BATON ROUGE - East Baton Rouge Parish School District Superintendent LaMont Cole says he supports the proposed budget for next school year.

The budget would include a $6,000 increase in starting teachers' salaries. 

"And it's not just starting teachers, I want to be clear. All of our employees in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system are going to receive a raise. We're just going to ensure that the starting salary for teachers is competitive not only in the Capital region but also in the rest of the country," Cole said during a Friday morning appearence on 2une In

Another big investment in the budget is improving school safety. If approved, the budget would allocate $6.3 million for new security equipment, including AI-powered metal detectors. The district started using the technology two years ago within its high schools.

"First on the list were our high schools. We put this technology in our high schools in my first year as superintendent, and then we started adding more high schools the second year. Now we're going to transition to our middle schools. We'll go in alphabetical order to ensure our middle schools have the technology as well, and we'll then transition to our elementary schools," Cole said. 

A public hearing for the budget will be held on June 4 at 4:30 p.m. at 1050 South Foster Drive. The budget will be voted on by the school board on June 11, with the pay increases taking effect on July 1.