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The fate of the House school funding plan could come down to one question: Who wrote it?

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House leaders say they’ve been working independently of any other group for more than a year to develop their sweeping new public education funding plan, which they say would send additional money to poorer school districts than the current funding formula does.

But three advocacy groups that have often butted heads with powerful pro-public education groups also have been working on a new funding formula. It consists of many of the same characteristics found in the House leadership’s plan.

The origins of the House school funding bill have become central to the combustible debate at the Capitol about whether the plan should be passed into law — and it could ultimately impact the bill’s fate as it faces key deadlines in coming days and weeks.

Rep. Jansen Owen, a Republican from Poplarville, said he and his colleague, House Education Vice Chair Kent McCarty, a Republican from Hattiesburg, worked independently of advocacy groups in their effort to rewrite the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which currently provides the state’s share of the basics to operate local school districts.

READ MORE: House leaders want lawmakers, not an objective formula, to determine ‘full funding’ for public schools

All three of the advocacy groups that worked to develop the 2024 school funding rewrite have been at odds with pro-public education groups in the past. Two of the groups involved in this year’s rewrite effort — Empower Mississippi and the Mississippi Center for Public Policy — have long advocated for allowing public funds to be spent in private schools.

A third group involved in this year’s rewrite effort — Mississippi First — was an outspoken advocate in developing the state’s charter school program. In the 2010s, when the Legislature was enacting a charter school law, many public school advocates vehemently opposed it, arguing charter schools were funded with public dollars but did not have to adhere to the same rules and regulations that normal public schools must follow.

The three groups’ involvement in the 2024 public education funding formula rewrite has created pause for some education groups fearful of what a rewrite might entail. For decades, lawmakers have underfunded MAEP, with many legislative leaders calling for its rewrite at least partially because they argued the state could not afford full funding. For some public education advocates, any effort to rewrite MAEP is viewed as an effort to further cut education funding. MAEP has been fully funded only twice since its full enactment and has been underfunded more than $3 billion since 2008.

But Owen said that he hopes the rewrite he and his House colleagues have put forward will result in more funding for education. He said he is not sure the three advocacy groups involved in the rewrite are even supportive of the House effort because of the extra money it will mean for K-12 schools.

“Rep. McCarty and myself have been working on a plan for a new formula to address some of the inequities in MAEP and bring funding to the classrooms for well over a year now — long before any other groups or organizations became involved,” Owen said. “After Speaker White took office, and Rep. (Rob) Roberson became chairman, it became apparent that House leadership and our (Republican) caucus were on board with changes that provide equitable funding to classrooms.”

It is likely that the MAEP rewrite will be passed out of the House Education Committee on Tuesday, the deadline for the measure to advance out of committee. There have been no public hearings on the 413-page bill designed to rewrite the current school funding formula.

READ MORESpeaker Jason White says House will work to scrap, rewrite public education funding formula

The Senate Education Committee already has passed a more modest rewrite of MAEP. Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, has said the Senate bill addresses some of the issues that that those promoting a complete rewrite say make the existing school funding formula unfair.

Rachel Canter, the executive director and founder of Mississippi First, told Mississippi Today in an interview in late February that she and her organization began working with Empower and Mississippi Center for Public Policy after she was contacted by the two groups. She said there are many areas where she does not agree with the two groups, but she saw the combined effort as a chance to write a new funding formula that she believed would be more equitable for poor and at-risk students.

Grant Callen, founder and chief executive officer of Empower Mississippi, offered a “no comment” when asked if his group believed the formula needed to be rewritten and whether Empower’s involvement might taint the proposed formula with some education groups.

Douglas Carswell, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, wrote in a February op-ed that the existing funding formula needed to be scrapped because it was outdated and complicated. Plus, he said, the new proposal took into account individual children’s circumstances.

“An individualized funding system means weighting the amount that every student gets above a base amount, depending on every child’s circumstances,” Carswell wrote. “For example, the amount ought to be adjusted to reflect the fact that a child might have special needs, or be especially gifted.”

The House bill and the plan developed by the work of the three advocacy groups include a base student cost (amount of money per pupil) being established and providing additional funds to the base student cost based on the unique circumstances of the student, such as more money for a special needs student.

Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory and key architect of the current MAEP funding formula, told Mississippi Today in an interview he feared the House bill’s base student cost would be used a vehicle to develop vouchers to go to private schools equal to the base student costs for each of the students they educate. House Education Chair Roberson has filed a far-reaching school choice or voucher bill.

Several pro-public education organizations — the Mississippi Association of Educators, Mississippi Association of School Superintendents, Mississippi Professional Educators, Mississippi Association of School Administrators and the Parents Campaign – wrote a letter to legislators in February voicing support for some type of weighted system, but said it was essential that any rewrite of MAEP include an objective formula and a growth factor.

The House plan, as currently written, does not include an objective funding formula or a growth factor as the MAEP does. The Adequate Education Program, passed in 1997, has an objective formula, based on specific criteria, to determine how much per pupil is needed to provide an adequate education.

The House plan would leave it to legislators to determine how much to provide per pupil to the local school districts for their basic operation. But the House bill does require the Mississippi Department of Education to make recommendations to legislators every four years on what the base student cost should be. Owen predicted the House bill would be “tweaked” to include local superintendents in the process of recommending the base student cost to legislators. He also said he would not necessarily oppose an objective formula akin to what is in the Adequate Education Program.

Canter at Mississippi First said the House plan may not necessarily have buy-in from all three of the advocacy groups that worked to develop their own school funding rewrite. She said the groups paid Bellwether, a national education consulting group, to work with them on the plan. Bellwether developed a website that is password protected and not open to the public, where different data can be entered to see how much the new plan would generate in funding. House members working on the rewrite have used that website to ascertain how changes to the plan would impact school districts.

While the three advocacy groups did not recommend an objective formula to ascertain the base student cost in their rewrite, Canter said she would not be opposed to one. But she said the lack of the objective formula is not a reason to discard the rewrite effort.

Canter pointed out that there are elements of the MAEP funding formula that penalize low-income students and property-poor school districts. She said, though, there are merits to having a formula that includes a growth factor and an objective funding formula, but she said the House bill without the formula still merited consideration.

DeBar has said he believes any inequities that have developed in the MAEP since it was first passed in 1997 can be fixed without completely rewriting the formula.

READ MORECould this be the year political games end and MAEP is funded and fixed?

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

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Mississippi Today

Derrick Simmons: Monday’s Confederate Memorial Day recognition is awful for Mississippians

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mississippitoday.org – @BobbyHarrison9 – 2025-04-27 14:32:00

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.


Each year, in a handful of states, public offices close, flags are lowered and official ceremonies commemorate “Confederate Memorial Day.”

Mississippi is among those handful of states that on Monday will celebrate the holiday intended to honor the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

But let me be clear: celebrating Confederate Memorial Day is not only racist but is bad policy, bad governance and a deep stain on the values we claim to uphold today.

First, there is no separating the Confederacy from the defense of slavery and white supremacy. The Confederacy was not about “states’ rights” in the abstract; it was about the right to own human beings. Confederate leaders themselves made that clear.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declared in his infamous “Cornerstone Speech” that the Confederacy was founded upon “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.” No amount of revisionist history can erase the fact that the Confederacy’s cause was fundamentally rooted in preserving racial subjugation.

To honor that cause with a state holiday is to glorify a rebellion against the United States fought to defend the indefensible. It is an insult to every citizen who believes in equality and freedom, and it is a cruel slap in the face to Black Americans, whose ancestors endured the horrors of slavery and generations of systemic discrimination that followed.

Beyond its moral bankruptcy, Confederate Memorial Day is simply bad public policy. Holidays are public statements of our values. They are moments when a state, through official sanction, tells its citizens: “This is what we believe is worthy of honor.” Keeping Confederate Memorial Day on the calendar sends a message that a government once committed to denying basic human rights should be celebrated.

That message is not just outdated — it is dangerous. It nurtures the roots of racism, fuels division and legitimizes extremist ideologies that threaten our democracy today.

Moreover, there are real economic and administrative costs to shutting down government offices for this purpose. In a time when states face budget constraints, workforce shortages and urgent civic challenges, it is absurd to prioritize paid time off to commemorate a failed and racist insurrection. Our taxpayer dollars should be used to advance justice, education, infrastructure and economic development — not to prop up a lost cause of hate.

If we truly believe in moving forward together as one people, we must stop clinging to symbols that represent treason, brutality and white supremacy. There is a legislative record that supports this move in a veto-proof majority changing the state Confederate flag in 2020. Taking Confederate Memorial Day off our official state holiday calendar is another necessary step toward a more inclusive and just society.

Mississippi had the largest population of enslaved individuals in 1865 and today has the highest percentage of Black residents in the United States. We should not honor the Confederacy or Confederate Memorial Day. We should replace it.

Replacing a racist holiday with one that celebrates emancipation underscores the state’s rich African American history and promotes a more inclusive understanding of its past. It would also align the state’s observances with national efforts to commemorate the end of slavery and the ongoing pursuit of equality.

I will continue my legislative efforts to replace Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday with Juneteenth, which commemorates the freedom for America’s enslaved people.

It’s time to end Confederate Memorial Day once and for all.


Derrick T. Simmons, D-Greensville, serves as the minority leader in the state Senate. He represents Bolivar, Coahoma and Washington counties in the Mississippi Senate.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Derrick Simmons: Monday's Confederate Memorial Day recognition is awful for Mississippians appeared first on mississippitoday.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This article argues against the celebration of Confederate Memorial Day, stating it glorifies a racist and failed rebellion that is harmful to societal values. It critiques the holiday as a symbol of white supremacy and advocates for replacing it with Juneteenth to honor emancipation. The language used, such as referring to the Confederate cause as “moral bankruptcy,” and the call to replace the holiday reflects a progressive stance on social justice and racial equality, common in left-leaning perspectives. Additionally, the writer urges action for inclusivity and justice, positioning the argument within modern liberal values.

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On this day in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois urged active resistance to racist policies

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-27 07:00:00

April 27, 1903

W.E.B. Du Bois by James E. Purdy in 1907 from the National Portrait Gallery.

W.E.B. Du Bois, in his book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” called for active resistance to racist policies: “We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.” 

He described the tension between being Black and being an American: “One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” 

He criticized Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech. Six years later, Du Bois helped found the NAACP and became the editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis. He waged protests against the racist silent film “The Birth of a Nation” and against lynchings of Black Americans, detailing the 2,732 lynchings between 1884 and 1914. 

In 1921, he decried Harvard University’s decisions to ban Black students from the dormitories as an attempt to renew “the Anglo-Saxon cult, the worship of the Nordic totem, the disenfranchisement of Negro, Jew, Irishman, Italian, Hungarian, Asiatic and South Sea Islander — the world rule of Nordic white through brute force.” 

In 1929, he debated Lothrop Stoddard, a proponent of scientific racism, who also happened to belong to the Ku Klux Klan. The Chicago Defender’s front page headline read, “5,000 Cheer W.E.B. DuBois, Laugh at Lothrup Stoddard.” 

In 1949, the FBI began to investigate Du Bois as a “suspected Communist,” and he was indicted on trumped-up charges that he had acted as an agent of a foreign state and had failed to register. The government dropped the case after Albert Einstein volunteered to testify as a character witness. 

Despite the lack of conviction, the government confiscated his passport for eight years. In 1960, he recovered his passport and traveled to the newly created Republic of Ghana. Three years later, the U.S. government refused to renew his passport, so Du Bois became a citizen of Ghana. He died on Aug. 27, 1963, the eve of the March on Washington.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Jim Hood’s opinion provides a roadmap if lawmakers do the unthinkable and can’t pass a budget

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mississippitoday.org – @BobbyHarrison9 – 2025-04-27 06:00:00

On June 30, 2009, Sam Cameron, the then-executive director of the Mississippi Hospital Association, held a news conference in the Capitol rotunda to publicly take his whipping and accept his defeat.

Cameron urged House Democrats, who had sided with the Hospital Association, to accept the demands of Republican Gov. Haley Barbour to place an additional $90 million tax on the state’s hospitals to help fund Medicaid and prevent the very real possibility of the program and indeed much of state government being shut down when the new budget year began in a few hours. The impasse over Medicaid and the hospital tax had stopped all budget negotiations.

Barbour watched from a floor above as Cameron publicly admitted defeat. Cameron’s decision to swallow his pride was based on a simple equation. He told news reporters, scores of lobbyists and health care advocates who had set up camp in the Capitol as midnight on July 1 approached that, while he believed the tax would hurt Mississippi hospitals, not having a Medicaid budget would be much more harmful.

Just as in 2009, the Legislature ended the 2025 regular session earlier this month without a budget agreement and will have to come back in special session to adopt a budget before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. It is unlikely that the current budget rift between the House and Senate will be as dramatic as the 2009 standoff when it appeared only hours before the July 1 deadline that there would be no budget. But who knows what will result from the current standoff? After all, the current standoff in many ways seems to be more about political egos than policy differences on the budget.

The fight centers around multiple factors, including:

  • Whether legislation will be passed to allow sports betting outside of casinos.
  • Whether the Senate will agree to a massive projects bill to fund local projects throughout the state.
  • Whether leaders will overcome hard feelings between the two chambers caused by the House’s hasty final passage of a Senate tax cut bill filled with typos that altered the intent of the bill without giving the Senate an opportunity to fix the mistakes.
  • Whether members would work on a weekend at the end of the session. The Senate wanted to, the House did not.

It is difficult to think any of those issues will rise to the ultimate level of preventing the final passage of a budget when push comes to shove.

But who knows? What we do know is that the impasse in 2009 created a guideline of what could happen if a budget is not passed.

It is likely that parts, though not all, of state government will shut down if the Legislature does the unthinkable and does not pass a budget for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.

An official opinion of the office of Attorney General Jim Hood issued in 2009 said if there is no budget passed by the Legislature, those services mandated in the Mississippi Constitution, such as a public education system, will continue.

According to the Hood opinion, other entities, such as the state’s debt, and court and federal mandates, also would be funded. But it is likely that there will not be funds for Medicaid and many other programs, such as transportation and aspects of public safety that are not specifically listed in the Mississippi Constitution.

The Hood opinion reasoned that the Mississippi Constitution is the ultimate law of the state and must be adhered to even in the absence of legislative action. Other states have reached similar conclusions when their legislatures have failed to act, the AG’s opinion said.

As is often pointed out, the opinion of the attorney general does not carry the weight of law. It serves only as a guideline, though Gov. Tate Reeves has relied on the 2009 opinion even though it was written by the staff of Hood, who was Reeves’ opponent in the contentious 2019 gubernatorial campaign.

But if the unthinkable ever occurs and the Legislature goes too far into a new fiscal year without adopting a budget, it most likely will be the courts — moreso than an AG’s opinion — that ultimately determine if and how state government operates.

In 2009 Sam Cameron did not want to see what would happen if a budget was not adopted. It also is likely that current political leaders do not want to see the results of not having a budget passed before July 1 of this year.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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