All. Together. Now.

Mississippi

“Pushback is not about putting on an event or electing a legislator. It’s about building the elements of a strong national collaboration that is informed by the infrastructure built through the local work.”
– Mike Sayer, Southern Echo

Southern Echo’s antidote to the state’s matrix of systemic poverty, structured under-education and residual fear has been to provide training, technical and legal assistance to support the building of independent black-based, black-led, low-wealth grassroots community organizations and leadership.

Echo’s work involves the 10 black-based, black-led organizations in the MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable; the more than 30 organizations in the Education Stakeholders Alliance; and the 58 organizations in the MS Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse 2 Jailhouse.

Mississippi Anchor Organizations

Southern Echo (Echo)

Southern Echo sees quality public education as the public policy struggle most critical to the transformation of individuals, communities and culture. Echo has worked for 18 years to engage parents and students in the formation and implementation of education policy; dismantling the student achievement gap; supporting mechanisms for students at-risk, dropout prevention, school discipline policies and conflict resolution, and the use of budgets to shape education policies.

Learn more about Southern Echo on their website.

Catalyst Roundtable (CR)

The MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable, formed in 2005, is a partnership of 10 black-based, black-led, grassroots community organizations including Southern Echo, built on inter-generational community organizing models and based in the MS Delta region, through which the partners pool their strengths and resources to impact the formation and implementation of education policy at the state level in support of their education organizing work at the local school district level.

What’s going on in Mississippi

Full funding of MAEP: Under intense pressure from Southern Echo, the MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable and the Education Stakeholders Alliance, in 2007 MS Legislature fully funded the MS Adequate Education Program for the first time since its passage in 1997.

2008 Quality Education Act: The full funding of MAEP in 2007 helped to lay the foundation for the MS Dept. of Education to put forth the 2008 Quality Education Act that incorporates key new education policies that have been supported by Echo and the Roundtable, including substantial additional funding for children at-risk and the state’s dropout prevention process. The full funding of MAEP in 2007 established a new “floor” or “center of gravity” on education policy. Even the Republican Governor and Lt. Governor are now committed publicly to fully fund MAEP in 2008. The fight now will be over the proposed new Dept. of Education policies incorporated in the 2008 Quality Education Act.

MS Dept. of Education Dropout Prevention Program: In 2007 Echo and the Roundtable worked with the MS Dept. of Education to fashion, adopt and implement the community participation facet in the first year of the new statewide Dropout Prevention Program.

Increased funding for children at-risk: In 2007 worked to get the state House of Representatives to pass legislation to increase funding for children at-risk, but the provisions were killed in the Senate under pressure from the Governor, where there were insufficient votes to override a threatened veto by the Governor. Although the legislation itself did not pass, the process shifted the issue from obscurity to the one of the state’s highest priorities in the debate over education policy in 2007 and 2008. A great deal more work must still be done.

Parent and student engagement in public policy: The pressure brought in 2007 by Echo and the Roundtable to include parents and students in a meaningful way in the development of the new dropout prevention policies at the state and local levels contributed to the decision by the MS Dept. of Education to hold a Teen Summit in Jackson in January 2008 and an Adult Summit in February 2008. The Teen Summit in January 2008 was attended by more than 900 high school students who spent a day developing policy recommendations on key issues that underlie the dropout problem. From the point of view of the MS Dept. of Education, the focus of the process was to enable students to learn to take control of the process and become aggressive as “demand consumers” rather than “passive subjects” in the policy formation process at the local school district level. In the context of Mississippi, this was an historic development, since so many educators in the state, especially in low-wealth communities, disparage and seek to undermine participation by students or parents in the policy formation process. It remains to be seen what the follow-up to this process will entail.

From June 25 – July 2, 2008, PBN’s Mississippi and New Mexico State Alliance Partners will come together with grassroots organizers from Texas to expand on South X Southwest, an ongoing project working to build Black/Brown progressive partnership across traditional cultural, geographic and political barriers. The meetings will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and 41 Mississippi leaders will travel by bus across the Southwest to participate.