Oct. 13, 2015 – Public school opponents are shamelessly race-baiting and misinforming white voters to oppose Initiative 42.  The initiative forces state legislators to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), Mississippi’s rudimentary public school funding formula, or be compelled to fund it through court order.  Opponents to public schools, however, are fighting back hard.  They recently released a commercial warning voters that the initiative will put funding power into the hands of a “Liberal Hinds County Judge.”

“If Initiative 42 passes, one liberal Hinds County judge can get all of the power, the power to take your money from your school and give it to the school district he chooses,” claims the commercial, paid for by the Improve Mississippi Political Action Committee.

Financing the Improve Mississippi Political Action Committee are Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson, along with various conservative-leaning organizations such as the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, the Mississippi Bankers Association, and the Mississippi Realtors Association, among others.

Critics called the ad a race-baiting whistle designed to frighten rural white voters, who are confident that most judges in predominantly black Hinds County are black judges.  This black judge, according to the ad, will then take your money from “your” (white) school and hand it over to the black school district that this black judge will inevitably choose.

The problem with this argument is that many of the schools benefitting from MAEP funding are actually rural and semi-rural white schools whose low-commerce, agrarian districts don’t generate enough taxes to fully support schools.

Shannon Eubanks is principal of the K-12 Enterprise Attendance Center in rural Lincoln County, which is just such a school.  Enterprise, which has only a nine percent minority student enrollment, according to Public School Review, can’t afford important brick and mortar repairs due to legislators routinely shorting MAEP funding.

“We have serious issues with facilities,” said Eubanks.  “I have an awning that hasn’t been repaired because I do not have the money for it, or we have to make decisions when there’s a water leak.  That may mean I can’t do upgrades to some facilities.  We need air-conditioning.  Our buildings are getting old and they’re starting to fall apart and you’re looking at up to $5,000 for air-conditioning repairs and the money runs out really quick — but that’s something you’ve got to have.”

Eubanks complained that his district’s student-to-teacher ratio in elementary grades is 27:1, but when the legislature doesn’t fully fund MAEP, the district has to struggle to keep class size that low, which, due to Legislative short-sightedness, is an annual struggle.

“Right now I have a ratio of 26- to 27-to-1 — which is the maximum allowed — with no assistants because I have no money for them,” Eubanks said.  “There was a time when I would have three, four or five applicants to a job, but now I have to scramble to get that one applicant.  I’ve had to hire teachers as late as August, just as school’s about to start, because there are just not that many applicants out there — and we’re a B district.”

Finding teachers is significantly more difficult in even poorer districts in small towns with few to no entertainment venues.  Some districts in rural areas have had to make do with temporary teachers for a large portion of the year.

White rural districts like Lincoln County are finding themselves in a tough place also due to their comparatively larger district size.  Lincoln County, for example, has an ailing fleet of nine buses that must be “packed to the gills,” according to Shannon, with students from as far away as the county’s northern border, meaning many students endure hour-and-a-half rides both to the school and home again.  Some students must be at the bus stop before 6 a.m. and do not see their home until 4:30, even though they get out at 3 p.m.

Rural districts covering a large swath of wilderness and farmland are common to largely rural Mississippi — and particularly common in majority white districts.

Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson dismissed the anti-Initiative 42 ads as low-level race-baiting and urged voters to ignore calls to starve their own school district.

“All schools benefit from MAEP.  Schools have been underfunded across the board by $1.7 billion, and that’s not exclusive to any district.  That’s every district,” Johnson said.  “And besides, if legislators would merely follow the letter of the law, there would never be a need for a judge in Hinds County, or anywhere else, to do anything.”

Source: NAACP Staff