Senate Education Committee Chair Dennis DeBar (R) met with his fellow committee members on Tuesday to start the 2026 legislative session off by taking up three bills. (Photo by Jeremy Pittari | Magnolia Tribune)
- House and Senate Education Committee chairs say they intend to continue the push for salary increases for educators this session.
Bills that would have provided Mississippi teachers with a boost to their salary are dead for now, after House and Senate failed to make it out of committees by Tuesday’s deadline. Chairmen of the House and Senate Education Committees pledged to continue to work to provide the raises through other means. However, those efforts may also prove unfruitful.
After the signature education freedom reform package backed by Speaker Jason White (R) died in the Senate in early February, efforts by the House to provide teachers with some sort of increase to their compensation were moved to another bill. HB 2 included language that would have expanded school choice options in the state, a proposition the Senate swiftly killed.
The House then placed teacher pay raises in HB 1126. That bill would have provided a $5,000 raise across the board as well as given special education teachers an additional $3,000.
The Senate had its own bill, SB 2001, to provide teacher pay raises which passed in the opening days of the session. It would have given teachers a $2,000 raise. State Senator Dennis DeBar (R), chair of the Senate Education Committee, pledged earlier in the session to try to increase the amount of the raise.
Back over in the House, after passing only two Senate education bills out of committee, House Education Committee State Rep. Rob Roberson (R) announced on February 14 that there would more than likely be no more Education Committee meetings for this session, meaning the rest of the Senate’s education bills would not be considered, killing SB 2001. The Senate Education Committee followed suit and also stopped holding meetings.
After the death of the teacher pay raise bills on Tuesday, Roberson told Magnolia Tribune efforts may start again to provide teachers with a raise this session.
“I am going to try and move something forward, but worst-case scenario [the plan] will be to come back next year,” Roberson said. “I hate that we are having a rough year.”
DeBar told Magnolia Tribune he does plan to try to revive some sort of a teacher pay raise before the end of session.
“We have an appropriation bill to do a line item pay raise,” DeBard described. “We could try that.”
He added that the issue with providing the raises under that method is they will only be good for one year.
Attempts in previous years to provide Mississippi’s teachers with a pay raise have met with mixed results. The last time the Legislature agreed on, and the governor signed into law, a teacher pay raise bill was in 2022, when the base teacher pay was brought to about $41,500.
However, inflation and the rising cost of insurance have essentially negated that income boost over the years, advocates for another raise have argued.
According to a report issued by the State Auditor’s Office in December, the average teacher pay in Mississippi is about $53,000, compared to the national average of $70,000 cited in the Auditor’s report.
Jeremy Pittari
