School funding ballot issue Initiative 42 fails

Voters on Tuesday night rejected Initiative 42, a proposed constitutional amendment supporters hoped would force lawmakers to fully fund public schools after nearly 18 years of underfunding.

Unofficial results show the amendment failed the first hurdle it needed to pass: for a majority of people to vote to change the state constitution. With 84 percent of precincts reporting, 54 percent voted against changing the state constitution, according to unofficial results. Forty-six percent voted to change the constitution.

“We’re pleased with the outcome, and we feel like our message resonated with Mississippi voters,” Russ Latino, the head of the anti-42 group Kids First Mississippi, said. “… Mississippians have made the right decision for our kids and for our schools.”

Better Schools, Better Jobs Communications Director Patsy Brumfield said that while "it appears that we won't get where we want to go," this won't be the end of the fight.

"When you look at that up and down vote, we actually won that vote," Brumfield said, referring to the results showing more people voted for Initiative 42 than the alternative. "But the confusion with the ballot caused folks to just not know what to do."

Citing the underfunding of the MAEP, or the formula that stipulates how much money school districts need to provide an adequate education to students, Initiative 42 supporters said the new constitutional language would have made the Legislature follow the law. Opponents, including Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn and other Republican leaders, say it would have transferred authority traditionally held by the Legislature to the courts.

Bryant in the weeks leading up to the election called the amendment the “largest transfer of political power” in the state’s history.

If Initiative 42 had passed, the state constitution would have read that the state (replacing the Legislature) is required to provide an adequate and efficient system of public schools and gives the chancery court the ability to enforce that requirement. It was expected the courts would use the MAEP to determine the meaning of adequacy in “adequate and efficient” public education system, though opponents said that was not a guarantee.

Mississippi’s constitution currently requires the Legislature to provide a free system of public schools “upon such conditions and limitations as the Legislature may prescribe,” giving lawmakers significant wiggle room. It also doesn’t make any mention of the quality of that education, making Mississippi one of only a few states not to set a quality benchmark.

Initiative 42 was born out of a petition that gathered nearly 200,000 signatures in early 2014, which cleared the way for it to appear on the ballot. The Legislature then voted to add its own alternative amendment, known as Initiative 42A.

Rep. Greg Snowden, R-Meridian, authored the alternative and is one of the more outspoken opponents of Initiative 42. Snowden said he presented the alternative, the first in the state’s history, to generate debate about what Initiative 42 would do.

Snowden said 42A, which states that “The Legislature shall … provide for the establishment, maintenance and support of an effective system of free public schools,” would keep traditional funding and policy decisions with the Legislature. He has also said the term “effective” would set a higher bar than “adequate and efficient.”

Critics have said the Legislature only brought forth 42A to split the vote and defeat Initiative 42, not to pass the alternative.

Contact Kate Royals at (601) 360-4619 or kroyals@gannett.com. Follow @KRRoyals on Twitter.