AP and staff reports

At least 5,000 Louisiana public school teachers are expected to converge of the state Capitol Wednesday for a rally calling for pay raises, a union official says.

Orleans Parish school officials already have notified the Louisiana Federation of Teachers they will cancel classes that day and have it made up later, said Les Landon, a union spokesman in Baton Rouge.

”We’re getting a real good response from Orleans Parish, about 1,000 have committed from Jefferson and we have at least 800 hard signatures from Baton Rouge,” Landon said.

Wilma McKeever of Concordia Parish’s LFT chapter requested in the Concordia School Board’s April 4 meeting that local members be given the day off attend the rally.

But Superintendent Lester &uot;Pete&uot; Peterman said that would probably mean canceling classes that day, something he is loathe to do except in an actual emergency. And the missed day would have to be made up later.

&uot;We have to make sure we have all our bases covered,&uot;&160;he said.

The board decided to allow two representatives per school to attend the rally, which didn’t require a board vote because the district had previously done so when members of teacher unions attended other events in the past.

But McKeever said Concordia Federation of Teachers members will probably take personal days to attend the rally. That means that the district might not know until the day before the rally how many teachers and other workers could be out of school Wednesday.

By law, teachers who are willing to use one of their allotted personal leave days must be excused for the rally as long as they give 24 hours notice, Landon said.

But if enough teachers in a certain district plan to take that day off, some school districts may elect to cancel classes, Landon said.

The response is likely to be lighter in Bossier Parish, where the Federation of Teachers – one of two major teachers’ unions in the state – has lower membership.

Bossier Parish schools Superintendent Ken Kruithof said his district will force teachers to use personal leave and has asked that only two teachers from each school attend. ”I spoke to the union’s local representative and she was fine with that,” Kruithof said.

The union last held such a rally in 1997, in part to fight legislation and also to push for a raise. Lawmakers ended up approving raises of between $850 and $1,200 a year.

But teacher salaries in Louisiana remain comparatively low in the South, and even more so nationally. The average pay in Louisiana is $32,510. The Southern average is $35,795 and the national average $40,582.

In Mississippi, lawmakers recently approved raising teacher salaries to about $41,000 over the next few years.

Louisiana lawmakers say they want to give teachers raises but are hamstrung by a $269 million deficit in the next fiscal year starting July 1. Raising teachers’ salaries to the Southern average would cost an additional $220 million.

Leaders of the federation, which has 18,500 members, and the Louisiana Association of Educators, with 21,000 members, have floated the idea of a strike in September if no raise is approved. The two unions represent all but about 9,000 public school teachers in the state.