On a 29-22 vote, the full Senate has defeated the Senate Appropriations Committee’s strike-all amendment that would have removed $65-million from MAEP funding and a total of $81-million from HB1494, the education funding bill. Defeating the strike-all amendment restored the higher House level of funding. Click here to see that vote.
A number of Senators spoke passionately about the need to put as much funding as possible into our schools so that Mississippi children can compete well with their peers in other states.
Prior to the vote on the strike-all amendment, Senator Briggs Hopson proposed an amendment to add back $15-million of the funding that had been cut from the House bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee. Senator Merle Flowers co-authored the amendment. That amendment was adopted on a 32 to 16 vote. See that vote here.
Once the Hopson Amendment was adopted, the amended strike-all amendment was before the Senate. Senator Gray Tollison went to the podium and asked the members to vote against the Senate Appropriations Committee’s strike-all amendment. (Voting against the strike-all amendment would have the effect of reinstating the higher House level of funding.) Tollison spoke passionately about the need to get as close as possible to full MAEP funding, arguing that it is both the right thing to do for children and an economically wise investment. His wishes were granted when the full Senate rejected the strike-all amendment in favor of the original House bill on a 29-22 vote.
Other senators who spoke in favor of increasing the funding in the bill were Senator David Blount, Senator Eric Powell, Senator Ezell Lee, Senator Derrick Simmons, Senator David Baria, Senator David Jordan, and Senator Merle Flowers.
This is a tremendous victory for the children of Mississippi. The Parents’ Campaign is extremely grateful to all those who called, wrote and emailed their senators to make it possible.
