AP: Freshmen legislators make their mark on education.

(Rep. Charles) Busby was tapped by leadership to carry the charter school bill in the House, and made the most of his opportunity. Though Democrats baited him in committee and during more than seven hours of debate on the House floor, Busby never lost his temper and was generally in command of the details of the legislation.

Other House Republican freshmen have also been influential on education matters, including Rep. Brad Mayo of Oxford and Rep. Pat Nelson of Southaven. Mayo carried other education bills this year. Nelson has played the role of maverick, serving as one of the chief vote-counters among charter school opponents in the 2012 session.

Pascagoula has a double dose of high-profile Republican freshmen, because Sen. Brice Wiggins also found success in the 2013 session as the Senate sponsor of an effort to create a limited state-funded prekindergarten program for the first time.

Another GOP newcomer, Sen. Angela Hill of Picayune, sponsored the bill that’s meant to improve literacy instruction in early grades and would flunk third-graders who couldn’t read on at least a basic level.

For other new Democrats, it’s harder to make an obvious mark, with the party in the minority in both chambers. The most vocal leaders among Democrats in the House have all been veterans. Some new Democrats have shown signs of promise, though, including Rep. Kevin Horan of Grenada, a former prosecutor.

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Gates: Odd coalition kills loan fee bill.

During the last week of the Mississippi legislative session, an odd coalition came together to help kill a controversial bill that would have allowed small loan companies to charge fees amounting to an annual percentage rate of up to 99 percent on loans from $500 to $4,000 that are mostly taken out by low-income, working people.

The Christian Action Commission of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, the Central Mississippi Tea Party, a conservative Republican lawmaker and some Democratic lawmakers all voiced opposition to Senate Bill 2571, the Mississippi Consumer Alternative Installment Act.

When the dust settled, the House recommitted the bill to committee, killing it for this legislative session.

It was refreshing to see diverse groups come together to try to stop a bad bill from becoming law.

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Compromise charter schools bill passes House, heads to Senate.

The House on Tuesday passed a charter schools bill 62-56 with, oddly, no debate or questions on House Bill 369, the “Charter Schools Act of 2013.”

The chamber’s first vote on the bill, on Jan. 24, came only after 10 hours of debate that ran into the wee hours of the morning.

The House action came after Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and other GOP Senate leaders backed down from their push for a more expansive charter schools bill and accepted the weaker House version.

Five Democrats voted for the bill; six Republicans against in the House.

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Plunkett: Dems, civil rights groups continue pushing “angry teacher” narrative in fight against student protection.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

Democrats in concert with left-leaning groups continue to promote the idea that if the legislature allowed local school boards to decide on armed protection of students a teacher might mentally snap and injure or kill a child.

The position indicates a severe lack of trust of teachers and their dedication to students livelihood. It also shows a mistrust of educators ability to safely handle a firearm, something that many of the thousands of them already do outside the classroom.

Civil rights groups and Democrats used this misguided tactic again on Thursday in fighting against Senate Bill 2659.

SB 2659 would provide funding for school resource officers to police around primary and secondary schools. The House version of the bill would allow local school boards to develop safety policies to arm administrative employees and teachers. The policy would have to be submitted to the State Board of Education and Department of Public Safety and would authorize school superintendents to allow their employees to carry a concealed weapon with the proper permit. Language for the House amendment was inserted from House Bill 958, which died in the Senate Education Committee.

House Democrat Adrienne Wooten went a step further and insulted parents saying they should be concerned about the bill, because parents don’t properly maintain good relationships with teachers.

“You don’t know enough about these individuals to feel safe knowing that they have a weapon around your child, let alone speak of where the weapon is going to be housed,” Wooten said.

Nsombi Lambright, formerly with the ACLU and now communications director for the liberal group One Voice, directly promoted the idea of the angry teacher while attempting to place “advocates” such as herself as the ones really concerned with students well-being.

“The proposal to bring more armed guards into schools and to arm teachers is like a slap in the face to us as advocates and to those of us who are parents and aunts and mentors to young people in Mississippi Schools,” Lambright said. “As the parent of a 15-year-old in the public school system, I know that the risk of him being harmed by an angry guard or an angry teacher is far greater than him being harmed by somebody who is coming into the school from the outside.”

One may easily view this as an isolated incident, except for the fact that Democrat Representative David Myers of McComb made the same argument a few weeks ago.

Democrats would do well to remember that many teachers already own guns and use them responsibly every day.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

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House nixes appointed Superintendents and ACT college entrance requirement for teachers.

Map of Mississippi highlighting DeSoto County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Senate Bill 2199, which was supposed to lead to more appointed superintendents around the state, lost on a 65-52 vote.

Members then voted 60-59 to amend Senate Bill 2658 to cut a requirement that students score at least 21 on the ACT college test to enter teacher preparation programs. The House left intact a requirement that a student earn a 3.0 GPA in high school.

Taken together, the votes could signal a limit on House members’ willingness to agree to all the education proposals being pushed by Republican leaders this year.

The second bill returns to the Senate for more work, so changes could be reversed in House-Senate conference.

Rep. Forrest Hamilton, R-Olive Branch, continued his fiery opposition to appointed superintendents. He represents DeSoto County, which is both Mississippi’s largest school district and one led by an elected superintendent.

“Quit trying to take the right of the people away in this bill,” Hamilton said, waving a flag and a Bible as he strode to the podium. “This is just a little bit of the noose around your neck. If they take my right away today, they’re going to take something away from you tomorrow.”

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Senate Committee adds school takeover language to HB 890.

State Seal of Mississippi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mississippi lawmakers are considering a sweeping plan that could remove more than 100 low-performing schools from local school board control for unknown periods of time.

The Senate Education Committee added the proposal to House Bill 890 Tuesday. It says the state Department of Education must take over any F-rated school that doesn’t reach a C rating after two years or any F-rated school that improves to C and then ever drops back to D or F.

The two-year clock would begin running with the ratings that follow the school year beginning next fall. That means takeovers could begin sometime after fall 2015.

Senate Education Chairman Gray Tollison, R-Oxford, said Thursday he intends to amend the law to make department takeovers optional and not required. Last fall, there were 127 F-rated schools in Mississippi, almost 15 percent of all 878 schools that were graded on the new A-to-F scale.

“You can’t take over all those, and I understand that,” Tollison said.

The state Department of Education, which proposed the new plan, said it intends takeovers to be optional. Larry Drawdy, the interim deputy superintendent running the current takeover process, said he hadn’t read the current language.

The change was rolled into a 108-page rewrite of a House bill that also includes plans for charter schools, higher entry requirements to public university teacher preparation programs and requirements to improve reading instruction.

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SB 2687 to bar government regulation of restaurant portion sizes moves to Guv’s desk.

The House passed the final version of Senate Bill 2687 on a 92-26 vote Wednesday. It bars local governments from requiring nutritional information, restricting portion sizes, or barring toys in kids’ meals.

The bill, introduced by Picayune Republican Sen. Tony Smith, is meant to keep Mississippi cities and counties from modeling rules after cities like New York. There, restaurants menus must display calorie counts and soft drinks are limited to 16 ounce servings.

Federal rankings show nearly 35 percent of Mississippi adults were very fat in 2011, worst in the nation. Opponents say local governments need to be able to fight obesity.

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State Retirement receives most of increased spending in FY ’14 budget proposals.

Mississippi lawmakers are pushing forward with early proposals for the budget year that begins July 1, and many agencies are likely to receive less money than they’re requesting.

The $5.5 billion spending plan will be about 1 percent bigger than it is now, with most of the increase going toward state employees’ retirement.

Education could receive slightly more money, with about $8 million penciled in for a limited program for pre-kindergarten. Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves also wants to spend about $7.5 million to help schools hire armed police officers — a proposal he made in response to the fatal shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Reeves said most agencies are likely to receive about the same amount of money as they’re receiving this year. Still, many had requested increases, so agency directors won’t be able to do everything they want.

“What you find is a very conservative budget,” Reeves told reporters Wednesday.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville, said House leaders identified $280 million worth of “critical needs,” but only $74 million of those would be covered under early budget proposals. For example, the Division of Medicaid says it needs nearly $124.7 million to cover program growth and increased medical costs, but the House proposal includes only an additional $32 million for the program.

Frierson told the House that lawmakers need to avoid expanding programs or cutting taxes. The House voted recently for a $5,000 across-the-board pay raise for teachers, but that is unlikely to be approved by the Senate or to appear in the final version of the budget.

“We can’t get out of this hole, y’all, if we keep digging,” Frierson said Wednesday.

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House committee votes for $184 million in bonds to invest in infrastructure improvement.

House committee members want the state to borrow more than $184 million, mainly for new buildings at Mississippi’s community colleges and public universities.

However, it remains unclear what Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves will agree to. In 2012, the House and Senate couldn’t agree how much to borrow, and the state authorized no new borrowing for the first time in at least 15 years.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed bills Tuesday to borrow $120 million for universities, $25 million for community colleges and $3 million for a statewide community college headquarters.

The panel also agreed to borrow $5 million to preserve historic sites and $250,000 to improve the Mississippi Crafts Center in Ridgeland.

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Speaker Gunn to Dems on Medicaid: Vote for House bill or Gov. Bryant will run the program.

The following is a Press Release issued by Speaker of the House Philip Gunn this afternoon:

This afternoon, the House Rules Committee called up and considered Senate Bill 2207 (SB2207), the Medicaid repealer extension bill passed by the Senate last week. The bill was tabled in committee and therefore will not move to the House floor for debate.

“The decision to kill the Senate Medicaid Technical bill was not made lightly,” said Speaker Gunn. “However, there are not enough votes in the House to expand Medicaid. Because of this, the House was faced with what would have been a long and divisive debate on the issue of expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, which would have served no purpose and would have ended with the bill being defeated. I said two weeks ago after House Democratic leadership advised its members to defeat the House Medicaid Technical bill that it was a misguided and premature decision on their part.

“Allowing Obamacare to expand Medicaid in Mississippi is not an option today,” he said.

Speaker Gunn said the House Democratic leadership has the opportunity to encourage House Democrats to vote with the House Republicans tomorrow and reconsider the House Medicaid Technical bill, House Bill 560 (HB560). This is the last option for the bill that gives Medicaid legislative oversight to survive. Without a technical bill, the Governor will have to run the Medicaid program by executive order.

“Until we have a clearer understanding of all the ramifications of Obamacare and its proposed expansion in Mississippi, there will not be a debate in the Mississippi House of Representatives,” continued Speaker Gunn.

Friday morning, House members will be asked to reconsider and pass HB560. The bill would essentially accomplish the same thing as SB2207. However the Senate bill, which does not have Medicaid expansion in it, would have allowed for an amendment to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

“House Bill 560 is carefully drafted to forbid Obamacare expansion; so, we find it prudent to discard the Senate bill and use our own instead,” said Speaker Gunn. “If HB560 passes, the Medicaid program will continue as it now exists. If it fails, Medicaid’s continued existence will be in doubt, and many of Mississippi’s children, patients in nursing homes and some of our most vulnerable citizens will be at risk.

“The Governor may well have to step in and run the program through executive order,” he said. “I encourage House members to pass HB560 tomorrow and move the process along to the Senate. This is the best course of action to continue providing services to the beneficiaries of the current Medicaid program.”

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