A bill has moved through the Mississippi House of Representatives to make it easier for parents to transfer their pupils from one public school to another.
Currently, if a parent wants to send a student from one education center receiving taxpayer dollars to another, consent is required by the school potentially losing the child and the one receiving the student. House Bill 1435, which passed on a 67-46 vote, would rid the losing school of a choice, preventing administrators from blocking a child’s transfer.
“The goal of this bill is to eliminate hang-ups that are currently keeping students away from districts that their parents might choose to send them to,” said Rep. Jansen Owen, a Republican from Poplarville who wrote the bill. “Under current law, if I decide to send my child to another school, and that school accepts my child, my school district is allowed to veto my decision as a parent and tell me that I cannot send my child to that other school district. This [bill] will be eliminating the veto power that the sending district has.”
A parent could request a transfer at any point in the academic calendar. The receiving school board would be given a 60-day window to assess and act on that transfer request.
Receiving schools would have the option to decline a pupil’s transfer, especially if capacity limits exist. However, guardrails were installed in the legislation to avert potential discrimination. Public education centers could not deny a student’s enrollment based on race, sex, socioeconomic status, etc. Schools would have to report their acceptance policies and consistently adhere to them.
The state portion of a student’s funding, as outlined by the recently enacted Mississippi School Funding Formula, would follow him or her to the receiving school to alleviate any financial concerns stemming from an influx in classroom attendance.
In addition, a $5 million pool called the “Student Portability and Open Enrollment Fund” would be created to help receiving schools make up for what they would possibly miss from the transfer student’s parents not paying taxes in that local community. According to the bill, money from the fund would be divvied out on a first-come, first-serve basis.
One of the concerns espoused by challengers of the bill is that it could open Pandora’s box in athletics. Fears hinge on the prospects of a “transfer portal,” one similar to what has become frequently utilized at the collegiate level, in high school sports. Owen assured that the Mississippi High School Activities Association’s existing regulations would coincide with his legislation and that widespread transfers solely for athletics would not become a norm.
“We’re going to let the MHSAA continue to govern whether or not an athlete is eligible to play sports,” Owen added. “We’re trying to avoid this potentially being a high school transfer portal. We’re not going to let that be the case with this bill.”
Other resistance to this bill, or any that moves Mississippi closer to implementing school choice, stems from a fear that this could be one step away from public dollars being used to subsidize a pupil enrolling in a private school.
HB 1435 will head to the Senate for consideration.
