Over the past few weeks and I am sure into the legislative session next year a discussion is occurring in Mississippi about the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. This program (MAEP) is about how much funding schools should receive and what that funding should be directed towards. In recent days it has become apparent that Governor Barbour and what seems to be a majority of the Senate want to spend Educational funds one way and the House and a minority of Senate members want to “fully-fund” MAEP, spending money another way. For just a few of the many articles and/or stories on this debate see WLOX here. See a press release from the Governor here. See a statement from the Mississippi School Board Association (MSBA) here. For a Clarion-Ledger article see here.
Much of the descension seems to come from those feeling that Gov. Barbour is trying to pull a fast one as he agreed last year to fully fund education but he is choosing to spend a portion of the money on teacher pay raises and not include the money in MAEP which would, once again, under fund MAEP. By doing this more affluent, wealthy districts will receive a bigger share of the educational money pie than under the MAEP formula (thereby making the poorer districts receive a smaller piece of the pie under Barbour's plan) as the governors plan does not take into account the At-Risk Component and the wealthier districts often have more contributions within their districts that are also factored into the MAEP formula.
The purpose of this post is to try and bring a bit of understanding to our readers of what the MAEP actually is. The basic calculation is:
ADA (times) Base Student Cost (plus) At-risk Component (plus) ADA Allocation (plus) 8 % Guarantee (minus) Local Contribution = Adequate Education Allocation for a district.
For a breakdown of what these terms all mean see the MS Department of education website here. Additionally SB 2604 of the 2006 regular session altered some of the definitions of these terms, it can be found here.
For further information on what MAEP is I recommend reading the December 2002 PEER report found here.
For those unfamiliar with the PEER committee it is a group of 10-15 House and Senate members who investigate state programs (and almost always their expenses) to make sure agencies/programs/laws are being implemented as they were intended to when passed.
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Much of the descension seems to come from those feeling that Gov. Barbour is trying to pull a fast one as he agreed last year to fully fund education but he is choosing to spend a portion of the money on teacher pay raises and not include the money in MAEP which would, once again, under fund MAEP.
Nope, the agreement last year -- the Brown-Chaney plan -- was to phase-in to full funding over four years. I'm pretty sure Barbour's proposed plan for this year adheres to that agreement. Many Democrats in the House were opposed to any phase-in last year and the House leadership sees this upcoming election year session as an opportunity to jettison the Brown-Chaney phase-in by demanding full funding now.
Of course, the full funding of MAEP is just the feint. What they really want is a general tax increase in order to take the no tax increase arrow out of Barbour's election year quiver and to open the door to more overall spending.
Smitty, glad to see someone actually reads this stuff. I attempted to qualify my statement by explaning that the dissenters FEEL like the governor is pulling a fast one. I don't know if he is or he isn't, this could well be part of a 4 year phase-in plan but to play devils advocate Barbour's press release says $65M where the original agreement was between $67M and $68M so there is a few million left out (which doesn't sound like much but small agencies can run an entire year on around $2M). Additionally teacher pay raises were already contemplated as SB 2602 was passed last year and the governor is pumping up this "old news" for his own political capital.
I agree the House Democrats are using this issue to try and push fully funding now and gain pro-education political ground but Barbour is doing virtually the same thing by trying to give a pay raise to the largest (I think) group of state employees in all of state government, teachers, in an election year.
As for the general tax increase I personally don't know if more spending is what the House Democrats want but to me Governor Barbour has already broken the no tax increase arrow with the hospital assessments, truely a pass-through cost onto those who are sick.
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