“Everything that they’re saying is untrue,” House Education Chairman Rob Roberson said Thursday. “The teacher pay increase was funded by the State of Mississippi.”
The Moss Point School District claims to be facing a projected $2.5 million deficit for Fiscal Year 2027. District leaders are blaming the shortfall on the teacher pay raise signed into law this year.
The district’s financial consultant Bonnie Granger told WLOX that the shortfall is largely tied to an unfunded state teacher pay raise.
“Most of that was brought on by the teacher [pay raise] — even though the teachers very well deserve it — but the state didn’t fund any of the teacher pay raise for this district,” Granger said.
State Rep. Rob Roberson (R), the chairman of the House Education Committee, takes exception with that claim.
“Everything that they’re saying is untrue,” Roberson told Magnolia Tribune Thursday morning. “The teacher pay increase was funded by the State of Mississippi.”
Roberson said the district is likely having shortfalls because of student population loss while not properly adjusting to the new realities that decline creates.
“Anytime you start getting under 1,500 or 2,000 students, you’re going to have a larger problem, especially if your administration is top heavy,” Roberson explained.
According to the latest student population data from the Mississippi Department of Education, Moss Point School District reported 1,519 enrolled students from PreK to 12th Grade in the 2025-2026 school year, a drop of nearly 500 students over the last decade. Fifty of those students were enrolled in PreK, a program which did not exist in the district in the 2015-2016 school year. Moss Point High School reported less than 425 students.
“In business, you have to make these hard decisions,” the House chairman added. “These school districts have never had to think that way until now.”
Roberson said he planned to ask the Mississippi Department of Education to review where “their money is going.”
State Senator Dennis DeBar (R), the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, shared a similar sentiment.
“We funded the teacher pay raise and we allocated the money based on the number of students under the formula,” DeBar told Magnolia Tribune. “The amount of money that we appropriated for the teacher pay raise was based on the number of teachers. However, the funding for that went inside the [student funding] formula this year. And so, what that means is that the funding is based on the number of students. Some districts, like Moss Point, that don’t have the number of students of say a Rankin County maybe got less money [from the formula].”
Yet, DeBar added, “The money is there. They knew about it, especially with the hold harmless going away.”
When lawmakers passed the new student funding formula in 2024, certain districts like Moss Point that were receiving more funding than what their student population would allow for under the new formula were given a three year hold harmless provision. That provision meant funding for those school districts would not decrease from what was received in the 2023-2024 school year during that transition period.
Lawmakers said at the time that the hold harmless provision was for the school districts’ planning purposes, allowing local school boards time to make cuts where needed before the provision expired in 2027.
The Moss Point School District had proposed an ad valorem tax increase for the upcoming fiscal year but following local backlash school officials set that aside for now.
In her interview with WLOX, Granger did add that the district is working with Jackson County and the City of Moss Point while exploring a possible exception “to the 55 mill cap that we could use for next year when we lose the hold-harmless provision.”
Senator DeBar believes the district has had ample time to prepare for the changes.
“They would have had to come up with the money this year or next year from their local budget but this year was a better year for [the teacher pay raises] because next year when you’re losing the hold harmless that would have been a double whammy,” DeBar said.
State Rep. Roberson was more pointed in his criticism of Moss Point School District’s claims.
“They have been given plenty of time, even if they did not get held harmless,” Roberson said. “My best guess is that they’re not capable of running their own school.”
-- Article credit to Frank Corder for the Magnolia Tribune --
