OurTupelo

The latest meeting of the House committee studying school choice opened with a bold statement: Private schools could be convinced to support “school choice” and take public dollars — as long as there are no strings attached. 

The hours-long hearing Thursday marked the third meeting for a group of representatives tasked with studying school choice. This refers to a number of policies that provide families more options, in and outside of the public schools system, including using public tax dollars for private schools. State legislative leaders, including House Speaker Jason White, have said expanding school choice will be a top issue in the coming legislative session.

The first speaker, Barrett Donahoe, executive director of the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools, said repeatedly at the meeting that private schools would not make their students take state assessments, nor would they change their faith-based curriculum or their ability to turn some students away, even if the schools were to take state money through school-choice programs. 

It’s a popular argument among school-choice opponents — that voucher programs would allow private schools to accept tax dollars without being held to the same standards as public schools. But Donahoe did little to rebut it, instead doubling down on his stance.  

When Rep. Greg Holloway, a Democrat from Hazlehurst, questioned his logic, Donahoe replied, “I don’t think we have to compromise anything. I think our schools do a good job.” 

READ MORE: Lawmakers want to expand ‘school choice’ in Mississippi. Here’s what it looks like in neighboring states

Many lawmakers were curious about accountability standards for private schools. Donahoe said that, mostly, private schools are held accountable by parents who pay tuition, typically between $7,200 and $7,500 a year. 

Other representatives were less skeptical about private-school accountability.

“I don’t want to force our Christian schools to teach secular curriculum,” said Rep. Jansen Owen, a Republican from Poplarville and co-chair of the select committee, after the meeting. ”I don’t want the state’s involvement to infringe on that in any way.”

Owen and Donahoe suggested that private schools serve many low-income students, but data says otherwise. In 2016, just 8% of private school students lived in poor households, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Donahoe predicted that if school choice laws are passed, private schools wouldn’t get an influx of students, calling it a “false narrative” perpetuated by opponents of the choice policies.

It’s true that in other states, a majority of school-choice vouchers went to children who were already enrolled in private school, and school-choice programs don’t necessarily make private schools more accessible for low-income students or students with disabilities. 

Next, officials from the Mississippi High School Athletics and Activities Association told lawmakers that expanded school-choice policies would “completely upset” the competitive balance of high school sports and activities. 

“There’s no doubt in my mind we’re going to have movement based on academic needs, but I promise that the vast majority of our movement will be because of athletics,” said Chad Harrison, president of the association. 

He encouraged lawmakers to consider allowing MHSAA to maintain its eligibility rules for students. That means if a student living in one district transfers into another district, they wouldn’t immediately be eligible to play sports. 

Owen said the association’s concerns were addressed in a bill that failed last session, and they’d likely be able to find a compromise this year. 

Mary Werner, a Mississippi Board of Education member, and Sam Duell from yes. every kid., a pro-school choice advocacy organization funded by the Koch brothers, concluded the meeting. 

Werner, who said she wasn’t speaking to the committee on behalf of the board, suggested establishing a lottery would be the most equitable school-choice solution. 

Duell presented a number of polls and surveys that showed parent satisfaction is higher when they get to make choices about their child’s education.

House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, said the select committee on school choice would likely meet again once or twice before the legislative session begins in January.

Jackson State University students, faculty, staff and alumni have the opportunity to sound off on qualities and qualifications they want to see in their next university president. 

The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board announced this week that trustees and AGB Search, an executive search firm IHL hired to assist with the presidential process, will hold listening sessions Monday and Tuesday at the Jackson State Student Center. 

The campus sessions are happening after the board announced it would start naming constituent members to serve on an advisory group to provide insight and recommendations to trustees during the search process. It is an action the board said it hasn’t taken in years. 

IHL said it has also released a new survey link to collect community input to develop the job profile for university president. The responses will go directly to AGB Search. Previous comments made through IHL’s portal will also be shared with the firm. The surveys will close on Tuesday at 10:59 p.m. CST. 

Schedule for listening sessions: 

• Staff – 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
• Faculty – 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. 
• Students – 11 a.m .and 3 p.m.
• Alumni – 4 p.m.

The campus listening sessions will also be livestreamed on IHL’s website. 

Knolyn Bailey, a bright-eyed, just-turned-16-year-old, 10th grade running back, has grown up attending football games at Lanier High where his mother teaches. Most years, he says, there was little to cheer where the Bulldogs were concerned.

“We usually got blown out,” Bailey says. “It was a sight to see, not in a good way.”

That’s an understatement. Four of the last 15 Lanier football seasons have been winless. During the first four years of Bailey’s life, the Bulldogs lost 38 consecutive games. Lanier, traditionally a basketball powerhouse with 17 state championships, has won only three football playoff games in school history and has never made it past the second round of the playoffs.

And that brings us to one of the most startling developments in Jackson Public Schools football history. The current Lanier Bulldogs are a perfect 8-0 heading into a Friday night showdown at Florence. Despite moving up to Class 5A, the Bulldogs have out-scored opponents 282-62. Bailey has run for 1,540 yards and 15 touchdowns. 

Surely, Richard Wright, the famous author and a Lanier grad, would have loved to write this story. Lanier, the proud little school on Maple Street, celebrates its 100th year of existence with its best football team ever.  You can’t miss the biggest – and I mean, BIGGEST reason – for this sudden success. He is 6-feet, 6-inch, 315-pound Tommy Kelly, the former Mississippi State and NFL standout, who towers over nearly all his Lanier players.

Says Knolyn Bailey, a smart young man who already attends some college classes at Tougaloo, “Coach Kelly changed the culture here. He has given us structure.”

In the three seasons prior to Kelly’s Lanier arrival in 2024, the Bulldogs won only seven games while losing 24. In 2024, Kelly’s first Bulldogs finished 8-3 and made the Class 4A playoffs. The current eight-game win streak is the longest in school history.

First question: How did this happen?

“Discipline and structure,” Kelly answers. “What can I say? The kids have bought in. At every level of football I played, I learned from some great coaches. I try to coach these kids the way I was coached, and besides that I have a really good coaching staff.”

Second question: Why in the world is a man who once signed a $50 million NFL contract coach a high school football team for about $60,000 a year? Clearly, he doesn’t need the money.

“My players ask me that sometimes,” Kelly says. “The answer is I’ve always wanted to coach, even back when I was playing high school ball at Provine, I knew I was someday gonna coach. This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. This is my dream.

“You know, I played for Willie Collins, a great coach, at Provine. I played for Jackie Sherrill, a great coach, at State. I played for coaches like Bill Belichick and Bruce Arians in the pros. I’ve learned from all of them. It’d be a shame to waste all that.”

Both Collins and Wayne Brent, who coached Kelly in basketball at Provine, remember him as a teen-aged sports junkie. Says Brent, “In my 35 years of coaching, I’ve never had another one like Tommy. He knew everything there was to know about players and teams in all the sports. He was a sports encyclopedia.”

Basketball was Kelly’s first love and he played on Provine’s state championship teams. After playing football and basketball as a freshman, he concentrated on basketball as a sophomore and junior before finally returning to football as a senior, graduating in 1999. He instantly became a highly valued college football recruit. Nick Saban came to Provine from Michigan State to recruit him. Virtually every school in the country wanted him. He committed to Ole Miss first before eventually winding up at State, where Sherrill called him “a diamond in the rough who just needs to be polished.”

Sherrill now says he isn’t the least surprised by Kelly’s success as a coach. “He was very smart, especially when it came to football,” Sherrill says. “He picked up things easily.”

Kelly came to Lanier from Provine, where he was the defensive line coach and coordinator for his alma mater. And this will give you another idea of Kelly’s impact: In 2023, his last year there, Provine beat Lanier 40-0. But Kelly’s first Lanier team beat Provine 16-6 and, this season Lanier routed Provine 30-8.

Says Kelly, “I am still a Provine fan 364 days a year, but not on the day we play them.”

Darrell Roberts, a 16-year-old junior and Lanier’s starting quarterback and safety, has experienced the remarkable transformation of Lanier Bulldogs football.

“The year before Coach Kelly got here, we weren’t locked in as a team,” Roberts says. “We had a lot of guys who didn’t care about football. There’s just a lot more discipline now, at lot more focus on football.”

Jamison Kelly, a 17-year-old senior running back and cornerback, doesn’t know anything about Lanier football before Tommy Kelly. All the other Bulldogs call Tommy Kelly “Coach.” Jamison Kelly calls him “Dad.”

Jamison transferred to Lanier from Madison Central, where he had started at safety as a sophomore. Jamison, one of several Bulldogs who play both offense and defense, has committed to play college football at Southern Illinois. He expects to play a lot more Lanier football first.

“I believe we can go all the way to the state championship. I really do,” Jamison says.

At Lanier, Jamison and his teammates practice on a hardscrabble, unkempt and un-lined field, bare in some areas and ankle-high in weeds in others. They lift weights in shifts because of the weight room is so small.

“It’s what we got,” says Tommy Kelly. “You gotta make do with what you’ve got. We just go with it. I think it motivates our guys when we go to other places and see the nice facilities they have. We play with a chip on our shoulder.”

Knolyn Bailey, the sophomore who takes college classes and scores touchdowns in bunches, has had the opportunity to transfer to private schools where the facilities are much nicer. He has remained at Lanier where his friends are and where Kelly teaches life lessons.

Bailey remembers making a critical defensive mistake last year as a freshman and returning to the sideline to face Coach Kelly. Instead of a tongue lashing, he got a huge arm around his shoulder and a softly spoken but matter-of-fact explanation of what he did wrong and what he should do instead the next time.

“It’s tough love you get from Coach Kelly,” Bailey says. “He can be funny, but when it’s time to work, it’s time to work, and we work. We plan to go all the way. Why not?”

Besides Florence Friday night, Lanier has games remaining with Cleveland Central and Vicksburg. None of the three figures to be easy. Should the Bulldogs get to the Class 5A playoffs, the likes of traditional powerhouses West Point, South Jones and Brookhaven would stand in the way.

Tommy Kelly says he loves the fact that his players believe they can compete with anybody and win a championship.

“You gotta believe in yourself,” he says. “You gotta believe in your dreams.”

He should know. He dreamed of being a pro football star and making millions. He did.

He dreamed of becoming a winning high school coach. He has. He dreamed of coaching his son. He is.

His football hero in high school was Warren Sapp. He wound up playing beside him as an Oakland Raider for four seasons.

“Can you believe that?” Kelly says. 

Yes. It’s a lot easier to believe that than believe this sudden transformation of Lanier football.

LAMAR – Kimberly Todd sat in a brown and gold upholstered chair on her front porch at the end of a long dirt driveway on a cloudy September afternoon. Wearing jeans and a crimson blouse, it’s the most dressed up she’s been in months, she says. 

Tight clothing, socks and shoes make her skin feel like it’s on fire – a symptom of fibromyalgia she has lived with for four years without health insurance. A single mother of five, Todd also has endured numbness in her abdomen, pain in her uterus and two periods a month as a result of complications from a C-section in 2021. 

Todd qualifies for Medicaid, but the difficulty she has faced getting on the program over the last few months reveals the cracks poor people fall through when trying to get assistance from the social programs that purportedly exist to help them. Mississippi has among the strictest Medicaid income eligibility requirements in the nation. People must meet the income threshold, which amounts to less than $500 per month for a family of three and is a fraction of the federal poverty level. They also face bureaucratic red tape and punitive measures for missteps that often force them into deeper holes. 

Her most recent barrier to getting health care? The state has asked Todd to file for child support from her ex-boyfriend. This little-known Medicaid requirement has translated to four months of back-and-forth with caseworkers, miscommunication among state agencies, delayed medical care and the possibility of sending the father of her two youngest children to jail. 

“I want to take care of my family – that’s it,” Todd said. “Something I never had growing up.”

Whether or not it’s intentional, social safety net programs end up shutting out eligible people through “unnecessary complexity,” explained Daniel Dawes, an attorney and founding dean of Meharry Medical College in Nashville who helped write the Affordable Care Act, widely considered the most progressive health care legislation since the formation of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. 

“Many of these programs are designed as if they’re intended to keep people in perpetual poverty,” Dawes said. “Instead of making allowances and helping people to maneuver out of that.”

By all accounts, people in circumstances like Todd motivated lawmakers to create the Medicaid program. Todd has worked multiple jobs, from cleaning houses and hotels and working in convenience stores to fixing cars and broken phones. She has worked in grueling conditions so that she can care for the three children ages 4 to 18 in her custody – two of whom have autism. 

She has no family in the state and lives in what she calls “a shack” on an acre of wooded land without the resources to put her kids in afterschool activities like art classes or programs for autistic children. Todd and her children lack the community safety net most people take for granted. 

“Most people have family, friends – I don’t even have a friend,” Todd said. “I don’t have one friend.”

Medicaid would be her safety net, at least in theory. But the system has been failing her. 

“I will work myself literally to death and not have any health care coverage,” Todd said. “Who’s going to take care of my autistic child when I pass away? Where is she going to go? She can’t talk. Who’s going to hurt her while I’m not here?”

‘I didn’t want that for my kids’

The child support requirement aims to help single parents. In practice, research suggests it can be harmful for families – yet it pervades most social safety net programs. 

“It may be that a family already has informal arrangements for all the parents to financially contribute to the child’s wellbeing, and complying with this requirement through the state can disrupt those informal arrangements that are working better for families in many cases,” explained Matt Williams, director of research with the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. 

That’s the case with Todd. She said she is on good terms with her ex-boyfriend and often gives him a place to stay. She said she is hoping to help him get back on his feet so he can start working again after his own mental health conditions and lack of insurance made working impossible. He doesn’t qualify for Medicaid because his biological children are not in his custody. Mississippi’s version of Medicaid does not insure childless adults. 

In other cases, being forced to file for child support with the non-custodial parent could have dangerous repercussions. 

“For any one of a number of reasons, including concern for their own physical wellbeing, they might be reluctant to identify someone,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, who previously told Mississippi Today “the child support system in Mississippi is f-cked up, and no one knows how to unf-ck it.”

Exemptions to the rule technically exist for those who are concerned for their own or their children’s safety. In practice they are very difficult to obtain, explained Williams. 

“It’s not always the case that they are granted that exemption if they don’t have the right kind of legal paper trail, court documents or restraining orders,” Bryan said. “If they’re unable to prove through documentation that they are experiencing domestic violence or fleeing domestic violence, they may not get that exemption.”

In Todd’s case, filing for child support from her former partner in August was an impossible decision. She worries the missed payments that she knows he will incur will put him in jail. 

“How is he going to help me from jail?” Todd asked. “What sense does that make?”

She knows this situation all too well. Her own driver’s license was revoked twice in the last year after she fell behind on child support payments to the father of her two children who are not in her custody. She has not been able to pay off the most recent fine since she is out of work, making it harder for her to find work and to take her non-verbal autistic daughter to therapy. 

What makes the child support requirement even more harmful in Todd’s case is that evidence suggests it was implemented incorrectly. States are only allowed to ask applicants to agree to comply with requirements at the time of application, according to several national Medicaid experts who spoke to Mississippi Today. States cannot force applicants to file for child support before they are approved for Medicaid. But according to Todd, they did. 

“Part of that’s just practicality,” said Jennifer Wagner, director of Medicaid eligibility and enrollment at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “In the application timeframe, filing for child support is not something that can always be completed before the state’s deadline and it’s counter to the concept of Medicaid and providing timely care.”

Mississippi Division of Medicaid Spokesperson Matt Westerfield confirmed applicants cannot be required to file for child support until after their Medicaid application is approved. He did not respond to a request for comment on Todd’s case.

Once Mississippi Today informed her of state and federal law, Todd went back to her case worker in mid-October with the information, at which point they told her she should expect an approval letter in the mail in a week.

According to Todd, the caseworker alleged over the phone that Todd had been approved for Medicaid in August, failed to comply with the child support requirement, and had her coverage rescinded. But Todd says the application in her online portal went from “processing” to “denied,” and she never got an approval letter in the mail. 

Her online portal finally said “eligible” on Wednesday – nearly four months after her initial application. But Todd has yet to receive her official approval letter and insurance card in the mail  – and she can’t start using her coverage until then, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid site.  

It’s not uncommon for Medicaid requirements to be implemented incorrectly at the local level, according to Tricia Brooks, a research professor at the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. 

“Although we don’t have hard data, we consistently hear about errors made by eligibility workers or misinformation provided by call center staff,” Brooks said. “Unfortunately, applicants and enrollees are often unaware of their right to a fair hearing and hit roadblocks in getting accurate information.”

Before Todd got sick, life wasn’t much easier. 

The last time Todd and her former partner were working full-time, they were told they made too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Together, they struggled to cover rent and utilities and had no money left over for food – much less health insurance. They got by on provisions from a nearby church, but they only ever ate “peanut butter and jelly and noodles,” Todd said. 

Since then, her health has deteriorated to the point that she can no longer work. As a result, Todd qualifies for Medicaid. Advocates for Medicaid expansion in Mississippi have long sounded the alarms on this paradox. In one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid, Mississippi could have covered tens of thousands more working people who do not earn enough to pay for their own insurance – people like Todd. 

Nearly a quarter of people in Marshall County, where Todd lives in the northern part of the state, are living below the poverty line, according to the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. That’s more than double the national average. Todd grew up in poverty, but she always thought it was an escapable fate. She has since lost all faith in the system.

“I grew up in nasty houses with roaches and rats and holes in the floor and no money and starving – I grew up like that,” Todd reflected. “I didn’t want that for my kids. But there’s nothing I can do. I see how hard it is now.”

Widening gaps

Government programs are not universally difficult to apply for. Those serving poor people tend to be far more wrapped up in red tape, unequally levying what’s called “the time tax.” A 2021 Atlantic article written by Annie Lowrey sums it up: The time tax is regressive. 

“Programs for the wealthy tend to be easy, automatic, and guaranteed. You do not need to prostrate yourself before a caseworker to get the benefits of a 529 college-savings plan. You do not need to urinate in a cup to get a tax write-off for your home, boat, or plane. You do not need to find a former partner to get a child-support determination as a prerequisite for profiting from a 401(k).”

Application processes for government programs aimed at the wealthy are so much easier that many affluent people don’t even realize they’re benefiting from them, according to a survey conducted by political scientist Suzanne Mettler at Cornell University. 

In Mettler’s survey, the majority of high-income participants initially said they had never used a government safety net program. When told what counted as a government program, 96% reported they had. 

The wealth gap will widen and the time tax inequality will increase under President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, experts warn. The new law contains the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, or food stamps, in history. 

“We know that programs like SNAP and Medicaid reduce poverty, and so if they’re less available, we can expect poverty and hardships to rise,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Tax and Income Supports Division at the Urban Institute. “And we also know that the tax cuts for higher income groups are designed to boost those incomes, so you can just do the math without even having to do the math.”

Strict policies and cuts to Medicaid and food aid disproportionately harm women – a fact Todd knows firsthand. In her community, she says many mothers she knows are dropping dead because of heart attacks, too sick to take care of their kids, or committing suicide – a fate she almost fell prey to except that she didn’t want to repeat the generational trauma with which she grew up. 

“I know how it is to live without a parent because my mom mentally and emotionally wasn’t there, and I would never do that to my kids,” Todd said. “That’s the only reason why I’m here. I promise you, if it wasn’t for them, I would not be here. This world is too much for me, trying to just survive with nobody.”

Jackson Mayor John Horhn asked state lawmakers for help raising money for the city’s water system during a Thursday committee hearing at the Capitol.

JXN Water, the city’s third-party water manager, raised the alarm several times this year over funding shortfalls and said last month the system was “insolvent.” The utility is losing $3 million a month, it says.

“We think that the state’s assistance is going to be required,” Horhn told members of the Capital City Revitalization Select Committee. “We have to come up with an additional revenue stream, at least temporarily, over the next few years until we can get the water system back to solvency.”

The mayor, a Democrat who took office July 1, listed a few avenues for funding, such as increasing tax diversions from the Capitol Complex Improvement District or increasing the city’s 1% sales tax. The latter, though, may put local businesses in a tough position, he added.

JXN Water’s funding shortfall includes money for debt payments. The utility warned in September that if it can’t make debt payments, the state would have to start diverting some of the city’s sales tax revenue. Horhn confirmed that was the case, but said Jackson was able to pay the $5 million owed by December. It’s unclear how much longer the city would be able to cover those payments without additional water funding.

The mayor went on to address what happens to the city’s water and sewer systems, which are both under the control of JXN Water, after the third-party manager steps aside. Horhn said he wants control of the systems to return to the city, and laid out a plan for an independent advisory board to run them separately from Jackson’s public works department.

His vision of the advisory board includes a majority of appointees from the Jackson mayor’s office. Because the city serves places outside of Jackson, such as Ridgeland and Byram, Horhn said a minority of appointees could come from the state or from those other municipalities. The board would then hire a third-party company to manage and operate the utilities.

Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent from Jackson and the committee’s co-chair, asked how Horhn’s plan would differ from lawmakers’ past attempts to put the city’s utilities under a separate utility authority. Those plans, the mayor said, gave the state a majority control. Moreover, a bill last year from Sen. David Parker, a Republican from Olive Branch, would have taken away Jackson’s ownership of the systems.

The governor would have likely vetoed Parker’s bill because it would have made the state responsible for Jackson’s debts, added Horhn, who served in the state Senate at the time.

Ted Henifin, who runs JXN Water, was invited to speak at Thursday’s hearing but couldn’t attend because of a “traveling conflict,” Yates said.

Both the mayor and Rep. Fabian Nelson, a Democrat whose district includes part of Jackson, criticized JXN Water over its handling of billing issues. The utility, for instance, doesn’t have a process to challenge bill amounts, Horhn said, adding his proposal would include an “appeals judge” to handle such cases.

“I have 10 constituents that have reached out to me in the last 24 hours with $37,000 water bills, $70,000 water bills, and they’ve all been told that it’s due to a leak,” Nelson said. “Every last one of them has had plumbers verify that it’s not a leak.”

Adding to the challenges, the utility doesn’t have anyone who customers can talk with in-person about billing issues, and constituents are having trouble getting answers through JXN Water’s phone helpline, he said.

“I have a lot of questions, but these are mainly geared toward JXN Water, which did not show up today,” Nelson went on to say. “This has to stop. We have people whose water is being turned off every single day.”

JXN Water told Mississippi Today earlier this month that it was shutting off about 1,000 accounts per week over nonpayment.

Yates said she would coordinate another time to bring Henifin before the committee. The chairwoman asked Horhn about a Jackson City Council vote earlier this month, which approved a resolution asking U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate to place control of the water and sewer systems back under the city. Council members echoed similar concerns from residents about communicating with the utility.

Wingate, though, has the ultimate say about when to turn over management of the systems, the mayor said. Henifin has projected he’ll be the third-party manager until 2027.

JXN Water is still awaiting a decision from the judge, who appointed Henifin to his role in 2022, regarding a proposed rate increase the utility first requested in April. The current water bill rates, even with perfect collections, wouldn’t be enough to fund operations and pay for the system’s debt, Henifin has said. The collection rate is now about 70%.

In a statement after Thursday’s hearing, the utility said it had told lawmakers ahead of time that Henifin couldn’t attend.

“The creation of JXN Water itself was born out of a period when collaboration and coordination around solutions for Jackson’s water system were lacking,” the statement said. “We welcome any dialogue aimed at strengthening the system for the people of Jackson and ensuring that future governance structures are grounded in transparency, accountability, and apolitical leadership.”

Correction 10/23/2025: This story has been updated to show Rep. Shanda Yates is an independent.

The Jackson Public Schools board voted unanimously to deny a charter school’s request to expand into high school grades — but that isn’t stopping Ambition Prep’s plans, its leader said. 

The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board approved Ambition Preparatory Charter School’s request to expand into grades nine through 12 at its July meeting. The school currently serves kindergarten through eighth-grade students. However, leaders of the local public school district voiced their disapproval at their board meeting Tuesday night.

“The establishment of this high school will have significant long-term implications, including decreased enrollment in existing high schools, particularly smaller ones, resulting in an impact on district fiscal operations,” JPS Superintendent Errick Greene said. He also noted that a new high school would likely affect teacher recruitment at the public school district. 

Greene made clear in an impassioned speech that the district views Ambition’s foray into higher grades as the establishment of a new school, not an expansion.

It’s an important distinction.

According to state law, charter schools can only be established in areas where the local school district is rated A, B or C if the local school district’s board approves. There’s no appeal process, so if the school board denies the request, the process ends. New charter schools can only be established without local school board approval in areas rated D or F. 

But expanding an existing charter school to serve more grades is relatively new territory. The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, which is tasked with approving new or expanded charter schools, established a new policy in 2023 that addresses charter schools that want to expand.

Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the authorizer board, says that, in this instance, Ambition Prep is not starting a new school, so it doesn’t have to follow the state law for establishing new charter schools.

The JPS vote came as a shock to Karmacharya when reached by Mississippi Today. 

“I am absolutely speechless,” she said. “My mouth dropped open.”

Karmacharya said that DeArchie Scott, Ambition’s executive director, completed a “healthy and robust application for the expansion” under the new policy and should continue with the process. 

That’s exactly what Scott plans to do, he said. 

“It’s not a new application, so it goes based on what the (local public school) district was rated at the time of approval, which was an ‘F,’” he said. “It’s already been approved by our authorizer board, so we don’t need approval from JPS.”

Ambition Prep, which opened in 2019, got a C in the latest Mississippi school report card, as did Jackson Public Schools. 

Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School in the Delta was previously approved as the state’s first charter high school, but that was through a merger. Ambition is the first school in the state to take advantage of the charter board’s new expansion policy to start serving higher grades. If the charter’s buildout is completed in fall 2027, it would make Ambition Prep the second charter high school in the state and the only charter high school in Jackson.

It’s not clear how the dispute will be resolved, or if it will escalate to litigation.

A spokesperson for Jackson Public Schools said the district’s board of trustees would “pursue all available options at its disposal to support its position regarding Ambition Prep’s request.”

During a standing-room-only meeting in downtown Jackson, Latrice Rogers — the entrepreneur known for her role on the Oprah Winfrey Network reality TV show the “Belle Collective” — read aloud the email addresses of residents who have complained about her one-year-old restaurant, Fondren Taste Bar and Grill.

In an attempt to clear the air, Rogers said she’d reached out to each one of them.

Upon hearing her email, Jennifer Baughn, an architecture historian who lives down the street from Taste, in the otherwise sleepy north Fondren neighborhood off Meadowbrook Road, spoke up.

“That’s me,” she said so members of the Jackson Planning Board could hear her. “I’ve never received an email.” 

“But I have it here,” Rogers insisted as other residents began to say that they, too, had not heard from her. “I literally have it here.”

Residents in close proximity to Taste have complained for months that the establishment, which many of them refer to as a nightclub despite Rogers’ insistence it is a bar and restaurant, has disturbed their quality of life with loud music and traffic.

At issue Wednesday was Taste’s proposal to build nine residential units — which it hoped to use as Airbnbs — on top of its existing restaurant in a section of Fondren historically home to offices, convenience stores and fast-food chains. The units are part of Rogers’ plan to invest in north Jackson that began when she opened a beauty supply store in 2022 after owning a beauty business in the area for more than a decade. 

“We’re not going to invest in the neighborhood just to destroy it,” she told Mississippi Today. 

To open Airbnbs, the city’s zoning administrator, Ester Ainsworth, had recommended Taste pursue rezoning its white brick restaurant, one of the few newly redone commercial buildings in this part of Fondren, from commercial to mixed-use development. 

The proposal rankled residents of the otherwise low-key neighborhood. Six people, including Baughn, spoke in opposition to what she called a “de facto entertainment district” with music that is too loud and patrons who park illegally and drive recklessly. 

“This has been the most stressful year of my life as every weekend has been taken away from us,” she said. “We cannot enjoy the peace of our household and that has happened without any due process from our neighbors.” 

After about an hour of discussion, the planning board overwhelmingly voted to recommend denying the rezoning. The issue will eventually go before the city council, which has the final say on whether or not to grant Taste’s request. 

“Thank you for your investment in the city,” said Michael Booker, the planning chairman who represents Ward 2 and voted against the measure, as Rogers and her attorneys walked out of the room. 

As they exited, they vowed aloud to build hotel rooms instead.

Terris Harris, an attorney who spoke on behalf of Rogers, told the planning board that he thought an above hotel would be permitted under the restaurant’s existing zoning classification, so Taste could pursue its goal of building the units even if the board nixed its Airbnb-apartment idea. 

“That would be well within the requirements of their zoning, so it’s tomato, tomato, chocolate, chocolate, however you want to say this, it’s the exact same thing,” he said.  

Harris added that he believed residents’ opposition to Taste’s proposal had “absolutely nothing” to do with a second floor of residential units but rather a mistaken belief that Taste operates as a nightclub when it is in fact a bar and restaurant. 

“These aren’t fly-by-night business folks,” he said. “These are business folks with multimillion dollar enterprises who have spent over a million in that place. … This is not a nightclub. That’s not what this is. This is a fine dining restaurant, and the cigar lounge they have in there is super small, so it’s not a lot of people in there.” 

Rogers insisted she had done everything she could to ameliorate the concerns, such as buying parcels of land around the restaurant to create additional parking and even turning over security footage that police wanted when they investigated a shooting near a nightclub across the street from Taste called Parlour Room. The bullets injured eight people and police reportedly found at least 30 casings outside.  

“We have hired extra security guards. We have got a noise ordinance reader. We got with the police to make sure we have the exact same ordinance reader as they do,” Rogers said. “We started closing earlier. We don’t even have a DJ where we started off having a DJ.” 

Baughn and others conceded Taste is not the only bar on the street causing problems for residents. 

“It’s a different crowd,” she said of the Parlour Room. “It’s a little more criminal of a crowd than Taste, but it’s not as popular as Taste, and it has adequate parking, which Taste does not.” 

Liz Brister, the president of Downtown Jackson Partners who lives in the neighborhood and has renovated homes there, said a nonprofit organization working on Fondren’s economic development plan is looking at the need to rezone the area to encourage residential density. 

Doug Boone, the executive director of the Fondren Renaissance Foundation, claimed Taste has made no attempt to hear from residents and had, in fact, misled them about the nature of its business from the start. 

Brenda Davis, a resident who moved to North Fondren in 1989 and decided to stay there after she retired in the late 2000s, said she hears “booming bass” and “cars screeching” every weekend. 

“‘No communication’ might not be the word,” she said of the relations between the bar and residents, “but no communication between the two that would cause a compromise.” 

Ainsworth, the zoning administrator, said she had witnessed the bar’s patrons parking up and down the street, flouting No Parking signs. Emily Pote, a planning board member representing Ward 7, asked who is supposed to hold the bar responsible for that, to which Ainsworth replied, “the city.” 

“But sometimes people pay us no attention, and they do whatever they feel is necessary for their survival,” Ainsworth said. 

After the meeting, Baughn said that her street has had problems over the years with loud establishments, including a spate of rave clubs about 20 years ago that were shut down after residents got the city council and the fire marshal involved. 

Compared to the raves, Taste has the potential to be an improvement, Baughn said. 

“I love that building, and actually, what they’ve done with it isn’t bad,” she said of Rogers’ redesign. 

Baughn said she doesn’t know why bars or nightclubs have flocked to this area of town over the years, except for its excess vacant rental space. She believes the solution now is to sever the commercial and residential sides of North Fondren by closing off the street. 

“I do think there could be a compromise, she has just not been interested in it,” Baughn said of Rogers. “She could’ve talked to us today, but she didn’t.”

A federal judge in Mississippi has admitted that his staff used artificial intelligence to draft a flawed court order, after months of speculation and an inquiry from a U.S. senator. 

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate sent a letter on Tuesday to the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts in response to an inquiry from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. Wingate acknowledged that his law clerk used an AI program to compose an order that paused the enforcement of a state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Mississippi public schools. 

The order, issued July 20, was factually inaccurate — naming defendants and plaintiffs that weren’t parties to the case, misquoting state law and referencing a case that doesn’t exist — which led the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office to raise concerns. 

Wingate then replaced the order with a corrected version, wiped the flawed order from the docket, and denied a request from the Attorney General’s Office to restore the original order with errors to the public docket. He refused to explain the errors, calling them “clerical” mistakes.

Months later, Grassley sent a letter to Wingate, asking him to address the errors and the speculated use of AI.

Wingate finally acknowledged that one of his law clerks used an AI program called Perplexity to analyze publicly available information from the docket to craft the order. But Wingate emphasized no privileged or sealed information was used. Wingate says he still does not plan to restore the original order to the docket, in an effort to avoid confusion. 

The judge conceded that the order was a draft opinion, and it did not undergo proper review before being added to the docket. Wingate said he’s taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. 

The corrective measures include requiring all draft opinions, orders and memos to undergo a second, independent review. He will also require all cited cases be printed and attached to the final draft. 

“I manage a very busy docket and strive to maintain the public’s trust by administering justice in a fair and transparent manner,” Wingate wrote. “Given that I hold myself and my staff to the highest standards of conduct, I do not expect that a mistake like this one will occur in the future.”

Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, commended Wingate, a Reagan-appointed judge, for acknowledging the mistake.

“Each federal judge, and the judiciary as an institution, has an obligation to ensure the use of generative AI does not violate litigants’ rights or prevent fair treatment under the law,” Grassley said in a statement. “The judicial branch needs to develop more decisive, meaningful and permanent AI policies and guidelines.” 

Still, AI usage in the federal judiciary is a serious issue, and it’s largely uncharted territory, especially among federal judges.  

The legal profession has seen a rise in AI use in recent years, with people relying on software or processes that attempt to replicate aspects of human work. These use vast amounts of data to accomplish tasks such as researching court cases and citing them in legal briefs. 

But these systems are not perfect and can “hallucinate,” or provide false information. 

Judges in Mississippi have punished attorneys in both federal and state courts for using AI because attorneys have an ethical and professional responsibility to tell the truth in court. 

But there’s little accountability when the roles are reversed. 

Robert Conrad Jr., the director of the federal Administrative Office of the Courts, also sent Grassley a letter noting that he recently established an AI task force composed of judges and technology experts to recommend new policies on AI usage in the federal court system. 

Conrad said the task force, during the summer, published interim guidance on AI, suggesting that attorneys should review and independently verify all AI-generated content and should consider disclosing when they’ve used AI to help craft documents. 

ExxonMobil had a preliminary conversation with Satartia leaders on Monday about a potential large economic development project for the tiny town.

Michelle Douglas, the mayor of Satartia, confirmed the meeting but said the potential project is still in early stages. She and others familiar with the proposal said they were bound by agreements not to discuss details.

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and others familiar with the proposal would not say what type of development is being proposed.

Satartia, with a population of 40 people, is the smallest incorporated city in the state. It is in Yazoo County, about 45 miles northwest of Jackson.

Three large-scale data centers are currently under construction in Mississippi, totaling over $26 billion in investment, and they are some of the largest economic projects in the state’s history. In a September interview with Mississippi Today, Haley Fisackerly, CEO of Entergy Mississippi, said multiple companies are exploring bringing new data centers to the state.

Data centers being built across the country require huge amounts of electricity and water, and many of the deals involve energy companies.

Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps also told Mississippi Today that economic development discussions were taking place in Satartia, but he could not provide specifics because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

ExxonMobil has publicly said it plans on building power plants to service data centers.

“What I will say about that project is we are here and already doing our due diligence to support all economic development in the state,” Stamps said.

Although the specifics of the project are unknown, two people not authorized to discuss sensitive business details told Mississippi Today that it could be one of the state’s most significant economic development projects. 

However, both people emphasized that the discussions are highly exploratory in nature, the project could be located elsewhere and considerable work would be needed at the state and local levels before the project could advance further. 

A former University of Mississippi employee fired in September over social media commentary she reposted about the assassination of Charlie Kirk has filed a federal lawsuit against the university’s chancellor, claiming the chancellor violated her First Amendment rights.

Lauren Stokes, a former executive assistant in the University of Mississippi’s development office, said she was terminated over a social media post she endorsed on her private Instagram account about Kirk, the right-wing activist and CEO of the political organization Turning Point USA.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce fired Stokes over speech that is constitutionally protected, even if it was offensive, her attorney argued in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

“A private employer might require its employees to conform to a point of view but the state acting through its public university cannot,” wrote attorney Allyson Mills. “After all, today’s policed are tomorrow’s policemen. No state institution should purport to wield such power.”

Boyce was sued in both his personal and professional capacities. University of Mississippi spokesperson Jacob Batte told Mississippi Today the university does not comment on pending litigation.

On Sept. 10, Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus in Utah. That night, Stokes reposted to her Instagram account a statement made by another person that lambasted Kirk’s views on issues like guns, abortion and race.

“For decades, yt (white) supremacist and reimagined Klan members like Kirk have wreaked havoc on our communities, condemning children and the populace at large to mass death for the sake of keeping their automatic guns,” the statement said. “They have willingly advocated to condemn children and adult survivors of (sexual assault) to forced pregnancy and childbirth. They have smiled while stating the reasons people who can birth children shouldn’t be allowed life-saving medical care when miscarrying. They have incited and clapped for the brutalizing of Black and Brown bodies. So no, I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”

The post generated immediate backlash for Stokes, who deleted the post and apologized hours after publishing it. That same night, Boyce happened to dine at a restaurant owned by Stokes and her husband, the complaint says.

By the next morning, a social media firestorm had kicked into high gear, with conservative activists and even some state leaders drawing Stokes’s post to her employer’s attention. That mirrored similar episodes around the country in the days after Kirk’s killing.

Journalists and teachers have been fired for their comments on his death, with several conservative activists seeking to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory.

The University of Mississippi placed Stokes on administrative leave around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, according to the complaint.

A little under four hours later, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a vocal critic of what he calls “woke” initiatives in higher education, posted about the episode on X.

“To Ole Miss, did an Ole Miss employee just repost this insane reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder? Answer,” White wrote.

About an hour after that, university officials fired Stokes, according to her complaint. Then, 20 minutes later, Boyce released a statement that didn’t name Stokes, but confirmed her firing and called her comments “hurtful” and “insensitive.”

“The comments run completely counter to our institutional values of civility, fairness and respecting the dignity of each person,” Boyce said. “We condemn these actions and this staff member is no longer employed by the university.”

In Stokes’s legal complaint, her attorney points out that the speech in question “related to a subject of obsessive news interest” and was not even hers, but someone else’s that she reposted.

“By terminating Lauren for reposting the speech, the University says that Lauren is not allowed even to agree with a point of view held by a substantial portion of the nation,” the complaint said. “Stated differently, the University says it gets to tell its employees what to think on matters of public concern. The interests in freedom of speech, indeed of thought, are extraordinarily high here.”

Stokes said she has received death threats and bomb threats against her restaurant that forced it to close for two weeks. She is seeking damages, legal fees, and a declaration that Boyce violated her First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was filed just over a week before Vice President JD Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, will speak at the University of Mississippi in Oxford on Oct. 29.