It’s National School Choice Week, and dozens of students, teachers and advocacy leaders are standing on the steps of the Mississippi Capitol.
They’re asking lawmakers to expand access to alternate forms of education, such as homeschooling, charter schools, and private institutions. Grant Callen is the CEO of Empower Mississippi, a conservative non-profit that has long advocated for school choice. He says public education isn’t enough for the diverse needs of students.
Callen says “Asking one school to meet the needs of every student in the community that often have really diverse needs, it’s just asking too much. And I think if you look across the state, you can see in some places traditional public school works wonderful and delivers a world-class education, and in other places, we struggle.”
Callen says the state could expand school choice opportunities, or make it easier for a charter school to get started.
Advocates for public education say the state shouldn’t direct funds away from public schools, which have not been fully funded in decades. Nancy Loome is Executive Director of the Parent’s Campaign, a non-profit focused on enhancing public education in Mississippi. She says the idea of school choice can often be misleading.
Loome says “The state is responsible for funding a system of schools that is open to all children. And unfortunately, private schools are not open to all children. They accept the children they want to teach and they decline to admit the children they don’t see as a good fit for them. So that’s not an acceptable use of our tax dollars.”
Last year a judge blocked the legislature from allocating $10 million in federal funding to private schools because it violated the state constitution.
