JACKSON, Miss. — If you have a special needs child, you still may not be able to use tax dollars to help them go to a school that may be better able to handle their circumstances.
A bill to create an education savings account for some of those students has stalled in the legislature. “Parents tell me they want this and some teachers say they want it; so we file the bills. And the next thing we know, we are fighting the superintendents and the Parents Campaign,” explained Rep. Mark Formby, R- Pearl River, who is the father of a 7-year-old special needs child.
The bill would give up to 500 special needs children $61,000 each to help their parents send them to other schools better suited to assist them. But Formby said opponents are concerned that local school districts would lose the money. “But this is not the Department of Education tax dollars. It’s the tax payer’s tax dollars.” And he said more importantly these are real children who could benefit from the legislation. “And sentencing them to stay where they are is sentencing them to no real education.”
