After the House and Senate killed each other’s teacher pay raise bills last week, they’ve revived them by amending other bills, with the Senate upping the ante on Wednesday.

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a $6,000 teacher pay raise with an extra $3,000 for special education teachers.

The House has proposed a $5,000 raise, with an extra $3,000 for special education teachers.

The Senate had initially passed only a $2,000 teacher raise before the chambers killed each other’s bills.

But the new Senate plan would spread its proposed $6,000 a year raise over three years, at $2,000 a year, plus $1,000 a year more for special ed teachers.

The Senate vote comes after the House revived its own teacher pay raise on Friday by amending a Senate bill. 

“Today is a good day for teachers, teacher assistants, professors and special education teachers,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, said after Wednesday’s vote. “This is a big step moving forward.”

Under the Senate proposal, university and community college professors and K-12 teacher assistants would also get a $2,000 a year raise. 

The bill would over three years bring starting Mississippi teacher pay to $47,500. It would cost taxpayers $109.5 million extra a year, for a total of $328.5 million a year once fully implemented, according to legislative budget analysts.

One of the major differences from the House proposal is that the Senate bill would keep the pay raise money outside of the state’s per-student student funding formula during the first year to ensure that the money is goes to raises. When money passes through the formula, DeBar said, districts are not required to spend it on teacher raises because they receive it as a lump sum. 

“We put a lot of thought into this,” DeBar said on the floor. “We would like to do more … but we’re being cautious and prudent as we do over here in the Senate.” 

If either proposal becomes law, it would be the first raise for teachers in Mississippi since 2022, when they got a $5,000 a year increase. At the time, it brought Mississippi’s pay above other Southern states, but as neighboring states have passed raises, Mississippi has again fallen behind. 

Mississippi educators, now the lowest paid in the country on average, say it’s gotten harder to make ends meet in the years since.

“At the end of these three years, it’s gonna be a wildly increased raise for the teachers,” DeBar said. “I know five to 10 years from now, we’re gonna be back because our competing states are going to raise their pay to keep up with us, but I think this is a good start.”

The relationship between the Republican-led House and Senate has soured this session over education issues. Speaker Jason White has taken shots at Senate leadership, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, for failing to take up the House’s school choice proposals, while the Senate has returned barbs.

The squabbling reached a head last week when each chamber killed the other’s initial pay raise proposals. 

But Senate leaders made good Wednesday on an earlier promise to raise their teacher raise proposal by the end of the session. DeBar successfully offered an amendment to a House bill on Wednesday, the deadline for such action coming late in the 2026 legislative session. 

DeBar said the Senate would not consider the House’s latest pay raise proposal, which is hundreds of pages long and covers a range of topics including adjustments to the state employees’ retirement system, combatting chronic absenteeism in schools and capping superintendents’ pay. Senators have taken issue with the House’s omnibus bill strategy this session of including dozens of policy issues in one piece of legislation. 

Advocates have expressed concerns that the House proposal brings forward extraneous parts of state law, which could pave the way for changes well beyond teacher pay. In a statement after the Senate vote, Hosemann said a teacher pay raise “must not be held hostage by multiple other political issues.”

However, House leaders have said they are being thorough with their legislation, and not trying to tie school choice or other issues to a teacher raise.

“We wanted to narrow it down to one issue dealing with teachers, and that’s what we did,” DeBar said. “I tried to block out all the other noise … I want to focus on teachers because they’re the ones that deserve it. They’re the ones that brought us up to where we are.”

Mississippi has received national recognition over the past decade for public school academic gains.

Now, each chamber could approve the other’s proposal, ask for final negotiations on a compromise, or kill the bills.

“No one wants to see the sausage being made because that’s what we do — we debate,” DeBar said. “But in the end, I think we always come together and compromise.”