School ‘Home Rule’ Rises With Accountability

By Jack Elliott Jr Associated Press

Gov. Haley Barbour’s education package for the 2006 session will again include a provision for “home rule” – where good-performing school systems can run themselves without the need for help from the state.

Under current statutes, school districts may take only those actions expressly permitted by the state. Mississippi cities were granted home rule in 1985, followed by counties in 1988.

A version of home rule was included in an education bill passed by the House in the 2005 session.

This past January, Barbour said “liberating our successful schools from the process and bureaucratic requirements of the state Department of Education … will mean more innovation and efficiency in our schools and give taxpayers more for their money.”

He said state education officials could devote more time to schools that need help.

In a speech this past week in DeSoto County, Barbour didn’t go into any details but said good-performing school systems should be allowed to spend money as they see fit within the limits of state law.

School boards and school districts are highly regulated by the states in virtually every aspect of what they do – from teacher qualifications and minimum pay to lists of textbooks.

Federal aid imposes additional requirements, such as nutritional quality of school lunches and specialized services for special needs students.

Historically, home rule came, in part, in many states as a response to court decisions mandating “one man, one vote” representation in government.

In some cases, home rule never came to public schools, leaving a system of large and small districts with varying degrees of fiscal independence.

In Mississippi, House Education Committee Chairman Cecil Brown said fiscal autonomy goes hand-in-hand with accountability.

“I think with the accountability system that we have at the state level and with the No Child Left Behind, we should be giving them more leeway to make their own decisions.

“We provide funding. We hold them accountable. In between they ought to be able to run their own local schools,” Brown said.

The devil is in the details, Brown said, and those must be addressed with the involvement of the governor and the state Department of Education.

“It’s always nice to say we are going to turn them loose, but there may be some things we have to do to comply with federal law or there may be some other restrictions we have to impose on them,” he said.

In discussing education, Brown said people talk about inputs and outputs – the outputs being well-educated students.

Brown said previously there was no way to measure student achievement.

“So the way they tried to make sure kids got a decent education was to control the inputs. The Department of Education and the Legislature would impose these rules and regulations on how you went about educating a kid in the hope that the outcome would be successful.

“But they weren’t really measuring outcome,” he said.

With state and federal accountability systems measuring student achievement and with adequate funding, Brown said school districts could be left alone to make a lot of their own decisions.

“The flaw of all of this, of course, is if we don’t provide adequate funding but we hold them accountable. They have to have the tools necessary to provide an adequate education for the kids and that costs money.”