Mississippi Today

MAEP full funding fight could be renewed in Legislature

Published

2 years ago

March 5, 2023

MAEP full funding fight could be renewed in Legislature

by Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today
March 5, 2023

For 56 days of the 90-day 2023 session of the Mississippi Legislature and before then in the pre-session budgeting work, no one was speaking publicly or seriously about the possibility of fully funding public education.

But in a remarkable move on the 57th day, Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, announced his goal for the 2023 session is to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides the state’s share of the basics to operate local school districts.

Such talk had not occurred in earnest since the 2000s when Democrats still controlled the Mississippi House. At that time, it was those House Democrats calling for MAEP to be fully funded or at least provided additional funding. And it was Republican leaders of the Senate and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour opposing full funding.

This time around it could be the House leadership — in the form of Republican Speaker Philip Gunn — opposing full funding. Gunn has long been an opponent of fully funding MAEP, and the issue of full funding could again become a contentious one just as it used to be in earlier days.

But make no mistake about it: DeBar would not have uttered the words “full funding” without the blessings of Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate. DeBar is loyal to Hosemann.

DeBar made his pronouncement with the caveat that the MAEP formula would need to be “tweaked” as part of the full funding effort. Those tweaks could theoretically result in the need for less money to fully fund MAEP. But education advocates have generally trusted DeBar to make decisions they believe are in the best interest of public schools.

MAEP was passed by the Legislature in 1997 over a gubernatorial veto and was phased in over six years. It was fully funded during the phase-in period and during the 2003 session – the first of full enactment.

It was not fully funded again until 2007, when Barbour acquiesced to House Democrats and agreed to full funding. Interestingly, Barbour and others campaigned for election later that year proclaiming the fight over full funding of MAEP was over. It would take only a minimal increase each year to maintain full funding. And it was fully funded again in the 2008 session, but Barbour cut MAEP funding later that year and then reduced funding for most agencies because of the so-called Great Recession that resulted in a dramatic slowdown in state tax collections.

MAEP has not been fully funded again since then. But it has not been from lack of effort from those outside of the Legislature.

Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who was one of the architects of the Adequate Education Program that was enacted during his tenure as lieutenant governor, sued the Legislature in 2015 on behalf of a group of school districts saying that the law mandated full funding.

The Supreme Court, in a word salad ruling, said just because the law said the Legislature “shall” fully fund MAEP did not mean that the Legislature, well, shall fully fund MAEP.

And about that time a group of education advocates gathered the signatures to place on the ballot an initiative that would have strengthened the state’s commitment to public education, presumably putting more pressure on the Legislature to provide full funding. That proposal was narrowly defeated at the polls in 2015, thanks in part to the fact that the Legislature put an alternative proposal on the ballot to confuse voters.

After that 2015 defeat, Gunn and then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves went to work to scrap the MAEP funding formula. With both of the chambers’ presiding officers supporting the effort, most believed MAEP’s days were numbered.

But lo and behold, the effort of Reeves and Gunn failed.

In the ensuing 2019 election, no candidate, including Reeves who won the gubernatorial election nor Gunn’s House Republican candidates, ran on the issue of repealing MAEP.

On the other hand, there also was not much talk about the full funding of MAEP, which provides a base level of state funding for all school districts with more funding for less affluent or property poor districts. Despite unprecedented revenue growth, MAEP was underfunded $273 million during the 2022 session and has been underfunded $3.3 billion since 2008.

But going into the 2023 elections and with Gunn serving as a lame duck speaker not running for reelection, talk of full funding for the Mississippi Adequate Education Program has resurfaced.

That will make some happy and others mad, but it will continue a battle that has been ongoing for decades.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Did you miss our previous article…
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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1906

Published

3 hours ago

January 22, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-22 07:00:00

Jan. 22, 1906

Willa Beatrice Brown served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. Credit: Wikipedia

Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky.

While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.”

In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S.

She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.

In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics.

After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Stories Videos

Mississippi Stories: Michael May of Lazy Acres

Published

19 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – rlake – 2025-01-21 14:51:00

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show. It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.

For more videos, subscribe to Mississippi Today’s YouTube channel.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1921

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-21 07:00:00

Jan. 21, 1921

George Washington Carver Credit: Wikipedia

George Washington Carver became one of the first Black experts to testify before Congress.

His unlikely road to Washington began after his birth in Missouri, just before the Civil War ended. When he was a week old, he and his mother and his sister were kidnapped by night raiders. The slaveholder hired a man to track them down, but the only one the man could locate was George, and the slaveholder exchanged a race horse for George’s safe return. George and his brother were raised by the slaveholder and his wife.

The couple taught them to read and write. George wound up attending a school for Black children 10 miles away and later tried to attend Highland University in Kansas, only to get turned away because of the color of his skin. Then he attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before becoming the first Black student at what is now Iowa State University, where he received a Master’s of Science degree and became the first Black faculty member.

Booker T. Washington then invited Carver to head the Tuskegee Institute’s Agriculture Department, where he found new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops.

In the past, segregation would have barred Carver’s testimony before Congress, but white peanut farmers, desperate to convince lawmakers about the need for a tariff on peanuts because of cheap Chinese imports, believed Carver could captivate them — and captivate he did, detailing how the nut could be transformed into candy, milk, livestock feed, even ink.

“I have just begun with the peanut,” he told lawmakers.

Impressed, they passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922.

In addition to this work, Carver promoted racial harmony. From 1923 to 1933, he traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Time magazine referred to him as a “Black Leonardo,” and he died in 1943.

That same year, the George Washington Carver Monument complex, the first national park honoring a Black American, was founded in Joplin, Missouri.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.