03/17/2023
March 17, 2023
The Legislative Report
The eleventh week of the 2023 Mississippi Legislative session involved floor meetings for both the House and the Senate. Appropriation and revenue bills were the main topic of the week as Tuesday, March 14 was the deadline for original floor action on those bills. Talk of an early end to the session has floated around the Capitol; however, there are still many decisions to be made which could keep legislators right up to or possibly past the SINE DIE date. Both the House and the Senate took up multiple bills during the week. On each bill listed below, the respective chamber voted not to concur and invited conference on the bill. This means that each side will have to name conferees on the bill. Those named individuals will then have to come together and attempt to work out details that each side can agree on. Those bills are:
SB 2079 – This bill is the Mississippi School Protection Act which would allow guardians to be named in school districts. These guardians would be armed teachers with the purpose of protecting those on each school campus during an emergency.
SB 2586 – This bill allows paraprofessionals to teach computer science at the elementary level. Any course that would award Carnegie units still must be taught by a licensed teacher.
SB 2749 – This bill is the school board member pay raise bill which aims to raise school board member pay to $4,000, $5,000, or $6,000, depending on the number of students in the district.
SB 2812 – This bill would extend the repeal date for subsection 4 of MS Code 37-17-13 and clarifies the definition of a community school.
HB 817 – This bill would increase minimum funding levels for each student enrolled in full-day early learning collaborative programs to $2,500 and half-day learning collaborative programs to $1,250.
HB 1613 – This is the appropriation bill for the Mississippi Department of Education. As discussed last week, HB 1613 contains the additional $181 million dollars aimed at fully funding the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP).
The Senate has not yet named their conferees to HB 1613. However, the House has named their conferees and those are:
John Read – House Appropriations Chair
Richard Bennett – House Education Chair
Casey Eure – House Gaming Chair
Thank you to everyone who contacted their legislators this week in support of fully funding MAEP. We received many emails from those who said they called in support of a fully funded formula. Please continue to contact your legislators on this and other important issues during the last few weeks of the legislative session.
Other Important Bills
Other important bills still remain on the respective calendars through the end of the week. These bills will likely be discussed in the upcoming days. We will be watching the outcome of each one. A few of those bills are:
SB 2333 – This bill requires schools to have individuals who can administer seizure rescue medication on campus and modifies who can deliver dyslexia instruction.
SB 2361 – This bill was the original vehicle for the Modified School Calendar Grant program but was replaced with the language from HB 1373 involving student leave for religious instruction.
HB 1369 – This bill would help provide for the full funding of the MAEP formula through minor tweaks to the formula itself. This is the partner bill to HB 1613. To see a detailed description of the proposed changes to the formula, refer to last week’s report.
HB 1365 – This bill would prohibit local school districts from using any state-funded increases to the minimum salary of assistant teachers as a substitute for the local contribution.
Deadlines
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 — Deadline for first consideration of conference reports on general bills and constitutional amendments.
Saturday, April 1, 2023 — Deadline to dispose of motions to reconsider conference reports on general bills and constitutional amendments.
Sunday, April 2, 2023 — SINE DIE
