{"id":11204,"date":"2015-10-19T21:51:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T21:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/?p=11204"},"modified":"2015-10-20T19:14:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T19:14:36","slug":"k-12-opponents-resort-to-misinformation-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/k-12-opponents-resort-to-misinformation-commercial\/","title":{"rendered":"K-12 Opponents Resort to Misinformation Commercial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Oct. 13, 2015 <\/strong>\u2013 Public school opponents are shamelessly race-baiting and misinforming white voters to oppose Initiative 42.\u00a0 The initiative forces state legislators to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), Mississippi\u2019s rudimentary public school funding formula, or be compelled to fund it through court order.\u00a0 Opponents to public schools, however, are fighting back hard.\u00a0 They recently released a commercial warning voters that the initiative will put funding power into the hands of a \u201cLiberal Hinds County Judge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf 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,\u201d claims the commercial, paid for by the Improve Mississippi Political Action Committee.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u00a0This black judge, according to the ad, will then take your money from \u201cyour\u201d (white) school and hand it over to the <em>black<\/em> school district that this <em>black<\/em> judge will inevitably choose.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t generate enough taxes to fully support schools.<\/p>\n<p>Shannon Eubanks is principal of the K-12 Enterprise Attendance Center in rural Lincoln County, which is just such a school. \u00a0Enterprise, which has only a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicschoolreview.com\/school_ov\/school_id\/45307\">nine percent<\/a> minority student enrollment, according to <em>Public School Review<\/em>, can\u2019t afford important brick and mortar repairs due to legislators routinely shorting MAEP funding.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have serious issues with facilities,\u201d said Eubanks.\u00a0 \u201cI have an awning that hasn\u2019t been repaired because I do not have the money for it, or we have to make decisions when there\u2019s a water leak. \u00a0That may mean I can\u2019t do upgrades to some facilities. \u00a0We need air-conditioning. \u00a0Our buildings are getting old and they\u2019re starting to fall apart and you\u2019re looking at up to $5,000 for air-conditioning repairs and the money runs out really quick \u2014 but that\u2019s something you\u2019ve got to have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eubanks complained that his district\u2019s student-to-teacher ratio in elementary grades is 27:1, but when the legislature doesn\u2019t fully fund MAEP, the district has to struggle to keep class size that low, which, due to Legislative short-sightedness, is an annual struggle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now I have a ratio of 26- to 27-to-1 \u2014 which is the maximum allowed \u2014 with no assistants because I have no money for them,\u201d Eubanks said.\u00a0 \u201cThere 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. \u00a0I\u2019ve had to hire teachers as late as August, just as school\u2019s about to start, because there are just not that many applicants out there \u2014 and we\u2019re a B district.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finding teachers is significantly more difficult in even poorer districts in small towns with few to no entertainment venues. \u00a0Some districts in rural areas have had to make do with temporary teachers for a large portion of the year.<\/p>\n<p>White rural districts like Lincoln County are finding themselves in a tough place also due to their comparatively larger district size.\u00a0 Lincoln County, for example, has an ailing fleet of nine buses that must be \u201cpacked to the gills,\u201d according to Shannon, with students from as far away as the county\u2019s northern border, meaning many students endure hour-and-a-half rides both to the school and home again. \u00a0Some students must be at the bus stop before 6\u00a0a.m. and do not see their home until 4:30, even though they get out at 3\u00a0p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Rural districts covering a large swath of wilderness and farmland are common to largely rural Mississippi \u2014 and particularly common in majority white districts.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll schools benefit from MAEP. \u00a0Schools have been underfunded across the board by $1.7 billion, and that\u2019s not exclusive to any district. \u00a0That\u2019s every district,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: NAACP Staff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oct. 13, 2015 \u2013 Public school opponents are shamelessly race-baiting and misinforming white voters to oppose Initiative 42.\u00a0 The initiative forces state legislators to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), Mississippi\u2019s rudimentary public school funding formula, or be &#8230;..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,45,14,44,19,7,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerning-mississippi","category-economic-justice","category-education","category-history","category-labor-news","category-latest-news","category-mississippi-issues","category-news-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11204"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11206,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11204\/revisions\/11206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}