School funding for the 2018-2019 year will be decided in the next few days; your legislators need to hear from you. We have reason to believe that there is strong support in both the House and Senate for improving funding for public schools. After all, our Senate defeated every privatization bill that came its way this session, and the House refused even to consider them.
Both the House appropriations and education chairs said recently that they are working to keep an increase over current-year funding in the K-12 budget conference report. During debate on the school funding rewrite, the House and Senate education chairs promised to provide schools $8.2-million over this year’s appropriation.
Following the defeat of the school funding rewrite, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves appeared to threaten to reduce the K-12 appropriation, but his spokesperson said those comments were misinterpreted.
Ask your legislators to stand with our public school children one more time and ensure them at least the $8.2-million above level funding that was promised earlier in the session:
Find contact information for legislators.
Capitol Switchboard: 601.359.3770
Share the same message with:
Lt. Governor Reeves Capitol: 601.359.3200
Speaker Philip Gunn Capitol: 601.359.3300
Please watch your inbox for updates throughout the weekend as important appropriations deadlines approach.
Thus far, this has been a good legislative session for Mississippi public schools. It will take a while to climb out of the terrible under-funding hole we’ve dug for our children, but any progress should be recognized; our legislators need and deserve our support when they defeat harmful education bills or make incremental gains in funding schools. Ask them to stand with us again to take this small but important step toward a better day for our children and our state. Together, we’ve got this!
