Give Mississippi legislators credit. Without being cajoled, threatened or begged, they fully funded education during the recently completed special session.
With little fanfare, they provided full funding of $2.97 billion or $16 million more than last year to the formula that provides the basics to operate local school districts.
That, famously, has not always been the case.
Through much of the early 2000s, the preeminent issue facing legislators each session was whether education would be fully funded. There were knock down, drag out fights about education funding.
Most times it didn’t happen. From 2005 until 2024, education was fully funded once.
But in 2024, legislators fully funded education and did it again this year in the special session that was held late last month.
When referencing the full funding of kindergarten through 12th schools, most times educators, policymakers and advocates are referring to the formula that provides for the basics of operating a local school district. The basics include items like staff salaries, utilities, transportation, textbooks and other items needed to operate a school district.
Starting in the 2003-2004 school year, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program incorporated the formula that determined how much money each school district needed to meet those basic needs.
The MAEP arrived at that dollar amount through an objective formula developed by education experts and put into law by legislators.
But after the MAEP was developed and passed into law, many legislators and more than one governor balked at fully funding it. They said it provided too much money for public education. There were multiple efforts to rewrite or even replace the funding formula.
Finally, in the 2024 legislative session, House Speaker Jason White, R-West, and his leadership team offered a new formula that would provide as much or more money for the schools than MAEP for at least one year. But the proposal removed the objective funding formula, leaving it to the whim of the legislators what full funding was each year.
Many educators and advocates balked at the idea of leaving the definition of full funding to lawmakers – many of whom had a history of wanting to underfund education. Some feared legislators would offer the big pot of money the year the MAEP was replaced, but in later years reduce the money, pulling the old bait-and-switch.
But a funny thing happened on the way to rewriting the Adequate Education Program. Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, backed by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, insisted that objective criteria be used in the new formula to determine full funding.
House leaders and Gov. Tate Reeves, wanting desperately to say they replaced the MAEP, yielded and agreed to the objective criteria for the new, simply named Mississippi Student Funding Formula.
In essence, the new funding formula is a lot like the old funding formula with objective parameters and a mandate for the Legislature to fully fund it, though the Supreme Court has ruled that legislators do not have to follow the law and fully fund MAEP. Supreme Court members would presumably reach the same conclusion with the new funding formula.
But legislators would look hypocritical to make a big deal of passing a new formula to replace MAEP and not fully fund it.
This year, we can give lawmakers the benefit of the doubt and say that they are excited about fully funding education.
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