Mississippi educators could soon get an annual pay raise of at least $2,000 after the Mississippi Senate Education Committee advanced legislation on Tuesday to increase teacher salaries.
The pay raise under Senate Bill 2001 would include all K-12 teachers and teachers’ assistants, as well as community college teachers, professors and assistant professors.
The State of Mississippi would have to spend $132 million to raise salaries by $2,000 yearly, Mississippi Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, told his committee on Jan. 6. He said he hoped that the $2,000 raise could be increased if the state budget allows.
“We know that our educators deserve and need more than $2,000. I would like to see it get closer to $5,000 as most of our education groups have requested, and so, what this will do is allow us time to work through the process,” he said. “And maybe by the end of the session, if Sen. (Briggs) Hopson and the Appropriations Committee can find some more money, we can increase the pay raise.”
Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The Senate Education Committee advanced the pay raise legislation on Tuesday. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said on Monday that a teacher pay raise would be among his top priorities for 2026.
The Legislature last raised pay for K-12 educators in 2022. Mississippi’s teacher pay remains the lowest in the nation, even as the state has climbed in the education rankings. Last year, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual KIDS COUNT Data Book found that Mississippi ranked No. 16 in the nation for education in 2024, up from No. 48 in 2014.
Bringing Retirees Back to the Classroom
On Tuesday, as lawmakers returned for the first day of the legislative session, the Senate Education Committee also quickly passed legislation in an effort to bring more members of Mississippi’s Public Employees’ Retirement System to the classroom. Any person who retired from working for the State of Mississippi, whether as an educator or not, may soon be able to work in the classroom to help with Mississippi’s teacher shortage and draw a salary even while receiving PERS benefits under Senate Bill 2003.
Mississippi Sen. Dennis DeBar said the state is lacking 3,815 teachers across its K-12 sector, with elementary schools needing 1,378 extra teachers, middle schools needing 529 teachers, and high schools requiring 955 additional teachers. In K-12 public school districts, he said the state needs 953 music teachers, counselors, librarians and other educators.
The chairman said that he does not know if there is a teacher shortage for college educators. Mississippi’s current statutes say that only retired teachers can return to work in critical service areas, but the Senate’s bill would remove that requirement.
The Senate’s solution to the teacher shortage is to allow any retired teacher or any person who has retired from the State of Mississippi to come back to teach through an alternative process. A state employee would need to be retired for at least 45 days in order to teach. DeBar said that returning to teach after retirement would not increase a state retiree’s years of service for PERS.
“What we’re about to do, I think, is transfer a bunch of the costs of paying teachers to the retirement system,” Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said during Tuesday’s committee meeting. “In other words, in the existing system, if you continue to teach, you pay into the system. And the system will pay you more money because every year you pay in is another year you don’t get a retirement check.”
DeBar said he showed the legislation to the retirement system’s director and staff, and that they did not express concerns.
School District Transfers
The Mississippi Senate Education Committee also advanced legislation on Tuesday to make it easier for students to transfer from one public school district to another. Currently, both the sending and receiving public school districts have to approve a student to transfer. Senate Bill 2002 would change the law so that only the receiving school district would have to approve the transfer.
Mississippi Sen. Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, explained three changes to the bill from an earlier version.
One change said that, by March 15 of the school year before a student transfers, the receiving district would have to approve the transfer request, and the student would have to notify their current district.
“One (amendment) would be to ensure there are no prohibitions on the receiving school district to charge a reasonable fee, something akin to the ad valorem taxation that a student in their district would pay so that they would be compensated if their board chooses to do so,” Hopson said at Tuesday’s committee meeting, explaining his second amendment.
Mississippi Sen. Rod Hickman, D-Macon, questioned whether the policy could exacerbate “socioeconomic” disparities.
Students with families who can afford to pay the fee to transfer to a different school district would have an advantage over those who cannot afford to do so, Hickman suggested.
“To then say that you can charge a fee, doesn’t that allow one set of people to do that and another set of people to not be able to do that?” he asked DeBar.
“Not necessarily, but I see your point,” the Republican chairman replied.
The last change DeBar presented said that nothing in the legislation would prevent the Mississippi High School Athletic Association or any other future extracurricular regulating bodies from determining if students can participate in extracurricular activities.
The Senate Education Committee passed all three bills on Tuesday, sending them to the Senate floor for a vote among all members. The bills, which lawmakers could still modify as they work their way through the legislative process, will need approval in the House and the governor’s signature to become law.