Additional teachers to get pay raises

It was just earlier this month when Governor Phil Bryant signed the bill to give teachers and assistant teachers a $1,500 pay raise.

Recently, the Mississippi Department of Education has gotten numerous calls from superintendents reporting some teaching positions, like gifted teachers, special education teachers, and vocational teachers, were not included in their allocation for the pay raise.

The MDE took a look at the number of positions and found there are additional teachers who were eligible for the raise who were not coded as funded positions.

Now, the MDE says they will work with lawmakers to get the additional funding. Representative Richard Bennett said, “It’s going to be somewhere between 12 and 14 million dollars added through the budget. That’s a reoccurring expense so we will have to come up with that on top of the 60 something million dollars that was put into the purse and also the 50 some million dollars for the teacher pay raise.”

Representative Bennett says all teachers will get the pay raise.