When Mississippi State submitted its plans for becoming the new home for Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science in February, it was noted that those plans were designed entirely on the premise of MSMS sharing some facilities with a new Starkville High School built on land owned by the university adjacent to the school district’s Partnership Middle School. There was no stand-alone plan for a MSMS campus.

It called into question the real motives for MSU’s primary interest in becoming host to MSMS.

Was the whole plan simply a means of helping the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District obtain state funding to defray some of the costs of the new high school? That strategy certainly worked with Partnership Middle School, whose $30 million price tag was offset by $10 million state funding and another $5 million from MSU (primarily in the form of the land donation). When it was all said and done, SOCSD got a $30 million middle school for $16 million.

So moving MSMS is clearly in the best interest of one high school, just maybe not be the one being relocated.

In a process that has had all the markings of a backroom deal to move MSMS to MSU, there remains one formidable obstacle. It would need the approval of the Mississippi legislature.

For all the dubious-dealing, it may turn out that the real fight hasn’t even started. That battle will be waged in the 2026 legislative session and, despite every effort to put the thumb on the scale for MSU’s plan, the outcome is far from certain.

If the legislature shuts down the move of MSMS, MSU really hasn’t lost much of anything, but it would be a tremendous blow to SOCSD’s plans for a new high school partially funded by the state.

No matter what happens to MSMS, Starkville will still need a new high school. The need for a contingency plan is obvious. This week school officials confirmed they are considering MSU’s land on Hwy 182 as well as building on their existing high school campus.

The SOCSD Board initially passed an intent to issue bonds in the amount of $86 million.

During Tuesday’s meeting, the board authorized borrowing up to $125 million in bonds for the new school.

Publicly, the school district offered a variety of explanations for the $39 million increase, including increased construction costs and the need for various unidentified programming to support the new high school.

A far more likely explanation is that SOCSD is making contingency plans to build a new high school without state funding somewhere other than property owned by MSU.

After all, there can be no rational explanation for a new high school, built on donated land and without any athletic facilities, to cost $125 million.

Two recent examples drive that point home. Simpson County’s new high school is a $51 million project. Estimates for a new high school in DeSoto County range from $55 to $65 million.

Ten years ago, Lowndes County spent $26 million for a new high school in New Hope. What Starkville is proposing is spending almost five times that amount. You can’t explain any of this away by citing construction costs and new programming.

At $125 million, the new Starkville High would cost more than twice as much as any high school ever built in the state.

Suddenly, that $86 million high school that is part of MSU’s acquisition of MSMS seems almost like a bargain even though it, too, would immediately become the most expensive high school ever built in the state.

There is no doubt Starkville needs a new high school.

But it doesn’t need the Taj Mahal of high schools, no matter who ends up paying for it.

Starkville doesn’t have just one bad plan. Now it has two.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.