Blanco Talks About Teacher Pay

By JOE GYAN JR.

NEW ORLEANS – Saying Louisiana is “in striking distance” of the average salary for public schoolteachers in the South, Gov. Kathleen Blanco pledged Friday to ask the Legislature next month to boost teacher pay in the state by $2,400 a year.

“We are going to do it in this legislative session. We’re going to hit the bull’s-eye,” the governor said during the annual convention of the Louisiana School Boards Association. The session begins April 30.

Blanco said her next budget proposal also will include $16 million to help implement recommendations of the 2-year-old Louisiana High School Redesign Commission. The governor also said she plans to ask state lawmakers to increase spending on public school classes for pre-kindergarten students by $30 million.

Blanco said her next budget could be described as an “education budget” because it will include more money for teachers, pre-K and high school – what she called “a formula for success.” The governor called the pre-K and high school initiatives “bookends” to better education in the state. She said a strong education system is the “greatest legacy” the state can leave its children.

Leaders of the state’s two largest teacher unions – the Louisiana Association of Educators and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers – have said Blanco’s $2,400 pay raise plan will not be enough to reach her target.

Blanco promised Friday that if $2,400 is not enough to get the state’s public school teachers to the regional average, then “it will be more.”

The governor’s bid to increase teacher pay to the regional average failed during a special session in December. That proposal totaled $2,100 per teacher per year. Teachers won a $1,500 pay raise during the 2006 regular session.

States that make up the regional average are Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

The Louisiana High School Redesign Commission’s recommendations are aimed at making high school more rigorous and relevant.

The panel’s proposed changes include adding a fourth year of math for high school graduation, implementing a state-suggested curriculum starting with the ninth-grade class of 2008 and end-of- course tests starting with ninth-graders in the class of 2009.

The recommendations next face action by the state’s top School Board.

If implemented, Blanco said, the recommendations could cut the dropout rate in half. Of 60,000 ninth-graders who began high school in August, only about 35,000 will leave with a diploma in 2010, according to a state report done for the commission.

Blanco said boosting pre-K enrollment was dear to the heart of the late Education Superintendent Cecil Picard. The governor said federal funds are drying up for that program, so the state will infuse general fund dollars into it.

“We are seeing amazing results,” she said of the pre-K program.

Blanco said her goal is for every child in Louisiana to “stand shoulder to shoulder educationally” with children across the nation and globe.

“We can’t stop. We’re not where we need to be, but we’re on the right track,” she said. “We are strengthening education every day. Stay with it. Always remember the children.”

(c) 2007 Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.