(KLFY)-- A new Louisiana law allows retired teachers to be re-employed to fill critical shortages in the classroom without losing their retirement benefits.

Retirees' pensions will not be suspended or reduced, and they will be paid a first-year teacher salary. This was previously offered to teachers who retired prior to June 2010, but this law includes those who retired from 2010 to now.

This includes other positions like: speech therapist, speech pathologist, audiologist, school counselor, school social worker, educational diagnostician, school psychologist, interpreter, educational transliterator and educator of the deaf or hearing impaired.

Lafayette Parish School System Communications and Public Relations Specialist Tracy Wirtz said retired teachers can fill any grade or subject where there is a critical shortage of certified teachers.

"By allowing some of these retired teachers to come in and fill some of these critical shortage areas, it further ensures that we do have those certified teachers in the classroom," Wirtz said. "Which is always important not only to the people here at Lafayette Parish School System, but also, of course, to the parents."

Now it's about a critical shortage.

"Retired teachers are teachers at heart," Dr. Savonne Williams, President of St. Landry Parish Retired Educators Association, said. "When they went into the profession, they knew what it was all about."

Wirtz said this gives school systems more options for hiring.

"For a particular position in one of those critical shortage categories, the law states that there need to be less than three applicants before a retired teacher can be considered for that particular position," Wirtz said. "If only one or two people apply, then the retired teacher obviously becomes eligible for that particular position, but if there are three or more, then they're really going to look at the active teachers."

Teachers must be retired for a full twelve months before returning to the classroom in order to keep their full benefits.

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