A new education funding formula passed in the Mississippi House of Representatives Wednesday and will move on to the Senate.
The bill, titled House Bill 957, passed the House 66-54, following several hours of discussion and debate. The new formula is a departure from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), and will be based on a figure of $4,800 per student, recommended by consulting firm EdBuild. Amounts will be added to the $4,800 based on needs of certain groups of students, including special education, extraordinary students, students in poverty, English language learners and students who must travel a long distance to school.
Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, D-West Point, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, explained the process the bill would face in the senate leading up to a vote.
“From there, it would actually be referred over to the Senate, and then referred to a committee, which I presume would be Appropriations and Education,” Turner-Ford said. “When it would be scheduled, I presume would be left up to the chairman, as far as when we would meet.”
Rep. Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, who serves as vice-chair of the House Education Committee, explained the next steps after the House receives the Senate’s version of the bill.
“They’ll get a chance to see it, amend it, vote on it,” Roberson said. “If they change stuff, we’ll go to conference if they invite conference or we invite conference, and we move forward with it that way.”
After going through the committees, the bill would go back to the House to have revisions made and the Senate’s concerns addressed before a Senate vote.
Turner-Ford said she was unsure when the Senate committees would meet, but said the Senate would not meet again until Monday.
She said she did not support the new formula, and would vote no as it stood. She also voiced support for a fully-funded MAEP.
“I’ve heard a lot of the concerns from various school administrators, teachers and even parents across the Senate district,” Turner-Ford said. “As I understand it, a lot of them have needs for additional resources, and that’s what I would like to see under any formula.”
Rep. Gary Chism, R-Columbus, a member of the House Education Committee, gave an account of the debate in the House.
“It’s a major piece of legislation and a major change, so there were just tons of questions and discussions on the bill, ” Chism said.
Chism, who voted in favor of the formula, explained his support.
“MAEP is a formula that has been in existence for 20 years, and we have funded it only twice,” Chism said. “What this bill did was shift from district (based) funding to per-student funding.”
Chism also said the new bill would fund all Golden Triangle school districts except Columbus Municipal Schools at the same level as in years past, and Columbus’ amount would drop only because the district has lost students. However, the bill will keep the funding at the same levels as in years past for two years.
Roberson also raised the point of MAEP seldom being fully funded.
“This formula that we voted on yesterday is just a lot easier to understand,” Roberson said. “It actually, over its implementation, guarantees $107 million into that formula that was not guaranteed before. There’s something wrong with a formula that’s only been funded twice in 20 years.”
Roberson also said some of the issues he had with the original bill were cleared up while it was in committee, including work on changing the “27 percent rule.” The rule is spelled out in MAEP allowing a community to provide no more than 27 percent of funding for education.
“That’s probably going to be fixed in the next week or so,” Roberson said.