VICKSBURG — Gov. Haley Barbour made big news last month by signing a $2.5 billion appropriation that provides the most state tax money ever for K-12 education.
For those convinced that more money is what makes schools better, it still won’t be enough.
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann made less news in January by trying to ratchet up, however slightly, funds for schools from a non-tax source most people may have heard about, but don’t understand.
What Hosemann did was place on the Internet for the first time a list of all 16th Section leases in Mississippi. Although Hosemann plans to add more interactivity, the idea is to shine more light on an aspect of school funding steeped in history — and in chicanery.
In an article a few years ago, former Secretary of State Eric Clark, also a 16th Section crusader, put his doctorate in history on display. He explained that the idea of setting aside land to lease or manage to make money for education was something colonists brought with them from England.
As states were created, counties were gridded out on master maps. Each 36-square-mile area was called a township. Each township was divided into 36 sections containing 640 acres. The 16th Section of each township was not for sale. When Mississippi was granted statehood by Congress in 1817, all 16th Sections were reserved as “school lands.”
One problem arose. Twenty-three counties in North Mississippi were initially Indian land, open to settlement but belonging to the Chickasaws. When the Indians gave back the land (that was theirs in the first place), the federal government failed to reserve sections for schools and the land was sold. Later, Congress gave the state replacement land, but the state sold that land to raise money for railroads and the investment became worthless via the Civil War.
The net effect is that the state to this day provides annual supplemental appropriations to school districts in the 23 counties to make amends for its foul-up a century and a half ago. Schools in the 23 counties sued over the disparity 25 years ago, but the U.S. Supreme Court told them “tough luck.”
The remaining 59 counties do have 16th Sections. In sum, they total 640,000 acres and raise money for education through 7,000 leases granted by individual school districts. The total is about $50 million per year.
However, Hosemann, like Clark, believes there’s more cash to be had.
Clark knows times have been worse. Indeed, he described the first 150 years of 16th Section land dealings as a waste. “Unfortunately,” Clark wrote, “Mississippi (would) squander most of the potential benefit that might have been gained. Mismanagement of school lands, including corruption and scandals, would be the rule.”
For much of the last century, the state’s take on school land was about $3 million a year, largely due to sweetheart deals made by local boards, such as 99-year leases for $1 per year for land worth hundreds of times as much.
Change started about 1970 and picked up speed with the election of John Ed Ainsworth as state land commissioner (a job since abolished) in 1975. Old ways died hard. The late Lt. Gov. Evelyn Gandy boldly broke a Senate tie in 1978 to inject the first measure of accountability in how school lands were managed.
It’s compelling to realize that the greatest motivation to get top dollar for school land has not been the law or students’ needs. Good management has always been legal. The greatest motivator is increasing the likelihood people would find out what school boards were doing.
Toward that end, Hosemann says his next step will be to place actual leases on the Internet — to let people know everything there is to know about who’s getting what for how much.
