The Senate Education Committee has hosted five listening sessions in various cities across the state to hear local input from teachers on how pay can be raised equitably. Maggie King is a teacher at Luther Branson Elementary in Madison County. She says it is good that lawmakers want to raise pay for new hires, but she has concerns that raises for more experienced educators will not come soon enough.
“What about the rest of us? There are still so many other teachers. That’s only 10% of the 30-year requirement in teachers. There’s still 27 other years that you need to commit to and you need to be able to incentivize us to stay.”
Senate Education Committee chair Dennis DeBarr listened to the input of teachers at the meeting. He says teachers deserve a pay raise across the board, however, he says it will take years to raise wages to compete with other states on all fronts.
“I’m hoping that we can continue with the progress that we’re making last year and building on the next year and just keep going. We need to get teachers up to a professional wage,” says DeBarr. “They’re professionals, they teach our kids, they do a difficult job and I hope to continue the progress. And as long as I’m education chairman we’re gonna continue to do that.”
Other teachers are concerned that the state is not incentivizing higher levels of education. Trisha Gilbreath has a PHD and teaches at Northwest Rankin Highschool, but also has a second job training teachers to supplement her income.
“I was pleasantly surprised by Senator DeBarr’s attitude. He already wants a raise, he’s pushing for a raise, he seemed receptive to our ideas, and I was happy with that. I am concerned that it’s not going to be enough to keep teachers in the classroom.”
Senator Debarr says he will continue to listen to input from teachers and work with other lawmakers to potentially address multiple aspects of teacher pay, such as insurance coverage and retirement.
