For most Jews, education is a top priority. That’s one of the reasons our community engagement efforts are often focused on issues related to education—including the fact that throughout the nation, public schools are woefully underfunded.
Right now, there is an effort underway in Mississippi to make an “adequate” education a constitutional right. In 1997, the legislature passed the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), a law that creates a formula to distribute adequate funds to school boards to be used to ensure an adequate education for all Mississippi children.
While the formula remains the law in Mississippi, there is no requirement that the legislature fund education according to that formula. In fact, this formula has only been fully funded twice and, in 2014, the gap between the funds necessary to adequately fund education and the funds that are designated by the legislature for education has widened starving Mississippi’s educational institutions.
Mississippi’s registered voters have the power to put an important issue to a vote through a ballot initiative called Better Schools Better Jobs-a petition to place a referendum on the 2015 ballot that will require the Legislature to fully fund education according to the formula set out in MAEP. If the 110,000 required signatures are collected, voters will be empowered to decide whether to amend the Mississippi constitution to require the adequate funding of education.
For Mississippians who can potentially take part in this effort, you can learn more about Better Schools Better Jobs here.
That’s what’s going on where I live, and one way my fellow citizens here can keep the activist spirit of Freedom Summer alive. Do you know whether education is adequately funded in your state? Please let us know what people in your state are doing to ensure that all children receive, at minimum, an adequate education.
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