Published: June 08, 2023
By: Allison Allsop, LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE – Under a compromise approved in the chaotic closing minutes of the spring session Thursday, state lawmakers limited a $2,000 pay increase for teachers to a one-year stipend and cut $100 million from what the Senate had sought for the Louisiana Department of Health.
Those moves came even though legislators had more than $2 billion of revenue at their disposal beyond what had originally been expected to supplement both the current budget and one for the fiscal year starting July 1.
In the deal, lawmakers also added back more than $40 million for early childhood education programs and $25 million for extra differential pay for teachers in demand areas like math and science.
The final votes came with angry lawmakers demanding to know what had happened with the teacher pay raises and the health cuts and objecting strenuously that they did not know the details of the bills they were voting on.
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LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 