The Mississippi House of Representatives is remaining persistent in its efforts to discard the state’s current public education funding formula in favor of an entirely new model.
While it appeared that efforts to ax the oft-criticized Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) and move forward with what lawmakers have tabbed the INSPIRE Act had been killed at the capitol, House education leaders managed to pull a rabbit out of their hat to keep the proposal afloat.
On Wednesday, the House implemented a strike-all amendment into Senate Bill 2693, legislation designed to place failing schools into a district of transformation, and replaced the text with INSPIRE language ahead of Thursday’s deadline to pass bills originating in the other chamber. The House passed the amended bill 103-16 and returned it to the Senate for concurrence.
The move follows Senate Education Committee Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leaksville, motioning to neither send amended legislation establishing the INSPIRE Act back to the House nor to further debate the bill in conference on Tuesday.
Instead, the Senate proposed a different set of bills to provide an additional $206 million to K-12 public schools and $50 million for teacher pay raises while keeping the MAEP intact. Though Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann admitted that he is not married to the MAEP formula, he and DeBar expressed sentiments insinuating that they were not comfortable jumping the gun with the House’s plan without first having additional conversations with parents and education leaders.
House Speaker Jason White did not buy their reasoning. He also argued there may be ulterior motives at play with the timing and method by which the Senate, under Hosemann’s guidance, went forth with discarding the House’s proposal without any formal discussions between education committee leaders in both chambers.
“I thought for the Senate to critique [the proposal] and the lt. governor’s statement about, ‘Just too much too fast. We’re open. We’re not married to the formula’ and those kinds of things, but yet, we’re going to lob a teacher pay raise and a $200 million increase — it just looked like a smokescreen from the direction we really want
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