The PFPS Interview: Nancy Loome from The Parents' Campaign and Educator Michael Cormack on Opposing Private Education Vouchers in Mississippi
This Public Funds Public Schools interview features Nancy Loome, Executive Director of The Parents’ Campaign in Mississippi, and Michael Cormack, Deputy Superintendent of Jackson Public Schools in that state. Nicole Ciullo, Associate Director of Policy & Development at Education Law Center asked the questions. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
[Please note, this interview was conducted before the end of the 2025 legislative session. All voucher bills, including proposals to establish new voucher programs, remove restrictions on the state’s ESA voucher program for students with disabilities, and enact the “Tim Tebow Act” (see below), failed to pass.]
Nicole Ciullo: Nancy, can you please tell me about The Parents’ Campaign, its mission, and why fighting vouchers is a legislative priority for the organization?
Nancy Loome: Our focus is on students and what's good for students in public schools, and our mission is to give parents a voice and to provide them with an avenue to have conversations with the folks who are making decisions that affect their children's schools. Our role is to make it very easy for busy people to participate in these conversations by providing them not only with the training that they need to feel confident, but also with the information they need about proposals that are being considered, whether it's legislation or a change in policy.
We make sure that they have credible, accurate information, and we really try hard to distill that down to show them what the impact will be on the local level, how it is going to affect their own child and their own school, and then provide them tools to make it easy to reach out to those who are making these decisions.
Defeating vouchers is a priority because vouchers provide a direct funding stream to private schools that takes funding away from our public schools. Private schools are not designed to be a public good. They want to be able to select the students that they educate and are not open to all students. Because they have a selective admission process, they can refuse any child for any reason. And they operate outside of the public eye. We don't know what the standards are that they are purporting to meet. We don't have any accountability for the quality of education that they are providing. So funding private schools is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars, which are intended to fund public goods, things that are open to all children and benefit all taxpayers.
We all benefit from strong public schools. They are so important to thriving communities. Also, it is a hot topic among parents. Parents in Mississippi are not having it when it comes to vouchers and this whole “school choice” push. The voucher lobby has really been pushing so hard here and in other states as well, but our parents see right through that.
NC: Michael, can you please introduce yourself, tell me a bit about your school district, and what the impact of vouchers has been on your community?
Michael Cormack: I'm Michael Cormack, and I am a 23-year educator. I got my start as a classroom teacher, and I've supported nonprofits in our state and also worked as an elementary school principal. In my current capacity, I serve as Deputy Superintendent for Jackson Public Schools, our state's second largest district and only urban district in the state. We serve approximately 18,000 students.
Mississippi’s voucher program[1] currently only exists as an education option for students with special needs, and there are a few fundamental challenges. First, as Nancy indicated, it takes very needed resources away from our school district and our ability to serve those students that remain. As you are likely aware, there are federal guidelines in terms of students with special needs and certain obligations that we as a public school district continue to have to the students that are served in private schools. While the money leaves and follows the student, support services like speech and language pathology or diagnostic services, occupational therapy, all of the rich sets of resources that help students to thrive, and specifically students with special needs to thrive, we still have an obligation to provide.
And when students attend a private school, the school doesn’t have any obligations to meet the requirements of the students’ Individualized Education Program (IEP). What we have seen are students who return and may be even more severely or profoundly behind than when they left. Our obligation is to educate all students, and we take that very seriously, but vouchers really do jeopardize the continued work of those students.
NC: In 2024, several proposals that would have expanded Mississippi’s education savings account voucher program or establish a new voucher program were introduced in the state. Can you tell us a bit about what you were most focused on opposing last session? What strategies or tactics did you find to be most successful in your advocacy? Did you encounter any challenges? And if so, how did you overcome them?
NL: You know when this bill first passed, we assumed that it was the camel's nose under the tent, just a foot in the door with an ultimate goal of universal vouchers. We anticipated that because for years preceding its adoption, there were multiple bills introduced to push for voucher programs, and none of those had passed. And sure enough, the very next year after it passed, they came back trying to expand it, to blow it wide open for all children.
We have opposed all expansions of the program for all the reasons that Michael talked about. It's bad for kids. We've seen this in Mississippi, and we see it in the national research. We know that public schools outperform these private voucher schools. We know that children typically lose ground academically when they use vouchers to leave public schools and go to private schools.
The strategies and tactics that have been successful for us are the things that I talked about earlier. It's just having concerned citizens, parents, grandparents, educators, retired educators have conversations with the people making the decisions. In this case, it was legislation, so having conversations with their own lawmakers about what the impact would be. We find that this approach is very, very successful when we make it easy. When we tell parents when the votes are coming up, when we tell them what bills have been introduced, what the impact of those bills will be. One of the things that we provide advocates in their training and on our website is how to reach out, how to contact their legislators and have effective conversations. Parents respond when they feel confident.
The voucher lobby, as I'm sure you know, is well-funded and persistent. They have lobbyists at the Capitol who are having exchanges with lawmakers every day. They are wining and dining them. They are contributing to their campaigns. They are doing everything they can to convince them to support these bills that would send public money to private schools. And so, it is very important for legislators to understand the true impact of the legislation before them and to know that their constituents are paying attention, that they are watching these things, and that they care about them. And when public school supporters reach out and have those conversations with their legislators, legislators respond. They want to represent their constituents well. That’s how democracy is supposed to work, you know, where we have an informed electorate having conversations with lawmakers about how they want their public resources utilized. The legislative process can be a little difficult to follow – the amendments to the bills and the deadlines and that sort of thing – so that is the information throughout the legislative session that we are providing to parents. We also make sure that we’re going into all school districts and recruiting advocates. We have a very, very enthusiastic response in our school districts that are majority Republican and in our school districts that are not.
NC: Michael, is there anything you'd like to add?
MC: I think implicit in what Nancy is saying is the statistic that, you know, 90% of our students are enrolled in public schools in Mississippi, and that's a broad constituency across the state. Many of our legislators either have children in the same schools and/or community members, church members. They know teachers and they know principals within their local school systems, so they'll pick up the phone to answer the concerns of those in their community who are strong advocates, and they have positive experiences with public schools. I think we have a very positive story to tell about educational improvement and outcomes in Mississippi, and so the voucher movement has been pernicious. It's come at a time when investments that have been made are leading to improvements in our traditional public schools.
In 2015, there were some tug-at-your-heart-string stories told about students with special needs whose needs were not met. When the legislature passed the special education voucher, just 36% of students with special needs with IEPs were graduating high school. And as part of a larger, more pronounced effort, those outcomes now sit at well over 60% statewide, nearly double the number of students with special needs graduating within four years. It's because of concerted effort and investment and energy around this issue. I think all of us would agree that there are certain outcomes that we really need to improve, but the answer is not to take your money and go to a system that has no accountability. Let’s improve our public education system. Let's make certain that we fund robust supports, so that more of those students can get to the high school diploma and to lives of promise in college and career.
NL: We know that vouchers, and even public school choice, won’t provide a choice for the overwhelming majority of students enrolled in our public schools. Private schools limit choice intentionally and in a number of ways. First and foremost, obviously, is by not admitting all students. Another is raising tuition beyond what the voucher covers. Most Mississippi families can't afford to pay the difference between the tuition amount and what the voucher covers. Not providing transportation. We're a very rural state. Most of our children need transportation to school, so if the school's not providing transportation, students can't get there. The answer is not to encourage a few children to leave. The answer is to fix what's wrong so all children can benefit, and we know how to do that.
We know that we need some state funding for facilities in districts that cannot afford to provide their own. In our state, facilities repair and construction are 100% left to the local taxpayers to provide, which creates enormous disparities in the infrastructure and facilities that children learn in. There has been recent research that shows learning environment to be one of the most important things in student achievement, so that is something that the legislature should provide. Literacy coaches and math coaches have been extremely effective in bringing our children's fourth grade reading and math scores up. In our struggling schools, we need dedicated literacy and math coaches that don't have to be shared with other schools. We need high-quality after-school programs.
These are things that we know for sure are effective and would help all children. If we have money to spend, that's where we should be spending it, to improve schools for all children, and get a much more positive bang for our buck, and helping our communities at the same time, because strong public education is what drives economic development. Vouchers put taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars, and we know that in other states that have gone that route, it's really not for new choices. Overwhelmingly, we're seeing the majority of vouchers go to families who already had their children enrolled in private schools and could afford to pay that tuition themselves.
NC: How have things legislatively changed from last year to the current session, and what are the legislature and governor trying to make happen in terms of vouchers currently?
NL: One of the things that was a little different this year was that before the session even started, the Mississippi Speaker of the House made it clear that school choice was one of his very top priorities and he expected his chamber to go along with it. Parents had to be paying attention. They needed to be reaching out to their legislators early and staying engaged all the way through the session because we had pressure coming not only from the voucher lobby, but also internally from the Speaker of the House. And in Mississippi, unfortunately, the way the House operates – and which has now been sanctioned by our ethics commission and a judge – is that when there is Iegislation that is deemed in any way controversial, the House Republican caucus meets about it and decides how they're going to vote on that issue as a body. We have a Republican supermajority, so we're talking about a controlling block of the legislature meeting behind closed doors in a caucus meeting and making decisions about the outcome of legislation.
We knew that it was really important for parents to be very engaged on the front end because we weren't even talking about a legislative deadline necessarily. It was very, very important for us to be educating people before the legislative session started, letting them know what was coming so that they could be engaged from the get-go. And they were. They got engaged and the voucher bill never came out on the floor for a vote. I guess there was not support for it in the caucus meeting, and that is a testament to our parent advocates. And kudos to their legislators for responding. They are facing enormous pressure from the voucher lobby. We see these emails coming out where they are threatening to fund the campaigns of pro-school choice opponents to run against incumbents and primary them. But Mississippi lawmakers stood up for their own constituents in their own districts, and they deserve a lot of credit.
MC: Additionally, we're watching what has been called or nicknamed the “Tim Tebow Bill,” which would allow homeschooled families to have their students participate in public school high school athletics and other afterschool activities. We simply believe you should enroll in your public school and take advantage of all that we have to offer as an enrolled student. I think it's part of a larger effort to decouple what it means to be public and what it means to leverage those resources. It is also part of the broader “choice” strategy and conversation. And I think what really is pernicious is that you clearly see that there's a benefit, but there's also accountability that we have to our students, both their education, but also the liabilities. And that's something that they want to pick apart as part of a strategy to decouple this idea of public engagement and public accountability.
NC: Michael, what do you see as the role of school administrators in the voucher fight?
MC: I think we need to speak with a unified voice across urban, rural, and suburban systems, to talk about the benefits of public education and to remind our communities, our families, our parents, who are well-versed in the benefits of a public education, of the benefit to all. Not only to their own individual students, but to their local communities in terms of increased graduation rates and more students headed on to careers of opportunity and to college. As Nancy mentioned, public educators have a responsibility, obligation, and privilege to educate and ensure greater progress for our students.
Here in Jackson Public Schools, we just launched a new strategic plan. We call it “The Power of People and Possibilities,” and one of our strategic commitments is a strong finish. We've set some really ambitious goals aligned with our state's economic chamber of commerce to get more students on a path to a post-secondary credential, either two-, four-year or certification. And if we meet these really ambitious five-year goals that we've set, we'll add half a billion dollars to our local Jackson economy. That makes a difference.
And as important as each individual student is, there is also value collectively as more and more of them have the opportunity to lean into their God-given potentials and capacities to realize a career prospect that they couldn't visualize without the support of a strong public school. I think that that has to be our unified message – that there is real value in the work that we do and we’re able to tell the positive stories of students who, with the support of state-funded literacy coaches, are reading proficiently and reading on great level. You know, Mississippi is one of the best places to be a Black boy in public education. It's the positive trajectory of statewide investments that have been made, so why would we want to diminish that? Why would we want to be 50th again when we have the capacity to show what's possible? Why would we want to diminish what we’ve been able to do around literacy and outcomes by taking public dollars and investing them in private schools to the benefit of single families when we have built a system at scale to create opportunity for all?
NC: Thank you for sharing that. What advice do you have for advocates working in other states?
NL: I would say there are wonderful, enthusiastic parents, educators, and advocates in every state. They just need to have good information. If they feel empowered, if they feel confident reaching out, they are the best voices for our public schools. Those are the folks that legislators are going to listen to. Provide them with a web page with each school district’s legislators listed along with their contact information so advocates can go right to that and see who the people are affecting their child’s education. It’s important for constituents to know the deadlines, know the processes and understand how to develop these positive relationships with lawmakers. We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make it easy for people to participate in advocacy. We want them to be able to do it in a minute or less, so we want all the important information to be at their fingertips - the bill numbers, what the impact is on their own communities, how to reach out to the people who are making the decisions. And then they'll be willing to do it repeatedly, particularly when they feel successful in doing that.
Also, don't be too discouraged. There are other people out there who care. There really is power in numbers. The more people who call, the better. Calls and visits are better than emails. We always strongly encourage people to develop positive relationships with legislators and to get their cell phone numbers so they can text them. Legislators like to engage by text. Once parents develop these relationships it’s easy to send a text message and say, “Hey, heads up. I understand this bill's coming up, and I’m very worried about the impact on our schools. Can you give me a call or send me some information or let me know what you're hearing?” And then there's this back and forth, and it's a real relationship. That's how we end up with better policy. And when we end up with better policy, we end up with better public schools.
NC: Thank you. Michael, is there anything you'd like to add?
MC: I think Nancy hit the ball out of the park. That's exactly it. You know, when you operate in a small state, you're likely to see somebody in the grocery store or in church, and there is a level of accountability that provides and the opportunity to engage. At a local level in terms of advocacy, our district hosted an annual legislative breakfast for our local delegation where we pitch a legislative agenda, and we talk about the support for public education. We also invite our legislators to school-based events. We want them to understand all the positive things that are happening on a day-to-day basis in our schools to encourage them, ensure that we have the opportunity to be in their ear, and also to say thank you and cultivate positive relationships that we can then tap into. We want to brag on the good work of our teachers and our students as part of shaping positive relationships and building relational capital such that when we need to call on them and urge their support and/or the defeat of more pernicious legislation, that we have some of that relational capital in the bank.
[1] Michael is referring to the Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Program, an education savings account voucher program. Mississippi operates two additional voucher programs, one for students with dyslexia and one for students with speech-language needs.