BATON ROUGE – Louisiana is still facing a shortage of about 1,200 teachers, according to testimony at a House hearing this week.

The shortage was more severe during the COVID-19 pandemic, when classrooms across the state struggled to keep staff as thousands of teachers retired over health concerns or work difficulties.

Lawmakers moved then to temporarily loosen restrictions on retired teachers returning to work, and now they are looking for a longer-term solution to reduce the remaining gap.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 6-1 Monday to advance Senate Bill 14, authored by Sen. Ed Price, D-Gonzales. It would reorganize and simplify the rules governing how retired teachers can return to work under the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana.

Instead of maintaining multiple, separate return-to-work policies based on different timelines and job types, the bill would consolidate them into a single structured system. Under SB14, retired teachers could return to the classroom while still receiving retirement benefits if they meet certain criteria. These include retirees who left before June 30, 2010, and those
aged 65 or older, or those who wait at least 12 months after retirement before returning.

The bill is designed to make it more attractive for experienced educators to return without risking their financial stability.

Lawmakers asked if the changes could prompt some teachers to take early retirement and then come back to try to gain more money.

Katherine Whitney, director of the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana, responded: “At age 65, you're a lot less likely to inspire people to retire early because most likely they've already retired.”

If retirees return before that 12-month window ends, their retirement benefits would be temporarily suspended.

Price’s bill also sets a clear earnings limit. Retirees can earn up to 50% of their original final compensation, and any amount earned above that threshold would reduce their retirement benefits.

The legislation also maintains provisions for teachers who specialize in areas of critical shortage. It would require school systems to advertise those roles before filling them with retirees.

Bruce Chaffin, assistant superintendent in Livingston Parish, said that increasing the cap on earnings for returning teachers to 50% from 25% of what they had previously made would help high schools significantly. Those retired teachers could work half of the year, and instead of needing four retired teachers for a school year, the school would only need two.

“That particular rule is going to help out our high school students significantly, where we can at least have a retired teacher, someone that knows the profession, or we just have a regular day- to-day sub that doesn't know all the components of being an effective teacher,” he said.

The key difference between the current bill and the 2022 changes lies in structure and longevity. While the 2022 adjustments temporarily relaxed restrictions to address the immediate crisis, SB14 would create a standardized, long-term framework.

As the bill moves through the legislature, the question remains whether altering the rules will be enough to bring experienced educators back into the classroom, hopefully closing the state's persistent teacher gap for good.

Even before the COVID pandemic, teacher turnover had been building for years. State data shows that between the 2012-2013 and 2020-2021 school years, an average of 11% of teachers left the classroom annually.

But by the 2021-2022 school year, the number of teachers retiring or moving on rose to 14%, leaving a total of 50,081 public and charter-school teachers statewide, according to the Teacher

Data Exit Report prepared by the state Education Department.

In the 2024-2025 school year, the department’s exit survey found that fewer teachers said they were leaving over dissatisfaction or to take jobs in other states. It noted that 32% of those who left said they had departed due to personal circumstances.