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S T TA M M A N Y FA R M E R.N E T

W e d n e s d ay, J u n e 4, 2025

151ST YEAR, NO. 34

50¢N

Teachers, other school employees will get raises paychecks The raises are $2,550 their starting in August after the School for teachers Board on May and $1,750 28 approved an agreement negotifor support staff ated by the school

district and teach- Jabbia ers’ union. The raises — $2,550 for educaStaff writer tors and $1,750 for support emThousands of St. Tammany Par- ployees — are part of a deal that ish teachers will see a bump in was hammered out by union Presi-

BY BOB WARREN

dent Brant Osborn and schools Superintendent Frank Jabbia. The vote cements the first of a two-year collective bargaining agreement with Osborn the St. Tammany Federation of Teachers and School Employees. In addition to pay increases, the agreement calls for stipends rang-

ing from $250 to $1,000 for coaches who guide their team to the playoffs or become state champions, $550 per semester for employees who manage the laptop computers at their schools, and pay for school “duty” work that teachers are assigned to complete. Jabbia said stipends for teachers and other workers in recent years have been welcomed, but were one-time payments. The district’s focus this time around was

increasing salaries, he said. “It’s a win-win for everybody,” Jabbia told the board.

Higher salaries The raises will nudge starting salaries for teachers to around $52,000 annually. In a Facebook post earlier this month, Osborn noted that St. Tammany teachers have received

ä See RAISES, page 5A

Loved ones visit veterans’ gravesites

PHOTO BY MATT DOBBINS

INSIDE ä More remembrance photos. Page 2A ä Missing Man Table serves as reminder. Page 5A ä Covington service honors those lost and veterans. Page 6A

Jessica Butts and Randy Bourgeois spend time on Memorial Day honoring and remembering his daughter and her sister, Jenifer Laine Bellott, a staff sergeant with the Air Force.

The Murph

Dirt work saves living history in St. Tammany

Sacrifice in the service of remembering BY MIKE GEGENHEIMER Contributing writer

Logan Hunt doesn’t want people to thank him for his service. Not on Memorial Day. A captain in the Army National Guard ﬂying helicopters out of Hammond, Memorial Day has nothing to do with him. He isn’t alone in that wish. Far from it. Ask any veteran or active military member and they will proudly tell you that Memorial Day is about the men and women who died serving their country;

the ones who gave the “ultimate sacriﬁce” in support of something they felt was bigger than themselves. It’s a common mistake, but an important distinction nonetheless. Memorial Day is a day to honor people like Lieutenant Michael P. “Murph” Murphy, who died in 2005 serving as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. He died sacriﬁcing himself to call in support for his team

BY SUZIE HUNT

PHOTO BY HERB GOMEZ

Logan Hunt does The Murph each Memorial Day to honor the sacrifice of military personnel ä See THE MURPH, page 4A who died while serving.

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ists are part of Wild Ones, a national organization on a mission to save native landscapes through educaWhite-topped sedge, daisy ﬂea- tion and advocacy — and it takes a bane and yellow pitcher plant lot of dirt work to do it. Locally, members of the orgagraced local woodlands and marshes since before Europeans arrived nization’s Pontchartrain Basin on the northshore, and a group of chapter are committed to protectdedicated volunteer conservation- ing Louisiana’s native plants from ists are working hard to ensure destruction. On lands slated for dethat the precious ﬂora — and the velopment, members make themfauna that needs it — survive for selves available to remove native generations. ä See HISTORY, page 3A These determined conservationContributing writer

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