Education was the signature issue of the ’26 legislative session. What happened?

By Devna Bose | Originally published by Mississippi Today

What began as all cylinders firing on an education policy-focused legislative session has sputtered to a close — with not much new policy to show for it. 

But legislative education leaders say they’re still pleased with what they managed to accomplish, even if they failed to expand school choice or give teachers a large pay raise, billed as top priorities for both chambers. 

“This was a net positive across the board, regardless of the political headaches that we get into,” said House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville. “The bottom line is sometimes you have to go through the fire to get to the good stuff, and I think that we managed to make our way to that in the end.”

‘We can’t have another year like this.’

Rep. Rodney Hall

However, advocates, teachers and other legislators are less satisfied. Instead of being known for education policy, this session is more likely to be remembered by them for the infighting between House and Senate Republican leaders that left most bills, education included, in the graveyard. 

“I’m not sure where the trains fell off the track,” said Rep. Rodney Hall, a Republican from Southaven. “We came in, and I think both sides placed a lot of emphasis on education. I really thought we would get a lot more accomplished there … We can’t have another year like this.”

The years-long push to expand school choice in Mississippi started heating up in the months leading up to the 2026 legislative session, as House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann made their stances clear on the issue. School choice refers to a myriad of policies that have gained traction under the Trump administration that give parents more power over their children’s schooling, often funding their choices with state or federal money. 

White, at events and hearings across Mississippi, highlighted the success of private school choice policies in other states and said his support of school choice was driven by a desire to help underprivileged Mississippi students in struggling public schools access better education. 

Private school choice refers to programs such as education savings accounts or vouchers that allow families to spend public dollars on private school tuition. Mississippi has an education savings account program for students with special needs, but is one of the few states in the Southeast without a universal private school choice program, which would be open to all students, regardless of income or ability.

Last summer, White formed a select committee on “Education Freedom.” It was billed as a panel with representatives from both sides who would be tasked with studying how school choice policies would impact the state, but from the committee’s first meeting in August, it became clear that a majority of the members backed the policies.

Conversely, Hosemann doubled down on his support of public schools, focusing on the success of the state’s education system that’s garnered national attention in recent years. He said he wanted to give teachers a pay raise and supported public school choice policies. 

These policies, also referred to as “portability” or “open enrollment,” reduce restrictions on public school district transfers and allow students to enroll in districts where they don’t live. 

And the Senate Education Committee, in meetings leading up the session, praised state education officials about public schools’ success. When charter school leaders asked for the ability to establish charter schools in more places, committee members criticized charter schools’ middling performance. 

Most of the state’s charter schools are considered “failing.”

Meanwhile, public school teachers throughout the state feared a pay raise could be tied up in school choice policies they didn’t support. Mississippi teachers last received a meaningful pay raise in 2022, but since then, they have slid back down to the lowest-paid teachers on average in the country. 

As the discussion simmered, it was hard to understand who supported school choice, outside of the Capitol and national advocacy groups. Local city councils and boards of aldermen began passing resolutions in Mississippi towns across the state, opposing school choice and imploring state leaders to vote against the policies. 

One of these boards was in Kosciusko, the largest town in White’s district and where his law office is located. 

That policy divide between the House and the Senate on school choice was made clear from the start of the year.

On the first day of the session, the Senate passed a portability policy that would allow students to transfer between public school districts more easily and a $2,000 teacher pay raise. The following day, the House revealed its massive education reform bill, which included a universal education savings account program, the expansion of the literacy act that helped boost Mississippi students’ reading, a similar math program and a number of other education changes.

Notably, a teacher raise was missing from the omnibus House plan. Leaders said they wanted to keep the bills separate to avoid politically entangling the issues. The House revealed its $5,000 teacher pay raise proposal a few weeks later.

But the massive school choice package passed without overwhelming support in the House Education Committee. Its reception in the full House was even more tepid — the bill passed by two votes. Then, it headed to the Senate Education Committee in February.

If the House was lukewarm, the Senate was outright frigid — the chamber’s education committee killed the bill after less than two minutes of deliberation. 

It was a turning point in the session. White appeared to take the committee’s action as a slight, telling reporters in February, “We are disappointed that the Senate did not engage in real meaningful discussion and debate on the issues in House Bill 2 and instead opted for what can only be described as a theatrical committee performance to kill the bill a full month before the committee deadline.”

“There’s no reason for that,” he said. “You have to read into some meaning there.”

White began hinting that the governor might call a special session for school choice, and the House Education Committee had its last meeting on Feb. 18. 

Roberson said he “was told” that the committee would no longer meet this session. 

One by one, as the House’s and Senate’s education bills arrived in the opposite chambers, they died without being considered. Both pay raise bills were casualties. 

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” said Jason Reid at the time. He’s a teacher in DeSoto County who drives a school bus before and after work to supplement his income. “Two months ago it seemed both chambers were very committed to addressing the regional and national teacher pay raise gaps and teacher shortage. Now, Mississippi teachers will fall even further behind their peers.”

With both original vehicles dead, both the House and Senate revived their teacher pay proposals in early March by putting their language in unrelated bills. The House stuck with its original $5,000 while the Senate raised its plan to $6,000, spread out over three years in $2,000 increments. 

However, around the same time, with budget talks in full swing, legislators seemed to realize Mississippi couldn’t foot the bill for either proposal. 

In negotiations, the chambers landed on a $2,000 pay raise for teachers and a number of other school employees. 

“The first question I’ll be asking next year is, ‘What does the Medicaid budget look like?’” Roberson said. “That budget came in, and it just kind of blew up everything.”

In the end, just four education bills survived out of the hundreds filed in January. A school choice policy was never revived, and there were no charter school reforms this session, either.

Teachers, legislators and advocates have had mixed feelings about the education policies that made it through to the governor’s desk. 

“We were able to stop the school choice bill,” said Rep. Robert Johnson III, the House Democratic leader from Natchez, at a press conference Thursday. “We were able to make sure that we at least got a teacher pay raise, but we also understand what’s a meaningful raise and what’s a symbolic raise.”

Johnson acknowledged this year’s budget constraints, but also noted that the Legislature is reaping the consequences of a $2.2 billion tax cut it passed last year that is being phased in and will eventually eliminate the state’s income tax. 

“We’re a poor state,” he said. “We can’t afford to do those things. We’re barely doing what we’re doing now. When you take that away, then we can’t do the things we need to do for our schools.”

Still, on the penultimate day of the session, leaders said they were proud of the work they did, especially expanding the literacy act and establishing a statewide math program. 

“I think we’ll look back at this moment and realize that it will have just as much of an impact as the reading gate did,” Roberson said, referring to the 2013 bill that required that third-graders pass a statewide reading test to graduate to the next grade and funded reading coaches throughout the state. “I think we will have substantially moved the goalposts on success for these kids, and that’s what it should be all about.”

Roberson acknowledged that there were “hiccups” to figure out before next year. 

Both Roberson and Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, said the two have a good relationship. But Roberson said they’re sometimes acting on the wishes of their respective chambers’ leaders. 

“He knows that I’m not the one that makes all these decisions, and he’s not the one that makes all these decisions,” Roberson said. “Sometimes we have to give each other room to go back and make sure that everybody is on board with what we’re trying to accomplish.” 

DeBar chalked up the session’s stalemates to not wanting to “give in.”

“Nobody likes to see the sausage made, but they like to have sausage,” he said. “I don’t think there’s regret. We just have beliefs that we believe in, and we wanted to stick to them … We’ll just try it again next year.”

And while DeBar said he’s committed to revisiting a teacher pay raise next year, Roberson is less sure — a sentiment he echoed on the floor this week. 

“The truth is, we look at it every year,” he said. “My knee-jerk is that we’re gonna have to look at some of the other departments first.” 

As he lingered outside the House chamber after adjournment on Thursday, Hall spoke for his constituents who had watched the back-and-forth for months.

“I think just like most of our constituents, and especially teachers, it was very frustrating from the outside looking in … it seems like they were a political football,” he said. “That’s what it appears to be. I can understand that level of frustration.

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This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article