BATON ROUGE, La.—An online survey by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers found that 60% of the 
almost 4,000 teachers who responded would favor a statewide walkout to win a “significant” pay raise, union leaders said May 21. The 16-question survey, taken from April 10 to May 7, also found that 59% would support a “mass demonstration” at the state capitol, as teachers have done in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina. “Our survey shows that teachers are fed up, not just with low pay but also with a lack of resources, crumbling facilities, poor student discipline, and a lack of parental involvement,” LFT President Larry Carter told reporters. Louisiana’s roughly 50,000 public-school teachers’ salaries averaged $49,244 in the 2015-16 school year, according to the Southern Regional Education Board, about $1,700 less than in other Southern states and almost $9,000 below the national average. The state legislature has frozen per-pupil aid to public schools for 10 of the last 11 years, and will not raise teachers’ pay this year. “I feel like the momentum is sort of building, the frustration is building,” Louisiana Association of Educators political director Shane Riddle told the Baton Rouge Advocate. Read more
