How Amendment 2 could impact education trust funds & teacher pay in Louisiana

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - Election Day in Louisiana is March 29, and on that day, voters will be asked to vote yes or no on four constitutional amendments.

Amendment 2 is more than 100 pages long, and addresses a multitude of topics, including education trust funds.

[PAR Guide to the 2025 Constitutional Amendments]

If passed, the amendment would dissolve three education trust funds and use the money to pay down retirement debt, and give public school teachers and support workers a permanent pay raise.

If the amendment fails, the three education trust funds would stay the same and continue to distribute their investment earnings for public school and higher education programs.

MORE INFO FROM THE PAR GUIDE

ARGUMENT FOR ✅

Louisiana has locked up too much of its money in dedicated accounts and trust funds that make it difficult for lawmakers to set budgeting priorities and determine appropriate spending levels. Removing dedications of corporate tax collections and mineral revenue will give lawmakers more flexibility. To address concerns about freewheeling spending, the amendment also will protect a larger sum in the Budget Stabilization Fund. Constitutional rules allow lawmakers to raid the Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund too easily. Moving money into the Budget Stabilization Fund will make it harder to access, with more protections that only allow its use for true financial downturns and emergencies.

ARGUMENT AGAINST ❌

Budget reserves offer a key safeguard against financial instability and downturns. Instead of building up its reserves, Louisiana will lessen them by $1 billion and eliminate most provisions for increasing them in the future. The Revenue Stabilization Trust Fund acts as an important hedge against two of the most volatile revenue sources in the state treasury: corporate taxes and mineral revenue collections. Removing requirements that a portion of those collections go into savings accounts will allow governors and lawmakers to use the cash for ongoing expenses that might be unaffordable later since the revenue sources are uncertain. Overreliance on unpredictable tax types risks creating needless budget gaps.

Louisiana Secretary of Revenue Richard Nelson say this is likely the largest amendment that’s been proposed since the state’s constitution was rewritten in 1974. He says it rewrites the revenue and taxation portions of the constitution.

As far as education goes, Nelson says the plan is to use around $2 billion from three educational trust funds to pay off a significant amount of debt for the teachers' retirement system. He says this will help retired teachers and will use the savings to give current teachers a permanent salary increase. He claims it would save around a billion dollars in interest over the next 15 years or so.

More specifically, Nelson says if passed, $2 billion from these three trust funds would be used to make a payment toward the teacher retirement system, which would reduce the debt of that system by around a quarter. That’ll in turn reduce the payments that local school systems and the state have to make by around $300 million per year. About $200 million from that savings would go to the K-12 system, giving teachers, at a minimum, a bump of $2,000 each (and $1,000 each for support workers).

Melinda Deslatte, the research director at PAR, says teachers and support staff have been receiving this stipend for the last two years, but it’s not guaranteed to renew year-after-year. This amendment would make the increase permanent.

Nelson says there will be around $40 million leftover after the raises are given out; that money is slated to be used for additional raises, he says. However, Deslatte says the money saved is not necessarily enough to cover teacher pay for each school district, so the legislature and the governor have promised to come up with additional money from the state to fill those gaps.

Currently, the three educational trust funds reference in the amendment produce about $50 million per year; around half of that goes to K-12 education, Nelson says. The other half goes to higher education.

Red River United, an organization that represents teachers and school employees in northwest Louisiana, is in support of the amendment because of the pay raises for teachers and support staff. Jordan Thomas, the executive vice president of Red River United, says looking at data from the past several years, Louisiana pays teachers around $5,000 less per year than the regional average and about $10,000 less than the national average. She says it would be “silly” for them to be against this amendment.

However, Thomas says there are other things in the amendment that could raise concern, so her organization is having a community forum with Rep. Phelps so people can get their questions answered.

Conversely, Rep. Tammy Phelps is not in favor of the amendment. She says it will repeal protected funds set aside for education.

“How do we get rid of those and say Louisiana puts education first? Doesn’t really make sense,” she said. “Concerning because once it’s gone, the rest of these funds will be put into the general fund, so there would be no constitutionally protected education funding from this point if this amendment passes.”

Jennifer Hart, a school bus driver in Caddo Parish, agrees with Rep. Phelps. She says she agrees that teachers need the money to support themselves and their families, but that the state’s educational system needs support as well. She’s opposed to this element of the amendment. Hart says she sees students every day who don’t even have books or backpacks, and she fears if these dedicated funds are eliminated, that problem will get worse.

Meanwhile, there’s currently a lawsuit in the courts over Amendment 2.

The challenge is over the 100+ pages of changes to Article 7 of the state’s constitution, which the lawyer for the plaintiffs argues is “misleading.” State law mandates election ballot language be concise, simple, and easy to understand.

Deslatte says the litigation likely won’t be settled before the election though, meaning the amendment will still appear on the March 29 ballot. She reminds voters that they can’t vote yes or no for specific pieces of the amendment, but must vote for or against it as a whole.

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