Mississippi lawmakers — after considerable haggling between the House and Senate the past couple of years — have agreed nearly unanimously on a new funding formula for the state’s public schools.
Between the two chambers, there were only three dissenting votes when the compromise plan was agreed to over this past weekend. It’s not known whether Gov. Tate Reeves will sign the legislation, but even if he doesn’t, there should be plenty of votes to override him.
The new formula has a lot going for it. It blends some the best ideas from each chamber’s starting point in the negotiations.
The House insisted that it would not fund the formula that’s been in place since 1997, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, and wanted to replace it with a formula it called Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education. INSPIRE had these advantages: It took into greater account the difficulties faced by school districts whose students come from economically or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, and it expected wealthier areas to shoulder a greater financial load for their schools.
The Senate, which was initially inclined to stay with MAEP but do a little tweaking, was uncomfortable with INSPIRE because it did not have an objective formula for determining the base cost for funding. The base cost might be generous one year, not so the next, potentially hinging on legislative whim.
The compromise incorporates an objective formula, and supposedly one that’s easier to understand than MAEP’s. We would not call the new formula simple, however. It starts, according to the explanation provided by Mississippi Today, with a base cost per student of the average teacher salary divided by 14, which represents the current average student-teacher ratio statewide. From there, 20% is tacked on for administration, 30% for ancillary costs, as well as money for operations and maintenance based on a three-year, per-square-foot average. Then comes the additional funding designed to help out districts with the biggest challenges, such as high poverty, learning disabilities or English not being the student’s primary language.
Is that simpler than MAEP, which was designed to provide enough funding so that districts could theoretically achieve a midlevel accountability grade? Maybe. Simple overall? Hardly. It will still take some sophisticated accounting to calculate what each school district will receive.
Nor will the new formula guarantee adequate funding, as it will still require the Legislature to follow what its own formula dictates, something it has done only twice in the 27 years of MAEP. Just as lawmakers chronically shortchanged that formula, it could do the same with the one replacing it.
An aspect about the new formula that is clearly simpler, though, is its name. It will be called the Mississippi Student Funding Formula. No clever acronyms, no lofty aspirations that could go unfulfilled, just a no-nonsense name that speaks plainly what it is.
That is an improvement.
