Dear Members,

I know you are all probably counting down to the Thanksgiving holidays just like us, as it has been a long beginning of the school year.  As the Federation continues to work hard towards improving wages, benefits, and working conditions for all employees, we believe it is also important to offer events that will help us build community with the goal of building a stronger union.  Therefore, we have a couple of events available to members to help us have fun, relax, and get to know each other a little more. 

The first event is a virtual BINGO hosted by the St. Tammany Federation

 “Health & Welfare- Open Enrollment”

October 6th – December 5th, 2025 is open enrollment for dental insurance. Now is the time to make changes or sign up for a higher dental plan. You can find out more information about the benefits and different plans by clicking here. Please note that the prices that are listed are per month, so you would have to divide by two to get the amount per paycheck.

If you don’t need to make changes to your plan, you don’t have to do anything.

One of our main goals is to add value to your membership by adding more local perks. One idea that is in the developing stages is to help our members learn more about managing debt, purchasing real estate, and building wealth. The local real estate team: Stephen McCarthy and Judy Camhout have partnered with us on this enterprise. This short survey is intended to help us design workshops based on members interest. We appreciate you taking the time out to answer these few questions.

https://forms.gle/pxuyxqJpLDGpm8Qx7

There are two different ways that you may be able to receive assistance for Hurrican Ida relief. 

LFT and AFT partnered together to give out hardship grants.  You can apply for the grant by clicking here.

Union Plus has came up with an option for a $500 disaster relief grant.  See if you qualify by clicking here.

In the wake of Hurricane Ida, St. Tammany Parish Superintendent Frank Jabbia stated at a school board meeting that he was confident that instructional minutes would be waived. The communications director for STPSB, Meredith Mendez, subsequently stated “at this time, we are not revising our calendar because we are hopeful the state will provide waivers to the required instructional seat time given the widespread damage across the state.”

State Superintendent Cade Brumley had a different stance, though, hoping “that systems would be able to make calendar adjustments so that the children could get

Please click here to take the survey to help us be as prepared as possible for the conference call today with the presidents of LFT & AFT. 

I attended the BESE meeting today. As you may have heard, the unruly crowd led to the meeting being adjourned before public comment and discussion of the mask mandate. 

Many have requested that we take the pulse again on the issue of masks now that the second week of school is almost complete. Even if you have taken it before, please take this second survey. There is some new content. As your representative, I need to know where you stand. 

Some take issue with the request for school email addresses. We have to be sure that only employees are taking the survey. Your individual results will not

This employee survey is designed to evaluate the STPSB workforce's reaction to the raise reflected in the first paycheck of the new school year. This is an anonymous survey due to the sensitive nature of the content. Please do not complete this survey during work hours as stated in the Employee Handbook.

In December 2020, the Federation and the School Board came to terms on a collective bargaining agreement. During the first year, teachers were paid $4000 in stipends with no permanent raise and school employees were paid $3700 in stipends.

For this year, teachers received two step raises from