As the common Mississippi adage goes, nothing in the legislature is ever truly dead until the session is over. Three days after a pair of bills implementing a teacher pay raise died in House and Senate committees, lawmakers have gone back to the drawing board to compile a plan together to put more money in the pockets of educators.
On Friday, the House of Representatives gutted Senate Bill 2103, a measure addressing ethical standards for school counselors, and inserted language from a teacher pay raise legislation the chamber passed unanimously in February. The move comes after the initial measure failed to make it to a floor vote in the Senate. The same happened to a Senate bill raising teacher pay, but in the House.
Though Tuesday’s deadline for committees to report on general bills and constitutional amendments from opposing chambers has passed, the House found a loophole by removing statutory language from the aforementioned Senate bill and inserting its wording to revive the spirit of the legislation that had died.
“Today, the House stood firm to revive a teacher pay raise that our hardworking educators deserve,” Republican Speaker Jason White wrote on social media. “With a unanimous House vote this morning, Senate Bill 2103 was amended to include the House’s original teacher pay proposal of $5,000.”
As the speaker noted, the House’s plan bumps teacher pay by $5,000, moving the minimum annual salary from $41,500 to $46,500. Assistant teachers would receive an additional $3,000 annually, and special education instructors would be compensated an extra $3,000 on top of the $5,000 raise. Attendance officers are also in line for a pay bump, per the measure.
Where increases are doled out, a cap on how much can be made would be implemented at the superintendent level. The proposal would not allow superintendents to earn more than 250% of what they would make as a teacher. The superintendent’s education level, experience, and the amount of money the district has would factor into salary.
At the student level, the measure slightly tweaks the state’s per-pupil funding formula, with the base cost increasing by $500 to roughly $7,447. Around $18 million would be used for the Mississippi Department of Education to identify and aid districts the agency believes to be in need of help. This would largely apply to D- and F-rated districts, aiming to improve their overall outcomes.
Another hot-button issue addressed in the legislation is the public employees’ retirement system, rectifying concerns from the Tier 5 created as part of last year’s income tax elimination bill. The updated PERS structure would allow most state employees to retire after 30 years of service, rather than the 35 years under the new tier. For first responders, the time of service before drawing benefits would be 25 years. The retirement age would also drop from 62 to 60.
While seemingly not seeing eye-to-eye on much before gaveling in at the state capitol in January, House and Senate leadership vocally supported a teacher pay raise as a 2026 legislative priority. The consensus support ultimately unraveled with finger-pointing following.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, penned a letter to education associations statewide on Wednesday, blasting the House for killing three separate bills linked to a teacher pay raise, allowing retired educators to return to the classroom, and curbing chronic absenteeism rates. The House, unlike the Senate, passed education-related measures mostly through an omnibus bill. Hosemann argued that said measures deserved to be debated individually, rather than clumped together with unrelated issues.
“It has been the position of the Mississippi Senate that matters of this magnitude deserve consideration as separate, standalone legislation,” Hosemann wrote to the education advocacy organization. “Addressing each issue individually allows legislators to fully debate and vote on the merits of each proposal and, when appropriate, increase financial commitments rather than combining multiple provisions with controversial issues into a single measure.”
The controversial items Hosemann referred to dealt with school choice expansion, something that was included in a prior House bill that died in the Senate earlier in the session and is not mentioned in the House’s latest teacher pay proposal, and the alterations to PERS that are highlighted in Friday’s measure.
Speaker White, in a Friday press conference, said the time has passed for “fancy letters” and misleading rhetoric from Hosemann and other Senate leaders while calling on the chamber to work with the House. House Education Committee Chairman Rep. Rob Roberson is confident that infighting between GOP leaders will be cast aside and that the legislature will focus on the greater good that would come from a teacher pay raise.
“I believe the Senate is serious about looking at this. I have every hope that they’re going to take this up and we’re going to be able to pass this on both sides,” Roberson said. “Hopefully, this gives us the ability for them to be able to look at this again and move forward. I feel certain that the vast majority of senators want to do this.”