The Tate Reeves-led Mississippi Senate took a big step Wednesday to avoid a Special Session and, more importantly, end the chance of losing ground on one of conservatives’ main issues, that being charter schools.
As we noted was possible last week, State Senate Education Chair Sen. Gray Tollison offered an amendment on HB 1152 (conversion charter schools) to include the charter schools’ bill language with a few new twists aimed at recovering the ground lost last week in the House when the Education Committee killed the bill by a 15-16 vote with 5 Republicans (3 from education sensitive DeSoto County) defecting. At that time, Governor Phil Bryant threatened to call a Special Session within the regular session to handle the hot topic.
One of the primary compromise changes is that instead of successful districts being given a permanent veto, they will now be able to not approve charter schools until 2015 with a majority vote of the school board.
Another interesting point is that the bill does not include language pushed for by The Parents Campaign mandating proven-experience for charter school operators. Watch for this group and others sympathetic to their cause (Superintendents, etc.) to raise more than a little sand with this as well as the process being used to push this through toward a vote.
The amendment (sub) was passed by a voice vote and the bill was adopted by a vote of 31-19. Most importantly, the Republicans seem to be crawling back on top of the correct narrative. The debate now is about giving parents and kids who are imprisoned in underperforming schools options to help themselves. By giving higher performing districts an opt-out, Republicans should effectively neuter “Big Education” influence and get the narrative back to helping kids in need.
Now it will move to the House for consideration where the full membership will have the opportunity to vote on charter schools. Republicans will now have to whip together their votes and seek to end the defections given their slim majority.
Five votes now makes a huge difference.
