Plans to name an AmeriCorps training center for the late state Sen. Grey Ferris have been scrapped and a new measure to honor the education leader from Vicksburg has been found.

The bill that passed the House in February was amended after lawmakers learned the multimillion-dollar project is being funded primarily with federal money, state Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, said Monday.

“The state can’t name it because AmeriCorps has a federal program in it,” Flaggs said.

AmeriCorps plans to lease 75 percent of the former All Saints’ Episcopal School for a campus tentatively set to begin operations by July. About $2.5 million in federal funding has been set aside for the center. Staffers there would conduct training for new volunteers in the service and outreach program.

Another hitch, Flaggs said, was that lawmakers were also contacted by the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, which co-owns All Saints’ with dioceses in Louisiana and Arkansas, to remind them AmeriCorps is a tenant, not a buyer, and has an initial one-year lease. The portion not leased by AmeriCorps would be retained by the dioceses, which would also keep up the buildings and grounds.

Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, who sits on the Legislative Budget Committee along with Flaggs and chairs the Public Health and Human Services Committee, was author of the bill to honor Ferris that passed the House earlier this session.

Pending in the Senate, the bill has been amended to name the board room at the state Department of Education for Ferris, a founder of the consolidated Vicksburg Warren School District and chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Flaggs said there has been discussion about naming the Mississippi Adequate Education Program after Ferris, who was a lead author of the 1997 act that implemented the public education funding formula now followed by the state.

“It would give him great distinction and he’s deserving of every bit of it,” Flaggs said of Ferris, who died in June.

Special permitting from the city zoning board has been approved for the AmeriCorps campus, which initially would house 60 to 80 volunteers.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com.