History of Charter School Legislation

Mississippi’s first charter school law, HB1672, was signed into law on April 4, 1997. It allowed existing public schools to convert to charter schools on a pilot program basis. Schools interested in converting had to gain the approval of their local school board through a majority vote. Schools then had to be approved by the Mississippi Department of Education. Unsurprisingly, only one school in the state, an elementary school in Merigold, was converted to a charter school under this law. This school, the Hayes Cooper Center, was never a true charter school in the accepted understanding of the term and quickly reverted back to a traditional district magnet school. The 1997 law expired in 2009.

After a year with no charter law, Mississippi passed the Conversion Charter Schools and New Start Schools Act of 2010. This law, which contained both charter language and state school takeover language, again proved unworkable. The law only allowed conversions of existing schools that had been rated failing for three consecutive years beginning in the 2009-2010 school year. By the time the first schools would have become eligible, in 2012-2013, Mississippi had already repealed the law in favor of a better one.

In 2012, the Mississippi Legislature made its first attempt at passing a true charter school law. Although a Senate bill and two House bills were introduced, each bill died in committee or failed to be considered by the deadline.

The Mississippi Charter Schools Act of 2013, signed into law by Governor Bryant on April 17, 2013, established Mississippi’s first true charter school law. Mississippi’s law is based on the 2009 model law crafted by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The Mississippi Charter Schools Act moved Mississippi from 43 out of 43 on the 2013 ranking of charter school laws by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools to 14 of 43, the largest leap for any law in the years the Alliance has published a ranking.

Mississippi First’s original Keeping the Promise brief found that 75% of its recommended policy elements were completely adopted into law:

70% (14 of 20) were in the original 2013 law.
An additional 5% (1 of 20) was part of a 2015 amendment.
Another 10% (2 of 20) of recommendations were partially adopted in 2013 and remain today.

HB455 made minor changes to the qualifications of the Executive Director of the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board to enable the Board to conduct a wider search for a leader.

HB859 corrected technical problems with the funding provisions of the charter law. It improved the calculation of local and state funding as well as imposed a penalty for local school districts that withhold local funding from charter schools.

SB2161, signed into law on April 14, 2016, contained several improvements to the charter school law. These improvements aligned closely with the recommendations from Keeping the Promise, published in May 2015.