The Mississippi House and Senate are trying to reach a consensus on how much of a pay raise to give teachers after killing each other’s bills that would have done just that earlier in the session.
On Wednesday, the Senate amended and unanimously passed a bill to provide a $6,000 raise for K-12 teachers, with special education instructors receiving the same raise plus an additional $3,000 supplement. It would give assistant educators a $2,000 raise. The text was substituted into an unrelated House bill since key deadlines have already passed.
The House revived its teacher pay bill on Friday, using an unrelated Senate bill to set K-12 teachers up for a $5,000 raise with a $3,000 bonus for special education teachers. Teacher assistants would get a $3,000 bump under the legislation. The bill also included a cap on superintendents’ pay, a slight tweak to the education funding formula, and an adjustment to the Mississippi Public Employees’ Retirement System, among other topics.
While the spirit of both pieces of legislation remains the same, with K-12 teacher pay at the forefront, the Senate kept its simpler but also added community college and university professors for a $2,000 raise. Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has been adamant that both K-12 and postsecondary educators deserve raises.
Hosemann and other Senate leaders have also been critical of the House’s omnibus approach this session when it comes to education policy, considering the House began the session with a massive education package covering everything from public money going to private-school tuition to prayer in schools. The Senate, on the other hand, has taken more of a piecemeal approach, and that began with the passage of a now-dead $2,000 raise for teachers earlier in the session.
A notable difference between the House and Senate’s proposals for teacher pay raises is that the Senate’s would be phased in over three years – $2,000 a year for three years to reach the $6,000 total for K-12 teachers. The House wants to see raises immediately. Both would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, but it’s a matter of keeping the state’s budget balanced, according to Hosemann.
“On day two of this legislative session, the very first bill the Senate passed was a standalone teacher pay raise. Now, we are once again advancing a clean teacher pay raise for the educators who are shaping our future,” Hosemann stated after Wednesday’s vote. “This phased implementation is critical to balance the budget as the Constitution requires us to do. Further, a teacher pay raise must not be held hostage by multiple other political issues.”
While Mississippi has made gains in education as of late – being ranked No. 16 in U.S. last year after decades at the bottom – teachers are still underpaid compared to their peers in other states. A 2025 report from the National Education Association found that Mississippi’s starting salary of $41,500 for teachers is one of the worst in the country, even after accounting for the state’s relatively low cost of living.
Even with the two chambers advancing their own proposals, the path forward remains uncertain. They could pass one another’s bill as written, negotiate a compromise through a conference committee, or allow the measures to die again – leaving teachers without a pay raise this session. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Tuesday that he is not ruling out a special session to give teachers pay raises.