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Senate leaders on Monday unveiled a proposal to give Mississippi teachers an average raise of $4,700 over two years and restructure the way teachers are paid to provide them higher salaries in the long-term.

The proposal — which, if passed, would represent the largest teacher pay increase since at least the early 2000s — was announced on Monday by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar of Leakesville.

The aim, Senate leaders said, is to structurally address Mississippi’s teacher salaries, which by several metrics are the lowest in the nation.

“This pay plan will make us more competitive with our neighbors,” DeBar said. “Hopefully, this will entice or provide some incentive, some motivation for teachers to stay in the profession as well as stay in Mississippi.”

The Senate’s proposed restructuring of annual changes to teacher pay is aimed at retaining mid- and early career teachers, who often leave the state or the teaching profession altogether because of low pay.

The Senate plan would cost $210 million per year starting the second year. That figure includes a $166 million cost in the first year to restructure step increases and provide a large raise for most teachers, and $44 million starting in the second year for a $1,000 across-the-board raise for all teachers.

The plan was unveiled Monday during a Capitol press corps luncheon meeting of the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government where Hosemann, the presiding officer of the Senate, was scheduled to speak.

Unannounced, Hosemann asked DeBar, who was in the audience, to join him at the podium where they outlined the plan.

Teacher pay is expected to be one of the priority issues during the 2022 legislative session, which began last week. Hosemann, Speaker of the House Philip Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves have all voiced support for “significant” teacher salary increases this year.

Reeves has proposed a $3,300 increase over two years. The House has yet to announce its plan. DeBar said Monday if the House wanted a larger raise that would be OK with him.

Reeves’ office on Monday issued a brief written statement on the Senate plan: “We’re grateful for the Senate’s work on this, and optimistic at this further momentum for a meaningful teacher pay raise this year. Teachers deserve it.”

The significance of the Senate plan, Hosemann and DeBar said, is that it attempts to correct some of the structural deficiencies in the so-called salary ladder.

The ladder, which is written in state law, determines the state compensation each year for teachers based on their years of experience and education level. Each year, with no action from the Legislature, teachers get a small increase as they garner another year of experience. Teachers also receive more pay based on their academic degrees.

Normally, that step increase is around $200-$250 annually. The Senate plan unveiled Monday would make the yearly increase uniform at $500.

The plan also would provide significantly larger raises for each five-year increment —  $1,325 for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree, $1,425 for a master’s, $1,525 for a specialist and $1,624 for a doctorate. The teachers would automatically get the larger step increase every five years and, importantly, those increases would become part of their regular pay.

In addition, the salary ladder would begin after year one for teachers. The current ladder starts after the third year of teaching. And the starting pay for teachers would increase from $37,000 annually to $40,000.

“I think it (Senate plan) will make a difference,” said Kelly Riley, executive director of the Mississippi Professional Educators. “Is it all that we want it to be? No.

“It is significant. It is going in the right direction. It will make us more competitive. We are appreciative of (DeBar’s) commitment to this.”

Nancy Loome, director of The Parents’ Campaign, said: “I think it’s a very good effort, and it does a very good job of addressing specific concerns teachers raised during listening sessions. They actually rewrote the entire salary schedule — including adding steps after years one and two, and it compounds, so that raises everybody. The bigger bumps at five year intervals. We are very pleased about that.

“As we heard from (Southern Regional Education Board), our teachers at the top end of the scale actually compare pretty well to other states. They did not leave those teachers out of this plan – everybody gets something – but it’s those teachers in that mid-career range that will see some increases that will help, hopefully allow them to stop those second or third jobs unless they want to work them.”

Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, said she attended several listening sessions the Senate leaders held and, “I believe they were listening to what teachers were saying.”

“I saw it did include the increases for teachers 0-3 years, and we heard that mentioned to them several times,” Jones said. “And we are really pleased to see the year five larger increases. I know this can change as it goes through the legislative process, but we are very pleased with this proposal … One concern I did have was that it didn’t include all school staff — custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.”

The proposal comes on the heels of s roughly $1,000 raise teachers received during the 2021 legislative session. For the past several legislative terms, lawmakers have opted to offer pay raises in small increments rather than addressing the pay scale itself, like in this new Senate plan.

DeBar said he had planned for a smaller pay raise proposal before holding town hall-style meetings with teachers across the state the last few weeks of 2021.

“They were enthusiastic,” DeBar joked.

He and Hosemann said the current unprecedented growth in state collections — 15.9% for last year — gave them the opportunity to propose a larger pay hike.

“If we did not go forward with a significant pay plan this year with the times we have, with the revenue we have… I don’t know if we could do it another year,” DeBar said. “This is the year to do it… It is important to do it now.”

Loome said: “It sounds like we are in a really good place… when the executive and both branches of the Legislature say they are committed to a significant pay raise. I think they are realizing that our teachers are doing an amazing job, but they are being paid near poverty level and it’s not reasonable to expect professional people do to continue to do such a job for such low pay.”

The post Senate leaders unveil historic plan to significantly increase teacher pay appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Ole Miss and Mississippi State now have played one another in 265 basketball games over 108 seasons, dating back to 1914 — roughly 23 years after Dr. James Naismith famously nailed peach baskets to a low railing in a Springfield, Mass., YMCA.

Thus, Mississippi State versus Ole Miss is the oldest basketball rivalry in the Southeastern Conference.

What strikes this observer most about the series is this: You never know what will happen when these arch-rivals meet. You may think you know, but you don’t.

For instance, the 1995-96 Mississippi State team, the only Mississippi men’s team to reach the Final Four, played a mid-February game in Oxford against a young Ole Miss team with a losing record. Heavily favored State was a red-hot team about to get a whole lot hotter. The Dogs had won five straight and just three weeks later would stun No. 1 Kentucky to win the SEC Championship.

Ole Miss, coached by Rob Evans, featured a guard tandem of two freshmen, Keith Carter, now the school’s athletic director, and Michael White, now the head coach at Florida. Few gave Ole Miss much of a chance. So of course the young Rebels won 71-64.

Stuff like that just happens in this series. It just does.

Last season, for instance, the two teams played first at Starkville with the Bulldogs big favorites. Naturally, the Rebels beat the socks off the ‘Dogs, 64-46. A month later, they played at Oxford, where Ole Miss was supposed to win. The Rebels did not. State prevailed 66-56. You just never know.

It was with all that in mind that I tuned into Saturday night’s 265th basketball Egg Bowl, a game played in Oxford. State came in with a 10-3 record, 1-0 in the conference. Ole Miss was 8-5 and had lost its only previous SEC game. State was much higher in all the power ratings. Ole Miss was coming off a game in which the Rebels turned the ball over a whopping 27 times to snatch defeat from what should have been a victory. Tennessee won 66-60 in overtime. For all that and more reasons, State was favored at Oxford by two points.

Well, you know what happened. Ole Miss turned the ball over just 12 times, shot nearly 50% from beyond the three-point arc, and won 82-72 after leading by as many as 20. In retrospect, we should have expected it.

Every State-Ole Miss game is remembered for something. The most recent will be remembered as the night Ole Miss sophomore Matthew Murrell went unconscious. What he did was make everything he threw at the basket from anywhere. Well, not quite. He missed once in 11 field goal attempts. That’s a shooting percentage of 90.9%. He was 100% from three-point land, making all five. He was 100% on free throws making all six. He scored 31 points, 22 above his season average. In all, he shot the ball 17 times, made 16. That would be a helluva feat in warm-ups, much less with big, tall, fast people guarding you.

In basketball, they call it “being in the zone.” For State, it had to feel like the Twilight Zone. Several of those shots were heavily guarded. Didn’t seem to matter to Murrell.

This was the kind of performance Kermit Davis Jr. probably expected from Murrell when he became the most highly rated basketball recruit in Ole Miss history — or at least the most highly rated since Cob Jarvis signed a hot-shot kid out of Memphis named Johnny Neumann.

Neumann famously averaged 40 points per game in his one Ole Miss varsity season (1970-71). By comparison, Murrell averaged just 4.2 points per game as a freshman and made just 33% of his shots.

In other words, Murrell wasn’t living up to high expectations — at least he wasn’t until Saturday night. He had scored 17 in the loss at Tennessee and Davis, his coach, said he had seen signs in practice that Murrell was about to break loose. “He’s been practicing like that lately, making every shot like that,” Davis said.

Murrell had lots of help. Just as crucial to the Ole Miss victory was the play of seven-foot center Nysier Brooks, the transfer from Miami who surely played his best game as a Rebel. He controlled the lane is what he did, scoring 15 points, pulling down 16 rebounds, blocking five shots and causing the Bulldogs to adjust on several others. Of those 16 rebounds, eight were on the offensive end.

Freshman point guard Daeshun Ruffin was huge as well, scoring 17 and passing out eight assists. Ruffin is making the transition from being a shooter and scorer at Callaway High to being a point guard and distributor in the SEC. Saturday night was surely the best sign to date he is successfully making that transition.

Mississippi State? Hard to say. The Bulldogs were missing 6-11 Tolu Smith and his 14 points and eight rebounds a game. Would Smith have made a difference inside against the dominance of Nysier Brooks? You would certainly think so.

We shouldn’t have to wait that long to find out. Ole Miss travels to Starkville for a Saturday afternoon game on Jan. 22.

There’s plenty of basketball for both between now and then, beginning with the Rebels’ quick turn-around game at Texas A&M on Tuesday night. The Rebels will then play host to Auburn and Missouri before making the trip to State.

State plays host to Georgia on Wednesday and then Alabama Saturday, before going on the road to Florida a week from Wednesday. 

And then the ‘Dogs will return home to face Ole Miss in the 266th meeting between the two teams. What to expect? 

The unexpected, of course.

The post SEC’s oldest hoops rivalry – ‘Dogs vs. Rebs – is predictably unpredictable appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.

Last year, Speaker of the House Philip Gunn was poised to kill the most popular legislation of the session — a pay raise for the lowest-paid teachers in America — over one thing: his proposal to eliminate Mississippi’s personal income tax.

Gunn’s defiance led to a standoff with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann late on a key deadline day in March 2021. 

The run-in serves as a reminder that the possibility of drama between the two leaders — and possibly even legislative gridlock between the House and Senate — looms large in the 2022 legislative session.

As Gunn again puts his full energy behind his tax proposal this session and Hosemann continues to say he won’t support it, are major policy ideas from both leaders in trouble?

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Early in the 2021 session, the House passed a bill that would increase teacher salaries. Likewise, the Senate had passed their own bill that would increase teacher salaries. The tiff between Gunn and Hosemann occurred on the March 2021 deadline day for leaders to pass bills that originated in the opposite chamber.

That day, Gunn let the Senate’s teacher pay bill die. Notably, he had tacked on a teacher pay raise to what he considered the most meaningful legislation of his political career: his plan to completely restructure the state’s tax system. That plan would have eliminated the state’s personal income tax, cut the grocery tax in half and raised the sales tax and other taxes.

But Gunn’s tax proposal was met with swift public criticism by Hosemann and other Senate leaders. Hosemann warned of “unintended consequences” of passing a bill that was not vetted by key constituent groups and scored by economists.

Education groups, getting word of the deadline day theatrics, blistered legislative leadership. 

“While being used as a bargaining chip is something to which we’ve become accustomed, it still stings,” said Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators.

READ MORE: Teacher pay raise gets caught up in standoff over controversial tax proposal

When Senate leaders got word that day that Gunn had killed their standalone teacher pay bill, Hosemann and Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar indicated they would return the favor and kill the House’s standalone teacher pay bill. But that would’ve meant the best remaining chance for teachers to get a pay raise in 2021 would be through Gunn’s tax bill, which Hosemann strongly opposed.

Sometime after Mississippi Today broke that news on deadline day, Hosemann and DeBar thought better of killing the House pay raise bill and passed it out of committee. Later in the session, Gunn finally faced the music and conceded that his tax plan would not pass. Ultimately, the House bill that Senate leaders passed in the eleventh hour of that deadline day was what gave teachers the pay raise.

History has a way of repeating itself. Listening to Gunn and Hosemann discuss their major goals during the first week of the 2022 legislative session, that notion feels especially true.

On the first day of the new session, Gunn again insisted his tax proposal is his very top priority. Hosemann, when asked about that tax proposal, again discounted its chances of passing but hinted that the Senate was working on their own bill that would provide “tax relief.”

Gunn and Hosemann share most major goals for the 2022 legislative session. They both want to again address teacher pay, they want to reenact a ballot initiative process and they want to do something — well, we think — on medical marijuana.

Then there’s the all important 10-year redrawing of legislative districts, and the spending of billions in excess state and federal revenues on projects that could positively affect the state for generations to come.

There are plenty of issues the two leaders will need to reach consensus on. But Gunn’s plan to eliminate the income tax — and his insistence that he gets the Senate support he wants — could throw a wrench in it all.

READ MORE: Inside Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s relationship

The post Hosemann doesn’t like Gunn’s tax proposal. Is Capitol gridlock looming? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For some time after the Supreme Court shot down a vote of the people to create a Mississippi medical marijuana, it appeared fait accompli that lawmakers would enact a program, per the “will of the voters.”

Legislative leaders got to work over the summer to draft a bill. Gov. Tate Reeves said he would call lawmakers into special session to pass it once there was general agreement on the plan.

But it took a while to get such a draft together, and it wasn’t until late September that legislative leaders told Reeves they had consensus on a bill. Then Reeves said he had problems with it — particularly that it would allow patients to receive too much marijuana (even though the 4 ounces a month was less than the 5 ounces voters had approved in 2020). Law enforcement, religious, medical and other lobbies stepped up opposition to the measure.

As the debate devolved into how many joints can be rolled from a gram of pot, the potential for a special session faded. Last week, the regular legislative session began, and whatever golden hour there might have been for medical marijuana after the 2020 passage of Initiative 65 appears to have faded.

As time drags on, passage of a Mississippi medical marijuana program in a legislative session crowded with many other major issues becomes less assured , or even less likely. Senate leadership has indicated they intend to move relatively quickly — as early as this week — on the issue, but even those that support a program in general are coming up with pet peeves with the draft or things they want taken out or put into the measure. Alternative bills are being drafted.

And in the House, which doesn’t plan to take up its own version of the bill, Speaker Philip Gunn stated bluntly last week that “candidly, that is not a top issue for us” and that House leadership was trying to push the bill in “a more conservative direction,” indicating that there’s no longer agreement on the agreements ostensibly reached in the fall.

And for that matter, Reeves has threatened a veto if lawmakers pass what they agreed to then. Some legislative leaders have said they’re standing pat on the amount of marijuana allowed in the bill, but Gunn’s comments would at the least raise doubt about a veto-proof vote on that issue.

READ MORE: Lost in the shuffle: Chronically ill people suffer as Mississippi politicians quibble over medical marijuana

The overwhelming 2020 vote for Initiative 65 obviously caught politicians’ attention and prompted promises to quickly reinstate the program after the high court shot it down. There’s been a dearth of publicly released polling on the issue lately, but it would appear many politicians — perhaps with some internal polling in hand — don’t view it as No. 1 with a bullet among voters any more, or at least not an issue that could get your photo stripped from the Capitol hallway.

Medical marijuana has been a divisive issue in the Legislature for years, hence the citizen-and marijuana industry-led initiative.

As the clock ticks, headwinds appear to grow against lawmakers passing a Mississippi medical marijuana program.

READ MORE: Mississippi’s medical marijuana mess

The post As clock ticks, headwinds build against passage of Mississippi medical marijuana appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today’s political team discusses how a Mississippi medical marijuana program may be growing less likely as lawmakers cannot seem to get on the same page. 

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side.

The post Podcast: Is Mississippi medical marijuana on the ropes? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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On this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey visits with U.S.S. Alabama museum technician Matthew McCluney. McCluney, a Gautier resident, talks about his passion for preserving a giant piece of American and Naval history.

The U.S.S. Alabama, launched in 1942 during World War 2, is a veteran of both the Battle of the Atlantic and numerous combat actions against the Japanese in the Pacific. Mothballed after the war, the 45,000-ton U.S.S. Alabama was presented to the citizens of Alabama in 1965 and towed to Mobile’s U.S.S. Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. The park also is home to the Gato-Class submarine U.S.S. Drum, 45 historic aircraft and various artillery pieces.

McCluney has created numerous exhibits throughout the ship and along with his teammates helps keep the Alabama shipshape for the nearly 18 million visitors who have visited it throughout the years and for those who will visit it in the future.

The post Mississippi Stories: Matthew McCluney appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann believes a plea to Mississippians’ better angels ultimately will lead to Medicaid expansion.

Granted, Hosemann does not utter the phrase “better angels,” but listen closely and it is obvious that he is appealing to them. He also does not want to use the term “Medicaid expansion.” Instead, he would rather discuss everyday scenarios of working Mississippians who suffer, who die because they don’t have access to health insurance.

Hosemann said legislation to provide that health care access will pass “when we start focusing on real life Mississippians… who are really suffering who don’t have to be, who are dying leaving their children motherless. I think we have a sense of values in Mississippi, and I think that will be energized by that discussion.”

Hosemann recently was asked by a reporter about the possibility of expanding Medicaid.

“What is expansion of Medicaid? That is a lazy question,” Hosemann retorted. “What you need to be thinking about is how are we going to cover people who are working in Mississippi who have catastrophic illnesses? That is the real question.”

Hosemann told media members they need to focus on real life consequences instead of “some nomenclature that is three presidents ago.”

Granted, Medicaid expansion was enacted during the first term of former President Barack Obama in 2009. But in fairness to the media, the original Medicaid program was enacted during the 1960s and Social Security was created in the 1930s, yet their names have not changed.

But in fairness to the lieutenant governor, he understands the value of providing health care access and because of the political rhetoric in the state he cannot state the obvious: that the most cost-efficient way to provide health care is by expanding Medicaid as is allowed under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Under Medicaid expansion, estimates show, between 100,000 to 300,000 primarily working Mississippians, who currently have no insurance, can gain health care with the federal government paying the bulk of the cost. Multiple studies have found that Medicaid expansion will save the state money because of the influx of federal funds.

The two politicians who make it nearly impossible to expand Medicaid in Mississippi are Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn who often, boldly proclaim their opposition to Obamacare.

Perhaps Hosemann, ignoring the political rhetoric and turning focus to helping Mississippians, is also appealing to the better angels of Reeves and Gunn, who often speak of the importance of their Christian faith.

It complicates matters because it is possible — some say likely — that Gunn will square off against Reeves in the 2023 Republican primary for governor, and because of the staunch Mississippi Republicans who will vote in that primary, neither candidate wants to be seen as supporting Obamacare.

Recent polling indicates that Mississippi politicians’ fear of being linked to Obamacare might be exaggerated. A January 2022 poll by AARP found that 68% of Mississippians over the age of 50, including 57% of Republicans polled, favor expanding Medicaid. Other polls, such as those conducted by Chism Research and Millsaps College, have shown similar results.

But polls have not moved Gunn and Reeves.

“I just don’t think that Medicaid expansion is realistic,” Gunn said last week. “Personally, I’m not for it. I’ve been very clear that I’m against it. I don’t see that as a way forward in Mississippi. We need to be looking for ways to get people off Medicaid, not put them on Medicaid. But the bottom line is it’s all an academic discussion until you’ve got the votes (in the supermajority Republican Legislature), and I don’t think the votes exist.”

The cold hard truth that Hosemann knows is that as long as Gunn and Reeves are opposed, the votes won’t exist.

So instead of talking about expanding Medicaid, Hosemann would rather tell the story of a mother of two in Greenwood who worked as a store clerk and was married to a mechanic. Like most people working in similar jobs, she did not have health insurance. Her employer did not provide it, and she could not afford to purchase private coverage.

She developed breast cancer but delayed seeing a doctor because of the lack of insurance.

“By the time she got to the hospital, they could just give her palliative care and she died,” Hosemann said. “And that is happening in Mississippi to working people… Rather than get into some easy question like that (about expanding Medicaid), I think we ought to start focusing on how we provide health care to working Mississippians.

“I think when we do that it takes down a lot of the barriers that may have been built on political discourse.”

Then, Hosemann believes, Mississippians will hear and listen to their better angels.

The post Hosemann wants to shun the term ‘Medicaid expansion.’ Is he appealing to Gunn, Reeves? appeared first on Mississippi Today.