Mississippians rallying for state lawmakers to oppose school choice

By Kathleen O’Beirne

Mississippi United

Mississippians from Gulfport to Tupelo wrote to all 174 members of the Mississippi State Legislature Tuesday, expressing their opposition to so-called “school choice” or school voucher programs. The Senate Education Committee already took up the issue on the first day of the 2026 session.

Through Mississippi United, a new network of Mississippians committed to taking action to move the state forward, more than 150 individuals called on the Legislature to focus its efforts on proven methods to improve public education, starting with teacher pay raises of at least $5,000, which would enable school districts to hire and retain the high quality educators the state’s children deserve. Even with the 2022 pay raise, Mississippi teachers continue to earn significantly less than their peers in neighboring states. Mississippians also urged investment in middle grades literacy, in order to continue the gains among elementary students reflected in the “Mississippi Miracle,” as well as funding from the state’s $3 billion reserves of taxpayer dollars to shore up aging school buildings and construct new ones in the state’s poorest communities. 

Although the actual bills voted on by the Senate Education Committee were kept secret from the public until Tuesday, Mississippi United’s letter to legislators expressed concern that any version of school choice the legislature ultimately considers – be it education savings accounts, public or private school “choice,” portability, vouchers, or anything similar – would be extremely expensive, would expand the state education bureaucracy, would take public resources away from addressing other needs (like healthcare and roads and bridges, for example), would exacerbate problems in those school districts that are already struggling by incentivizing high achieving students and their families to leave, and would not address debilitating teacher shortages throughout the state. Moreover, there is no data to demonstrate that overall student outcomes would improve or that student outcomes in lower performing schools would not decline. 

Ultimately the “choice” bill that advanced out of committee Tuesday, SB 2002, would allow a student to transfer from the public school district where he or she resides to another public school district, by obtaining approval from the receiving district and paying tuition to that district. Mississippi United opposes this bill for several reasons, including, first and foremost, that public school “choice” would automatically disadvantage those public school students without the resources to pay the “tuition” required to transfer to another district and would also therefore invite expensive litigation. Second, it is certain that rural districts in particular would suffer the most from losing students through public school “choice,” as the district would lose both the likely high-achieving student as well as the per pupil education funding for that student. In a rural school with a smaller population of students, per pupil funding makes up a much larger share of the school’s overall budget than in a school with many more students. Third, the Senate Education Committee presented no actual data to suggest that public school choice would necessarily improve outcomes for students choosing to transfer from one district to another or that such a policy would not jeopardize outcomes for students who remain in their home districts – whether their home districts tend to lose more students or gain students due to this policy. 

Finally, Mississippi United opposes public school “choice” as a solution to Mississippi’s education woes, because neither SB 2002 nor any other bill considered by the committee Tuesday does anything specifically to address the needs of students most likely to suffer under public school “choice” – those students already in underperforming districts and without the ability to take advantage of “choice.” 

Since September, Mississippi United has enabled nearly 500 Mississippians to make more than 34,000 contacts with 230 state and federal public officials concerning a variety of issues, including the negative financial impact on Mississippians from H.R. 1 (the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) and tariffs, extension of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, release of the Epstein files, investigation into the unprovoked attacks on civilian vessels in the Caribbean, protection of the First Amendment, respect for the rule of law and federal courts, the cruel nature of immigration enforcement, and the responsibility of Congress to conduct oversight of the Trump administration. 

Anyone interested in joining Mississippi United should send an email to mississippiunited1@gmail.com.