INDReporter

Lafayette teachers win back-pay dispute with board

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal has sided with a pair of teachers and against the Lafayette Parish School Board in a back-pay dispute that, if the ruling holds, will net the teachers thousands of dollars in compensation.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal has sided with a pair of teachers and against the Lafayette Parish School Board in a back-pay dispute that, if the ruling holds, will net the teachers thousands of dollars in compensation.

Aillet, left, and Doucet

According to the 3rd Circuit opinion issued Wednesday, Jan Aillet is entitled to just under $20,000 in back pay per year of service since the 2011-12 school year while Marilyn Doucet deserves about $17,500 per year. According to their Facebook profiles, Aillet has since retired from the Lafayette Parish School System and Doucet is in her final year before retiring.

The opinion affirms a district court ruling by Judge Durwood Conque finding that Aillet and Doucet were short-changed. Both were employed at Lafayette Charter High School for the 2011-2012 school year and paid on a 244-day school-year salary but were transferred to other schools and subsequently paid lower salaries based on a 182-day school year after Charter High closed in 2012.

Trahan ruled that the LPSB’s action in reducing the number of school days that served as the basis of the teachers’ salaries was a violation of Louisiana’s teacher tenure law, which reads in part, “The amount of the annual salary paid to a teacher or other school employee in any school year shall not be reduced below the amount of such salary paid during the previous school year, nor shall the amount of the annual salary paid to such school personnel be reduced at any time during an academic year.”

Read the 3rd Circuit opinion here.