When the 2026 Mississippi legislative session begins in January, one of the hot-button topics will be school choice, which could allow students to transfer schools with much more freedom. Several surrounding states have already passed school choice resolutions, and Mississippi could be next as six bills were presented before the state House of Representatives in 2025 and the idea continues to gain momentum.
There have been multiple proposals in the House of Representatives that could alter the academic landscape throughout the state and in Marion County. Some proposals could lead to open school choice, allowing for students to transfer without needing their current district’s approval, while others limit options to only being able to transfer to a school within 30 miles if their current district or school has had a D or F rating within the last five years. There is also a proposal that would allow students to use state funding to attend a private school.
Each of Marion County’s schools could be left in a precarious position because of their location and the abundance of schools in the area. There are six high schools in Marion County alone, as well as five in Lamar County and several more in Forrest, Jefferson Davis and Walthall counties that would be within 30 miles depending on where a student lives.
Marion County Superintendent Brian Foster said he’s been in several meetings over the past few years about school choice and has spoken with multiple superintendents in states who have already instituted school choice. He referenced one superintendent in Florida who told him that their district lost roughly 1,000 students over a two-year period after school choice was implemented, leading to a $60 million decline in state and federal funding.
“That’s concerning,” he said. “He told us they had 20 new private schools open in two years. In Florida, what they allowed was basically open for anyone — a church, a company, a private individual — could easily start a private school and start taking students and vouchers. They had three or four private schools before and then 20 open in two years. It pulled a lot of students. In Florida, they are also allowed to play public school sports under the Tim Tebow law. Even though those kids were leaving for funding purposes, they were coming back and playing athletics. The district was still spending money on these students (for athletics) but had lost the state funding for them.”
While Foster said he doesn’t believe something like that would happen in Marion County because there are already several established private schools such as Columbia Academy, Woodlawn Preparatory School and New Hope Community Christian School, as well as surrounding schools such as Presbyterian Christian, Sacred Heart and Lamar Christian, time will tell on what the ramifications could be.
“I don't believe the sky is falling or anything,” he said. “It would create some concerns and issues for us that we would have to address. Any time you talk about losing $1 million, $5 million or $10 million in funding, that's significant.”
The Columbia School District could be the biggest beneficiary of school choice in Marion County with its facilities, location and recent track record, as well as the city’s investment into the area around the high school with The Yards and Friendship Park. Columbia Superintendent Jason Harris said he and the district’s Board of Trustees view Columbia Schools as the cornerstone of the community, which could lead to an influx of students.
“We have engagement and are a driving force in the economy. I would say we would likely have demand for people to come here. The issue then becomes capacity — where do you put the students if demand is high?” he explained. “We have an outstanding school system, but we really don’t know the true impact without having the numbers.”
There could even be interest in the Columbia School District from parents of students outside of Marion County, but Harris said there are logistical hurdles.
“There could be some interest from neighboring regions, considering our borders. The argument for school choice is that parents get a choice, but there will be no buses picking up students outside districts. If a family is struggling financially, how do they manage a 60 miles a day?” he said. “Mississippi is primarily rural. About 70% to 75% of school districts are rural, and there aren’t very many urban school districts. … Public schools are the cornerstone of society and the cornerstone of the state of Mississippi and our communities, especially here in Columbia.”
Columbia Academy Headmaster Angie Burkett said if one of the school choice bills were to pass the county’s largest private school would potentially have to alter its testing programs, particularly for upper-level students who are primarily focused on improving their ACT scores to secure scholarships.
“We try to prepare them to do well on the ACT and offer the weekday ACT here twice a year, so students have multiple opportunities to take it in a comfortable environment,” she said. “Parents should get to choose the environment, curriculum or school that matches their desires for their child. … We offer something a little different, which is why families choose us. Our ACT scores have been some of the top scores in the area, and we give students a lot of curriculum opportunities.”
Foster pointed out the concern that school choice could lead to tax increases in Marion County and throughout the state. He explained that districts pass bonds to pay for projects over a period of time, knowing that they will receive state and federal funding on top of local funding. But if a district loses a significant amount of students, the state and federal funding follows the students, leaving a shortfall that local taxes would have to cover. It could also go the other way with a district having an influx of students without any extra local funding, according to Foster.
“To keep the same level of spending and resources, state and federal money may come, but it'll be a year behind. The local dollars won't come,” he explained. “It could increase local contributions if a district accepts a lot of students.”
If a school choice bill were passed that allowed for private schools to receive taxpayer funding, Foster said he believes those institutions should then be required to adhere to the same guidelines public schools currently do.
“(With) taxpayer dollars, public schools have very stringent requirements — accreditation standards, guidelines, accountability for testing, teaching, finances (and) facilities — we do all those things as stewards of public dollars. The state wants to ensure quality teaching, leadership, facilities, safety, transportation, financial audits — all those are very important. We should be held to high standards for academics, guiding students, accounting and spending,” he posited. “The only thing I would ask is that any entity accepting public dollars — private schools, associations — be subject to the same accreditation and accountability standards as public schools. Right now they are not.”
Columbia Academy is against any such stipulation as it wants to maintain its independence and not have strings attached from the government that would handicap its mission, according to Burkett. She added there are too many different proposals right now for Marion County’s top private school to be for or against school choice without knowing which one could be passed, but she believes CA is in a unique position to withstand negative ramifications.
“We feel we'd be viable with school choice because our parents choose us for our unique environment and our biblically based curriculum. They choose us for specific reasons, so I don't think school choice would affect our current enrollment, though, we might gain a few students,” she explained. “As independent schools, we wouldn't support any bill that changes our mission or admission standards or anything like that. We want to maintain our autonomy as an independent school.”
Although a school choice bill could affect Columbia Academy to some degree, Burkett said CA isn’t and has no plans to be in competition with the area’s public schools.
“We're not trying to be a Columbia High School or a West Marion or East Marion,” she said. “We know there are certain things we want to provide for our students. I love that we have chapel every Monday, Bible classes and we can express our faith-based curriculums. We use Abeka and Bob Jones, and we try to relate what we're teaching to how it applies to the Bible and what God's word says about that particular subject.”
If a variation of school choice allows for students to transfer to private or charter schools with taxpayer funding, Harris said it could have major consequences.
“If you start deteriorating (rural schools) across the state, the (communities) will wash up. We’ve seen that. Without naming certain areas, look at where the public schools in those small communities eroded and look at what’s left there now — hardly anything,” he said. “Public schools are the heartbeat of (communities). It’s the same thing when the legislature talks about consolidation, people come out the woodwork because those (schools) are their lifeblood. That’s what they have (in their community).”
Another aspect to consider is the legislature potentially passing a statewide bill to address regional issues in academics. Many of the state’s underperforming schools and districts are clustered in particular geographical regions, while other areas such as in Marion County don’t have the same issues. Harris explained that there are very unique regions throughout the state that have very different needs.
“You hear people in the legislature say that parents really want this. But having conversations with people in Marion County, Lamar County and surrounding counties from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, what I’ve heard from many of them is, ‘I’m just not interested in that.’ I am yet to have one person say to me, ‘Yeah, I’m for that,’” he said. “Maybe it does need to be split up into congressional districts because the sentiment I hear the most is, ‘I just don’t see the purpose in that.’ And some of these people are people who send their children to private schools.”
Harris added that if public money were diverted away from public schools in favor of private or charter schools, the consequences could be astronomical.
“Our teachers are really our backbone. They’re the people who come here every day and are a part of this community — they live here, shop here and are the same people who come out on Tuesday night to a baseball game after teaching fourth grade. When you start diverting and taking away from them, where does that really leave us?” he questioned. “Maybe in a larger, urban environment, (school choice) has some merit, but across this small, rural state, I just don’t see the merit.”
An unintended consequence of school choice could be consolidation, particularly in a community like Marion County that has four major high schools within five miles of one another. Marion County voters already said no to consolidation overwhelmingly in 2022 when the Marion County School District attempted to consolidate East Marion and West Marion. However, if students were able to move freely between the schools, leading to major decreases in state and federal funding if schools lose students, districts throughout the state may have no other choice.
“I think you would see consolidation (throughout the state),” Harris said. “I think there’s no doubt about it. I don’t see how, financially, you could make it. It could happen in a lot of different places.”
Through talking with other superintendents throughout the country, Harris said many of the school choice arguments are about fighting teacher unions, which isn’t the case in Mississippi.
While the purpose behind proposed school choice bills is to give students the best possible opportunity to succeed academically, there likely will be student athletes who take advantage of it to play for what they and their parents may believe are superior athletic programs. Harris, Foster and Burkett acknowledged that a quasi-transfer portal already exists to an extent and agreed that it could be much more rampant. -
Editor’s Note: This coverage is supported by a grant from Press Forward Mississippi, part of a nationwide philanthropic effort to reinvigorate local news.
