School Funding

In the 2024 Legislative Session, the House proposed a plan to strike the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) from law and replace it with Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education (INSPIRE), via House Bill 1453. The INSPIRE plan includes no objective formula for determining base student cost, allowing the […]

In the 2024 Legislative Session, the Senate proposed amendments to the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) via Senate Bill 2332. These amendments include adjustments to the inflation component that were put forward  but not enacted in 2023. SB 2332 amends the MAEP to increase the maximum amount in local contribution that wealthier school districts must

During the Barbour administration, legislators made a change to the school funding law that calls for a full recalculation of the MAEP base student cost only once every four years, instead of annually as the original statute required. In the intervening years, the amended law calls for the MAEP full funding amount to be determined

The treaty with the Chickasaw Indian Nation ceding their land to the United States failed to specifically reserve Sixteenth Sections, and when the lands were later sold by the government, no provision was made for the reservation of school trust lands. Later, the United States granted the State of Mississippi lieu land as compensation for

Initiative 42 was a citizen-sponsored amendment to the State Constitution, placed on the November 2015 ballot for statewide vote. The Mississippi Legislature added to the ballot its own legislative alternative, Measure 42A. Neither measure was approved by voters. See certified election results. Initiative 42 would: Bring the education section of Mississippi’s constitution in line with the education

Mississippi law requires that the State of Mississippi operate within a balanced budget, and it expressly prohibits the state from running a budget deficit. State statute further requires that, when revenue comes in 2% or more below projections, the governor take actions to bring the budget into balance. This law provides the governor, as the

Politicians and members of the public sometimes ask why schools aren’t using their reserve fund balances to cover the dramatic shortfalls in state funding they have experienced over the last few years. What are Fund Balances? School district cash flow reserve funds (to which some have referred as school district rainy day funds) differ from what

Politicians often use the percent of the state budget that is dedicated to public schools as evidence of their support of K-12 education. You have probably heard them claim that education makes up over 60% of the total state budget. That is simply not true. While it is true that all of education – including

The Parents’ Campaign Research and Education Fund reviewed and compared changes in school districts’ total points scored from 2016 to 2017 on the 1,000-point Accountability Rating scale. The following shows changes – increases and decreases – by rating level (A-F). Districts Rated F in 2016: 17 of 19 F-rated districts gained ground in total points (largest gain for an

Districts rated F in 2018 that would be rated D if 2016 baseline scores had remained in effect:South Pike School District                                      Hazlehurst School DistrictLaurel School District