Happy New Year! Today, legislators gathered in Jackson to convene the 2017 Legislative Session.
How will you know if your legislators are voting to support strong public schools? The Parents’ Campaign will make it easy! We’ll cut through the spin and tell you the truth about the impact each bill will have on your school and your child.
PRO-public education bills will:
• Provide teachers and students the resources they need to be successful when competing with their peers in Mississippi and across the U.S.
– There are several objective standards by which to measure the Mississippi Legislature’s school funding effort: by the Mississippi standard (what today’s law defines as adequate), by the national standard (U.S. per student funding average), and by the neighboring states standard (average per student funding in our neighboring states). Click here for a graph showing that, by every measure, Mississippi falls woefully short. See how much your schools are shortchanged for a single year by each of these standards.
• Keep public dollars in public schools – no vouchers or tax credit “scholarships” that divert public school funds to pay tuition at private academies.
• Maintain high standards for all public schools, traditional and charter.
– Keep Mississippi’s College and Career Readiness Standards.
– Maintain Mississippi’s rigorous application and selection process for new charter schools.
• Give parents reasonable, fair, and objective measures by which to determine how well students are achieving in all schools that receive state funding.
• Provide every child a high quality early learning experience; increase funding for high quality pre-k programs.
• Strengthen teacher education programs and teacher licensure to ensure 21st Century, classroom-ready first-year teachers.
Each year, hundreds of education bills are introduced, some good, some bad. We will make sure you know the difference so you can help your legislators understand the effect they will have on your schools and appropriately represent your community.
Watch your inbox tomorrow to learn what ANTI-public education bills look like. Our kids are counting on us to make sure that their futures are bright. And, together, we’ve got this!
