Each year, hundreds of education bills are introduced, some good, some bad. The Parents’ Campaign will make sure you know the difference. In turn, you can help your legislators understand the effect legislation will have on your schools.
PRO-public education bills will (ask legislators to vote yes):
- Provide teachers and students the resources they need to compete successfully with their peers in Mississippi and in neighboring states.
- Some lawmakers have claimed that our current school funding law, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), requires an “unrealistic” level of funding for public schools. Click here for an infograph showing that, even if the law were fully funded, Mississippi’s per-student funding would fall woefully short of what Arkansas and Alabama – and our other neighbor states – provide their children. See how much your school district is shortchanged according to Mississippi law for the current school year and since 2008, the last time public schools were fully funded.
- 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.
- Help to resolve Mississippi’s severe teacher shortage while strengthening teacher education programs and teacher licensure to ensure a sufficient number of 21st Century, classroom-ready teachers to adequately staff Mississippi public schools.
ANTI-public education bills will (ask legislators to vote no):
- Revise the school funding formula to DECREASE the amount that state law requires our legislators to provide public school students – a ruse designed to get legislators off the hook for denying Mississippi students a shot at a decent future. The formula rewrite proposed in the 2018 Legislative Session would have reduced the Legislature’s obligation to our children by an estimated $290-million when fully phased in. At a minimum, our kids deserve resources similar to those our neighbor states provide their students.
- Take away the right of local school boards to increase local school funding to pay for local programs in your community’s schools.
- Take tax dollars away from public schools and send them to private academies (vouchers and tax credit scholarships).
- Change the way school board members are selected, setting the stage for out-of-state privatizers to take over your local school board.
- Decrease the standards charter schools are required to meet in order to open a school.
- Allow charter schools to locate in school districts rated A, B, and C without local board approval, weakening thriving communities.
- Increase testing and add administrative responsibilities and unfunded mandates at the local level.
- Transfer authority to make decisions about our children’s education from professional educators to politicians.
- Retaliate against or attempt to silence citizens, including educators, who speak up against anti-public school bills.
