Mississippi Speaker of the House Jason White is one of the state’s leading proponents of school choice in the State Legislature. Over recent months, he has been on a statewide tour touting what he says are the benefits of giving parents greater flexibility in where their children attend school.
In September, White sat down with the Daily Journal to discuss the topic, which he hopes will gain traction during the next legislative session, which begins in January.
The interview below has been edited for both space and clarity.
Q. Are you looking for a full open enrollment model like some states have?
A. We are looking at that. The House actually passed that last year, and we called it “open enrollment” or “portability.” Several of our southern states have that. Arkansas has always had it … You can go to any public school you want to; just show up. It’s not even a capacity issue. It’s so accepted that it’s not even thought about anymore.
I like to frame my words on this topic of portability, school choice — whatever you want to call it — and let people know this: My mom taught English at Kosciusko Junior High School for 35 years. I grew up in a public school system. My dad was vocational director at Holmes Junior College back then; it’s now Community College. But I’m saying that’s the world I grew up in. My sister’s even an elementary school teacher, now principal, for 30 years. She’s retired from Kosciusko Lower Elementary, where she was principal all those years and she’s now at MDE — she’s the statewide reading and literacy coordinator for the entire state. So this isn’t about some assault on public schools
That usually at least gets me in the door to speak with somebody. “He may not be doing right, but he knows right,” “He was raised in a public school,” and that sort of thing. Kosciusko has always had a long, good record for good public schools and good ratings, good leadership.
The portability piece seems to have drawn as much backlash or negativity as any talks about an ESA — or voucher as some people call them — going from a public school to private school. There seems to be as much pushback, or questions or concerns about just simple public-to-public transfer or open enrollment — or portability as many states call it. We passed that bill in the House last year. That was allowed only in D or F districts. If you were a student in D or F district, and you could convince some other public school to accept you, and that school board accepted you, your home district couldn’t hold you hostage. We have some portability now; you just have to get your home district to release you.
The state portion follows the child as well, which is several thousand dollars. It’s just the state portion. You don’t get either the local supplement from that other local district or from your own. You just get the state portion and the charges (tuition) .. and that’s what most other states do. It’s just that most people that get that nod are either politically connected to where they’re going or coming from.
Q. So it’s a quasi-private model for the public school
A. But it’s very rare to get released. Now, I have found that our high schools on the coast, more than any other, there seems to be no friction there. If somebody wants to leave Biloxi and go to Ocean Springs or go to Hancock or wherever, they all release them. They’re busting at the seams anyway. If a family shows up and says, “We want to go,” (then) go. I’m still getting your property taxes, and I have all I can handle anyway.”
But you understand, and you know this, there are certain regions of the state, and they’re not letting anybody go, period. The school board has made that decision. And I’m not saying it’s a bad one. Their duty is to run a school system. I have a little different duty to voters and taxpayers than they might have. And even my duties may be different from what superintendents’ goals are and the school board.
Q. Do you envision Mississippi’s version of school choice as a voucher model or ESA model?
A. I think that we expand our current ESA model, and it would also include some portion of that public-to-public portability piece.
But again, the receiving school holds all the cards on that issue. If a receiving school says, “We don’t have the capacity for out-of-district, we’re doing all we can do to handle ours,” then that’s it. That’s the way other states do it, and there’s no questions asked and that’s the end of that.
We’re not looking to force an outside-your-district kid into your school district if you don’t want to accept it. But there are places where their facilities reflect a time when they had way more students, their city was larger, the county had more stuff going on. Now, they have the capacity, they don’t have the students. They might be willing to say, “Hey, we can take 50 students, and if we get just the state portion, which is $8,000-$10,000, we’ll take all the kids we can take; we’ll take 100 kids there.”
Q. (Tupelo Public School District Superintendent Rob) Picou said if it’s 100% of the money following, ‘We’ll take all we can take and start adding on.’
A. Oh, it will be 100%, but here’s how it’s going to work …
Q. What is 100% right now, roughly?
A. Every school is different. Here’s the catch all the way round: (For example) your people in Tupelo, they may say, more so than others, “We’re willing to put our money where our mouth is. We’ve got good leaders, good teachers, we’re willing to pay our teachers a little more than X school district.” And that’s reflected in their budgets and your peoples’ taxes. And your people have decided in this community of having a quality, A-rated school is at the top of their list. Other places, for whatever reasons, that is not their priority.
Now, it also has to do with leadership. You can probably look at your average per-people cost in the Tupelo School District, and it’s probably significantly less than the F districts. So, big spending doesn’t equal A students. Now, there’s a level that everybody’s got to get to have something adequate for their students. I’m saying y’all probably do a better job of managing your money where you’re not the top spender but it’s robust. We’re seeing $15,000-$16,000 in some places, and they tend to be the worst districts.
This is not about running students away or tearing down the great gains we’ve had in our public schools as we are measured nationally. But, I need places like Tupelo to understand that this is the exception. This is not what it looks like in the majority of our communities in this state. What y’all have is what I wish everybody else had. It’s probably what they want, but it’s not what they have.
Even here, there may be a parent — they may have four kids and three of them thrive in Tupelo and the other needs or wants something different. I just think we’re at a place in our state, especially when we’re surrounded by states that offer full universal school choice, we need to play in this place in some form. Even if it’s just that — the state portion (of funding) is what I envision following the child.
In other words, If there’s a public school student that wants to go to a private school, only the state portion follows the student, what we’re calling the base student cost.
Q. Does the money follow in Year 1?
A. Yes. You would keep your money in Tupelo. There would be a year lag. In other words, if that student selected and went to TCPS, the base student cost is all that would follow the child, not even the full state share.
Q. So the local portion …
A. Would stay (with the old school). And not all the state money, just the base student cost of our new formula, which this year is around $6,600 and some change. But none of this is set in stone. We don’t even have a bill yet.
Most other places they just picked a number and decided it’s $6,000 or $8,000.
Q. We looked it up and it depended by state. Some were using ESAs, some were using vouchers and you took it with you. ESAs are a little scary because how do you audit that? How do you manage that?
A. There is an approved list, and there’s going to be a third party. We envision running that through the state treasurer’s office. Just like they manage accounts and other things, they’ll be on the hook. They can do it internally themselves and hire staff to do it, or they can contract it out. But all of that will have to be vetted properly. And other states have been able to do that without much fraud and abuse.
Q. Will the schools get to decide which children they can accept or deny going there?
A. Yes.
Q. So if a kid applies and a school doesn’t want him, but it wants somebody else, they can decide which one?
A. Certainly a private school has that option now, the right to refuse anybody in any way. Now, this complicates this entire situation because of our Black-white population, our ugly history from 50 years ago, there’s no denying that.
When you boil all that down and when we have 79 Republicans and all but one are white, and we have 41 Democrats in the House, all but one are Black, and we have two independents, one is Black and one is white. So, when you boil that all down, the issue all of a sudden doesn’t become Republican-Democrat; it turns to this Black-white thing, so it makes this conversation extremely complicated from a statewide basis.
Now, that’s really not the issue in Tupelo. The issue in Tupelo is more about, ‘We have good public schools, and Jason, there are some guardrails that are fixing to come off. You’re moving the cheese around, and we don’t know what it looks like. I know what I got now is excellent. When you do this other thing, I don’t know what that does to us.’
Q. Let’s say there’s an average of an 18-1 student-to-teacher ratio in Tupelo. Suddenly, 200 kids from the county want to come to Tupelo. Is Tupelo going to get to say how many of those 200 they can take, or do they have to take the 200?
A. No. Different states have done it in different ways. (Some use) a case-by-case basis. But some boards are afraid of that because you might pick the white guy and not the Asian guy. So because of that, they can go in and say, ‘Our schools are pretty robust and we can take 50 kids this year,’ and they just put in the minutes. So the superintendent and everybody knows we’re not fixing to blow this thing out of the water. We can take 50, and we’ll see what we get.
We’ve been quietly having this conversation with folks that I consider the best school districts because I’m very interested. I don’t want to do anything that blows them up or messes them up.
The bill that the House passed this year gave everybody that straight-out ‘We’re just opting out of this part.’ But if somebody does take a child and says, ‘OK, yeah, you want to come here for Saltillo, we’ll let you in Tupelo Public Schools,’ you’re going to get that state portion to follow that child …
Q. And that’s that $6,600?
A. No, that’s the base student cost. Base student cost is where we start on the state side figuring out what it costs to educate a kid. There’s the base student cost and then there’s all those like English learner, CTE, poverty, sparsity, all that stuff. There’s a number and out of that number, the law says the state has to provide 73%. No local is on the hook for more than 27%. And it greatly benefits places like Tupelo.
Q. When you’ve spoken to lawmakers in other states, with these rules in place, how have these school districts made those choices fairly. I’m sure there’s always going to be accusations of why one kid is picked and another is not. If it’s not a first-come, first-serve, how do you do that fairly?
A. Let me first say this about open enrollment from public to public. Even in places that allow, it’s almost nonexistent. It doesn’t happen because people prefer their local public school as long as it’s decent and good. It’s usually the parents that went to the school, and statistics bear that out. Even in Arizona, where you hear these different horror stories, they have full-blown universal school choice and you get the full voucher.
Even in Arizona, the take rate is just a little over 7%. So 93% of students stay and do what they’ve been doing.
The public-to-public thing hasn’t been an issue in other states. What is an issue — what you call a voucher, we call ESA, whatever you call it — is public to private. Let’s say a Tupelo Public School student does go to Tupelo Christian, and we have some sort of school choice model. There is funding that does not go to Tupelo; that state share is not going to Tupelo. Now, I can make a counter-argument that that’s one less kid you have to educate. But you’re still getting that 23% of the local money. And whatever might come with that, like a better student-teacher ratio or whatever.
If you have school choice, we are able as policymakers to do away with much of the testing. Because now, I don’t have to be as rigorous to know what Tupelo’s rating is. Here’s why: If parents don’t like it, and don’t think Suzy is getting a good education, they can take their money — at least the state portion — and go somewhere else.
Q. Along those lines, what about getting rid of the A to F model of the system; the Department of Education can’t do it. It’s got to be the state legislature.
A. You’re fixing to see a big push to do just that. We’re going to get rid of our testing through eighth grade. In other words you’re going to test third grade for reading literacy. But other than that, we’re going to get rid of all that testing. Once you’re in ninth grade, most parents don’t even know they’re taking that standardized test. But third through eighth grade, they shut down schools for weeks at a time to get ready.
Q. The follow-up question is, if you’re not getting rid of that A-F system, shouldn’t any private school that will get public money have to now follow the testing so they get graded?
A. That is a legitimate concern. Here’s how I would answer that. No. 1, part of this school reform package is doing away with all testing through eighth grade other than the third grade reading gate. And a total tweaking of our accountability. Here’s what we’re kicking around: This idea of an accountability model and blowing it up in such a way — and again, these are just in their infant stage of conversation. Let’s say everybody now is at least taking the ACT as high school juniors. If you’re at a certain number, that’s the end of it. I don’t need to know anything else. We decide on a standard bearer there and that’s it.
We would have to decide what is that for the ACT. Used to be, there were some minimums. Now I think colleges take just about anybody under any set of circumstances. We’ve got to decide what that number is, and then based on that, if your school is hitting whatever that (number) is, I don’t need to know anything else. I want your superintendent, principals and teachers to educate your kids, and I think the community will tell us where the good ones and bad ones are. If you see 200-300 kids flocking from a school, to me, even Barney would call that a clue. Something’s not good over here if these people are looking for any way out of whatever this is.
Q. We have a lot of declining populations, and those places still have public schools. Rightly or wrongly, some families have the means to travel outside of their county even to send their kids to private school or another public school. How do you handle the ones that don’t have the means or the ability to get to a better choice, if what they got is just failing to the point that the schools are financially in desperate shape, and then they’re really failing those families?
A. That is a legitimate issue. It goes to the heart of the whole school choice versus non-school-choice model in that you’ve seen cities, counties, areas in our state where population shrinks. Like the city of West, where I lived, a town of 300. It peaked in the late 1950s. It had a movie theater at one time, three gas stations, three banks, all these other things. The last thing to go was the school in the late 1970s because it was protected from that.
Expand that to larger areas of our state where it might even be a county seat … the one thing that’s still there is (the school), is the largest employer, it’s the one place where the community does rally. So, they’re going to have to step up their game to keep their people.
I will say the ones that are doing a good job, that is what’s holding the community together. But if it’s an artificial hold because they have no other choice, and it’s not a good school, should I hold those parents hostage there who are willing to drive their kid and have the means or fortitude to do it because I’m afraid a few kids are going to get left behind. I don’t know if it’s my job to prop up a bad school.
Q. How do you deal with special education? With federal dollars, if you’re a kid dealing with dyslexia or other things where federal dollars supplement, how will that supplement be handled if they choose to go to a private school?
A. In most models, the dollars follow the student. Wherever they’re going, that school is going to have to have a curriculum accredited with that particular thing. There aren’t many, but there are a few specialty schools in our state that do deal specifically with that. There’s a school on the coast, one in Hattiesburg, Magnolia Speech in Madison — they have some capacity in those places. There may be a few others.
Q. Are the ESAs being audited by the state auditor?
A. They’re run by MDE … we have a waiting list on ESAs because we only allow so many slots. We agreed this year to fund the waiting list, and everybody who’s been waiting to get their ESAs for their special needs child. But the Senate didn’t even take that bill up for voting in committee.
Here’s the other chilling effect we’ve had on ESAs: To get the votes to make it pass, the folks that wouldn’t vote for it, this was the death knell for it: The family has to front the money, then they get reimbursed. So that in and of itself for a long time had a chilling effect. That’s why you have to get a third party like the state’s treasurer’s office … we’re not married to that. We just thought that’s the place for some accountability.
Q. Some of the states, when they opened it up, had so many kids moving that it was too much for them to handle the funding to make it all work. Have you thought of some means testing?
A. We will have caps on ours. Alabama did theirs and appropriated $150 million. They used every dollar in the first year and they had to come back the next year. But they have a $10 billion education trust fund that we don’t have.
Q. What do you mean we’re going to cap it?
A. Our ESA program will have 12,000 slots.
Here’s how I envision it: Now again, it’s a long way from the governor’s signature and becoming law. This is how other states have done it — you set aside half of that number for low-income, maybe kids living in poverty, and then the other half is everybody (else), and those slots are filled up with no income requirements or restrictions, and you have a lottery, which is what other states have done.
Q. If you are for school choice and opening it up, and I’m ready to move my kid from a subpar school to another school, maybe even in another county, is there a chance that I can’t move my kid because the state won’t let me because there’s not a slot for me.?
A. Yes. Now, I’m banking on a couple of things there. First, we’ve seen no other state have participation of greater than 7-8%. That’s in places that have had it for 10-15 years. But it’s kind of like the income tax. I would have liked to have done away with it this year. But we didn’t get into this overnight. I think parameters are a good thing, and to be honest, it’s fair to our current system the way it’s run. People have planned — they’ve built schools and done things like bus fleets and whatever you want to say — based on what they’re foreseeing five to 10 years out. Hopefully they have long-term vision. I’m not looking to blow that up overnight.
I kind of feel like we would phase it in maybe start at 12,000, add a couple thousands kids a year for three or four years after that and see where it goes.
From just a total spend standpoint in the state budget, if a public school kid goes from public to private the state was already spending money on that kid. So that’s not new dollars. But for whatever number are already in private school have availed themselves to this, that is new money. If you said universal school choice, we’d have 43,000 kids showing up wanting their $6,600.
Q. So if I’m a parent and send my two boys to private school, I can now apply for that $6,600 or whatever that number is for each one of them that I was paying out of pocket already?
A. Correct.
Q. So if you means test it, that stops that.
A. Well, I think we would reserve half that.
Q. So that increases the state budget. If every kid in private school applies for the money, how many kids is that?
A. About 43,000. And we haven’t even talked about homeschooled kids.
Q. An issue is that ESA money can be spent on non-school activities.
A. We’re only talking about $1,000 for a homeschool family. Some states have gone as much as $2,000 per kid and capping it at a family of four.
You’re going to see in this same bill, the Tim Tebow bill which will allow homeschoolers to participate in extracurricular activities at their local public schools as long as they meet all the requirements.
The good school districts, I haven’t gotten pushback on that. Here’s what I know: If I get that homeschool kid here to come to the soccer team or golf team or whatever, all of a sudden they figure out having peers and all, they want to go to school here. It’s almost like a recruiting tool.
Q. Speaking of athletics. Tupelo is well-funded; for example. What keeps them from going around and saying this particular school has a great quarterback, or we want the great offensive lineman from here, we want the running back from there — come to our school instead and they start hand picking the best athletes. Is that open season?
A. Our bill specifically says that MHSAA shall maintain eligibility rules. Here’s the rule for public and private, but not between the two. But they each individually enforce it. If you start in ninth grade, unless there’s a bonafide move to another school district, you sit out a year. And that was before school choice was ever part of the conversation. A lot of that goes on right now.
Our thought was we simply didn’t want anyone to single out if there was a kid and went public to public; if he wants public to private, it’s a non issue. Or if you go private to public, nobody cares. They’ll let you go in the middle of football season if you want that.
But going public to public; let’s say we have the portability piece where you can go to any district as long as they’ll take you, and certainly they’re going to take a 4-star quarterback or the 36 ACT. He started in ninth grade, he’ll sit out a year. If he hadn’t, he’s a young budding superstar and he’ll make it without having to sit out. Unless they moved; if they moved they’re now just a resident and they’re not even in the ESA program.
Now we’ve talked about, even if they started in ninth grade, they get one free transfer. But the more I met with school boards, they would bring up athletics more than anything else.
So, I think it will have a chilling effect to some extent on public to public if the kid started in ninth grade, but I also know people get around that now by renting an apartment or moving in with a grandmother.