OurTupelo

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit by former Jackson State University President William Bynum Jr. against the university and the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, ending a six-year legal battle. 

Bynum, who was JSU president from July 2017 to February 2020, sued the university and IHL in Hinds County Circuit Court alleging that the state’s college board violated his contract after he resigned. Bynum resigned after he was arrested in a prostitution sting.  

Bynum remained on staff at Jackson State as a professor until April 2020. A month after he filed the lawsuit, university leaders fired him. In the lawsuit, IHL and JSU countered that Bynum’s contract never granted him tenure at the university.

Bynum argued in the lawsuit that through a clause in his contract, he could resign or be fired as president but remain employed at the university as a full professor.

Senior Status Judge James D. Bell noted in his decision that the IHL Board of Trustees’ policies stipulate that after completing five years of service, a college president could be granted tenure as a professor at the board’s discretion. 

But Bell ruled, Bynum did not serve five years as JSU president and did not qualify for tenure. 

Nothing in the contract gave Bynum a right to tenure, Bell wrote. “Upon his resignation, he became an at-will employee. The entire premise of his Complaint is based upon a misreading or misunderstanding of the plain words of his contract.” 

Bell also dismissed Bynum’s complaint that he was entitled to punitive damages because IHL’s and JSU’s actions were “‘fraudulent, egregious, in bad faith and in total disregard for’ his actions.” 

Charles Winfield, an attorney who represents Jackson State and IHL, and Bynum’s lawyer, Dennis Sweet III, did not respond to a request for comment.

State Rep. Jeff Hale, a Republican lawmaker from Hernando, was arrested and charged by the Hernando Police Department on Friday night with driving under the influence, reckless driving, speeding and disorderly conduct. 

Online police records show Hale was booked into the DeSoto County detention facility, posted a bond of $1,500 and that he has been released from custody. The online records also say that this is Hale’s first DUI charge.

Hale did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear if he has an attorney representing him. The police department also did not respond to a request for comment. 

Hale told the DeSoto Times-Tribune in a statement that he received a phone call from his son and daughter-in-law saying that his granddaughter was unconscious and that they were traveling to the hospital for treatment. 

He further told the news outlet that while he was traveling to meet his family at the hospital, he was “providing instructions through my wife over the phone in an effort to help my granddaughter.” 

He also apologized to the police department and the sheriff’s department for his actions, but said he was not under the influence of alcohol or any other intoxicants. 

Hale has been in the Legislature since 2016, and he currently serves as the chairman of the House Energy Committee.

READ MORE: FAQ: Mississippi redistricting. Why does it matter? What’s being considered?

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a brief order on Monday, reversed a lower court’s ruling that determined Mississippi lawmakers unlawfully diluted Black voting strength when it redrew the state’s legislative districts. 

Monday’s order from the high court sends the case back to the lower federal court for further arguments in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Callais decision, which rolled back protections against racial discrimination in the redistricting process.

The order contained no legal justification or reasoning. Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter from the order. She wrote that she dissented because the only issue raised in the appeal was whether private groups could file a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act. 

The ruling stems from a federal three-judge panel’s order in May 2025 that determined Mississippi lawmakers did not give Black voters in three areas of the state a fair chance to elect voters of their choice and ordered the state to conduct special elections for the new districts. 

The state attorney general’s office appealed a portion of that ruling last year. It did not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the entire order. It only asked the high court to rule that private citizens did not have a right to file litigation under the Voting Rights Act. 

During the special elections last year resulting from the lower federal court’s order, the Democrats flipped one House seat and two Senate seats.  

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — In 1965, Black Americans peacefully demonstrated for voting rights and were beaten by Alabama state troopers before returning two weeks later to complete their march under federal protection. Keith Odom was a toddler then.

Now 62 years old, the union man and grandfather of three retraced some of their final steps. On Saturday, he came from Aiken, South Carolina, to Atlanta, where he joined several dozen other activists on two buses to Montgomery, Alabama. A few hours later, he stepped off his bus and onto Dexter Avenue, where the original march concluded.

“The history here — being a part of it, seeing it, feeling it,” said Odom, who is Black.

His voice trailed off as he saw the Alabama Capitol and a stage that sat roughly where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. concluded the original march.

Odom lamented that he and his fellow bus riders were not simply commemorating that seminal day in the Civil Rights Movement. Instead they came to renew the fight. The 1965 effort helped push Congress to send the Voting Rights Act to Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign, securing and expanding political power for Black and other nonwhite voters for more than a half-century.

Saturday’s “All Roads Lead to the South” rally was the first mass organizing response after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that severely diminished that landmark law. Striking down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana, the justices concluded in a 6-3 ruling that considering race when drawing political lines is in itself discriminatory. That spurred multiple states, including Alabama, to redraw U.S. House districts in ways that make it harder for Black voters, who lean overwhelmingly Democratic, to elect lawmakers of their choice.

“I’m not trying to live a life that’s going backwards,” Odom said. “I want to go forward, for my grandchildren to be able to go forward.”

An old political battle is new again

The passenger rosters and the scene when riders arrived in Montgomery sounded the echoes and rhymes of past and present.

“I talked to my grandmother before I came, and she was so excited,” said Justice Washington, a Kennesaw State University student named because her mother and grandmother had faith in the American system. “My grandmother told me she did her part, and now it’s time for me to do mine.”

No one on the Atlanta buses had reached voting age when the Voting Rights Act became law. The youngest attendee was born as Democrat Barack Obama was elected the first Black president in 2008.

Kobe Chernushin is 18, white and just graduated high school in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. He is an organizer with the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition and spent the day filming Khayla Doby, a 29-year-old executive for the organization, doing standups for the group’s followers on social media.

“I believe in the power of showing up,” he said.

The buses launched from the congressional district in Georgia once represented by John Lewis, bloodied on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, when he was 25. Lewis died in 2020, but some on the buses Saturday celebrated that a proposed federal election overhaul is named for him. If some Democrats get their way, the bill would override the U.S. Supreme Court, reinvigorate the Voting Rights Act and outlaw the kind of gerrymandering competition that Republican President Donald Trump has instigated.

“I’m here because of the same forces that pulled on John Lewis when he was a student,” said Darrin Owens, 27. He has worked for former Vice President Kamala Harris and now trains Democratic candidates.

“Political activism is personal,” Owens said, explaining that he attended Saturday as a citizen, not a political professional. “Sometimes those lines are blurred, and as a Black person in America, a Black person living in a Southern state, I’m committed to action that stops what I consider to be un-American, this possibility that the person who represents me is someone who is not from my community and does not understand me or my community.”

When he arrived, Owens saw no federal authorities on Montgomery’s streets. A wounded, recovering Lewis did during the second march in 1965.

This time many of the Alabama troopers and local officers who walked the area were Black.

The buses and sandwich lunches had been arranged by Fair Fight Action, a legacy of the political network built by Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who became a national figure in her unsuccessful runs in 2018 and 2022 to become the first Black woman elected governor in U.S. history. No Black woman has yet achieved that feat.

Different generations share their stories

At different points, Montgomery has branded itself as the cradle of the Confederacy and the cradle of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

“It feels like our country is stuck in this pattern of making progress, then there’s a huge backlash, and then people have to go through the same battle again just to get to where we were,” said Phi Nguyen, the 41-year-old daughter of Vietnamese refugees. She is now a civil rights lawyer in Atlanta.

She stood across from the church where a young King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and not far from where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office in 1861 as the slavery-defending Confederate president.

Nguyen and her sister Bee, a 44-year-old who served in the Georgia General Assembly and ran for statewide office, met two other women as they walked. Carole Burton and Tondalaire Ashford are 72-year-old Montgomery residents who have been friends since they were in a segregated junior high school and then newly desegregated Sidney Lanier High School.

“I don’t call it ‘integration,’” Ashford said, pointing at her dark skin. “It was never real integration, and it’s not like we can ever just blend in.”

Burton described them as being “in the second wave” of Black students. “It wasn’t easy,” she said. “And we had to support each other.”

They remember their parents not being able to vote in the era of poll taxes, literacy tests and other racist restrictions that the Voting Rights Act eventually outlawed. But they smiled as they swapped family histories with the Nguyens.

Burton said immigrants, descendants of enslaved persons and Native Americans have different but overlapping paths. “We just want to be treated like people with the same rights and opportunities the country has promised us,” she said. “They’ve never fully lived up to it.”

Conflicting legacies are at stake

To Odom, who had begun his journey Saturday in South Carolina, the current U.S. Supreme Court reinforced that history by refusing to see some race-conscious election policy as a way to ensure fair representation, not simply the “technical right to vote.”

He recalls decades of his life being represented by Strom Thurmond, a segregationist Democratic governor who became a “Dixiecrat” presidential candidate and U.S. senator — by now as a Republican — into the 21st century. Odom said he fears his state losing U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, through redistricting.

“They want to take away that legacy when we’re still living with Strom’s?” Odom said.

Odom said he is also worried that the young people who participated Saturday are not a vanguard but outliers.

“I was talking to a 20-year-old co-worker about this trip,” he said. “She told me she supported me but didn’t want to do it or work for anybody” running for office. “She wondered what any of them are going to do for her.”

Nonetheless, he said on the way home, “I’m still going to tell her what I saw and what I heard.”

MADISON — Even on a damp day, the gaily painted blooms, ladybugs and butterflies on a brick wall of Madison Avenue Elementary School seem to pull a ray of sunshine out of thin air and an overcast sky.

The new mural is a vibrant anchor for the Reading Garden at the K-2 school — a cozy gathering spot just out back from the school’s library and designed for use by students and the community, too.

Seeds for the project first germinated a few years back, with school librarian Tosha Nowell’s idea to take the library from inside to out.

“Lots of people come up here and play on the weekends or afternoons on the playground,” Nowell said, “so I just thought it would give them an opportunity to sit and read, and just have some books out there.”

Extra seating, outdoor cushions for the low brick wall and a still-to-come reading shed with bookshelves will make it an inviting hangout space during school hours and beyond.

“That area is used so much on the weekends and after hours for recreation,” Madison Avenue Elementary Principal Kristal Epting said. “ We have families that walk dogs back there, we have families that come to run, throw Frisbees, use the playground equipment.” 

Baseball and soccer teams practice there, too.

“Since it’s an active area for the community, we just provided an additional space to focus on literacy and reading,” Epting said.

The Reading Garden became an active focus this school year for the Madison Avenue Elementary Parent Teacher Organization. Members sold Blue Cards, which provide discounts at local merchants, to raise money for the mural, a reading shed, seating and whimsical artificial flowers, as well as other projects and student opportunities, said PTO co-presidents Kristen Shumaker and Amanda Wilson. Allyn Anderson was the chair for the Blue Cards.

“It couldn’t have happened without the parents’ support,” Shumaker said. “We’re very thankful for the support of our school families.”

Epting noted the mural’s tie-in with the importance of the arts at the school.

“Madison Avenue has been an arts-integrated school for many years,” she said. “Under multiple administrations, through multiple faculties, that’s just something that’s always stayed — an arts focus.” 

Epting said the arts can be “a vehicle for learning,” with teachers connecting academic content with visual arts, music, dance and theater.

Nowell sees daily how her library’s bright, engaging surroundings support and encourage early readers. Kids scurry to find comfy spots to settle down, books in hand. She might give them a flashlight to read by and turn out the lights, or let them crawl under a table with pillows and stuffed toys to tuck into a book.

“It’s the point of making reading a comfortable, exciting — not just a dreaded ‘You’ve got to read’-type thing,’” she said. “They think it’s a fun thing. It’s the enjoyment of reading.”

That is the type of zeal Wilson sees in her daughter, Katherine: Morning visits to the library are a prime reason the first-grader can’t wait to come to school.

“I know she’s looking forward to this summer,” Wilson said. “She’ll be excited to come and to play on the playground and read, too.”

The mural is the work of Clinton artist Lucia Duque, who specialized in murals in her art studies in Spain, where she grew up. Her artwork, measuring nearly 500 square feet, enlivens the brick with bright, bold colors and a visual buzz of activity behind the slender trunks of crepe myrtles. 

Its bounty of botanicals and bright insects suit the Reading Garden theme, and the word “Avenue” and a jaguar, the school’s mascot, tie it directly to the location. 

Several ladybugs crawl across the design, inspired by beloved late teacher Nancy Summerhill Gross.

“She loved that area and she loved ladybugs,” Nowell said, crediting former school principal Melissa Philley with the idea for that memorial detail.

Madison Avenue Elementary PTO Grounds Chair Melissa Shows said Duque incorporated all the ideas people provided: “She delivered, and more.”

Duque previously painted Mannsdale Elementary’s Measurement Garden, and she embraced the team’s requests at Madison Avenue Elementary. “They wanted something with a bunch of colors. … I was so excited that I could do something I really love.” 

Duque reached out for an assistant to help with the big project, and Sherry McAlilly, who had previously taken a watercolor workshop with the artist, stepped up.

“It definitely is Lucia’s project. I told people, ‘I just painted in the lines,” McAlilly said with a fond laugh. Her granddaughter, Eleanor, a 6-year-old kindergartener at Madison Avenue Elementary, was able to join in, too, with some brushstrokes.

Work that started during spring break was wrapped up in a few weeks. Construction on the reading shed is projected for the fall. Nowell likened the potential for a bring-a-book, take-a-book type of exchange there to “those Little Free Libraries you see, but on a grander scale.”

“I’ve had a few parents say, ‘Now, I’ll sit down and read, and my child will sit down and read their book and we just have reading time,” Nowell said. “To me, the more you get a book in their hand, and they enjoy it, the better.” 

Nowell said she wants the outdoor reading space to be inviting.

“You have students that truly love to read. And, they’re K-to-2. They’re small,” Nowell said. “I still have kindergarteners that come in here in the mornings and they go find a spot to read. … Anything that’s not forced is going to encourage reading and literacy for the students.”

The mural enhances that pull, Epting said.

 “The art mural supports an inviting space that people want to come to. … Your eye is drawn to that. You’re driving up the back driveway to the building, your eye goes to that immediately.”

She pictured families using the outdoor area there as a cool spot to chill out with a book as well as a place for play. “Taking the learning from the inside out gives them that option. And parents need that option.”

Shumaker said her kindergartener, Ollie, loves the outdoors and has gushed about the mural, which he dubbed “the decorations.”

“With active kids, it’s nice to be able to have some on the playground, and some be able to sit,” said Shumaker, whose four children include several book lovers and one particularly avid reader. “Ben Shumaker is going to take a book wherever he goes.” 

Schoolchildren are thrilled with the artwork, evident in excited gasps at first sight, and their calls to pals, “Look!” Nowell said. “You should just see the look on their face when they were looking at that mural.”

Epting said, “It’s always going to be a trademark of the school, in the years moving forward.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision gutted the federal Voting Rights Act protection for minority voters in redistricting, prompting some states, at the urging of the Trump administration, to try to redraw voting lines for GOP advantage ahead of the November midterm elections.

Mississippi had been ordered by a federal judge to redraw its state Supreme Court districts to allow Black voters adequate representation. But Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special legislative session set for this week to address the court districts after a federal appeals court set aside the judge’s order.

Reeves and other state Republican leaders say they want Mississippi to gerrymander its congressional voting districts to try to prevent reelection of the state’s lone Democrat, longtime U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, also the state’s only Black member of Congress. But it appears doubtful Reeves will try to get the Legislature to do so before the midterms, as Mississippi has already held its primaries.

The governor said he does want lawmakers to redraw congressional, judicial and state legislative districts before the 2027 statewide elections.

 Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about the political issue sure to embroil Mississippi, the South and the nation for years to come.

READ MORE: Trump pushes Mississippi to redraw congressional districts after Supreme Court ruling. But legal and political hurdles loom

What is redistricting?

Redistricting is the process for a lawmaking body, such as the Mississippi Legislature or a local city council, to redraw district boundaries to determine which voters belong in a district.

Redistricting normally occurs after the decennial census. The purpose of redistricting is to ensure equal representation in each district. The mandate for legislative seats is to have the near identical number of people in each district to ensure the one-person, one-vote principle. More leeway is allowed in judicial districts.

While lawmakers typically redraw the lines to account for population shifts, racial and political gerrymandering has long been a practice. Mississippi, with its long history of Jim Crow voter suppression, has often faced litigation and federal court intervention with its redistricting.

People in a district vote to determine who represents them, but the process of determining which voters belong in districts is the subject of much debate and controversy. 

What could redistricting impact?

Redistricting can impact everyone, but minority voters, especially Black voters, are usually the most impacted by redistricting in the Deep South.

The point of voting districts is to elect representatives who understand the needs of that area, such as the Mississippi Gulf Coast or the Mississippi Delta. But legislators often draw district lines to protect incumbent politicians or give their political party an advantage. In Mississippi, the state with the largest percentage Black population, partisanship and race are intertwined.

Despite Black people making up close to 40% of the population in Mississippi, Black representation in government has not reflected that, particularly in congressional and statewide offices.

Before the first voter casts a ballot, politicians have already influenced the outcome by determining who the voters are. 

PODCAST: Rep. Summers: With U.S. Supreme Court likely to dismantle Voting Rights Act, Mississippi lawmakers push for state version

What is the Voting Rights Act, and how does it relate to redistricting?

Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution in the 19th Century. These amendments were enacted to abolish slavery and to try to ensure equality for formerly enslaved people. But as formerly enslaved people began to gain voting power, white supremacists enacted Jim Crow laws in the Deep South that stripped voting rights and political power from Black people.

These laws included requiring Black citizens to pay poll taxes and pass literacy tests or answer impossible questions in order to vote. White supremacists also used violence and intimidation to prevent Black people from voting. 

After years of protests and pressure, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to try to prohibit such voter intimidation. After its passage, Black people began registering to vote in large numbers. But to prevent Black voters from wielding any real influence, state lawmakers in Mississippi and across the South began to redraw state legislative and congressional districts in ways that prevented Black voters from being able to elect Black candidates.

Lawmakers did this by “cracking” majority-Black areas and diluting the vote and placing them in majority-white districts. It wasn’t until 1979 that a significant number of Black people were elected to the Mississippi Legislature, and 1986 when Mississippi elected its first Black person, Mike Espy, to Congress.

Because white legislators intentionally tried to prevent Black voters from electing candidates of their choice, federal courts interpreted the Voting Rights Act to require states to draw districts in a way that gives Black voters fair representation. The recent U.S. Supreme Court Callais decision stops the practice of race being a factor in drawing districts.

READ MORE: State lawmakers push for protections as Supreme Court considers dismantling Voting Rights Act

What does this mean for me as a Mississippian? 

How legislators redraw districts goes to the heart of a healthy democracy.

If voters believe they have fair, representative districts, they are more likely to participate in the political process. If lawmakers draw politically or racially gerrymandered districts, it tends to create voter apathy. 

What communities are included in certain districts is also important. For example, if someone who lives in Jackson represents a district that includes the Gulf Coast, that representative may not advocate for the needs of the Gulf Coast as much as they would for the Jackson metro area. 

Who draws districts?

Lawmaking bodies draw districts.

The Mississippi Legislature draws congressional, state legislative and judicial districts. Local boards of supervisors draw county districts and local city councils or boards of aldermen draw municipal districts.

What’s the difference between congressional districts and judicial districts?

Congressional districts determine who elects members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mississippi is currently represented by three white Republicans and one Black Democrat. 

Each state has two senators elected by a statewide vote.

Judicial districts determine who represents voters in the state’s judiciary. The highest court in Mississippi is the state Supreme Court. 

What redistricting is being considered in Mississippi?

Lawmakers are considering redrawing congressional, state legislative and the state Supreme Court districts.

Gov. Reeves cancelled a special legislative session that had been planned to redraw state Supreme Court districts, but House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann recently announced the creation of committees to study redistricting over the summer and make recommendations to lawmakers. Since both the House and Senate are studying redistricting, it appears likely that lawmakers will debate redistricting measures during the 2027 session that begins in January.

Many Republican politicians in Mississippi are calling for the state to move more quickly, to nullify the results of the state’s congressional midterm primaries, and gerrymander the districts to try to provide a GOP sweep in the November general elections for Congress. Trump has been pressuring states, including Mississippi to do so.

Reeves cast doubt on that happening in Mississippi before November since the primaries have already been held —  it would be unprecedented for lawmakers to overturn duly held elections —  and he said the move could have unintended detrimental consequences for Republicans nationwide. But he left the door open and said he is working closely with the Trump administration.

Mississippi has lost nearly 70,000 public school students since the state’s student population started its downturn in 2013. 

The vast majority of Mississippi’s school districts, 113, have seen enrollment declines — some as much as 40%.

Some experts link the falling public school enrollment to the state’s overall population loss. 

If districts continue to lose students, their funding will decline, too. In 2024, Mississippi adopted a new public school funding formula that ties money to student enrollment. A section of the student funding formula included a “hold-harmless” provision, which prevented districts with declining enrollment from being hit with significant cuts. That protection expires in July 2027. 

Kymberly Wiggins, the Mississippi Department of Education’s chief operating officer, said every district will then have to live with their “true” allocation, which may be a wake-up call. She said the Legislature has an opportunity to adjust the funding formula in 2028 and minimize enrollment-related budget decreases. 

But Tyler Hansford, superintendent of Union Public School District and president of the state superintendents’ association, is worried about what’s going to happen in the meantime, as federal pandemic relief money dries up and the state’s hold-harmless deadline approaches.

“To really cure budget shortfalls, just about the only way is cutting personnel,” he said.

And if that doesn’t work, Hansford knows what comes next: consolidations and school closures. “I would think that would be unavoidable,” he said. 

Those possibilities are already becoming a reality for some districts. 

Leake County schools have lost about a fifth of their enrollment over the past decade. In February, district leaders announced that two high schools will be consolidated at the end of this school year. Former graduates and school employees told Mississippi Today they believe the move is necessary and overdue. 

Another case is Leland, a Delta town that peaked in population at 6,667 in 1980. Now, fewer than 4,000 people call it home. 

The public school district’s population parallels that of the town. Leland schools have lost about 300 students, a third of their enrollment, since the 2013-14 school year. Superintendent Jessie King is frank about what could happen if Leland schools lose more money. 

“We may have to cut staff,” he said. “That’s definitely a concern.”

Schools have fixed costs such as building maintenance and bus driver salaries, said Tara Moon, a researcher at FutureEd, an education think tank. But if they don’t have the same amount of money coming in, it can present challenges.

“They need to figure out how to close the gap in their budget,” she said. 

Often, the first casualty is teachers. 

Superintendents face tough decisions

When teachers retire in Philadelphia, they may not be replaced.

That’s because a third of the student population has evaporated in the past 10 years, and Superintendent Shannon Whitehead has to cut costs where she can. 

Philadelphia’s population dropped from 7,477 people in 2010 to 7,118 in 2020. City schools have seen steeper declines in enrollment. 

Philadelphia Public School District has lost nearly 40% of its student population since the 2013-14 school year, dropping from 1,224 students to 750. 

The factors for the enrollment loss aren’t clear. Some students are moving out of city limits and attending nearby Neshoba County schools, Whitehead said. Students often transfer to nearby districts. 

What’s resulted is a shrinking staff and growing class sizes. Whitehead said she’s dissolving roles now to prevent future layoffs. 

King, superintendent of Leland schools, is looking to trim costs, too. One option he’s considering is participating in the state’s virtual teacher program, with Jackson-based instructors teaching online classes across Mississippi.

Jackson Public Schools is losing students at the third-highest rate of Mississippi districts. JPS enrollment declined by half, about 13,000 students, since the 2013-14 school year. Skeletal buildings of former schools sit unused across Jackson. District spokespeople declined to comment on the district’s shrinking enrollment.

Will Russell, superintendent of Leake County School District, said he decided to “realign” the district’s high schools because of resource disparities tied to enrollment declines. He said he avoids the word “consolidation” because it evokes emotional responses in his community.

One school didn’t have a football team, for example, because of low enrollment. The county high school needs a chemistry teacher. Teachers are paid on the same salary schedule at both schools, but classes at one school only have six or seven students, compared to at least a dozen more at the other. 

“If anybody wants to say that we’re wasting money, they would be right,” Russell said. 

Grace Breazeale, a K-12 education researcher at policy advocacy organization Mississippi First, said that because population and enrollment declines will likely continue, district leaders should consider consolidating schools or districts.

But some district leaders aren’t willing to have those conversations. For years, there have been rumors about consolidating Philadelphia Public Schools and Neshoba County School District, but city school alumni have pushed back.

“Our community is not interested in that at all,” Whitehead said. “We feel as though we’re strong enough.”

Few districts are growing

Oxford School District is one of the state’s few districts bucking the declining enrollment trend. The 4,649-student district is the fastest-growing in the state at an increase of 16% over the past 10 years. No other district comes close, Mississippi Today’s data analysis shows. 

Superintendent Bradley Roberson said the district’s growth is tied to the city’s. District officials have also worked hard to make Oxford schools parents’ first choice, he said.

District leaders have spent $44 million in recent years to upgrade facilities and expand Oxford’s early education program, course offerings and extracurricular programs — investments for which Roberson credits the strong tax base in the city that’s home to the University of Mississippi. 

Local support also helps explain the growth of schools in Petal, a suburb of Hattiesburg with 4,307 students that is the second-fastest growing district in the state.

Petal schools’ enrollment has dipped some years and increased by 150 students the next, growing modestly over the past decade. Still, Dillon is keeping an eye on the state’s waning student population.

“We’ve got to figure out ways to reach families and students,” he said. 

Students who left schools during the pandemic haven’t returned

Lower birth rates and immigration trends have driven national student enrollment declines for years. The pandemic accelerated those losses, said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University who studies education policy. Families increasingly turned to other education options like homeschooling.

“I expected a bounce back,” Dee said. “But that didn’t really happen.”

Homeschool enrollment in Mississippi dramatically rose during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Census data shows an 11.6% increase in homeschooled students in Mississippi between May and September 2020, more than twice the increase nationwide, said Breazeale of Mississippi First. Those numbers have held steady.

In other states, new residents help offset the loss of public school students to homeschooling. But that’s not the case in Mississippi, said Jake McGraw, director of Working Together Mississippi’s Rethink MS initiative, which aims to find solutions to the state’s population decline.

Experts say converging state-specific issues such as Mississippi’s outmigration and brain drain of skilled workers and national population trends such as declining birth rates  have resulted in a steady trickle of students leaving public schools. 

The losses come even as the state’s public education system draws praise for its success with fourth grade reading amid a nationwide literacy crisis. 

Education quality is not a driving factor that attracts people to a specific community and incentivizes them to stay, McGraw said. The state’s economic opportunities aren’t keeping up with the education system’s progress, which means Mississippi’s education system might be training people to leave, he said. 
“An education in Mississippi now opens doors all over the country,” McGraw said. “That education also shuts doors in Mississippi … What we’re doing is just developing students for jobs that don’t exist in the state.”

Charles Rugg, a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer who died Thursday at the age of 94, might well have been the best basketball coach 99.9% of the world’s basketball fans never heard of.

That’s because Rugg did his coaching at Belhaven, a tiny Presbyterian school in Jackson that played its NAIA games in a 500-seat building now appropriately known as Charles Rugg Arena. And if that humble gym’s walls could talk, what an entertaining and inspirational tale they could tell. Charlie Rugg did it his way. He was tough. He was demanding. And if you hung around him long enough, you would learn how smart he was and that he had a tender side as well.

Understand, Rugg took the Belhaven job not long after the former women’s college began accepting men. He built the program from scratch.

Rugg’s teams won hundreds and hundreds of basketball games, but more importantly he positively affected thousands of athletes and students. He was more than a basketball coach. He was a national championship tennis coach. He was a beloved history professor. Before that, he was a fire-balling professional baseball pitcher until his promising career was ended by an arm injury after he went to spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers and players such as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and Peewee Reese. 

He was an excellent golfer until he tired of the game. He was a Bible scholar. Later in life, he was a rose grower of much renown.

My introduction to Rugg came more than half a century ago when I was a teen sports writer in Hattiesburg, often assigned to cover William Carey basketball games. Belhaven was Carey’s arch-rival. It was Rugg vs. Carey’s John O’Keefe, two basketball coaches who could match Xs and Os with any coach at any level, anywhere. It was Baptists vs. Presbyterians. Two things were certain: a pre-game prayer and a mid-game brawl (or two). Noses were broken. Blood was spilled.

Ole Miss-Mississippi State had nothing on Carey-Belhaven when it came to intensity and ferocity. Once, in Hattiesburg, Rugg was called for a technical five seconds into the game.

The late, great Orley Hood, the Mark Twain of Mississippi newspaper writers, once wrote that Rugg was “the most dynamic man I ever met.” At Belhaven, Orley served as Rugg’s basketball manager and played a little tennis as well. 

“It was my lucky day the day I met Charlie Rugg,” Hood wrote.

Mark Windham, who became like the son Charlie and Janie Rugg never had in their 71 years of marriage, was a shy and skinny teen when he walked on to the Belhaven campus in 1972. He well remembers his first game, especially Rugg’s halftime speech.

“Coach wasn’t happy with our effort, and he let us know it,” Windham said.

Windham just thought Rugg’s booming voice was loud, until Rugg booted a metal garbage can crashing clear across the locker room, caving it beyond repair. 

Said Windham, “I was terrified.”

To say Windham grew to love Rugg like a second father is an understatement.

“I had no confidence and a poor self-image when I got to Belhaven,” Windham said. “Coach Rugg changed all that. He impacted my life forever. I have no words to adequately express the influence he had on my life.”

Put it this way: Rugg once drove Windham and a friend to a lumber company where they would work over the summer stacking lumber and driving a forklift. Seven years later, Windham bought the company.

“Everything I have, I owe to Charlie and Janie Rugg,” Windham said.

And I well remember my first interview with Richard Williams, the Hall of Fame coach who famously took Mississippi State to the Final Four. This was just after he got the job at State. I asked Williams about his coaching influences. The first name he mentioned: Charlie Rugg.

Williams said he often visited Rugg’s Belhaven practices when he was a young high school coach at St. Andrew’s. He learned about Rugg’s match-up zone defense and his intricate offensive system. Later, when Williams was the head coach at Copiah-Lincoln Junior College, his teams often scrimmaged against Belhaven. Williams said he always learned something.

“I believe Charlie is one of the all-time great coaches who never received the respect due him,” Williams said. 

But those who played for Rugg or watched his teams play know how good he was. John Brady, who coached LSU to the Final Four, knows. Brady was a cocky, sharp-shooting guard from McComb when he arrived at Belhaven in 1972. Rugg taught Brady that basketball was about lots more than swishing jump shots.

“He stayed on my ass, and that’s what I needed,” Brady said.

“He taught me that if anybody was going to change me, it was going to me,” Brady said. “I cherish the time he made me uncomfortable with myself. He made me want to coach.”

Yes, and Brady never forgot. When LSU went to Indianapolis for the Final Four in 2006, he took Charlie Rugg with him. What’s more, he had Rugg talk to his team at a pre-Final Four workout. What’s even more, when LSU had held a banquet to celebrate an SEC Championship and the Final Four participation, Rugg was there and Brady presented him with a Final Four ring that Rugg treasured.

Rugg never really coached big-time college basketball, but Brady knew Rugg was a big-time coach. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves ignored intense pressure and announced recently he was canceling an upcoming legislative special session where it was speculated that he would try to redraw Mississippi’s four congressional districts with the intent of eliminating a majority-Black district held by longtime Rep. Bennie Thompson.

The governor’s decision must have been gut-wrenching considering his allegiance to President Donald Trump, who has been pressuring states to redraw political maps to create more Republican districts before the November midterm elections. But Reeves’ decision should not be surprising when considering the unique challenges in redrawing the Mississippi districts.

Challenges of redrawing maps

Perhaps the overarching challenge is that Black Mississippians vote Democratic while white Mississippians vote Republican at a higher rate than in any other state.

The state also has the highest percentage of Black residents at about 38%.

As Reeves and others in Mississippi’s Republican political leadership contemplated redrawing district lines before the November midterm elections to eliminate the state’s only Black congressional district while creating another Republican district, they had to realize that Black voters still had to go somewhere if they were unpacked from the majority-Black 2nd District.

Many people believe Mississippi does not have to have a majority-Black district because of the recent controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. The ruling potentially gutted the Voting Rights Act by overturning decades of established law mandating minority districts when feasible. It also ignored the heroic history of people who died to obtain voting rights for minorities.

Indeed, Reeves has said that he still wants the Legislature to redraw Mississippi’s four U.S. House districts at some point with the intent of eliminating the majority-Black district Thompson has represented since 1993. But the same issues will remain whenever that redistricting effort is mounted — perhaps later this year but more likely in 2027 for the 2028 federal elections..

Perhaps there are smart mathematicians/mapmakers who can draw four sure-fire Republican congressional districts in the state, but it might not be as easy as some people believe it will be.

Remember, the one-person, one-vote rule still applies, meaning the districts have to be nearly identical in population.

If there is no majority-Black district, it is likely that one or maybe two of the new districts will have a Black population of more than 40%, making the districts at least purple or competitive and perhaps a little blueish or Democratic-leaning. In a year where the approval rating of Trump is low even in deep red Mississippi, creating potential competitive districts had to be a little scary for Republicans.

Would redrawing of the lines this year hand Mississippi Democrats two U.S. House members instead of the one they have now? Maybe Reeves considered that when he opted not to call the congressional redistricting special session.

The bottom line is that under the current district alignment, Mississippi’s three Republican U.S. House members represent districts that are safe for the GOP and, not surprisingly, they want to keep them that way.

Past redistricting efforts

In 2022 when the Mississippi Legislature was redrawing the congressional districts after the 2020 Census, Thompson requested all of Hinds County and south Madison County be moved from the 3rd District represented by Republican Michael Guest to his 2nd District. The move would have made the 2nd District more compact, and by the way, less Black.

Instead of placing the Jackson metro area in the 2nd District as requested by Thompson, the Republican-controlled Legislature opted to extend his district nearly the entire length of the western side of the state along the Mississippi River.

It was no secret that while Thompson was eyeing a more compact district, he and others also were proposing a map where a Democrat would have a better chance in Guest’s 3rd District.

Even if the affluent white voters in south Madison County were included in Thompson’s district, he concluded there still would be enough Black voters to ensure victory for him and future Democrats while making the Republican 3rd District at least a little more competitive. Republicans also understood that fact.

Redistricting is like putting together a puzzle with complex rules.

That redistricting puzzle was complicated more by the fact Mississippi primary elections already have occurred this year. If the state were redistricted now, those elections would have to be invalidated.

It has gone against all norms for so many states to undertake mid-decade redistricting. Normally, the process occurs after the decennial census, but Trump, fearing he will lose Congress this November, has urged states to act this year to create more Republican districts. The U.S. Supreme Court, as it is wont to do, aided Trump’s effort by gutting the Voting Rights Act, giving Southern states in particular the excuse to eliminate majority-Black districts that normally vote Democratic.

But after looking at the landscape, it appears the governor came to what must have been a gut-wrenching decision for a MAGA supporter: Mississippi is not in a position to help Trump this year.