As early voting for the May 16 ballot approaches, Leaders for a Better Louisiana will take an individual look at each of the five amendments being presented to voters. Our hope is that citizens will use this information as a resource to familiarize themselves with each of the amendments before they cast their votes.
Here is our analysis of Amendment #3. You can find our review of all of the amendments here.
Eliminates Education Trust Funds to Pay Off Retirement Debt
What It Does: This amendment does three major things.
- It abolishes three large education trust funds that are currently protected in the constitution.
- It uses the revenues in those funds to retire about $2 billion in debt in the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL).
- It requires the savings local school districts would realize from reduced payments to the retirement system to fund a small permanent pay raise for school employees. Currently teachers receive a year-to-year non-guaranteed stipend of $2,000 with school support workers getting $1,000. The amendment would permanently raise that to $2,250 and $1,125 respectively.
Background:
In 2025 voters rejected Constitutional Amendment #2 which was a major rewrite of all of Article VII of the Louisiana Constitution. It made extensive changes to many parts of that article. This is one piece of that which the Legislature singled out to present again to voters as a stand-alone proposal.
The Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund and the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund receive constitutionally dedicated revenues from offshore mineral production. Together they generate revenues from earnings that are equally split between K-12 education and postsecondary education in support of specific educational activities that are specified in the constitution.
The Education Excellence Fund is a part of the Millennium Trust funded by a legal settlement with major tobacco companies. It, too, uses investment earnings to support various education initiatives.
This amendment eliminates all three of those funds and redirects the revenues in their accounts to pay down more than $2 billion of debt in TRSL. The original amendment estimated that move would reduce the amount that public school systems and higher education are paying to eliminate that debt by about $283 million per year.
It further mandates that the savings realized by the various public school systems be used to make a year-to-year stipend that school personnel have been receiving into a permanent part of their pay. For the last three years, these stipends have totaled $2,000 per year for educators and $1,000 a year for school support workers, though that amount would increase slightly if this amendment passes.
On the positive side, passage of this amendment would eliminate a significant amount of state debt owed to TRSL. It would also turn a yearly, non-guaranteed stipend that teachers have been receiving into a permanent payment at a slightly higher rate. It is worth noting that stipend is not now included in the current version of the state budget and lawmakers would have to find other dollars to fund it for next year if this amendment fails and they want the stipend to continue.
On the negative side, this amendment would eliminate about $2 billion dollars in permanent trust funds whose earnings have been used for decades to support early childhood, K-12, and higher education research and professorships. Companion legislation requires an annual deposit of $11 million into a new fund to maintain the support for early childhood education.
The governor and legislative leaders have indicated that K-12 and higher education would continue to receive the funding lost by the dismantling of the trust funds, but that is not guaranteed for the future. The revenues that would have gone into the Education Excellence Fund will now be added to companion Health Excellence and TOPS Funds.
Our Recommendation: Support. Better Louisiana supported Amendment #2 in 2025. We noted that paying off large amounts of debt and raising teacher pay were good things, while acknowledging that maintaining significant trust fund balances for education was also good policy. Ultimately, we believe the passage of this amendment outweighs the possible negative consequences of losing the trust funds. However, we take this position with the expectation that if this amendment passes, the Legislature will permanently maintain the funding for K-12 and higher education initiatives that would be lost from these trust funds.