Mississippi Legislature passes K-12 education funding, transgender bills. See what else

While state lawmakers left several bills on the table this year, including Medicaid expansion and reinstating a ballot initiative process, several major items such K-12 education funding, state retirement plan reforms and LGBTQ bills have been approved and passed on to the governor to become law.

Some of the most impactful bills passed this session, include a historic rewrite of the state's K-12 education funding formula, further legislative oversight for the Public Employment Retirement System of Mississippi and legislation to restrict where transgender people can use the restroom and public facilities on college campuses.

All three of those bills were negotiated between the House and Senate for months and all three originally died by legislative deadlines to pass them onto the governor's desk.

After the apparent demise, lawmakers passed several resolutions suspending the rules of the Legislature to take those bills back to House and Senate negotiators to come up with a last-minute compromise.

Below is a look into those bills and how they got passed.

Mississippi Student Funding Formula

After months of what some lawmakers called a stalemate between the Senate and the House leaderships' positions, lawmakers passed the Mississippi Student Funding Formula, funding K-12 education with $2.95 billion this coming fiscal year.

Before MSFF, the two chambers had competing versions of education funding. The House had passed the INSPIRE Act, a $3.001 billion funding model that utilized weighted funding criteria to assist poorer school districts fund students with certain disabilities, as well as weights for districts with career tech courses and high achieving students.

More on INSPIRE Act MS lawmakers still can't agree how to fund K-12 education. House reintroduces its own plan

The funding lawmakers would pass each year would have came from a committee of education professionals to recommend funding changes to lawmakers.

The Senate passed a revised version of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the formula that has been in place since 1997 and only fully funded twice. That bill would have increased funding from last year by a significant amount, totaling up to $2.94 billion.

MAEP uses an objective formula based on student attendance and other factors to calculate a based student cost. It also included an inflation factor that would adjust the funding amount based on the economy and overall value of the American dollar.

Those two funding methods caused a pivotal point of contention that led Senate leadership not to even consider the INSPIRE Act by a legislative deadline. To try and keep the legislation alive, the House passed the Senate MAEP bill, but they reworked the bill to be the INSPIRE Act in all but name.

That bill also died on the Senate floor when Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, killed the bill with a motion not to concur with the House changes.

After House leadership said they would leave the Capitol without an education funding package if Senate negotiators didn't come to the table, both chambers passed the Mississippi Student Funding Formula. That bill includes the weights from the House plan, as well as an objective funding formula and an inflation factor.

Read about MSFF MS Legislature passes historic education funding model, sends to governor's desk

PERS reform

Earlier in the session, legislative leadership touted PERS reform as a top priority.

Those statements came alongside several municipal leaders throughout the state calling for action to eliminate a move made by the PERS board in 2023 that would address $25 billion in liabilities within the state retirement fund but would cost public employers millions.

To answer those concerns, the House passed a bill to eliminate contribution rate increase set to take effect July 1 on public employers and replace all but two elected members of the nine-person PERS board with appointees from Gov. Tate Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

However, Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg, let the bill die in his committee by a legislative deadline because he believed the bill was a hasty decision based on information that might tell the whole story of PERS.

More on original PERS bill Mississippi lawmakers, state retirement leaders disagree over bill to take over PERS system

About a month later, both chambers voted to bring up the bill again and passed legislation to replace the PERS employer 2% rate increase with a 0.5% increase over the next four years. The bill also states that any rate increases need two actuarial reports to recommend them and it must be approved by the Legislature.

More on PERS legislation MS Legislature passes bill restricting state retirement board's authority

Transgender bill

After efforts to restrict legal recognition of transgender people and keep them from using all state-controlled gender-assigned facilities that match how they identify, such as bathrooms, locker rooms and college dorms had died early last week, both chambers came to a compromise.

That compromise included a bill that dictates transgender people must public facilities on college campuses such as bathrooms and changing rooms, that are for their gender of birth.

Rep. Joey Hood, R-Ackerman, said he plans to expand the bill's scope to include other state owned buildings.

More about Senate Bill 2753 MS Legislature passes transgender bathroom restriction bill

Grant McLaughlin covers state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Mississippi education funding, transgender bills pass Legislature