Amid pressure to “do something” and with “free ice cream on Fridays” vibes, the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi Senate have traded competing proposals for budget-stretching teacher pay raises.
As these proposals head to conference, the chambers have painted themselves into corners. The House passed a $5,000 bump in a single year earlier this session. The Senate responded with $6,000 over three years. Additional raises for special education and teachers’ assistants have also been proposed. In my head, I hear a fast talking auctioneer. “Do I hear $7,000?”
For legislators, emerging from conference with anything under these sums and the previous jockeying will look like window dressing pretense. And yet there are people in both chambers that know the math doesn’t work. In some respects, each chamber would be better off politically, and as a matter of policy saying, “we tried, but those jerks down the hall wouldn’t cooperate.”
