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The Mississippi Legislature giveth and taketh during the 2026 session, when members originally passed one of the largest teacher pay raises in the history of the state but ultimately approved and sent to Gov. Tate Reeves a much smaller salary increase.
Perhaps at no time in recent history has the Legislature dangled such a historically significant pay raise in front of teachers only to take it away during the final days of the 2026 session.
Granted, Mississippi’s 30,000 educators will still receive a $2,000 bump in pay, but that’s far short of the $6,000 raise spread over three years approved by the Senate or the $5,000 raise passed by the House.
Normally, when legislative leaders meet to negotiate the differences in what each chamber passes, they agree somewhere in the middle. In this case, though, legislators eschewed the middle for the basement.
“The bottom line is that you have to balance your budget,” said House Education Chair Rob Roberson, a Starkville Republican. “We had to reduce it down to $2,000. It is not something I wanted to do but had to do to get through this process.”
A funny thing happened on the way to the negotiations on the teacher pay raise. The Republican leadership of the Legislature realized the potentially tenuous position of state’s finances and the national economy. In short, declines in the national economy could put the state’s revenue outlook in an even more dire situation.
The proverbial canary in the coal mine might have occurred in early March when the staff of the Legislative Budget Office released the report detailing the state’s revenue collections for the month of February.
The report was not good, even though legislators expressed hope that it was a one-off and that revenue collections would rebound for March. We will see when the next report is released.
House of Representative members confer in the House chamber of the state Capitol on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
But the February revenue report, combined with other factors, led to legislators putting the brakes on what was shaping up as an historic, possibly game-changing pay raise for teachers.
Those other factors included an ailing national economy that appears to be facing additional headwinds as a result of the U.S. war with Iran. The war, by the way, had no impact on the dismal February revenue report.
There were multiple other factors, such as a $26 billion deficit in the state’s massive pension system that many say must be addressed. Thus far, though, the Legislature has only dabbled around the edges in attempts to find a fix to the Public Employees Retirement System.
In addition, there is the need for what some have estimated as an increase of nearly $400 million in the budget for Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage for people who are disabled or elderly and for low-income pregnant women and children.
Many legislators have indicated they were blindsided by the need for the significant funding increase for Medicaid. But it should have been no surprise that the additional federal money the state was receiving for the program due to the pandemic was ending, resulting in the need for increased state funding.
Then, there is the 2025 tax cut that when eventually enacted in 10 years or so will eliminate nearly one-third of the state general fund revenue stream.
That 2025 tax cut was passed on top of a 2022 tax cut that, up until then, was the largest in the state’s history.
The tax-cutting spree actually began in the mid 2010s when the Legislature, pushed by the Republican leadership, passed about 50 cuts.
After those tax cuts, the state experienced a dramatic slowdown – even a decrease – in its tax collections, resulting in cuts to government services, including for mental health and public health.
But the pandemic came along, resulting in unprecedented federal funds flowing into the state, boosting Mississippi’s revenue collections by unheard of levels.
So, legislators began tax cutting again, even this year providing an additional $6 million tax credit (money removed from the state coffers) to private schools, in addition to the $9 million tax credits that donors to the private schools are already are receiving.
But somewhere along the way to negotiations on the teacher pay raise, legislators got fiscally responsible and decided it was time to taketh away the bigger pay raise.
