BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – The Senate Finance Committee is hearing a bill that would raise the age teachers would need to be in order to retire and get their full benefits.

The bill proposed by Senator Barrow Peacock would raise the age from 62 to 67.

Senator Price says in a statement the reasoning for the bill is people are living longer and it would save the state money over time.

“With a reduction in costs of our retirement system over me, more financial resources will be freed up from the retirement systems’ demands and will allow our state and our local school boards to reallocate those financial resources to needed areas such as paying our state employees, school employees and teachers more,” said Senator Barrow Peacock, a co-author on the bill.

This change would only apply to new hires, not existing educators.

Some have raised concerns that this change would make Louisiana less attractive for teachers to work in the state.