JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Supreme Court docket is scheduled to listen to arguments Tuesday in a dispute over a state regulation that may put $10 million of federal pandemic aid cash into infrastructure grants for personal faculties.
Hinds County Chancery Decide Crystal Sensible Martin blocked the regulation in October 2022 after Dad and mom for Public Colleges sued the state. The nonprofit group argued the grants would give non-public faculties a aggressive benefit over public faculties.
“Any appropriation of public funds to be acquired by non-public faculties adversely impacts faculties and their college students,” Martin wrote. “Taxpayer funding for schooling is finite.”
The lawsuit cited a bit of the Mississippi Structure that prohibits the usage of public cash for any college that isn’t “a free college.”
Throughout the 2022 legislative session, Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Home and Senate made plans to spend many of the $1.8 billion that the state acquired for pandemic aid.
One invoice signed by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves created a grant program to assist non-public faculties pay for water, broadband and different infrastructure initiatives. One other allotted the $10 million of federal cash for this system as of July 1, 2022.
This system allowed grants of as much as $100,000 to any in-state college that could be a member of the Midsouth Affiliation of Impartial Colleges and is accredited by a state, regional or nationwide group.
Public faculties couldn’t apply for the infrastructure grants. Legislators created a program to offer interest-free loans to public faculties to enhance buildings and different amenities, with cash coming from the state. These loans have to be repaid inside 10 years. The grants to personal faculties wouldn’t have to be repaid.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, the Mississippi Middle for Justice and Democracy Ahead filed the lawsuit in June 2022 on behalf of Dad and mom for Public Colleges, an advocacy group based greater than 30 years in the past.
“The truth that the non-public college funding at difficulty right here originated with federal funds makes no distinction,” attorneys representing Dad and mom of Public Colleges wrote in papers filed with the state Supreme Court docket. “These explicit federal funds turned a part of the state treasury, and the Legislature selected to spend them to assist faculties — and, extra particularly, non-public faculties.”
The non-public faculties’ infrastructure grant program was to be overseen by the Mississippi Division of Finance and Administration.
Representing DFA, the state lawyer normal’s workplace wrote in a submitting to the Supreme Court docket that public college college students “have benefited massively — and, in comparison with non-public college college students, lopsidedly” from federal pandemic aid cash.
State attorneys additionally wrote that the Mississippi Structure solely blocks the Legislature from sending cash immediately to personal faculties.
“It doesn’t bar the Legislature from appropriating funds to an company with instructions to assist non-free faculties,” the state attorneys wrote.
The chancery choose, Martin, wrote in her ruling that Mississippi’s public schooling system has been “chronically underfunded.” A 1997 state regulation established a components referred to as the Mississippi Sufficient Schooling Program, supposed to make sure faculties obtain sufficient cash to fulfill midlevel tutorial requirements. Legislators have absolutely funded the components solely two years.
