Mississippi’s legislative session is under 24 hours away, and lawmakers have a bevy of topics on which they are prepared to discuss, debate, and possibly find common ground on.
As has become customary, Senate leader Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White outlined their agendas on Monday, the day before the 90-day session begins. The two Republican leaders stressed that legislators will be mainly focused on education, the public employees’ retirement system, healthcare, and the state’s budget.
Education
On the education front, the House and Senate will likely take different approaches while addressing similar issues under the classroom umbrella. For White, school choice will take front and center stage as part of an omnibus-style bill encapsulating a multitude of reforms he would like to see in Mississippi public schools. School choice refers to the ability of parents to select the educational facility their child attends, rather than being limited to the public school in their zip code.
After examining how surrounding states have implemented school choice measures in recent years, White is looking to take a measured approach in giving parents more options for their kids’ schooling without completely overwhelming the education system. One starting point will be addressing portability, or students transferring from one public school to another.
While White and Hosemann have seldom seen eye-to-eye on school choice measures, the two are in agreement on removing some of the barriers that allow a school to block a student from leaving or prevent that pupil from enrolling without a viable justification, one way or another.
“I just think where we are now, in 2026, we’re at a place where we can give our parents some choice without not only not wrecking and messing up the gains that we’ve seen over the last few years, but actually taking those and expounding on that and getting us to a place where we continue to be the envy of other states when it comes to what we’re doing in our K-12 education space,” White told the media in his office.
Hosemann added the following at a separate speaking engagement: “The school to which that student would move needs to have the ability to accept that student under the terms that it thinks are appropriate. Those make sense to me. We don’t need a veto on kids moving around if they want to.”
In the event that there are tuition dollars attached to a pupil undergoing a public-to-public school transfer, the House would even explore creating a $5 million fund to cover up to $2,000 of costs parents would otherwise have to absorb in the transfer.
Teacher recruitment and retention also dominated the education discussion, with Hosemann outright calling for a pay raise for educators, while White eyes a plan that would allow retired teachers to remain in the classroom without their state pensions being in jeopardy.
Mississippi is currently experiencing nearly 7,000 vacancies among teachers, administrators, and school support staff across the state. Hosemann’s solution would entail more cash in the pockets of those who spend their days educating Mississippi’s youth, even community college professors.
“When I meet with [teachers] and discuss with them what’s going on there, they’re teaching students who go out and make more money than the teacher, the first job,” Hosemann said.
White, on the other hand, plans to have a proposal in his all-encompassing education bill that would let retired teachers continue educating while simultaneously being allowed to draw retirement benefits. Though this may be met with some taxation concerns, White said legislative attorneys have explored all possible options to satisfy any demands from the IRS and is confident that the proposal will not yield any unintended consequences.
The speaker is also open to discussing a bill to raise teacher pay. Despite being accused of planning to use a teacher’s pay raise as leverage to pass school choice measures, White said any legislation to increase educator salaries will not be included in his overarching bill.
The greatest threat, however, to Mississippi’s education system and the future of the state, per Hosemann, is rising chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism – missing 10% or more of the school year for any reason – spiked by more than 3% in the 2024-25 school year, according to a recent report from the Mississippi Department of Education. The report showed that 27.6%, or 120,408, of Mississippi’s public school students were chronically absent, surpassing the previous school year’s rate of 24.4%.
To fix the issue, Hosemann is seeking a pay raise for truancy officers, or those who work to ensure that students are in the classroom, while also working to have a resource officer in each public school tasked with working to prevent pupils from missing vital learning hours.
“Without having that child sitting in that seat, learning a skill set that will allow them to be financially viable in their personal life, we will not have achieved our education goal,” Hosemann said. “We have to change that.”
Public employees’ retirement system
Last year, the state made a deliberate effort to fix the public employees’ retirement system (PERS), which has an unfunded liability of around $26 billion. Though the plan includes a high volume of dollars going into the program, the PERS board has requested a large infusion now.
“We will be discussing significant contributions to the first plan to get us to that proposal, and I think we have, generally, a very perceptive understanding, both the Senate and the House, on that particular matter, and we will be releasing that as we do the budget and the rest of the things here shortly,” Hosemann said.
White has a wild card ready to play when it comes to PERS. The speaker announced his intentions to introduce mobile sports betting, which is illegal in Mississippi outside of brick-and-mortar casinos, as a new revenue source to pour into PERS, similar to what the lottery does for the transportation and education systems.
“You’re going to continue to see us try to find a way to either make a large cash infusion to PERS or find a dedicated stream of revenue that probably, yes, will include some form of mobile sports betting,” White said.
Another PERS-related topic will be addressing concerns from first responders regarding a new tier for state employees hired after March 1 of this year. The new tier, also known as Tier 5, was created in the 2025 session and increases service from 30 to 35 years, removes guaranteed cost-of-living adjustments, reduces the pension multiplier from 2% to 1%, and raises the retirement age from 60 to 62, among other functions, before one can draw state benefits.
First responders have sounded the alarm that the implementation could have unintended consequences such as a mass exodus of police officers, firefighters, and others exiting government work and their positions will go unfilled due to already-existing struggles in attracting new talent.
“I think they deserve other considerations. Part of that is that it has to be financially viable. We can’t go broke again like we were,” Hosemann said. “I think there will be some reviews of that, especially as it looks at firemen and policemen and their particular needs.”
White echoed Hosemann’s sentiments that something needs to be done to make first responders whole, acknowledging that the benefit structure does not comply with the stress of many of their jobs. Both acknowledged that any alterations would have to be presented to the PERS board to determine who would cover any increased costs that a change would impose.
Healthcare
Medicaid expansion talks have seemingly ended when the Trump administration took over at the White House. However, the state was recently rewarded $206 million for its plan to strengthen rural healthcare. Hosemann expressed concerns that the plan does not allow money to be used for brick-and-mortar facilities but is hopeful that it will improve health outcomes in underserved areas.
A side healthcare priority for Hosemann is getting the state to cover the health insurance costs for the roughly 12,000 National Guard members in Mississippi. To help bolster recruitment, the lieutenant governor’s plan would include finding the funding to subsidize the TRICARE plans for National Guard troops.
“Those healthcare premiums are extensive. It helps in recruitment,” Hosemann said. “The individuals at the guard have told us this is their number one project that they, if we could get health insurance for their guard members, would be a significant impetus to them staying in the National Guard.”
Meanwhile, the House is prepared to reintroduce legislation that would alter the state’s certificates of need (CON) laws. The regulations require healthcare providers to seek the government’s approval for certain projects and capital expenditures — money spent to acquire or maintain fixed assets like land, buildings, and equipment.
Last year, the legislature passed a bill that reformed these laws and removed some of the red tape preventing hospitals from operating freely. However, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed the legislation due to an “11th-hour” amendment that seemingly contradicted the spirit of the bill, which the governor said he originally supported. Lawmakers, however, did not modify and pass the bill in time.
“We’ll be back with that bill. I don’t know that there’s an appetite to override the veto of the CON legislation that the governor vetoed at the end of last session,” White said. “But if not, you’ll see the house moving pretty quickly with a new CON bill that mirrors the one that was vetoed, which may remove the offending language that the governor’s office had a problem with.”
Budget
Last year’s budget discussion took a turn during conference weekend and required a special session before state agencies could be funded by the legislature. This year, to have a plan in place before lawmakers are left to scramble to piece together a budget at the last minute, the House plans to tackle its proposal early in the session.
“You’re also going to see the House continue to push for a transparent and timely budget process,” White said. “While we may be here on conference weekend, debating some general legislation that’s caught up in the give and take of conference, [we] won’t be here working on the budget. We’ll either have a budget by then, or we’ll find ourselves in the same place we were last year.”
According to Hosemann, the Senate will also work on its budget early. Lawmakers will return to the capitol at noon on Tuesday to begin the 2026 session.