February 2017

HB 1046 has passed the Senate Appropriations Committee and is headed to the floor. A strike-all amendment has turned the bill into a dangerous voucher bill that threatens local school district funding and sends Mississippi tax dollars out of state to unaccountable private schools. See the amended version here. The biggest problem? This bill creates private school vouchers, which Cambridge Dictionary defines as scholarships […]

A Senate strike-all amendment could make HB 1046 the most alarming bill we’ve seen this year. Here’s why: • Drains school budgets – takes MAEP money away from your school’s already under-funded allocation and sends it to private academies.  • State budget buster – allows unlimited vouchers for private school tuition; if 10% of Mississippi students requested a voucher, the cost to

The Senate Education Committee has amended a dyslexia bill to insert voucher language similar to what you helped kill on the House side. The Senate version of HB 1046 would potentially allow thousands of students to take MAEP dollars to private schools – including schools in any other state, which could divert millions of dollars away from public schools and

Three cheers for the Mississippi Legislature – all voucher bills are DEAD! Due to lack of support, the bills never came up for a vote. Please thank the legislators who stood with parents and educators to kill privatization bills that would have harmed public schools. Find contact information for legislators in your school district. Capitol Switchboard: 601.359.3770

Neither the House nor the Senate took up a voucher bill in committee today. While that is a very good sign, we won’t be entirely out of the woods until tomorrow night’s midnight deadline. These bills could be passed out of committee and go straight to the floor for a vote. Please ask your legislators

Three voucher bills await action in the Senate Finance Committee, which is scheduled to meet tomorrow afternoon. Please ask the committee members to vote NO on SB 2575, SB 2585, and SB 2947. Find their contact information here.  These bills use tax credits and deductions to subsidize tuition at private schools, reducing the funding available to public schools. This

Legislators heard you, and they responded! Every single education bill that we asked legislators to oppose is dead. They all died on today’s deadline without a vote being taken. Apparently, a majority of legislators agreed with us. Your calls made a difference! Please make one more call to thank the legislators who scored a victory for our children

The Mississippi Business Journal reports that legislators will be asked in the next two days to vote on bills that strike the MAEP from state law and replace it with a new school funding mechanism. As of this afternoon, the proposal has not been made public and has not been presented to legislators. With so little legislative review and

Thank you for all the calls you have made to your legislators about education bills that threaten our children’s public schools. Please keep those calls going! The deadline for first-round action on these bills is Thursday, and legislators need to be reminded that you are watching their votes. I promise to let you know how your