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Key Takeaways Richland Parish, a rural school district in Louisiana, is preparing to pay teachers bonuses of more than $50,000 this year.
The district is funding the payouts with local tax revenue tied to Meta’s new data center.
For teachers in a rural area where education budgets are often tight, the sudden bonus is life-changing.
Teachers in Richland Parish, a rural school district in northeast Louisiana, are set to receive unprecedented bonuses of more than $50,000 this year, thanks to a Meta data center construction project.
Meta is constructing a $27 billion data center in Richland Parish to power its social media platforms and AI workloads, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. The project has generated a wave of spending on steel, concrete, equipment and services, all of which are subject to local sales tax.
For the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the parish collected about $42.9 million in sales and use tax, more than double the total for the previous year, per the Journal. On top of that, Meta made a separate tax payment of $22.4 million in May, equal to 1% of qualifying purchases, with more than half of that flowing to the local school district.
The 1968 rule behind the $50,000 checks
The bonuses are possible because of a little-known ordinance passed in 1968 that allows the Richland Parish School Board to levy a 1% sales tax specifically to fund employee bonuses.
Each year, the board divides the proceeds among teachers and other staff members, issuing a bonus check in addition to regular salaries. In a typical year, that extra check has been helpful but modest, last year topping out at around $10,200 for teachers.
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