Funding

For the last four years, K-12 education has suffered budget cuts at rates higher than the state budget as a whole. In fact, for the current budget year, K-12 funding decreased while funding for the overall state budget increased. K-12’s share of the General Fund portion of the state budget has shrunk every year since 2008. K-12 funding […]

Governor Phil Bryant has released his Executive Budget Recommendation for Fiscal Year 2013 (FY13), which is next school year.  While the governor’s proposal replaces over $5-million that was cut from high growth districts in the last legislative session, it cuts the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) appropriation to all districts by another $72.9-million.  This would underfund the MAEP

The PERS Study Commission has released its recommendations.  A summary of the highlights follows.  Click here to read the Commission’s full report.Highlighted Recommendations of the PERS Study Commission:  The PERS Board should reconsider lowering its investment return assumption from 8 percent to 7.5 percent as recommended by PERS’ own actuary, Cavanaugh MacDonald. Over the last ten years, PERS has

Kelly Riley, Executive Director of the Mississippi Association of Professional Educators, provided the following summaries of the recent meetings of the PERS Study Commission: November 16, 2011 Meeting of PERS Study Commission  ·       The Management Subcommittee presented four recommendations, the first of which recommended that the Legislature consider revising the composition of the PERS Board of

In FY 2012, Education Funding Continues to Move Backward Funding for public schools continues to decrease, both in actual dollars and as a percent of the overall state budget.  For Fiscal Year 2012 (school year 2011-2012), school funding was cut by an additional $14-million, with $5.5-million coming from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). This means that, for

Funding for public schools continues to decrease, both in actual dollars and as a percent of the overall state budget. For Fiscal Year 2012 (FY2012, the current school year), school funding was cut by an additional $14-million, with $5.5-million coming from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). This means that, for FY2012, the MAEP is underfunded by $237,386,693.  

Though virtually every state leader claims to hold public education as a priority, schools have borne a disproportionate share of the budget cuts over the last four years.  For the current year, while the whole state budget grew by 0.03%, K-12 education was cut by 0.7%. Of 16 major funding categories (state agencies), six saw their

On November 15 of last year, Governor Barbour announced his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2012, which included underfunding the Mississippi Adequate Education Program by $296-million, funding that is $65-million below the current school year’s level for the MAEP, citing the federal Education Jobs funds schools received in August of 2010. After 107 representatives and

On a 29-22 vote, the full Senate defeated the Senate Appropriations Committee’s strike-all amendment that would have stripped $81-million from the House level of funding in HB1494, the education funding bill.  Of that $81-million, $65-million would have come out of the MAEP.  Defeating the strike-all amendment restored the higher House level of funding.  Click here to see that vote. A