Under pressure: Some Mississippi educators told to stay quiet on school funding battle
"Maybe I’m crazy to speak out. But ... this is a big moment in public education. It’s a time to have all hands on deck."
JACKSON, Miss — Meridian High School science teacher William Tucker has a sign promoting Initiative 42 in his front yard. He hands out pro-42 stickers and speaks out at public forums, urging people to support changing the state’s constitution to boost funding for its struggling public schools. For Tucker, the fight is personal: a lack of funding limits his ability to prepare a generation of students for college or the workforce.
Tucker says his science labs haven’t been updated in decades and his textbooks are the same he used in 2006, the year he graduated from Meridian High. The school’s sputtering computers are nearly a decade old. When the class dissects fetal pigs, pigeons, sharks and other specimens, students work in groups of between four and six to save money.
“I know how important this is because I see these kids every day,” he said. “I see what we are working with, and I know what we could do with the right resources.”
Tucker feels justified expressing support for the legislation that he believes will funnel more funding to his school. Yet he’s among the Mississippi educators, including teachers and superintendents who say they’ve been pressured to keep quiet about Initiative 42, which will be on the ballot on Nov. 2 along with a competing amendment filed by lawmakers who are against 42 and want to keep funding fully in the hands of legislators.
Emotions are high in the weeks before voters will be asked to choose between 42 – which calls for a constitutional amendment to require the state to fund an “adequate and efficient” system of public school districts by 2022 – and 42A, which would nullify the effort by keeping funding as it is.
If 42 passes, funding would be determined using the Under pressure: Some Mississippi educators told to stay quiet on school funding battle - The Hechinger Report: