The education nonprofit working with Mississippi to rewrite the state’s school funding formula visited the Pascagoula Gautier School District and schools in Lamar County and Ocean Springs on Tuesday.

Pascagoula Gautier District Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich posted on Facebook that Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, set up a meeting for the district with EdBuild.

“It was good to give the perspective of one of the most diverse districts in Mississippi,” Rodolfich wrote in his post. “We talked graduation rates, English Learners, Super Saturdays, Star Bus, strategic planning, our bandwidth expansion, technology trainings for other districts, and our over 600 home visits for struggling readers this year.”

House Speaker Philip Gunn also tweeted about the group’s meeting at Oak Grove Primary School in Hattiesburg, calling it “productive.”

The Sun Herald reported Sibilia visited Ocean Springs Upper Elementary to look at the school’s programs and “how they fit into the current funding formula.”

EdBuild CEO Rebecca Sibilia and other representatives also visited Madison County School District last month while in town for the first public hearing.

No dates have been set for future public meetings with the group, though the legislative leadership says they hope to have a bill based on EdBuild’s recommendations ready for the 2017 session.


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Kate Royals is a Jackson native and returned to Mississippi Today as the lead education reporter after serving in the same capacity from 2016 to 2018. Prior to that, she was a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger covering education and state government. She won awards for her investigative work, including stories about the state’s campaign finance laws and prison system. She was a news producer at MassLive in Springfield, Mass., after graduating from Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communications with a master’s degree in communications.