National Policy Center Highlights Underfunding of Mississippi’s K-12 Education System
July 27th, 2011
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities highlights the state’s chronic underfunding of the K-12 education system in its new brief, “State Budget Cuts in the New Fiscal Year Are Unnecessarily Harmful.”
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The report gives examples of state budget cuts around the nation and discusses how these cuts are stalling the nation’s economic recovery and job creation.
Among other effects, the budget cuts are slowing the pace of economic recovery. Cutting state services not only harms vulnerable residents but also slows the economy’s recovery from the recession by reducing overall economic activity. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, reduce payments to businesses and nonprofits that provide services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. All of these steps remove demand from the economy.
The report illustrates that state governments have already eliminated 577,00 jobs since August 2008 and an unknown number of associated private sector jobs have been eliminated indirectly.
Moreover, many of the services being cut are important to states’ long-term economic strength. Research shows that in order to prosper, businesses require a well-educated, healthy workforce. Many of the state budget cuts described here will weaken that workforce in the future by diminishing the quality of elementary and high schools, making college less affordable, and reducing residents’ access to health care. In the long term, the savings from today’s cuts may cost states much more in diminished economic growth.
An example of these detrimental cuts in Mississippi are the cuts to the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. The funding formula has been underfunded from statutory levels since 2008, and the amount of underfunding has grown to an estimated $237 million for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. Not only has the program (which provides state funding for all of the state’s K-12 schools) been underfunded by statutory levels, which increase each year, it has been cut from already underfunded levels since 2008. Total appropriations from all sources for MAEP has declined over $170 million since 2008. This decline is even more steep when you consider the increases in the costs of providing education over the last 4 years.
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Mississippi Adequate Education Program Total Appropriations, FY 2008 and FY 2012
Education is vital to the state’s economic recovery and quality of life. More revenue is needed to restore the state’s education system and maintain the gains in education the state has made over the last few decades.
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