Jackson Free Press

Facing a Valentine's Day deadline to pass general legislation, Mississippi House and Senate legislators are zipping through more than 200 bills to clear their respective calendars.

Yesterday, House members devoted a lot of time to several education bills backed by Gov. Phil Bryant.

One such proposal, House Bill 955, seeks to strengthen reading skills in early grades. Bryant proposes spending about $15 million to hire literacy coaches to help teachers provide better reading lessons in kindergarten through third grade. He has said children who can't read at grade level by the end of third grade should not be promoted to the fourth. Instead, they would be held back and given more intensive instruction.

Lawmakers say they're on board with many of this session's legislative education initiatives, but wonder how much they would cost taxpayers.

Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, pressed Rep. Rita Martinson, R-Madison, who presented the bill, on whether it included any additional funding. Martinson said HB 955 does not appropriate additional money, and that third-grade teachers would find time in their schedules for the extra instruction.

On a visit to Jackson last week, civil-rights icon and Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman called on Mississippi to invest more heavily in early childhood education to keep kids from ending up in the juvenile-justice system later in life.

"You're going to hold kids accountable, and yet we don't give them the means to achieve," Edelman told the Jackson Free Press, referring to proposed accountability measures in Mississippi and other states.

Another bill the House passed Monday requires parents who send their children to kindergarten--which is optional in Mississippi--to meet the same attendance mandates as older public-school students. Lawmakers said this is intended to ensure that parents don't send children to kindergarten part-time or only when they feel like it.

The Mississippi House also voted to give every teacher a $5,000 pay raise starting July 1; however, educators shouldn't plan on that extra cash because the proposal has zero chance of surviving without allocating the funds to pay them more.

The pay-raise proposal came through an amendment to House Bill 890. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant calls the bill "Education Works." In its original form, the bill included a limited program for merit pay: Initially, teachers in four districts could receive higher salaries if their students show significant academic improvement.

Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, said Mississippi has some of the lowest teacher pay in the nation, averaging about $41,000 a year. He said a $5,000 across-the-board pay raise would be a good way to attract and retain good teachers.

Holland's pay-raise amendment originally passed 63-47. Several minutes later, the total changed to 64-46 when Republican Rep. Nolan Mettetal of Sardis changed his vote from "no" to "yes." Mettetal's move brought a loud moan from fellow lawmakers. The pay-raise proposal is on track to die, but it's the kind of vote that teachers' groups could point to when lawmakers seek re-election.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville, said a $5,000 across-the-board pay raise for teachers would cost about $170 million. The expense hasn't been included in early drafts of the overall $5.5 billion state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

"We don't have the money," Frierson said after the vote.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.