Uncertainty regarding education funding in Mississippi

President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget includes cuts to the Department of Education, cuts that would eliminate the title II program which helps train, recruit and retrain teachers.
It’s a program that Mississippi relies on and if eliminated it would mean a loss of about $31 million for the Magnolia State. This comes at a time where state funding for education is already in question with a lawsuit being considered by the Mississippi Supreme Court trying to force the legislature to spend the full amount demanded by Mississippi’s school funding formula.
MAEP has been highly debated for years and while education funding will not be a topic in June’s special session, lawmakers say they are considering private firm EdBuild’s recommendations for a potential overhaul next year.
State Representative Scott Delano said, “Since the EdBuild recommendations have come down. I’ve worked with our local superintendents to understand how the recommendations would affect our local districts. I think as we move forward with an appropriations bill and with the rewriting of the formula, we need to take those considerations into account and make sure that our local taxpayers are not burdened with additional dollars going towards education that have been funneled out to other parts of the state.”
Lawmakers say they want to create a formula that fairly distributes money to schools across the state.