BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge School Board held a public meeting to discuss an incoming budget that would give teachers a $6,000 raise.

Teachers, support staff, and bus operators packed the school board's office for the meeting.

One attendee said the raise has been a long time coming.

"So first, it's long overdue. Some of us mark our time in this district by the number of superintendents we've had, and some of us have been waiting for four or five superintendents to be paid and treated like professionals. But also, it's on the heels of inflation. Everything is costing more money now," the attendee said.

In June, Governor Jeff Landry ordered education agencies to find non-instructional funds to reallocate for teacher pay raises.

Superintendent Lamont Cole says East Baton Rouge schools were already taking that approach when developing the budget.

"We started talking about our process about 10 months ago. I think all of you are aware that during my interview, I committed to do whatever I could to change the compensation packages for our employees, change the salary schedule, uncompress it to ensure that it was easier to read, give our employees a raise," Cole said.

Bus operators at the meeting say they feel left out of the proposal.

Currently, bus operators make $14.50 an hour. The proposed budget would raise that to $20.50 an hour but would reduce their guaranteed workday from eight hours to six.

District leaders say operators could make more by picking up additional routes or extra work. Still, some bus operators pushed back, saying the hour reduction means it is not really a raise.

"Yes, the teachers deserve that raise, but we do, too. We don't deserve for our hours to be cut; the teachers can't teach if we don't get them there, "one bus operator said.

Superintendent Lamont Cole says the district will provide more information before next week's vote to help bus drivers better understand the proposal.

The budget will be voted on by the school board on June 11.