‘It’s incredibly disappointing.’ Teacher pay raise bills die from politics in Legislature ...Middle East

Raising teacher pay, which was originally described as a priority for both chambers of the Legislature, became a casualty of politics this week. 

Bills that would have increased teacher salaries died with a deadline at the Capitol on Tuesday, despite pleas from educators and advocates who have said for years that a teacher’s salary in Mississippi is unsustainable. 

Mississippi teachers are, on average, the lowest paid in the country at $53,704. Starting teachers make a little over $42,00.

The Legislature passed the last meaningful teacher pay raise in 2022, which educators told Mississippi Today was quickly eaten up by rising insurance premiums and inflation. In the years since, teachers say they’ve had to take second jobs and make tough financial decisions to live within their means. 

Both the Senate and House authored bills early in the session that would increase teacher pay. A Senate bill would’ve given educators a $2,000 a year increase, while the House proposed a $5,000 raise. 

But by the end of the day Tuesday, the deadline for committees to pass bills originating in the opposite chamber, lawmakers in both chambers ended up blaming the other for failing to advance each other’s raises.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” said Jason Reid, a teacher in DeSoto County who drives a school bus before and after work to supplement his income. “Two months ago it seemed both chambers were very committed to addressing the regional and national teacher pay raise gaps and teacher shortage. Now, Mississippi teachers will fall even further behind their peers.”

Educators have consistently named low pay as one of the factors driving the teacher shortage in Mississippi. A survey released earlier this year by the Mississippi Department of Education showed nearly 4,000 vacant teaching jobs across the state. 

Senate and House leaders said in the weeks leading up the 2026 legislative session that raising teacher pay was one of the top items on their agendas. However, as the day winded down on Tuesday, it appeared that the chambers had reached a stalemate.

Both the Senate and House Education Committees had the opportunity to advance the others’ teacher pay raise bills. Still, they chose not to and pointed fingers at the other.

Kelly Riley, leader of Mississippi Professional Educators, said the blame doesn’t lie with one chamber. 

“Educators, just like other constituents, expect their legislators to come to Jackson and to take care of the state’s business,” she said. “Please put politics aside and do the job that your constituents elected you to do.”

Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, told Mississippi Today multiple times throughout Tuesday that he wasn’t planning on calling a meeting before the chamber adjourned, and that the proverbial ball was in the House’s court. 

“Senate Bill 2001 has been in the House since the second day of the session,” DeBar said. “I would have liked to have collaborated with them over the past seven weeks.”

However, the Senate has also had the House’s teacher pay raise bill since early February.

The leader of the House Education Committee, Republican Rep. Rob Roberson of Starkville, made it clear weeks ago that he would not call another meeting before the March 3 deadline. 

It’s not exactly clear why, but the move did come after Senate leaders made their stance clear on school choice, which was House Speaker Jason White’s pet issue this session. 

The Senate Education Committee killed House Bill 2, White’s omnibus school choice bill, last month. A majority of the committee’s education bills were then double-referred in the House, a tactic commonly employed in an effort to kill bills — though White told Mississippi Today that wasn’t out of retaliation. 

The House’s education panel has only passed two Senate education bills. DeBar’s committee met last week and passed just two House education bills. 

As a result, dozens of education measures have died over the past two months. 

“It’s frustrating because this seems to be an annual thing when we discuss pay raises,” DeBar said. “However, along with the pay raise, we’ve sent down a plethora of bills that refuse to get any action.”

DeBar, who’s also vice-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he’s now planning to amend the Mississippi Department of Education’s appropriations bill to include money set aside for a teacher pay raise of at least $2,000. However, because legislators can’t address general law in appropriations bills, this would be a one-time bonus — not a permanent change to the teacher pay scale. 

In short, it would be a stop gap, and a temporary solution until the chambers could reach a resolution on a raise — perhaps next year. 

But legislative leaders heavily involved in education policy, such as Roberson and Republican Rep. Jansen Owen of Poplarville, and Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, all said they’d like to find a long-term solution before the chambers adjourn this year.

“That’s just not how you do teacher pay raises,” Owen said. “It’s strange. I don’t understand why they’re trying to work around taking up the clean pay raise bill. We sent the Senate a very clean, a good, clean, large pay raise. And if it’s dead, that’s sad … I hate to see that the Senate is killing it just to play some political games.”

Riley said the status of the teacher pay raise bills was especially disappointing, given the state’s academic achievement over the past decade.

While state leaders have taken turns accepting credit for students’ dramatic progress in reading and math that have landed Mississippi in national headlines, education advocates say the gains wouldn’t have been possible without the work of teachers. 

“It’s just disheartening that they don’t turn around and reward that hard work with the pay raise,” Riley said. “But I hate to say that they deserve it, or it’s a reward, because the bottom line is that they should pay and respect our educators as the professionals that they are.”

A teacher pay raise could be taken up during a special session, if Gov. Tate Reeves, the only person who can call a special session and sets the agenda, were to call one. 

Roberson suggested that the chambers could also potentially agree to suspend the rules of the session and revive one of the teacher pay raise bills before they gavel out for the year as scheduled in early April. 

“I’m not saying that we are gonna do one, but we could,” he said. “Dennis and I are gonna get together. There may be other tools that can be used to fund this for a year, but I don’t want to do it that way.”

Roberson said he doesn’t want to give up on the House’s more generous $5,000 proposal. 

“I think it’s just a matter of us figuring out what we’re gonna do,” he said. “We may can agree on something and that may work, so conversations are ongoing. Nothing is set in stone until we leave.”

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