More than a year after the last action in the case, Mississippi Supreme Court justices will hear arguments from both sides of a lawsuit that seeks to require the state to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program.
Former Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove filed the lawsuit on behalf of 21 school districts, including Jackson Public Schools, in 2014. Hinds County Chancery Judge William Singletary ruled against Musgrove and the school districts in 2015, stating that the Legislature is not required to fully fund the school funding formula every year.
The lawsuit also sought for the state to repay the districts the amount they had been underfunded according to the formula. The MAEP has been fully funded only twice since becoming law in 1997.
The plaintiffs appealed Singletary’s ruling and are seeking a favorable decision from the Supreme Court.
Arguments will begin at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. Each side will have 30 minutes.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.