BATON ROUGE — Gov. Jeff Landry on Tuesday signed an executive order that directs state education agencies to work to redirect non-instructional funding into teacher pay raises, an order he said goes hand-in-hand with the recently created task force to find funding for a statewide pay raise for teachers. 

This order, the governor explained, is the next step in structural work needed to embed permanent pay raises inside the Minimum Foundation Program. He said he wants to avoid having raises as temporary add-ons and make them guaranteed parts of the funding formula. 

"Your profession deserves the security of a permanent pay raise," the governor said. "We do not have a revenue problem; we have a priorities problem."

Landry's order directs the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Louisiana Department of Education to redirect funds in a manner that he says will protect essential student services like security, food services and transportation.

District leaders will also be included in the decision-making process when considering where funding will be reallocated from, Landry added.

"No line item, no formula component and no legacy practice will be off limits," Landry said. "This is a clean slate evaluation with one priority: ensuring that our teachers and support staff come first."

In total, Landry says he wants to see $168 million reallocated to teacher pay raises across the state.

The governor claimed that some school districts are "sitting on over $100 million in their fund balances." 

"It's important that we, if we have to, force these school boards to do their own fiscal responsibility programs," Landry said. "It is time for these school boards to tighten their belts and put what they find in those teachers' checks." 

He clarified that the executive order he signed does not cut from classrooms, repeating this several times. 

"It does not reduce teachers' salaries, and it does not raise taxes," Landry said. "What it does is raise transparency." 

Landry previously announced the formation of the 15-member Minimum Foundation Program Pay Raise Task Force on May 23 whose goal is to find funding for a statewide pay raise within the $13 billion of local, state and federal money allocated to education in Louisiana.

According to Landry, the state had 870,000 public school students in 1988 and spent $9,400, adjusted for inflation, on education per student. Now, the governor said, Louisiana has 760,000 public school students but spends $16,000 per student, and teachers make less than they did nearly 40 years ago when adjusted for inflation.

"The reality is that teacher pay in Louisiana has actually declined due to inflation at the very same time cost per student went up dramatically," the governor said.

After the failure of Amendment Three, which attempted to reallocate money from education funds to give teachers a permanent pay increase, at the ballot box, Landry said that no state employees would be receiving raises until teachers did.

"That message seemed to spark cooperation, urgency and meaningful movement," the governor said Tuesday.

In addition to his executive order, Landry also signed HB 196 into law, which doubles teachers' personal paid leave. This takes effect in August. 

WATCH LANDRY'S NEWS CONFERENCE HERE: