While the Senate appears to remain opposed to the House’s push for sending public dollars to private schools, the chamber’s Education Committee passed bills with many of the House’s other proposals on Thursday.

The panel of lawmakers advanced 15 measures over a nearly three-hour hearing, including four bills that mirror segments of the House’s omnibus measure, House Bill 2. 

The committee passed bills that would extend a literacy act that helped raise reading scores in Mississippi into higher grades and establish a similar math act. It also approved bills that would create a framework for school consolidations and mandate financial literacy education for high school graduation.

“A lot of stuff from last year passed again today, and then a lot of new stuff that you’ve probably seen in a House bill somewhere,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, told reporters after the meeting. “But, as I said before, we have most everything in House Bill 2, and we’re gonna pass (the Senate bills).”

An adolescent literacy expansion, which the Mississippi Department of Education estimates would cost $9 million, would send more literacy coaches to schools and establish an eighth-grade reading gate, akin to the test that third-graders are required to pass to graduate. 

The math act passed by the committee on Thursday is similar — with a cost of about $3.5 million. Lawmakers and education officials are aiming to replicate the state’s reading gains in math by deploying coaches and testing students at least three times a year to identify weaknesses.

Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, amended the bill to specify the use of high-quality instructional materials after committee Vice Chairman David Blount, a Democrat from Jackson, also pushed back against it, asking for a standardized curriculum and closer alignment with the state’s literacy program.

“We established a model that works, and I want to stick to that model,” Blount said.

The committee also passed a bill that would broaden the powers of the Commission on School District Efficiency, which the Legislature established years ago. The bill would require the commission to give the Legislature recommendations on school consolidations as early as the next session. 

Then, if any consolidations are approved by the Legislature, they would begin July 2028, DeBar said. 

Another bill that the committee approved Thursday, which mirrors a section of House Bill 2, would require financial literacy education for Mississippi students. 

The Senate committee previously passed three other components of House Bill 2 — easing public school transfer regulations, making it easier for retirees to return to the classroom and raising assistant teacher pay. 

The committee has passed more than a third of the provisions in House Bill 2 altogether, and more are coming. Senators have filed bills promoting prayer in school and permitting homeschooled students to play sports at their assigned public school, both pieces of the omnibus House bill. 

The panel on Thursday also took up 11 other education measures that would give more money to schools for their gifted students, raise the salaries of school attendance officers, allow school boards to enact cellphone bans during school hours, permit the earlier distribution of procurement cards that teachers use to buy classroom supplies and create an ombudsman office within the state education department.

One bill that would have revoked the charter of charter schools that are rated D or F for longer than two years was listed on the committee agenda. However, DeBar, who’s been outspoken about his disapproval of the performance of the state’s charter schools, cut the meeting short without bringing the bill up for a vote.

“I don’t anticipate bringing that back up,” he said. 

The bills passed by the committee can now be considered by the full chamber. 

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann referred House Bill 2 to the Senate Education Committee this week. DeBar said he will take it up in committee, but he has repeatedly said the Senate opposes any measure that includes a voucher system of using public tax dollars for private schooling.