State leaders convened this week in Jackson to begin deliberating on 2015 business, which is a scary proposition to many, especially those concerned about public education in this state.
Leading up to this session, Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have repeatedly made alarming statements about their plans for education in this state, including their intention to again fail to fully fund public schools, scrapping Common Core, and overriding the bi-partisan and constitution based state board of education.
Joel McNeece
The failure to “adequately” fund education is nothing new from our state leaders. The only times they’ve ever fully funded the Mississippi Adequate Education Program has been election years, but that doesn’t even seem to phase them this time around. Gov. Bryant released his budget proposal last month that provided a modest 2% increase for public education, a far cry from fully funding MAEP.
Gov. Bryant and Lt. Gov. Reeves have both said over the past two months that “Mississippi is in the best financial health in its history,” and yet we can’t prioritize enough funds for an “adequate” education. Easy to see why Mississippi consistently ranks 50th.
Shorting the educational system on funds apparently isn’t Reeves’ only desire. He’s also made it clear it’s his mission to eliminate Common Core, despite the fact he initially supported its adoption and the millions of dollars that have been spent since 2010 implementing the higher academic standards.
Reeves issued a statement explaining his flip-flop essentially saying that he changed his mind when President Barack Obama endorsed the program also. I guess if the president said he enjoys eating lunch everyday Reeves would suggest we eliminate that from the school day as well.
Common Core was originally a recommendation of the bi-partisan state board of education, not to mention the majority of state Republican leaders, including Gov. Haley Barbour, attempting to raise Mississippi’s education standards and ability to compete not just nationally, but globally.
That brings us to the third and most disturbing acts by Gov. Bryant and Lt. Gov. Reeves. They’ve made it clear their intention is to undermine the more qualified and independently appointed board of education and just run our public schools themselves.
My friend Charlie Mitchell, syndicated columnist and assistant dean of the journalism school at Ole Miss, made the point best when he questioned if state leaders meddled with Mississippi Highway Patrolmen trying to make traffic stops and surgeons conducting an operation at the University Medical Center as they do our education system.
“This state trains, tests and licenses public school teachers, requires continuing education and allows those trusted to staff classrooms to teach only the subjects for which they have obtained certification. The state refers to teaching as a ‘profession’ and then treats teachers as dolts,” Mitchell wrote in a recent column.
Educating our children is serious business and should be left to those qualified to make judgments on how it can best be done.
Politicians’ only role should be to provide adequate facilities, materials and funding to pay teachers and administrators a fair wage and then get out of their way.
Apparently, that’s asking for a little too much.
Email Joel McNeece at joelmcneece@gmail.com & follow him on Twitter @joelmcneece