Charter Groups Raise Concerns About Mississippi Authorizer Process; Board Approves Rules as Filed
Representatives of three charter school organizations urged the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board on Monday to decide the futures of charter schools on objective performance data rather than what the board’s own documents call “professional judgment.”
Speakers from Clarksdale Collegiate, Midtown Public and the nonprofit Embark used the meeting’s public comment period to ask the board to limit the use of professional judgment to override objective performance data, and to require a full board vote before any school is placed on the authorizer’s intervention ladder.
The speakers also seemed to imply concerns about how the board has handled charter school decisions in the past, telling members the authorizer needed to be “clear, consistent and predictable” in its dealings with schools.
The board voted to approve revised charter renewal guidance and changes to its school performance framework as filed.
Board chair Candace Hunt asked, “Is there any discussion?” before the vote. No discussion was recorded on the meeting audio before the motion carried.
The authorizer board was created by the Mississippi Charter Schools Act of 2013, which Gov. Phil Bryant signed on April 17 of that year. The board approved the state’s first charter school in June 2014, and the first schools opened their doors in 2015.
Thirteen years after the law passed, ten charter schools operate in Mississippi — in Jackson, Clarksdale, Greenwood, Canton and Natchez. A further two have been approved in the 2024 application cycle that have not yet opened.
An analysis published by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy in 2023 found that of 56 charter school applications submitted between 2014 and 2021, eight were authorized — an acceptance rate of 14 percent.
Neighboring states have larger charter sectors. Alabama, whose charter law passed in 2015, two years after Mississippi’s, has 17 charter schools, according to the state education department’s December 2025 listing. Arkansas has 23 open-enrollment charter districts and 102 charter campuses, according to the state’s ADE Data Center. Louisiana, whose charter law dates to 1995, had 148 charter schools in 2023-24, the most recent year for which the state education department has published a statewide breakdown.