Recommendations on Constitutional Amendments

Please take the time to Click on this link to the LAE Fund for Education. They give recommendations on 3 of the 6 amendments. For a more detailed analysis of the amendments with pros and cons for each, but with no recommendation go to the Public Affairs Research website by clicking here.

I agree with the recommendations of LAE based on the reasons given. In addition, I would also personally recommend a "no" vote on Amendment #2 because it lets the legislature off the hook for funding higher education and allows various colleges to raise their tuition without a vote of our elected representatives. This could result in out-of-reach tuition for certain universities for our low income students. This is not the way to close the opportunity gap.

I am recommending "yes" for Amendment #5 because it could provide state funding to pay off the unfunded liability of the state employee and teacher retirement systems. Be aware that it is the legislature that has caused some of our retirement systems to be underfunded because of benefits granted to some classes of employees that were not properly funded. These extra benefits were not given to most regular workers.  I don't think the majority of the retired employees and our school boards should continue to be punished for the decisions of the legislature. Recently our school boards were forced to pay over 25% of payroll to the retirement systems because of such abuses. At the same time charter schools received the same MFP funding but were exempted from participating in the retirement systems. This was a huge windfall for the administrators of such schools.

I hope these recommendations are helpful to the readers of The Louisiana Educator.