The new Mississippi Student Funding Formula (MSFF), adopted by the Legislature in 2024 as the mechanism for funding public schools, begins with a base student cost that is determined by an objective formula which has four components:
- Instructional – Calculated by dividing Mississippi’s average teacher salary (includes local supplements) by the average number of students per teacher statewide. For FY25: $53,354/14 = $3,811. Students per teacher = average daily enrollment divided by the number of full-time certified teachers statewide (440,876/32,092 = 14).
- Administrative – 20% of Instructional. For FY25: $3,811*.20 = $762.20
- Ancillary & Support – 30% of Instructional. For FY25: $3,811*.30 = $1,143.30
- Operations & Maintenance – 3-year average of cost per 100,000 square feet (same as MAEP). For FY25: $978.84
FY2025 Base Student Cost total: $3,811 + $762.20 + $1,143.30 + $978.84 = $6,695.34
Additional needs-based funding is added in nine categories as percentages of the base student cost, as was the at-risk component of the MAEP. This is the primary way that more funding is directed to higher-need districts. The nine components and their associated “weights” are:
- Poverty (Uses direct certification through the USDA) – 30%
- English Language Learners (Students are issued the Home Language Survey and given the English learning placement test based on proficiency, and a language service plan is developed for the student by the district) – 15%
- SPED I (Students diagnosed with specific learning disability, speech and language impairment, or developmental delay) – 60%
- SPED II (Students diagnosed with autism, hearing impairments, emotional disabilities, orthopedic impairments, intellectual impairments, or other health impairments) – 110%
- SPED III (Students diagnosed with visual impairments, deaf-blindness, multiple disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries) – 130%
- Gifted (Students scoring at or above the 91st percentile on an intelligence test) – 5%
- CTE (Determined by local district policy; includes students in only grades nine through 12; students taking multiple courses are counted only once) – 10%
- Concentrated Poverty (District qualifies if the percentage of students identified as low-income exceeds 35%) – 10%
- Sparsity (District qualifies if fewer than 8 students per mile) – Weight = difference between 8 and actual students per mile in the district; i.e. if 4.38 students per mile, additional funding per student is 3.62%
Needs-based funding for a district is based on the percentage of students qualifying in each category.
The local contribution is the portion of the total district funding that is the responsibility of the local school district and is generated through local property taxes. A district’s required local contribution is the value of 28 mills or 27% of the total district funding (base cost and needs-based funding), whichever is less. In the new formula, the 27% is applied after the needs-based/weighted funding is added, so it requires more of wealthier districts than did the MAEP.
District state funding allocation =
[Net enrollment * (Base student cost + Needs-based funding/weights)] – Local contribution
Note that the new formula uses net enrollment, not average daily attendance, which also helps low-wealth, rural districts that tend to have higher rates of absenteeism.
There will be a full recalculation of the formula every four years (just as with MAEP) and in the intervening three years, the base student cost is adjusted for inflation by multiplying 25% of the prior year’s base student cost by the 20-year average annual change in the rate of inflation rounded up to the nearest tenth of a percent.
Written into the legislation is a provision that says that the base student cost can never be lower than the prior year’s base student cost. Another provision in the law allows the Legislature to use the lower prior-year base cost in years in which state revenue declines.
