better future for our kids.
I agree with everything that you said. I don’t understand why all of these unclassified employees are needed.
The crime rate isn’t tied to police pay either, Zoe, but if you do not pay people for their expertise you will have a hard time recruiting and retaining employees. Try running one of the chemical plants up and down the river and not providing regular raises to your employees. You will be out of business within a couple of years.
I hope this is the straw that sends teachers into the streets in protest (Strike!) and will stir the Legislature to seriously review the nuts and bolts of the LDOE budget.
It’s the same at LSU. The employees that do the work have not had regular, decent raises for years. Meanwhile, every political hanger gets set up with a made up position that allows them to collect six figures for doing nothing related to instruction or research. On the one hand I understand the logic, both in higher ed and K-12. It’s about buying friends in high places. If you give these politicians jobs when they are temporarily not part of the administration, then next time their side gets elected and they move back into positions of power maybe they will help LSU. On the other hand that strategy has not worked particularly well given that the higher ed budget has been cut repeatedly for more than a decade. Maybe it’s time for a new strategy — fire all those political bums, stage massive protests, and have repeated sick outs for a month.
We should all be asking our elected “public servants” to make an official statement on this and make it an issue in the next election, if they cannot act to improve what is an obvious mess! And, after you get the traditional talking points response from your elected “public servant”, ask the same question over and over and over. Thousands of “we the people” should just bombard them with the facts about our Department of Education!
Buddy Roemer promised to [figuratively] “brick up the top 3 floors of the education building” if elected. He did eliminate enough positions there to have made closing those floors possible. He also pushed and succeeded in getting funding that resulted in huge pay raises for teachers (to the tune of over $800 million per year). He also attempted to implement what he believed to be a reasonable teacher evaluation program – that last was his undoing. The raises didn’t matter, the efficiencies in the state bureaucracy didn’t matter, all that mattered to the teachers was the perception that implementing his teacher evaluation program was bad for them and the erroneous presumption that he believed most teachers were no good. The saddest thing about this is that, over time, good teachers have come to welcome fair evaluations, but they seem to still believe the methods purporting to do so don’t work. There are people who believe public school systems should be independent of a central authority, or at least one with a large bureaucracy issuing what sometimes seem to be unnecessary and conflicting directives. That entire philosophical question has never been satisfactorily answered, but to me the gains to which the Louisiana Department of Education claims bragging rights are marginal. I guess we are expected to accept mediocrity in all state services – we apparently do just that, based on our national rankings.
Looks like the looting continues, how long will it take for Louisianans to wake up?
More seem to be falling asleep than waking up, locally and nationally.
Sad isn’t it?