Let’s Do the Boldest of Things for Students by Dr. Phelton C. Moss
Each year Mississippi’s education leaders, teacher advocacy groups, and those adjacent to education go to the Mississippi Capitol in hopes of a significant financial investment in public education beyond the usual. These leaders endeavor to persuade the legislature to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a program that funds public education in Mississippi.
While the 2021 legislative session increased Mississippi’s education budget for teacher salaries, early childhood education, and teacher loan forgiveness programs, advocates’ wishes to fully fund education did not come from the Mississippi legislature. Instead, advocates got their wish from an unlikely investor: the U.S. Congress.
This investment in Mississippi P-12 education gives school leaders and policymakers a window of opportunity to do the boldest of things for students.
Due to the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi schools will receive the most significant federal investment in public education that we’ve seen in our lifetime. Congress’ American Rescue Plan provides a substantial investment of $125.8 billion to help schools across the country recover from the pandemic. The State of Mississippi will receive upwards of $6 billion—this amount equals the state’s overall budget. Of that $6 billion, $1.6 billion has been allocated in Mississippi to K-12 education to accelerate learning and safely reopen schools based on a formula to subsidize the education of students from low-income communities.
With such an unprecedented opportunity, Mississippi school leaders must get it right. This federal investment represents well over half of the annual education budget in Mississippi. The United States Department of Education has issued guidance on how states and schools are to spend the dollars, with suggestions ranging from building upgrades, to planning and implementing activities related to summer learning, and providing mental health services and support.
This particular investment is encouraging for Mississippi’s K-12 education system. This new federal investment provides a subsidy for Mississippi’s inequitable distribution of school funding that has often led to the underperformance of schools in less affluent communities.
Researchers have attempted to predict the performance of Mississippi’s students based on how much funding their school receives from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. The federal government has given Mississippi more money, let’s spend it strategically and wisely. To be clear, more money spent on school resource officers, oversight, accountability, and test prep does not result in the same outcomes as more money spent on high-quality curriculum, materials, and professional development for teachers.
This federal investment has given both school leaders and policymakers a unique window of opportunity to build schools that work for all children—not just ones in more affluent communities.
School leaders have an opportunity to build the transformative schools they know children deserve by investing these new funds into adopting a high-quality curriculum. Selecting and training teachers in high-interest, high quality curriculum reduces the unnecessary burden on teachers who frequently spend time and money selecting and identifying high-quality resources for students. Our school leaders should also consider investing in all school personnel to be trained in trauma-informed education practices, dedicating funds to build the school’s capacity to support students socially and emotionally and address the grief and trauma that this pandemic has inflicted. Finally, we have a special opportunity to invest funds to repair, replace, and rebuild our schools’ infrastructure across the state. Our students deserve bright and joyful learning environments.
Policymakers should look to the decisions and investments of school and district leaders to shape the future of school funding policy in Mississippi. What is more, the decisions about how and what dollars support should be made at the local level. This significant federal investment can offer Mississippi’s policymakers a framework for providing additional funding to support Mississippi’s schools and what gets funded.
As school districts are writing their plans to spend these funds, families and community members alike should attend local meetings and dare their leaders to do the boldest of things we can imagine for kids in Mississippi. Conversely, education leader and policy-makers alike must engage communities in overly transparent ways to collect to make decisions about spending. Our children deserve for us to seize this moment to imagine a better and stronger Mississippi Public Education System.
Dr. Phelton C. Moss is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Tougaloo College and Policy Fellow at Education Leaders of Color. He is also the Founder/CEO of ALL Means ALL Consulting, LLC. He is a former teacher, principal, and Mississippi Department of Education Bureau Director.
