EDUCATION 08-24-07

In the early thirties, Governor Huey Long and T.H. Harris, State Superintendent of Education in Louisiana, put together a State wide Minimum Foundation of Education (termed the MFP) financed by a equalization formula for the School Systems of Louisiana. Only the elite, very rich, and those who were lucky enough to live in a major city and could afford it were able to educate their children. The MFP program simply put would allow each school District to pay local expenses for each school and the state would pay State mandated expenses: as transportation for all children living more than a mile from the nearest school, textbooks, teachers salaries, libraries and any other expense required by he state. Local Districts would provide the School Buildings, Janitors, and any other services deemed necessary to meet the requirements for education. Since Louisiana was a state system both men set a time table to complete this MFP which would require the same amount of money to be spent on the poorest parish as was spent on each child in the richest parish. The rich Parishes did not like this but most educators realized that an educated state as a whole was in better shape to draw people to the state to work and as one State Senator remarked my daughter might just marry some one from a poor parish with little education so He voted for it each time He had a chance to vote on a segment of the plan. World War 2 delayed the plan for four years but the final part was instituted in 1948 when each teacher was placed on the same salary according to a salary schedule devised by the state. Any teacher regardless of sex or race got the same salary according to the number of years taught and degree. Coaching salaries was not considered part of he MFP and the extra for coaching had to be paid by the local District.

Starting in about 1964 Parishes were allowed to pass taxes to pay extra for teachers and that was the beginning of the destruction of the MFP. Later Governors in the quest for more power gave in to the rich Parishes and Louisiana is in a mess trying to make every body happy. We have gone from a State that had other states beginning to copy our way of financing schools until now they would have no reason to come to Louisiana just because of he way our educational system is set up. True, teachers just got a well-deserved large raise but when will they get another? Every person will say, “ They just got a big raise”. I did not see any plan for a salary schedule.