JACKSON, Miss.— School districts could soon employ their own school attendance officers, taking the employment authority away from the Mississippi Department of Education while giving the officers pay raises under Senate Bill 2618. The Legislature would offer monetary support to school districts to finance their new employees.
The Senate passed its version of the bill on Feb. 12 and sent it to the House Education Committee for consideration.
The House Education Committee amended the bill during its March 4 meeting to add House Bill 1345’s language that students can transfer from one school district to another as long as the school district where the student wants to transfer gives written approval of the student’s decision. The school district must approve or deny the transfer within 60 days of the student’s notice; if the school district does not act within 60 days, the student is considered eligible for transfer. The Senate had allowed the House Bill, H.B. 1435, to die on the March 4 legislative deadline.
MDE must pay “an amount equal to the total funding formula funds” that is “allocated for each student transferring to a school district outside his or her district of residence” to the school district in which the student transferred under the amended version of S.B. 2618.
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“While the lieutenant governor has supported the (school attendance officer) bill in the press as it relates to fighting chronic absenteeism, he has also repeatedly supported the House’s position on the open-enrollment bill and at least continuing the conversation in that bill,” Mississippi House Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, said at the House Education Committee meeting on March 4. “What we’re going to do with this amendment, we will add House Bill 1435 to this bill, move it to the floor so we can continue the debate discussion, and then give the lieutenant governor an opportunity to accomplish two policy goals that he has stated multiple times in the press the last two months.”
“Anything (from the House Education Committee) that dies this