While the legislative session in Mississippi may have led one to believe that the House would be the first to introduce education reforms as part of the 2026 session – considering Republican Speaker Jason White’s continued push for broader school choice – the Senate saw its Education Committee meet and approve three bills directly impacting public K-12 schools and teachers on lawmakers’ first day back in Jackson on Tuesday.
Bills passed by the Senate Education Committee would give educators from kindergarten to university levels an immediate pay raise; allow retired K-12 teachers to step back in the classroom without losing any retirement benefits as Mississippi faces a statewide teacher shortage; and make it easier for K-12 students to transfer from one school to another, meaning the neighborhoods they live in wouldn’t control where they receive educations.
All three bills, each of which were authored by Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, can now be considered by the full Senate floor.
Senate Bill 2001 would increase K-12 teacher salaries by $2,000 beginning in the 2026-27 school year. Professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and course instructors at higher-learning institutions like community colleges and four-years would also receive a $2,000 salary bump. The latter was a group Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has vouched needs to be included in any teacher pay raises.
Assistant teachers on the K-12 level would see minimum base salaries increase from $17,000 to $19,000. Guardrails would also be set in preventing districts from offsetting the raise.
In that same vein, SB 2003 is intended to help address a teacher shortage the Mississippi Department of Education has estimated to include thousands of open positions. The bill aims to make it easier for retired educators – and potentially any retiree in the state public pension system– to teach without risking benefits they’ve worked decades to receive. It would also remove an existing requirement that retirees can only be hired in districts with critical teacher or subject-area shortages.
SB 2002 makes for one of the Senate’s first proactive steps in recent years on any form of school choice, the idea of giving parents more of a say in where their children are educated. The bill aims to open the process for public K-12 students who want to attend a school outside of their home district. Often called “portability,” current statute allows for a student to transfer to another school with the approval of both the home and receiving districts, something that rarely happens. The home district’s veto power would be removed under the proposal.
Hosemann, when speaking during the pre-session Stennis Institute of Government Capitol Press forum on Monday, told reporters that streamlined portability was going to be a priority for him.
“The school to which that student would move needs to have the ability to accept that student under the terms it thinks are appropriate. Those make sense to me. We don’t need a veto on kids moving around if they want to,” he said.
As the full Senate readies for votes that could come as soon as Wednesday morning on all three pieces of education legislation, the House is working on its own education reform package. Like the Senate, the House is expected to include in its package streamlined portability and an easier route for retired teachers to return to the classroom. It’s unclear what else may be included, but Speaker White did inform reporters on Monday that teacher pay raises would be a separate bill and not included in the overarching package. The House Education Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
Senate makes move on PERS
The state’s public employees’ retirement system, which is estimated to have an unfunded liability exceeding $25 billion, was a hot topic throughout the offseason and saw senators waste no time Tuesday in trying to address it.
SB 2004 was introduced by Sen. Daniel Sparks, R-Belmont, and approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, meaning it can be voted on by the full floor as early as Wednesday morning. Aiming to ensure the financial stability of PERS, the bill called the “Mississippi PERS Stability Act” includes an initial transfer of $500 million in 2026, followed by annual transfers of $50 million through 2036. Funds would come from the Capital Expense Fund, but in the event those are not available, they would be drawn from the state’s general fund.
The House is also looking at ways to sustain PERS, with Speaker White saying Monday that the legalization of mobile sports betting could create a dedicated source of revenue for the system.
