Mississippi Teachers Are Carrying Too Much—and Still Waiting for a Raise
After yesterday’s legislative committee deadline, all bills that would have led to a pay raise for Mississippi teachers are now dead. While not all hope is lost, the pathway to a permanent raise has narrowed. We are extremely disappointed that this long-overdue salary increase may become a casualty of political infighting.
Earlier this year, Mississippi First released The Weight They Carry, a report based on survey responses from public school teachers across the state. The findings on compensation and financial stability were staggering:
- 54.1% of teachers reported struggling to afford at least one basic necessity such as food, housing, healthcare, or transportation, up 9.7 percentage points from our 2022 survey.
- 18.3% of teachers said they are finding it difficult to get by on their salary, up 6.6 percentage points since 2022.
- 41.4% of teachers reported working a second job outside the school system, up 5.9 percentage points from 2022.
We ask far too much of educators for them to face these kinds of financial struggles.
When salaries fail to keep pace with the cost of living, many teachers make the difficult but understandable choice to leave the classroom. When teachers leave, other teachers shoulder the burden as workloads increase, leading to more burnout and more attrition. Ultimately, students bear the cost of teachers leaving the classroom. A teacher pay raise is not just an acknowledgment of the hard and important work educators do every day. It is an investment in Mississippi’s students and the future of our state.
To restore teachers’ purchasing power to what it was in 2022—the last year a statewide raise was passed—salaries would need to increase by approximately 12.8% across the salary schedule (equal to about $5,500 for a first year teacher on a Class A license). We call on legislators to set aside their differences and prioritize passing a pay raise of this magnitude.
There is still time this session to act, and this issue deserves the full attention of the Legislature. Mississippi’s teachers and students cannot afford to wait.
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