March 2015

The House and Senate have taken final action on one of the bills we have been watching. Several remain on the calendar; the deadline for an initial vote is tomorrow. Still awaiting action Charter Schools – SB 2300. The conference report would allow open enrollment within counties. This provision would permit students, even those in […]

The conference report for SB 2300 has added a provision to allow students to cross district lines to attend charter schools. Though the location of charter schools remains limited to school districts that are underperforming, this provision would allow students in any district, including those rated A, B, or C, to cross district lines within a county to

We are in the final stretch of the 2015 Legislative Session. The deadline for initial conference reports to be filed on funding and revenue bills is tomorrow, but those first reports are sometimes sent back for more work. The deadline for conference reports to be filed on general bills is Monday. Legislators will be working

The Legislature learned today that it has more money available to spend on state services. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee met this afternoon and revised the revenue estimate for Fiscal Year 2016. This revenue estimate is what next year’s budget (state spending) is based upon. The committee acknowledged an additional $30-million that can now be added

Voucher Bill Pushed by Florida For-Profit/Virtual Charter School LobbyistThere have been plenty of clues that the voucher bill being pushed in the Mississippi Legislature is not really about helping children with special needs (as it has been framed). Yesterday, voucher supporters tipped their hand further when a tweet from the Florida lobbyists who were in our state last year pushing virtual and

How about that? Taxpayers spoke, and legislators listened! Today, the tax-cut bill that would have eliminated $555-million from state coffers and made it nearly impossible ever to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) died in the House of Representatives, thanks to 52 representatives who chose our children over tax cuts. See that vote here. Our children, and we parents, owe a tremendous

You did it – now let’s make sure it sticks!   In what might be the most important vote of the 2015 Legislative Session,52 members of the House of Representatives chose our children over tax cuts.  These courageous women and men rejected the Senate plan to strip $555-million from state coffers, a plan that would have

Well, friends, we got our answer… In today’s debate over corporate tax cuts and adequate school funding, a majority of senators chose tax cuts. They passed a bill containing $550-million in tax cuts, which would remove enough revenue from the state budget to ensure that the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) is never fully funded and that colleges, universities,

Many legislators fail to take into account, when voting on the K-12 budget, that the state salary schedule they passed into law requires districts to give each teacher a small salary increase for each additional year of service. That same salary schedule also requires an additional bump in pay when a teacher earns an advanced degree and

No effort was made in the House today to reconsider the vote on the voucher bill so that it could be amended. The bill now will go back to the Senate, which will vote either to concur with the House changes and send it on to the governor or to invite conference for further work