Mississippi is bleeding out, hemorrhaging educators fed up with unlivable wages as students across the state suffer from underfunded schools and racial bias. For centuries, Mississippi has underfunded public education, and as a result has remained one of the poorest, unhealthiest and economically stagnant states in the country. Mississippi legislators who deprive public schools of the resources they need are making a clear statement: They represent the white, wealthy and privileged — no one else — and that they will pursue the interests of this class no matter what the consequences.
The push to underfund education has always been an attempt to suppress Black Mississippians and increase the socio-economic divide between white and Black families. During segregation, when Black and white students learned under different school systems, Black schools were severely underfunded compared to their white counterparts, with Black schools receiving $297 million dollars less than white schools between the years 1954 and 1960.
In 1969, when the U.S. Supreme Court released a mandate that Mississippi must merge its separate and unequal school systems, work which is not finished, as some towns in Mississippi are still desegregating, white students in public schools ran for the hills, or more aptly, ran for relatively inexpensive private schools called “segregation academies” that refused to admit Black students. While the racist selection criteria these private schools operated under is largely absent from these schools now, these private schools are still highly segregated institutions.
In Jackson, Mississippi, 97% of public school students are Black. At Jackson Preparatory Academy, one of the most prestigious high schools in Mississippi and a former segregation academy, however, 96.5% of the students are white. Despite supposedly ending the practice of maintaining two separate school systems in 1969, Mississippi legislators send their children to these high-outcome, segregated private schools while simultaneously underfunding public education by $2.3 billion dollars since 2008, year after year failing to meet budget requirements set out by the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP).
Thankfully, the Mississippi House and Senate have both passed substantial teacher pay raise plans that would aim to increase teachers’ salaries by an average of $4,700. The two chambers have yet to reconcile the two proposals, but both total around $210 million. Mississippi’s teachers currently have the lowest wages in the country, and nearly half that of the teachers in the highest paying state, New York. Public school teachers are often forced to work multiple jobs to make ends meet while the trickle of out-of-state teacher employment has slowed to almost zero. At the same time, the number of college students studying education has drastically decreased.
While this pay increase is a step in the right direction and will pull Mississippi up from dead last in educator wages to just near the bottom, this is just the first necessary step to reviving Mississippi’s education system. Fulfilling funding requirements for the MAEP is the next crucial step to ensuring quality public education. Additionally, even a $4,700 dollar pay increase, while no doubt a crucial piece of aid for state educators, is not substantial enough. Nationwide, 55% of teachers are considering ending their career sooner than they had anticipated, even in states paying teachers better adjusted for cost of living. With the incredibly important role that educators play in society and their influence on the future wages and health of the state, teachers should see a larger pay increase than $4,700.
The appalling conditions of Mississippi’s public schools are the direct fault of the legislators that have perpetuated racial divides in education for centuries. And often, instead of improving conditions and giving the withering public education system the funding it desperately needs, what education policies do these legislators pursue? Authoritarian bans on teaching critical race theory and systemic racism, education that is already completely absent from Mississippi classrooms. While students in Mississippi public schools are forced to endure the consequences of an education system razed by systemic racism, legislators spit in their faces by banning discussion about the very reason conditions are so bad in the first place.
It’s clear that Mississippi desperately needs an education revolution. White, rich legislators are content to drain the school system for all that it’s worth. Their kids don’t attend those schools anyway, so why should they care? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that education levels are the greatest predictor of wages and employment status later in life, and by defunding education, these legislators are condemning the wealth, health and happiness of the entire state, specifically for Black students.
If Mississippi voters don’t make funding quality, racially diverse public schools their top priority, then this state will continue to rank last for outcomes. Is this the Mississippi we want? A Mississippi that abandons hundreds of thousands of public school students, a Mississippi that stubbornly refuses to stop shooting itself in the foot every year the education budget remains underfunded? Or are we ready for a new Mississippi, a Mississippi in which no child’s education is prioritized because of their race or economic status, a Mississippi that invests in its wellbeing and future by investing in its students? If the latter is the world we want to create, then Mississippians must demand that their public officials finally put an end to the legacy of Jim Crow, and, for the first time in state history, adequately fund their public schools.
Hal Fox is a sophomore majoring in Chinese and international studies from Robert, Louisiana.
