The Ascension Parish School Board approved one-time stipends Tuesday night to comply with an executive order from Gov. Jeff Landry, halting the district's planned $1,500 permanent pay raises for teachers and support staff.
requires school districts to provide a $2,000 one-time stipend for teachers and a $1,000 stipend for support staff for the 2026-27 school year, a stipend that the state has paid for the past three years.
The ordered stipend replaces a proposed across-the-board $1,500 permanent salary increase that district leaders had hoped to implement this year.
Ascension Parish planned to vote on the permanent raises at its June 23 meeting but postponed the decision pending the outcome of a legal challenge to Landry's stipend plan.
District officials said Tuesday they are legally required to comply with the governor's executive order to provide stipends before moving forward with their own raise proposal. Because of the state mandate, officials said they are not able to afford the planned raises.
“Given that it is an executive order from the governor, we are legally mandated that obligation first, then the raise that we had proposed will come after that,” Chief Administrative Director Darby Lambert said.
Lambert cautioned that complying with the executive order could affect the district's general fund balance.
“Because of this executive order, there is a chance in November or December of us coming back saying, 'We may have gone into the fund balance,'” he said.
The board said it still plans to provide an additional $1,500 one-time stipend to all employees by Christmas, similar to the bonus distributed last November. Last year's stipend was $1,500 for teachers and $750 for support employees.
About 50 teachers from across the parish attended Tuesday's meeting, many wearing blue to show support for permanent raises rather than one-time payments.
During public comment, East Ascension teacher Valerie Comeaux said she has remained in the same condominium she purchased more than 20 years ago because her salary has not kept pace with rising costs.
“Every year that I stay in Ascension and continue doing what I truly love, my family falls another year behind financially,” she said. “My oldest daughter could graduate from high school having never lived in a house that sits on the ground, and that makes me feel like a failure.”
Comeaux told the board that while teachers have received raises over the years, their purchasing power has declined. She noted that according to the Louisiana Department of Education, the average teacher salary in Ascension Parish during the 2005-06 school year was $41,896. Adjusted for inflation, that would equal about $71,900 today — well above the district's current starting teacher salary of about $52,000.
Many of the board members acknowledged teachers' comments and said they will continue to look for ways to give raises, but that it wasn’t feasible this year.
“We’re going to continue to look for ways to pay people more. And that's all we can promise to you,” Board President Jared Bercegeay said.
“For us to just throw a raise across 3,500 people would not be responsible for us as board members. We just can't do that.”