House of Representatives Education Committee members from left, Jansen Owen, Kent McCarty, held a brief meeting Wednesday where only two Senate bills were considered. (Photo by Jeremy Pittari | Magnolia Tribune)
- Neither of the bills dealt with education freedom. The House Education Chairman said he expected Wednesday’s committee meeting to be the last for this session but “that’s subject to change.”
During a House Education Committee meeting held Wednesday afternoon, Chairman State Rep. Rob Roberson (R) announced it would be their “last meeting.”
“This is our only meeting that we will be having, from what I am understanding, just to give you all a heads up,” Roberson said during the brief five-minute committee meeting. “These two bills are what we are bringing out. Hopefully we’re able to work with the Senate and get things moving in a good direction.”
When reached by Magnolia Tribune to clarify if Roberson meant it would be the last meeting of that committee for the remainder of the 2026 Legislative session, Roberson responded with “That’s the plan now… that’s subject to change.”
Only two bills were passed by out of the committee: SB 2103 and SB 2294. Neither of the bills dealt with school transfers or other aspects related to education freedom.
SB 2103 seeks to delete the requirement of school counselors to abide by the American School Counselor Association Code of Ethics, essentially allowing the Mississippi Department of Education to create its own code of ethics instead of relying on “the ever-changing code.”
“It opens up the state to adopt its own professional code of ethics for school counselors as opposed to requiring that we adopt an ever-changing code adopted by a singular Board of Counselors,” State Rep. Jansen Owen (R) said.
Two amendments were adopted for the measure. One amendment made adjustments to the wording in the bill, specifically to include a “model code of professional ethics that may be adopted by our local school boards for their counselors,” Owen said. The second amendment inserted a reverse repealer into the bill.
Both conceptual amendments and strike-all were adopted by the committee. Roberson clarified that the bill does not do away with a code of ethics for school counselors.
“I do want to be clear on the bill. I’ve had a couple people ask me this question. So that it’s clear, we are not taking ethics out of counselors. That is not what we are doing,” Roberson said. “The intent here is to give a little bit clearer path for that ethics section.”
SB 2294, the Mississippi Future Innovators Act, which is similar to HB 1035, was also amended to only include the House’s version of their math initiative, reading initiative and financial literacy.
“What this will do is, we’re going to put in its place our math initiative that [the Mississippi Department of Education] actually wrote,” Roberson explained. “The reading initiative is how MDE plugged in, and the financial literacy part. Everything else has been stripped out of this bill.”
By not holding any further meetings, the committee is effectively killing all other Senate education bills, and also any additional efforts to insert language from its education freedom bill, HB 2, into a Senate bill. The Senate Education Committee killed HB 2 with a unanimous voice vote after a brief 90-second discussion earlier this month.
Speaker Jason White (R) said earlier in the week that he is willing to hold a special session to continue discussions on school choice legislation if the governor were to call one for that purpose.
