Mississippi House Bill 927, which would have given The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS) fiscal agency, permitted the acceptance of sophomores and established an MSMS Advisory Board, died on the calendar, likely halting its progress until the 2027 session.

The bill, failed Feb. 12, was sponsored by Rep. Steve Massengill (R-Hickory Flat) and was accompanied by an identical Senate bill that died in committee Feb. 3. It was set to be presented by House Education Committee Chair Rep. Rob Roberson (R-Starkville) on the session’s deadline day, meaning it had to pass that day.

In February, Massengill said the Mississippi Department of Education found an issue with Section 3 of the bill regarding admitting sophomores and requested it not be introduced.

“At the last minute, MDE decided there was a problem with adding the 10th grade, and I’m not really sure what the problem was. So, they asked [Roberson] not to bring it up,” Massengill said last month.

Roberson said he planned to present the bill for amendment on the House floor that afternoon, but Speaker of the House Jason White shut down the calendar at midday.

“I had the amendments to be made, and we got back on the floor after lunch. I found out that [White] was [shutting down the calendar] at 3 [p.m.],” Roberson said. “He didn’t want to bring anything else out, for whatever reason.”

Roberson said White’s decision to shut down the calendar was not a surprise, but that he had not been previously aware it would happen.

“It was not unexpected in the sense we knew we were coming to the end of what we were going to present,” Roberson said. “I wasn’t aware that we were not going to handle anything after lunch.”

Education legislation has been particularly contentious this session amid dissension over the Senate’s rejection of House Bill 2, which would have allowed state funds to follow students to private and charter schools. While it would still be possible for changes to MSMS to be added to another piece of legislation as an amendment this year, Massengill said the tension between the chambers would make that difficult.

“A lot of the education stuff got [dragged] into the last day. I think [Roberson] had 30 different bills, 
so they just got sort of caught up in all that,” Massengill said. “I don’t know if [the MSMS legislation] could get put in anything else. Right now, there is a little friction between the House and the Senate over HB 2, and it sort of put a strain on the education part.”

Roberson said he believes there is still a path to getting the legislation added to another bill this session.

“As long as there’s not an objection on the floor — which I don’t know why there would necessarily be an objection [on this legislation], at least on the House side — [legislators] can go ahead and plug it into another bill at some point,” Roberson said. “There may be a code section out there. I just haven’t had a chance to look yet.”

MSMS Executive Director Ginger Tedder said she is open to school-specific legislation being plugged into another bill this session but that the school is turning its focus toward planning for fiscal agency in 2027.

“There’s always that opportunity [for MSMS fiscal agency to be added into something else], and we’ll run with it if we get that opportunity, but we also have to plan ahead,” Tedder said. “We are planning for July 1, 2027, now [for a] fiscal agency start.”

While MSMS’s acquisition of fiscal agency has been delayed, Tedder said it gives the school time to develop its plan for greater financial freedom both internally and with MUW.

“In the meantime, we are going to work on our strategic plan. We’ll look at our staffing and make sure we feel like we are staffed accordingly for fiscal agency,” Tedder said. “[The delay] allows us some time for training on a … fiscal software we’ll be learning called Marathon. We need to give time to [MUW] as well because there’s some work on their side with this separation. There is quite the list, so we won’t be bored.”

This story was originally published on The Vision MSMS on March 30, 2026.