The organization behind a constitutional amendment requiring the Mississippi Legislature to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program is hoping for an up-or-down vote on the issue.
Patsy Brumfield, communications director for an advocacy group called Better Schools, Better Jobs, told the McComb Rotary Club Wednesday there is talk the Legislature may put up an alternative to Initiative 42 which is expected to be on the ballot next November.
“We believe it is a ploy to kill the initiative,” said Brumfield who acknowledged that under Mississippi’s petition and initiative law the Legislature has the discretion to offer an alternative to a proposed constitutional amendment. “We want a yes-or-no vote.” on the amendment, she said.
Brumfield also said, in an answer to a question, that a lawsuit filed by former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove on behalf of a number of school districts seeking what they claim is owed them in non-funded MAEP money is “not us. We’re looking to the future, not the past.”
She said her organization has more than enough certified signatures of voters to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot.
The amendment, if adopted, would require the Legislature to fund K through 12 public education at an adequate level described in the current MAEP formula.
MAEP is a complicated formula that sends state money to local school districts based on the goal of providing a basic level of funding for each student, regardless of local resources. Brumfield said it has only been fully funded twice in the past 17 years, and there has been a $1.8 billion shortfall in the past six years.
She said it is an economic issue, as well as an educational one, and she said the state has the money to fully fund MAEP.
Brumfield, who moved from a newspaper job in Tupelo to work for Better Schools, Better Jobs, is a McComb native and a former managing editor of the Enterprise-Journal.
