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Jeff Landry responds after teacher pay raise amendment fails NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Gov.Jeff Landry has responded after a ballot initiative to give Louisiana teachers a more permanent pay raise failed this weekend.Landry posted the following on X Monday: “I want to make it clear—if our teachers don’t get a permanent pay raise this year, nobody in state government gets a pay raise.I mean nobody.” For years, teachers in Louisiana have been hoping for more permanent pay raises to bring their salaries closer in line with fellow educators in the South.“Now, that has grown because those states over the last two to three [legislative] sessions, they’ve improved their teacher pay and school support.Now it’s going anywhere from $4,500 to $5,500 in terms of the pay gap,” said Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers & School Employees, a union representing about 18,000 teachers.Carter was hoping voters would approve Amendment 3 in Saturday’s statewide elections.The amendment would have given teachers an annual raise of $2,250.But that amendment, along with four others on the ballot, failed.The pay raises would have replaced temporary stipends of $2,000 and $1,000 dollars the state had been giving to teachers and support staff for the last three years.The amendment’s failure likely means teachers in the state will get pay cuts equivalent to those stipends.“It’s going to hurt pretty deeply.We were probably looking at $2,250 for teachers and about $1,125 for school personnel as a permanent pay raise, and that’s kind of disappointing that it failed.But we understand people had a lot of questions about the amendment itself,” Carter said.“If there’s any one group that needs more money, it’s the teachers.But again, it was shot down by 60% of folks,” said Ed Chervenak, a political analyst and political science professor at the University of New Orleans.Chervenak said the voters’ rejection of the amendments seem to send a message to Gov.Landry, who backed all five on the ballot and decided to postpone a house election so Louisiana’s Congressional map could be redrawn through redistricting.The issue of teacher pay became a causality of politics, according to Chervenak.Carter agrees.“We definitely heard about voters and how they felt a ‘no’ vote for everything was a way to get back at the governor.We didn’t take that approach.We wanted to make sure that it passed.So, we tried our best to inform our members what the amendment was about,” said Carter.Chervenak said there were more votes against the proposed amendments than votes for the candidates in Louisiana’s primaries for U.S.“What we saw was lower turnout in the two primaries combined compared to the vote in the amendments; 65,000 more people voted on the amendments than in the two-party primaries,” said Dr.Ed Chervenak.Previous state attempts for teacher pay raises have failed, and legislative leaders have said they won’t pursue something voters keep rejecting.Carter said the union now plans to work with the governor and the legislature to get some kind of raise through the state’s budget process.See a spelling or grammar error in our story?Click Here to report it.Please include the headline.Subscribe to the Fox 8 YouTube channel.Copyright 2026 WVUE.All rights reserved.