Bobby Harrison: Why are private school supporters so afraid of Mississippi voters?

Yahoo

09-02-2025

Proponents of spending public funds on private schools are not proponents of letting the people vote on the issue.
Their fear of letting the people vote is becoming increasingly clear as the debate intensifies on whether taxpayer dollars should be directed toward private schools.
House Education Chair Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, recently passed out of his committee a proposal that would allow students in low performing districts in some instances to receive public funds to attend private schools. The proposal would not necessarily help low income students since the bill does not include a mechanism to provide transportation to the private schools.
Many argue that with the lack of a transportation component, those who would be aided would be primarily students from more affluent families.
Despite some vocal support, the bill still has a long way to go. Roberson even says he does not expect the bill to progress far in the legislative process but wants to keep it alive for now to spur debate of the issue.
Roberson made no secret of the fact that the bill was written in such a manner as to try to skirt a provision of the Mississippi Constitution that states plainly that public funds cannot be spent on private schools.
He argued his proposal would not be unconstitutional since the public funds are not being given to the private schools but to the students in the form of education savings accounts that would have to be spent on the expenses of attending a private school.
Would that argument hold up in court?
Who knows how judges will interpret the law.
But what is certain is that supporters of private school choice could take the issue out of the hands of the nine members of the Mississippi Supreme Court. During the current session, instead of trying to circumvent the Mississippi Constitution, Roberson could propose a resolution to amend the state constitution to allow private school choice. Then people through the democratic process in a statewide election would have the option to approve or reject the amendment.
Why haven't voucher proponents ever tried such as amendment? The answer might be as plain as day or the nose on your face.
It does not appear the courts have ruled on the constitutionality of the proposal to send the public funds to the students instead of the schools. In 1941, the state Supreme Court ruled against litigants challenging a law that allowed the state to furnish textbooks to all children in certain grades, including those in private schools. On the surface, it appears that the 1941 Supreme Court decision is on point (as attorneys say) since the state's largess was going directly to the student first instead of to the private school.
But it does not appear the high court addressed the question of whether it was constitutional for the textbooks to go to the students instead of the private schools. Instead, the court majority said the law was constitutional because the textbooks were being loaned — not given — to the students. The Supreme Court majority even pointed out there were provisions in the law saying students would be responsible for paying for any damage done to the textbooks while they were on loan. If students so chose, they could purchase the books.
'The books belong to, and are controlled by, the state; they are merely loaned to the individual pupil,' the 1941 majority opinion read.
But if Roberson's scheme successfully circumvents the provision of the constitution that prohibits public funds from being spent on private schools, there are other concerns — namely Section 66 of the Mississippi Constitution. That provision requires a hard-to-obtain two-thirds majority vote of both the House and Senate for any bill 'granting a donation or gratuity in favor of any person or object' to become law.
Would money provided to a student to attend a private school be a donation?
A simple way to resolve all these questions would be to let the people vote. But the voucher supporters' aversion to voting appears to be a recurring theme.
When the bill was taken up in the House Education Committee last week, Roberson asked for a voice vote on whether to advance the bill to the full House for consideration. He ruled that a majority on the voice vote supported advancing the bill instead of letting it die.
By most accounts, the voice vote was close and in doubt, but Roberson refused efforts of committee members for a show of hands or roll call vote to erase any doubt on whether the bill had the votes needed to progress in the legislative process.
This column was produced by Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization that covers state government, public policy, politics and culture. Bobby Harrison is the editor of Mississippi Today Ideas.