Funding Permanent Raises

Every School, Ten Years of Enrollment i

Here is every St. Tammany public school, using the state's official October 1 head count for each of the last 11 school years. Tap any school to open its full report: test scores, letter grade, statewide rank, attendance, absences, discipline, poverty and special education, each going back as far as the state publishes it.

Tap a school to open its report. Pick a School Board District from the menu to see only the public schools located in that district (from the parish GIS school board district map). “Since 2019-20” compares October 2025 with October 2019, the last count before COVID; “Since 2015-16” compares it with October 2015. Each change shows the number of students first, then the percent. A big jump at one school often comes from a boundary change or grades moving between buildings, not from families leaving. Source: Louisiana Department of Education.

Compare Schools and Districts i

Compare up to four schools, or up to four School Board districts school by school. You can also tap “Add to Compare” inside any school’s report.

Districts don’t have state grades, ranks or scores of their own, so this compares their schools level by level: high school against high school, middle against middle, elementary against elementary. Every number is the state’s figure for a real school.

Where Did the Students Go? i

The state doesn't publish where each student goes when they leave, but it does count the other choices families make. Here is what those counts show next to our own enrollment.

Private-school counts are for schools located in St. Tammany and can include students from other parishes; 2020-21 and 2024-25 are a little low because a few schools didn't report. Home-schooling counts are for St. Tammany families: “state-approved home study” is the program families register with the state; “registered home-based private schools” are families who file as a private school that isn't seeking state approval (the state has published those counts only for 2023-24 and 2024-25). Louisiana Key Academy Northshore is a free public charter school in Covington for students with dyslexia. Sources: Louisiana Department of Education enrollment, nonpublic and home study reports; STPSB 2026-27 budget message.

The Facts We Start From

• Reserves: the General Fund balance was $148.6 million at June 30, 2025, about 31% of spending, against a board guideline the district's audits call a 19% maximum.
• Revenue: local property and sales taxes brought in $78.9 million more a year in FY2025 than in FY2019, while state funding fell.
• Staffing: total positions grew from 5,447 in FY2016 to 6,100 in FY2025 (+12%) while enrollment fell 5%. How many positions coded as teachers actually teach a class is not in the public record.
• Administration: central office spending per student is second-lowest of the peer districts compared.
• Leader in Me: about 90% of the program's cost is federal grant money that cannot legally pay salaries.
• Audits: clean opinions in every year reviewed. There is no evidence of fraud; the issue is priorities.

Gap, scenario, phasing and savings figures are estimates built on the district's verified 2026-27 budget and 2019-2025 audited reports. All raises are figured as a percentage of pay. They are incomplete until the payroll data we requested from the district is released and reviewed; the district says that release is delayed while its chief financial officer is out on leave.

What Raises Cost

Costs include the district's retirement contribution, Medicare and workers' compensation. Health insurance is paid per person and does not rise with a raise.

Raises are a percentage of each employee's pay. Five-year costs include the yearly steps already built into the schedules.

How We Could Pay for It

First: A Top-to-Bottom Review

Not one more tax dollar until every possible saving inside the budget has been found. What the board controls:

• Trim Lower-Priority Spending in the central office and the $10.2 million discretionary pool: about $1 million to $5 million a year.
• Reduce Staff Through Retirements and Resignations at about the pace enrollment is falling. No one loses a job. Worth about $1.8 million in the first year, growing to about $9 million a year by 2031-32.
• Look at an Early Retirement Incentive to speed up attrition. We don't yet know whether one would pay off or what form it should take. One tool is already in state law: the board may pay retiring employees for up to 45 days of unused sick leave instead of the standard 25, as long as the same policy applies to everyone. Any incentive must fit state retirement law and the constitution's ban on giving away public money, so it would need a legal opinion, a cost study and the payroll data we have requested. It saves money only when the position is not refilled, or is refilled lower on the salary schedule. Not counted in the figures on this page.
• Put the Savings Ideas and Partnerships to Work, and grow enrollment. Both are laid out under Every Dollar.

Phase the Raise, Lowest-Paid Employees First

Recurring money arrives over time, as savings take hold and students come back. Giving support staff 5% first, at about $4.4 million a year, and everyone else as the money arrives keeps reserves above the board's 19% guideline the whole time. Everyone ends at the same 5% for the same permanent cost of about $15.7 million a year.

Use Reserves as a Bridge, Never a Paycheck

The reserve above the guideline is one-time money. It can start a raise a year early while recurring money arrives, but paying a permanent 5% raise from reserves alone would drain them to about 1% of spending within five years.

Other Ways to Fund the Raise, Most to Least Desirable

None of these are counted in the five-year plan, which conservatively assumes enrollment keeps falling, no buildings repurposed or divested, and no positions reduced beyond normal attrition.

1. Grow Enrollment by Restoring the District's Rank and Reputation

   About $5,100 of state money follows each student. Winning back the 3,100 students lost since 2019 would bring about $16 million a year, roughly a 5% raise.

   The parish grew 6% from 2020 to 2025 while public school enrollment fell 8% from 2019 to 2025. St. Tammany ranked 1st in Louisiana in the early 2000s and 18th in 2024-25. Getting back to the top, and proving every child-abuse report is handled immediately and openly, is how families come back from charter, private and home schooling.

2. Repurpose or Divest Under-Used Buildings

   Roughly $0.8 million to $1.4 million a year for each building divested. Repurposed space brings in rent or shares costs, depending on the use.

   Some buildings will always be schools, including historic campuses like Bayou Lacombe and Chahta-Ima. Where a school isn't using all of its space, put that space to work. It can be as simple as a satellite office: central office employees who live nearby could work from a district building close to home instead of driving to Covington every day, saving them gas and time and putting the space to use. Other options include early-childhood programs, adult education and job training, partner agencies, or community use that helps cover the cost of running the building. A building that no longer serves students could be leased or sold. Any change needs a capacity study and public hearings first.

3. Reduce Positions Faster Than Normal Attrition

   About $8 million a year for every 100 positions.

   It pays some employees with other employees' jobs, raises class sizes and hurts recruiting. Retirements and resignations, paced to enrollment, reach much of the same savings without anyone losing a job.

Far-Flung, Last-Resort Options. Taxes are not the plan. For the record, state law lets the board restore tax rates rolled back after the 2024 reassessment (about $11 million a year, about $77 on a $300,000 home), and voters can approve a dedicated pay tax. Those stay at the very bottom of the list, behind everything on this page.

What a 25% Raise Would Take

A 25% raise costs about $79 million a year, and if enrollment keeps falling the district must also close a gap of $36 million or more. The good news: growth closes the gap by itself.

Growth Changes Everything

State money follows students, about $5,100 a year each. Here is the district's budget ten years out under four enrollment futures, before any raise, with the plan's savings and no new taxes:

Falling enrollment digs a hole no amount of trimming can fill. Growth fills it on its own, and then starts paying for raises, without cutting a job, closing a school or raising a tax.

A Path With No New Local Taxes

Over about ten years, these sources together could fund a raise of roughly 12% to 14% for every employee:

Reaching a full 25% would take more: faster growth than this, a bigger state commitment, early retirements once the payroll data shows where they pay off, or, as a far-flung last resort, a decision by voters. The plan doesn't start there. It starts with turning the district around.

Enrollment money counts the full $5,100 per student; some of it would pay for teachers and space where classrooms are already full. Ten-year figures carry the five-year model's assumptions (property tax +3% a year, sales tax +2.5%, health costs +6%) five more years, so they are less certain. The plan's savings are trims and attrition paced to enrollment. Students in 2025: 35,671; in 2019: 38,774.

Savings the District Can Find

Only money that comes back every year can support a permanent raise. Pushed hard, these ideas could produce roughly $2 million to $7 million a year, with no new taxes.

Still to Verify: whether the district pays the 24.4-cent federal diesel tax, which government school bus fuel is exempt from (up to about $180,000 a year), and how the district's fuel price compares with other parish agencies.

Partnering to Save

Every public agency in the parish is funded by the same taxpayers. The school district, parish government and public works, the fire districts, the Sheriff's Office and the cities all buy fuel, maintain vehicles, insure buildings, buy technology and prepare for hurricanes, mostly on separate contracts. A parishwide cooperative purchasing group could lower costs for all of them.

Wish List: Help From the State

Long-term ideas that would need the Legislature and the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) to act. Not counted in any figure on this page.

School buses and school buildings are part of Louisiana's disaster response. Buses can move residents out ahead of a storm: in 2019, the Lafayette and Avoyelles parish school systems sent buses to help evacuate residents before Tropical Storm Barry. Gyms and cafeterias can serve as shelters. Keeping them ready is paid for out of school budgets, and as far as we can find, the state makes no standing yearly payment to school districts for that readiness.

• Fleet Readiness Funds. A yearly state payment to districts whose buses are on call for evacuations, to help cover maintenance, tires and keeping spare buses road-ready.
• Shelter Readiness Funds. A yearly state payment for school facilities that could house evacuees, to keep electrical service, generators, restrooms, showers and kitchens up to standard.

Every dollar the state covers for readiness is a dollar the district's own budget can put toward pay. Ben's 27 years in the Louisiana Air National Guard are the background he would bring to making that case in Baton Rouge.