Letter to the Mississippi Department of Education — Reasonable Level of Tolerance (July 26, 2023)

Summary

A letter dated July 26, 2023 from the U.S. Department of Education, signed by Laura Jimenez, to Raymond C. Morgigno, Interim State Superintendent of Education, of the Mississippi Department of Education. It responds to Mississippi's written plan for a reasonable level of tolerance in calculating maintenance of equity under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and lists three proposed levels: a 10 percent reduction for districts with attendance of 1,000 or fewer, 1.05 percent for 1,001 to 1,400, and 1.5 percent for districts with fewer students eligible for Free and Reduced Price Lunch. It finds the first two reasonable but not the third, and says Mississippi may need to make additional payments for fiscal year 2022.

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Full text

                      UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION


                                          July 26, 2023

The Honorable Raymond C. Morgigno
Interim State Superintendent of Education
Mississippi Department of Education
500 Greymont Ave., Suite F
Jackson, MS 39202

Dear Superintendent Morgigno:

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) received your written plan for a reasonable
level of tolerance when calculating whether the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) has
met State maintenance of equity requirements under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021
(ARP Act). This written plan applies only to a subset of Mississippi’s local educational agencies
(LEAs).

The ARP Act State maintenance of equity requirements help ensure that State funding supports
LEAs with high concentrations of poverty and the students who have been subject to
longstanding opportunity gaps in our education system and experienced the greatest impact from
the COVID-19 pandemic. These requirements are vital for ensuring that States maintain funding
to address the impact of the pandemic on students’ education, and for protecting students in high-
need and highest-poverty LEAs from disproportionate cuts if reductions in State effort do occur.

The Department determined that it is consistent with the State maintenance of equity
requirements to allow a State educational agency (SEA) to calculate whether it has maintained
funding equity with respect to its very small high-need and highest-poverty LEAs within a
reasonable “tolerance level.” The Department’s determination is based on the possibility of
significant volatility in the calculated per-pupil funding amounts for very small LEAs caused by
small changes in student enrollment, which may be unrelated to whether an SEA has achieved
the intent of the requirements. (See Frequently Asked Questions, American Rescue Plan
Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Program, Maintenance of Equity
Requirements, July 26, 2022, Question 21(a).)

MDE asserts that calculated per-pupil funding amounts for small LEAs are significantly affected
by small changes in enrollment. This makes per-pupil funding amounts in Mississippi’s small
LEAs an imperfect indicator of whether the SEA has achieved the intent of maintaining equity in
funding across LEAs. Accordingly, MDE proposed three tolerance levels:
    1) For very small LEAs with rounded average daily attendance (ADA) of 1,000 or fewer
       students, MDE proposes to tolerate a 10 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year
       to year. This would impact six very small LEAs identified by the State as meeting the
       definition of high-need or highest-poverty in FY 2022 that served 0.55 percent of
       Mississippi’s students.
    2) For small LEAs with a rounded ADA between 1,001 and 1,400 students, MDE proposes
       to tolerate a 1.05 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would
      impact four small LEAs identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or
      highest-poverty in FY 2022 that served 2.32 percent of Mississippi’s students.
   3) For LEAs with a reduction in the number of students receiving additional State funding
      because of their eligibility for Free and Reduced Price Lunch, MDE proposes to tolerate a
      1.5 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would impact one LEA
      identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in FY
      2022 that served 2 percent of Mississippi’s students.

After reviewing MDE’s tolerance proposal and accompanying data, the unique circumstances in
the State, and our further State-specific analysis, we have determined that the proposal related to
small and very small LEAs include reasonable levels of tolerance when calculating whether
Mississippi has maintained equity for these LEAs in FY 2022. However, we do not find
extending tolerance to LEAs with a reduction in the number of students receiving additional
State funding because of their eligibility for Free and Reduced Price Lunch to be reasonable,
because the changes in per-pupil amounts in these LEAs are not due to unpredicted variability of
small changes in enrollment in small LEAs.

Data provided by MDE indicates that Mississippi may need to make additional payments to
LEAs that experienced a disproportionate reduction in per-pupil funding in FY 2022 and that are
not captured by this small LEA tolerance approval. Please advise the Department as additional
payments are made.

We appreciate your diligence in developing this proposal. If you have any questions, please
contact your program officer at: Mississippi.OESE@ed.gov.

                                                   Sincerely,
aura Jimenez
                                                   Laura Jimenez

                                                   Laura Jimenez
                                                   Laura Jimenez
                                                   Director, Office of State and Grantee Relations


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