A judge’s ruling last week to block the effort by the Mississippi Legislature to gift private schools with $10 million of the state’s pandemic relief allocation is no reflection on these schools.
It is a reflection, though, on the capacity of the Republican-controlled Legislature to ignore long-established law when it suits its political purposes.
There is no way the legislation should have ever gotten out of committee, much less through both the House and Senate. Even if the backers of the appropriation had all the best intentions — and that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt — the Mississippi Constitution is unequivocal in forbidding what they devised. Specifically, it prohibits the use of public money for any school that is not a “free school.”
The private schools probably knew the grant program — which would have allowed them to apply for up to $100,000 for water, broadband and other infrastructure projects — would not fly. That would explain why, as of the day last week in which Hinds County Chancery Judge Crystal Wise Martin issued her ruling to block the potential grants, not a single eligible school had submitted an application for any of the money.
A coalition of public education and public interest groups joined to challenge the law in court. They saw in the Legislature’s effort a repeat of this state’s dark days, when white lawmakers became antagonistic to public schools because of federal mandates that they be desegregated in the 1960s and early 1970s. The plaintiffs pointed out that at the same time lawmakers created a grant program for private schools, they voted to award only loans to public schools for infrastructure improvements. That disparate treatment alone didn’t smell right.
The plaintiffs’ criticism, though, is not a totally fair characterization of the prevailing sentiment in today’s Legislature, which is generally supportive of public education, as evidenced by the unusually large teacher pay raise also enacted this year.
What is fair to say, though, is the judge’s decision is a victory for the rule of law. The Legislature ignored the state Constitution, and it got its hand called for it. It should not have expected any differently.
