JACKSON, Miss.—If Eric Irvin had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t have chosen to teach in Mississippi because of the state’s low salaries for educators. Instead, he would have moved to Memphis, Tennessee, or Atlanta, Georgia, or a city in Texas to make more money.
The math teacher of 35 years said he chose the Magnolia State because he loved the kids and wanted to help educate them. Irvin described buying school supplies, toiletries and clothing for his students using his own money and coming to school on Saturdays to assist with academic testing.
“It’s like these people don’t care about us and what we’re doing,” the Jackson, Mississippi, resident said at a campaign event for U.S. Senate Democratic candidate Scott Colom at the Medgar Evers Library in Jackson, Mississippi, on April 6.
Colom, who is challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in November’s election, proposed that teachers and police officers making under $75,000 in the U.S. should not have to pay federal taxes, citing educators and cops quitting their respective professions to make more money in other fields…