Legislature Must Support School Consolidation
By Brother Rogers
Plans are coming together for a successful consolidation between the Starkville School District and the Oktibbeha County School District. After listening to input from parents and other stakeholders, the Commission on Starkville Consolidated School District Structure is putting the finishing touches on a final plan.
One element sure to be part of this final plan is additional funding from the Mississippi State Legislature. Members of the legislature and the citizens they represent will ask why the Starkville Consolidated School District deserves more money. This question is one we in Oktibbeha County should welcome and be ready to answer.
First, in the history of the state of Mississippi, there has never been a consolidation like this one. The legislature acknowledged that fact when, unlike previous consolidations in other areas, they created a special commission to study how to make our consolidation successful.
What makes our consolidation here unique is that it does not merge two small districts together for efficiency nor does it merge two failing districts together in order to improve both. Instead, for the first time, a larger award-winning district is consolidating with a smaller district that has been under state-imposed conservatorship twice. No such consolidation has ever been tried, but if this precedent can succeed in Starkville, then similar efforts can be replicated across the state.
It is worth noting that the children in the Oktibbeha County School District are just as capable of learning as their peers in Starkville, but due to school district lines drawn long ago, the students in the county have had more obstacles and fewer resources.
Second, since the state of Mississippi has required this consolidation by law, it has a legal and moral responsibility to make sure the resources are provided to make the consolidation successful. Otherwise, the legislature will have created an unfunded mandate.
The third and perhaps most important reason that the state legislature should provide additional funding for the new Starkville Consolidated School District is to help Mississippi State University reach its full potential. MSU is the largest institution of higher learning in the state. MSU needs a strong public school system focused on academic achievement in order to recruit and retain outstanding faculty and staff.
Mississippi State University has an enormous impact on the economy of Mississippi, and it prepares more graduates for high-skilled jobs than any other university in the state. It is not difficult to connect the dots from the quality of public schools in Oktibbeha County to the quality of the faculty at Mississippi State to the quality of the education of those who graduate from MSU. The future success of Mississippi is intertwined with the success of Mississippi State University, whose success is dependent on the condition of the public schools in the shadow of the university.
In short, there is a ripple effect from the local school district to MSU to the entire state. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of our state will be impacted by the quality of the new Starkville Consolidated School District. We can and we must and we will get this right. But the state legislature, which deserves credit for putting us on this path, must now stick with us to ensure success. As the late Senator John C. Stennis might have put it, “They need to plow a straight furrow all the way to the end of the row that they started.”
Plans are coming together for a successful consolidation between the Starkville School District and the Oktibbeha County School District. After listening to input from parents and other stakeholders, the Commission on Starkville Consolidated School District Structure is putting the finishing touches on a final plan.
One element sure to be part of this final plan is additional funding from the Mississippi State Legislature. Members of the legislature and the citizens they represent will ask why the Starkville Consolidated School District deserves more money. This question is one we in Oktibbeha County should welcome and be ready to answer.
First, in the history of the state of Mississippi, there has never been a consolidation like this one. The legislature acknowledged that fact when, unlike previous consolidations in other areas, they created a special commission to study how to make our consolidation successful.
What makes our consolidation here unique is that it does not merge two small districts together for efficiency nor does it merge two failing districts together in order to improve both. Instead, for the first time, a larger award-winning district is consolidating with a smaller district that has been under state-imposed conservatorship twice. No such consolidation has ever been tried, but if this precedent can succeed in Starkville, then similar efforts can be replicated across the state.
It is worth noting that the children in the Oktibbeha County School District are just as capable of learning as their peers in Starkville, but due to school district lines drawn long ago, the students in the county have had more obstacles and fewer resources.
Second, since the state of Mississippi has required this consolidation by law, it has a legal and moral responsibility to make sure the resources are provided to make the consolidation successful. Otherwise, the legislature will have created an unfunded mandate.
The third and perhaps most important reason that the state legislature should provide additional funding for the new Starkville Consolidated School District is to help Mississippi State University reach its full potential. MSU is the largest institution of higher learning in the state. MSU needs a strong public school system focused on academic achievement in order to recruit and retain outstanding faculty and staff.
Mississippi State University has an enormous impact on the economy of Mississippi, and it prepares more graduates for high-skilled jobs than any other university in the state. It is not difficult to connect the dots from the quality of public schools in Oktibbeha County to the quality of the faculty at Mississippi State to the quality of the education of those who graduate from MSU. The future success of Mississippi is intertwined with the success of Mississippi State University, whose success is dependent on the condition of the public schools in the shadow of the university.
In short, there is a ripple effect from the local school district to MSU to the entire state. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of our state will be impacted by the quality of the new Starkville Consolidated School District. We can and we must and we will get this right. But the state legislature, which deserves credit for putting us on this path, must now stick with us to ensure success. As the late Senator John C. Stennis might have put it, “They need to plow a straight furrow all the way to the end of the row that they started.”