Panel begins review of ed funding
A group of lawmakers, local school officials and state Board of Education members started meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday to examine the state’s school funding formula.
They’re trying to decide whether the Mississippi Adequate Education Program needs to be changed. The group will hold several meetings through late October, then make recommendations before the 2006 legislative session starts in January.
“It is not our purpose here to cut funding for education,” House Education Committee Chairman Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, said Tuesday.
MAEP is a complicated formula designed to ensure every school district has enough money to meet midlevel state standards. It was phased in over six years beginning in 1997, but fully funded only once – the year that ran from July 2003 to June 2004.
7/27/5
Clarion Ledger
