Corrected version
Educators and legislators in Leflore County are divided over Gov. Phil Bryant’s new push for broader school choice in Mississippi.
In a plan unveiled Friday, Bryant reaffirmed his support for charter schools and said that he would urge legislators to enact bills that would establish government-sponsored vouchers to private schools. The plan would also allow students to transfer to any public school that has room for them, regardless of where they reside.
The Rev. Greg Plata is the pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and is heavily involved in fundraising for St. Francis Elementary School. He said this morning that he supported Bryant’s measures, noting that at least 75 percent of the students enrolled in his private school receive tuition assistance.
“I’ve lived in different states where vouchers have been very effective,” said Plata.
Plata said he witnessed successful voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland and supports the program because “public schools are failing us.”
“There are great teachers and great administrators in the public schools, but the system as a whole is failing us,” he said.
Plata argued that in addition to allowing low-income students the opportunity to attend private schools, Bryant’s voucher program would also make the public school system more accountable and competitive.
Mississippi is one of 38 states with a constitutional bar on aiding religious schools, and many have expressed concern over state funding going directly towards church-affiliated schools.
Plata said that at St. Francis, faith does not matter in terms of funding for students in need of assistance.
“Most of our children here are not Catholic,” he said.
Still, opponents of vouchers typically argue that sending state money to religious schools violates the laws that ban aid to religious schools.
When asked to comment on the widely held fear that initiatives like charter schools and voucher programs would take money away from the public schools, Plata said that the public school system “is big enough and funded enough to afford vouchers.”
“Actually, private schools save taxpayers thousands of dollars each year, even though those (private school) parents are paying the same taxes,” he added.
Bryant agrees. He said on Friday that studies in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina show scholarship programs cut state costs by taking students out of the public school system. The idea of bringing students out of the public school system, however, is one that some local stakeholders decry.
Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, a former teacher and longtime advocate for public education, opposes the governor’s voucher program. Jordan said taking students out of the public schools would decrease the funding needed to improve those schools.
“We need to fund the public school system. In 1996, we established the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, and we haven’t fully funded it three times in a row,” said Jordan.
“We’re a billion dollars in deficit funding what we already created to make education better in Mississippi. If we had more funding for MAEP, we wouldn’t be looking for alternatives,” he added.
Jordan said that in addition to the state not being able to afford voucher programs, too much is at stake if they do not succeed.
“If these new things don’t work, everyone will have to go back to the public schools, and the public schools will be worse off than they were before,” he said.
Jordan argued that allowing students the opportunity to leave the public school system would rob the failing school district of resources, since funding is allocated per student in a given district.
“You leave one school district for another, that’s taxpayer money going to a different district, wasted. We should improve that district,” he said.
Jordan said the state should not go on trying new things when it should but rather should “keep the money where we know it works.”
Whether public schools are working, however, has been in question for some time. During the 2012 session, the Legislature narrowly defeated a bill to make it easier to create charter schools in Mississippi. Changes in committee designations in the House, specifically Rep. Linda Whittington’s recent removal from the Education Committee, might make charter school legislation more likely to pass in 2013.
Whittington, D-Schlater, is an outspoken defender of public education and has been one of 18 in a coalition formed to block charter school legislation.
Whittington said today that until she sees concrete details about how the governor plans to enact the vouchers, she is unsure of how she feels about the possible enactment of such a program.
She said that she does, however, question the legality of the governor’s proposal.
“I actually called to talk to the legislative lawyers after I heard about the program, to see what the Constitution said,” Whittington said.
“My question was, were these vouchers legal? And, without knowing all the details, probably yes. But in Louisiana, vouchers over there have been ruled unconstitutional, because they take public money and give it to private or religious schools. And you cannot do that with public money.”
Bryant said Friday that he is confident his scholarship plan would be constitutional in Mississippi.
He also said that he is open to other new ideas about how to improve education in the state, and that he hopes his proposals will serve as a starting point.
nContact Jeanie Riess at 581-7235 or jriess@gwcommonwealth.com.
