Local Educators Say State Teacher Raise is a Starting Point

Story contributed by broadcast journalism students Grant Gibbons and Carson McKinney

The Mississippi State Senate has approved a bill that would raise teacher salaries by $1,000 over a two-year span. The bill is the first uniform raise for Mississippi educators since 2016.

Ole Miss Senior Luke Lee is a student teacher at Lafayette High School and will be going into the field after graduating in May.

“You don’t go into teaching for the money,” he said. “You go into it because it’s teaching and its something that you want to do. I think of that as, if I’m not going to worry about the money, then I’m going to expect someone else to worry about that for me.”

Lee says the raise is good, but not enough to make a real difference to teachers in the state.

“The first time I read the headline, I was really excited,” he said. “(But) once you look at it, it’s very disheartening. It’s so negligible on your month-to-month paycheck that it’s not a raise.”

However, Ole Miss Chair of Teacher Education Susan McClelland is happy to see an increased awareness of how much teachers are paid.

“I think it’s a first step,”  she said. “I think this indicates that our public servants realize that teachers need to have a higher starting salary.”

McClelland’s main worry about low wages is that Mississippi struggles to retain teachers, even from in-state universities like Ole Miss. She lists neighboring states like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama as states with higher starting salaries for educators.

“What my dream would be is that in our state we can be competitive,” she said.

The bill will be heard in the state House of Representatives later this session.