How are we going to define "significant"?

More importantly, why is it John Bel who is doing the lowballing here?

Amid teacher unrest and a widening pay gap with other states, Gov. John Bel Edwards plans to recommend an election-year salary increase of at least $1,000 for public school teachers in 2019, officials said Friday.

In addition, the governor's plan would boost the pay of school cafeteria workers and other support personnel by $500 per year, all part of a $114 million package.

Teacher union leaders, long aligned with the governor, are hoping for a bigger pay hike but are working with Edwards' office.

According to this article, it would take at least an $1800 raise to get Louisiana teachers up to the Southern regional average. It also cites at least one Republican legislator (Nancy Landry) who is willing to back that amount.  Of course whether or not even that is good enough is another matter altogether.  The general feeling is it's probably not a great idea to mess with the teachers right now. 

The LAE and the LFT, which are the state's two teacher unions, are aligned with Edwards, backed his bid for governor in 2015 and are expected to be key support groups when he runs for a second term next year.

All the pay raise talk is also taking place amid rising demands nationally to boost teacher pay, including strikes that produced pay raises in red states like Oklahoma, Arizona and West Virginia.

LFT leaders said in May that, in a survey of their members, 60 percent said they would favor a statewide walkout or strike to get a "significant" pay raise.

However we end up deciding what constitutes a "significant" pay raise, it's hard to imagine that $1000 should suffice.  The teachers are a key part of  John Bel's constituency so maybe their leadership has already signed off on this. But objectively speaking, he might as well be offering a punch in the head.