Special thanks to your region’s public school superintendents, teachers, district staff and parents for their splendid support and help with gathering more than 200,000 signatures for the Better Schools, Better Jobs constitutional amendment to require full state funding for our kindergarten through Grade 12 education system, without new taxes.

Frankly, we could not have reached that goal in four short months without them. Initiative advocates usually use the full 12 months they have to gather signatures, but it was important to get this issue to Mississippi voters in Nov. 2015, so that’s why our deadline was so short. What an achievement.

Special thanks also to your circuit clerks and their hard-working staffs. With our self-imposed, short deadline to gather signatures, that meant the clerks’ offices were under a tight time frame to certify our petitions.

They did so admirably and will be remembered when history looks back on how important Initiative 42 was to changing the economic future of Mississippi.

Our critics will claim Mississippi cannot afford to fully fund its K-12 schools, which was promised by the Legislature in 1997 but fully funded only twice.

We believe we have the funds and must dedicate them to providing our children with the tools they need for the good-paying jobs that will make their lives better and the state of Mississippi better.

We hope anyone who’d like to help us make that happen will contact us at 769-524-6818 or get involved through our website betterms.org.

Also, follow us on Twitter @BetterMS2015 or our Facebook page.

 

Patsy R. Brumfield

Better Schools, Better Jobs Communications Director