Minutes: February 3, 2015

President Wes Brooks presided over the meeting. Thanks to Paul Presley who gave the invocation and Scott Hummel who led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thanks to Katherine Nugent for serving as our greeter today.

 

Aaron Ladner asked members with guests to introduce them. Scott Hummel introduced Dennis Cash, Florent Morlet and Valentine Bayh as his guests and shared that Florent Morley is visiting from Italy and Valentine Bayh is visiting form Germany. Johnny Stevens introduced his guest Jana Causey as a prospective member. Jerome Brown introduced his guest Van Jones. Melissa Phelps is a guest of Maura McLaughlin. Katherine Nugent introduced David Hayhurst who will be inducted later today. Our speaker Grant Callen brought Chris Johnson as his guest.  Chris is a candidate for District House 87.

Wes announced that April 21^st is the date for our annual Night in Italy. The event benefits the Children Center for Communications and Development. More details will be available as the date grows closer.  Ryan Kelly and Kristi Gould are co-chairing that committee.  April, 10-12 are the dates for the 2015 District Conference.  If you are interested in sponsoring, please contact Bill McLeod.  We are encouraging all members to attend the conference.  We would like the Hattiesburg Club to have a strong presence there.

Wes Brooks and Sean Priebe inducted David Hayhurst as a new member.  

 

Allen Anderson introduced our guest speaker today, Grant Callen. Grant is the President of Empower Mississippi and founded the organization in 2014. 

According to Grant, the goal of Empower Mississippi is to create opportunity and make Mississippi the most free and prosperous state in the nation. The organization’s mission is to empower citizens to advocate for policies that help people thrive. 

 

Grant says the organization educates and empowers citizens to ensure that Mississippians have access to quality educational opportunities and a restrained state government that operates efficiently, without an over-reliance on debt. The organization also promotes low taxes and pro-growth economic policies that reward productivity, a level economic playing field where government does not favor one company or industry over another and minimal barriers for entrepreneurs to start a business and succeed.

 

There are currently around 64,000 children with some type of special need in our state.  Whether it is Attention Deficit Disorder, Dyslexia, Down Syndrome, etc., Mississippi is currently at the bottom of the list for educational programs and assistance for special needs children. 

 

Mississippi is ranked as the 51^st in the nation for K-12 student achievement. Our graduation rate is 75% with only 22% for the special needs children graduating high school.  There are over 135,148 children who are failing in our school districts. We need more schools for the special needs children, and we need to offer parents financial assistance to assist if their child needs to attend another school.

 

Since 1970 there has been an increase in educational funds of about five-percent per year. Grant maintains that we keep adding money to the problem but nothing is solved.  Empower Mississippi offers Educational Choice which would allow public charter schools, educational savings accounts for parents, and tax credits for scholarships.

 

New Orleans had the worst public school educational rating prior to Katrina. After the storm they changed all of their schools to Charter Schools.  About ninety-percent of their children now attend charter schools.  Their failure rate went from seventy-five to seventeen-percent. Forty-two states have already implemented the Charter School system. 

 

Grant says his organization believes that empowering parents with education choice is an excellent option. By doing so we tear down barriers and help ensure that every Mississippi child has the opportunity to choose a quality education. By implementing policies that promote economic freedom, we remove obstacles for people to earn a living in a field of their choice says Grant. And by advocating for a fiscally responsible state government, we ensure that citizens retain more of their hard-earned money and have the resources to provide for their family.

 

Grant encouraged Rotarians to write to your legislators and join the movement.  For more information, please visit www.empowerms.org.