Dept. of Education flunks math test
We are all human, and we all make mistakes. But when the Mississippi Department of Education makes one, it is often big.
It happened in 2015, when the department approved after-school grants for 45 school districts but failed to account for another 65 districts whose grants were being renewed. As a result, all 110 districts got a lot less money than they expected.
This week, the department made an even bigger error. It undercounted the number of teachers in Mississippi who are paid with state money. It’s important because lawmakers used these employment figures in calculating how much it would cost the state to provide a $1,500 increase in the teacher pay scale.
The undercount occurred because the department mistakenly excluded special education teachers, gifted program teacher and career technical education teachers from the information it provided to the Legislature.
The error means the Legislature budgeted $10 million to $15 million less than it needed for the raises. Teachers need not worry. Republican lawmakers promptly said they will make sure everyone gets the $1,500 increase.
Mistakes happen, and fortunately this one got caught in time. But teachers whose jobs depend on ratings issued by the same department must be forgiven if they wonder whether any errors are creeping into those reports too.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
Restoring the right to vote
The restoration of voting rights is a small step, but a necessary one in getting Mississippi away from its self-destructive habit of putting too many convicted felons under a life sentence long after they get out of prison.
The Associated Press reports that Gov. Phil Bryant, who is in his final year in office, has allowed voting rights to be restored to 16 people. That’s not a lot, but it’s a big change from his first seven years, when he only allowed a total of 18 felons to regain the right to vote.
Here’s further evidence of Bryant’s willingness to take a second look at this issue: All 18 people who got their voting rights restored during Bryant’s first seven years did so in bills that became law without the governor signature. This year, he only followed that practice twice, while signing bills for the other 14 people.
The state Constitution lists 10 felonies that, upon conviction, remove voting rights from a person. The attorney general added 12 more crimes, which are related to those listed in the Constitution, to the list in 2009.
Most are serious crimes: murder, rape, robbery, carjacking, arson, embezzlement and extortion, to list the more prominent. A few are less serious, such as perjury and the “unlawful taking of a vehicle.”
Few will object to people convicted of these crimes losing the right to vote while they are serving their sentence, whether it’s in prison or in another program like drug court or house arrest. It also seems to be a reasonable penalty to withhold the right to vote during some or all of the convict’s probation or parole period.
What is bothersome is the permanence of the penalty, no matter how severe the crime. It’s impossible, for example, to support restoring voting rights for someone who intentionally kills or rapes another person. But it’s not even a close call to say that somebody convicted of perjury or taking a vehicle ought to have their full citizenship restored after meeting all the terms of their sentence.
Advocates for the restoration of voting rights note that in 2016, 218,000 residents of Mississippi had lost the right to vote. Only 7 percent of them were in prison. The rest were on probation or parole, or had completed their sentence. These are the people who should be considered for the return of the right to vote.
The Sentencing Project has two common-sense suggestions on this topic. The state should provide an annual report of how many people lost their voting rights during the past year and how many got them restored. Also, the state should notify convicts who have finished their sentence of how they can regain their voting rights.
This is a small element of criminal justice reform that Mississippi badly needs. Our laws basically discourage convicts from straightening up. Too many of them are unable (and in some cases, unwilling) to find a job after their sentence, making them prime candidates to break the law again. It is vital that Mississippi end this pattern of perpetual trouble.
