Mississippi House lawmakers have revived an effort to overhaul the state’s education funding scheme with the Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education Act, a new formula that House leaders say would more equitably fund schools statewide.
The Senate has killed the INSPIRE Act twice, first by letting it die on a deadline on April 2. Then, after the House amended the Senate’s school funding plan to replace its text with the text of the INSPIRE Act, the Senate killed it again by refusing to concur on Tuesday. But Senate leaders have suggested they would rather spend the summer and fall working with the House to find a plan both chambers can agree on and pass during the 2025 legislative session.
“I’ve looked through INSPIRE. I’ve researched it,” Sen. Dennis DeBar, R-Leaksville, told his colleagues on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “I just don’t think we need to address it during (the) session, and this is a way to take it off the table.”
DeBar told the chamber that he had spoken with House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, and relayed his willingness and commitment to address the education funding formula during the off-season.
Mississippi Sen. Dennis DeBar told his colleagues on April 9, 2024, that the Legislature should take time to study a new education funding formula plan and address it in 2025. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
But House Speaker Jason White responded to the Senate’s decision to kill the bill on Tuesday criticizing its leaders for refusing to agree to address the funding formula in conference between the two chambers during this legislative session. He said the chamber would not fund the current formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, again.
“The Senate took the extraordinary and unusual step to kill the INSPIRE Act funding formula
prematurely in addition to killing their own attempt to rectify the issues with MAEP,” White said in a statement on April 9. “Mississippi’s public school children will be directly impacted by the Senate’s lack of willingness to engage in the debate to address the current broken and
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