Louisiana schools wrestle with increased staffing numbers, falling enrollment amid budgetary woes

Louisiana’s public-school system is grappling with a problem repeated nationwide: burgeoning staff numbers even with student enrollment plunging, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In Louisiana, the school workforce grew by 6% over the past decade while enrollment fell by 7%, according to federal data from 2014 to 2024,” wrote Patrick Wall for nola.com. “Post-pandemic, the state’s public schools lost nearly 44,000 students, yet added more than 11,000 staffers — mainly teachers, but also classroom aides and administrators, according to 2019 to 2024 figures.”

Much of the funding used for the hiring spree involved federal pandemic relief, which ended in 2024. Critics of the current system, including Gov. Jeff Landry, warn school districts need to adapt by cutting “the waste and the bureaucracy,” according to the article.

The number of those “that school boards are employing, non-instructional, has risen at the detriment of our teachers,” argued Landry, who has called for a reduction of nearly $170 million in state school funding.

“I’m going to keep hammering this until people understand. The amount of students in the system keeps going down, and the amount of money we spend keeps going up.”

‘Cut the fat off the chicken’

Meanwhile, districts are facing increased pressure to downsize as financial deficits grow.

“We just have to continue to get our staff to align with our student numbers,” said St. Landry Parish Schools Superintendent Milton Batiste III. “As long as we can do that, we can survive.”

The state’s south-central St. Landry Parish district, which enrolls nearly 12,000 students, is facing a deficit of almost $8 million.

“Like nearly every other school district in Louisiana, St. Landry Parish has seen enrollment fall as families have fewer kids, move away or opt for charters or homeschool,” Wall wrote. “Yet even as the school system lost roughly a quarter of its students over the past decade, its workforce grew by nearly 20%.”

Proponents of increased spending argue the staffing increase was needed “to respond to students’ soaring academic and mental health needs, especially after COVID,” according to Wall.

“The additional educators have led to lower class sizes, a priority for many teachers and parents, and likely contributed to Louisiana students’ remarkable rebound from pandemic learning loss and recent reading gains.”

However, other community members point to specific districts’ responses to the pandemic as a major factor contributing to present-day troubles.

“There’s been study after study after study saying that St. Landry Parish is operating too many schools,” said Rod Sias, a former Opelousas city official and local NAACP chapter president. “Now, we’re in a situation where if we do not do something extreme within three years, it’s going to be unsustainable.”

Joey Richard, owner of Holliwood Cutz barber shop in Opelousas and the father of two school-aged children, agrees with Sias. His wife is a classroom aide for the St. Landry Parish district.

“I’m not the superintendent,” he noted, “but I’m sure that he’s going to have to cut the fat off the chicken.”