Nothing on this site, and nothing in this paper, disputes the premise that Louisiana teachers are underpaid. They are. The Southern Regional Education Board, the U.S. Department of Education, and every objective review of teacher compensation in the Deep South arrives at the same conclusion: Louisiana pays its teachers materially less than its peer states, and substantially less than the national average. What this paper disputes is the claim that Amendment 3 is the only mechanism available to fix that, or that it is a better mechanism than the alternatives. It is not.
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) publishes an annual comparison of teacher salaries across the sixteen Southern states. According to the most recent SREB data as reported by WVUE on April 20, 2026, the average Louisiana public-school teacher salary is approximately $56,000. Relevant comparisons:
The size of the gap matters because the gap, not the raise, is the problem. A $2,250 raise closes about 15% of the $15,000 national gap. It does not meaningfully affect the structural competitiveness of the Louisiana teaching profession. Teachers who are willing to leave for higher pay in Texas, Florida, or North Carolina are not going to stay for an extra $130 a month. Teachers who are not willing to leave were not going to leave anyway.
For the past three years, the Louisiana Legislature has funded teacher compensation through annual stipends rather than permanent raises. The stipend structure has been, per LFT and LAE reporting, $2,000 per year for certified teachers and $1,000 per year for support staff. The stipend is explicitly one-time: it shows up as a lump-sum bonus, does not enter the salary schedule, does not count for retirement-contribution purposes, and must be re-appropriated each legislative session.
Amendment 3 converts the existing $2,000/$1,000 stipend structure into a permanent $2,250/$1,125 salary increase — a true raise of $250 and $125 respectively above the stipend levels teachers are already receiving. The rest of the amount being advertised as a "raise" is the conversion of a temporary stipend into a permanent line item in the salary schedule. That is a meaningful administrative improvement. It is not the permanent pay reform that Louisiana teachers have been asking for since the 1990s.
Louisiana's Legislature began using annual stipends instead of permanent raises beginning in the 2022–2023 cycle, primarily for two reasons: (a) the state's revenue outlook was uncertain, and stipends offered a way to deliver immediate relief without creating a permanent General Fund obligation; and (b) the structural reform needed to fund a permanent raise — either new tax revenue, a redirection of existing non-education spending, or a restructuring of the MFP formula — required political will that the Legislature did not have.
That second reason is the relevant one. Every state that has closed its teacher pay gap meaningfully in the last twenty years has done so by finding a dedicated recurring revenue source and building the raise into the salary schedule on that source. Louisiana has not. Amendment 3 reflects a different theory: that with enough financial engineering, a permanent raise can be funded from a one-time asset sale. That theory is the specific problem this campaign is addressing.
Since 2015, three Southern states have implemented substantial teacher pay increases funded from recurring revenue. Each offers a model Louisiana could adopt.
In each of these three cases, the funding source was recurring, the political commitment was explicit, and the raise has survived subsequent budget cycles. None of these states liquidated a constitutionally protected endowment to pay for the raise. None of them was forced to. Louisiana's legislators chose the liquidation mechanism not because it was the only option, but because it was the option that avoided naming a new tax or redirecting existing non-education spending.
The annual cost of the raises contemplated by Amendment 3 — including benefits and retirement contributions — is estimated by Citizens for a New Louisiana at $180–$200 million per year. That is the baseline cost of what is currently being offered.
A more substantive raise that meaningfully closed the SREB-regional gap would cost more. A rough estimate, using Louisiana's public K–12 teacher workforce of approximately 47,000 FTEs plus support staff: closing half of the $5,000 Southern-average gap (i.e., a $2,500 across-the-board raise beyond the Amendment 3 numbers) would cost approximately an additional $150 million per year, for a total of roughly $330–$350 million annually. Closing the full Southern-average gap would cost roughly $500 million per year.
These numbers are large but not unimaginable. The Louisiana General Fund FY 2026 budget is approximately $12 billion. A $500 million dedicated allocation to teacher pay would represent approximately 4.2% of the General Fund. By comparison, Louisiana's higher-education appropriation for FY 2026 is approximately $1.7 billion, and the MFP allocation for K–12 is approximately $4.1 billion. A recurring teacher-pay dedication on the order of $300–$500 million is within the range of things Louisiana finances every year — the question is whether the political will exists to name and protect the source.
The following are five mechanisms, any of which would produce a permanent teacher pay raise funded from recurring revenue and without liquidating the education trust funds:
If Amendment 3 passes, the Legislature will declare teacher pay "solved" for the foreseeable future. The education trust funds will be liquidated. The stipend-to-permanent conversion will happen. When the fiscal mathematics begin to fail — which they will — the political pressure to address the failure will be weaker, not stronger, because the political narrative will have moved on. Teachers will continue to earn approximately $56,000 while their colleagues across state lines earn $60,000 or more.
If Amendment 3 fails, the Legislature has every opportunity to return in the 2027 Regular Session with any of the five mechanisms above. The political calculus will have shifted: voters will have told the Legislature that they are willing to support a teacher pay raise but are not willing to pay for it with a liquidation of the education inheritance. That is a clearer mandate for a real raise than anything the Legislature has received from Louisiana voters in decades.
The question on the May 16 ballot is not "should Louisiana teachers get a raise?" The answer to that question is yes, unambiguously. The question is "should Louisiana teachers' raise be paid for by liquidating the state's education trust funds?" The answer to that question is no. A real raise requires recurring revenue, a durable funding source, and a legislative commitment to sustain it. Amendment 3 offers none of those things. Defeat Amendment 3, and demand a real raise next session. Vote NO.