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College golf takes center stage this weekend at Fallen Oak, the Beau Rivage casino’s hidden treasure in the otherwise sleepy community of Saucier, a few miles from the sandy beaches of Gulfport and Biloxi.

There, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Southern Miss will combine to host the 14-team Fallen Oak Invitational, which in just three years has become one of the most prestigious fall college golf tournaments in America. Fourteen teams, including eight from the SEC and three from the Big 10 Conference, will compete.

“This is what we had in mind when we got this thing started,” said Chris Malloy, coach of the No. 4 ranked Ole Miss Rebels. “This is an outstanding field, one of the best you will see in college golf, and they will be challenged by a world class, championship course. Fallen Oak is special.”

Ole Miss, which boasts defending NCAA Champion Michael La Sasso, rates as the tournament favorite with its national ranking and three of the world’s top 45 amateur golfers. La Sasso ranks No. 9, Cameron Tankersley No. 17 and Cohen Trolio No. 45 in the latest world amateur golf rankings.

The Rebels have finished in the top three of all their previous three fall tournaments: a second at the Knoxville Collegiate, a victory at the Honors Course Collegiate at Chattanooga, and a third at the Hamptons Intercollegiate in New York. They played two of the three without La Sasso, who was participating in PGA Tour tournaments.

“Do I think we’re playing our best golf? No, probably not yet,” Malloy said. “But if you told me we’d play two of our first three tournaments without the defending NCAA Champion, have the finishes we had and be ranked like we are, I think anybody would sign up for that. I’m pleased with where we are. I like this squad.”

Mississippi State and Southern Miss also have had good starts to the season. State is coming off a victory in the Cullen Brown Collegiate, hosted by Kentucky. For the first time in school history, Southern Miss won two straight tournaments, the JT Poston Invitational at Waynesville, North Carolina, and the Badger Invitational at Madison, Wisconsin, where the Golden Eagles shot 23-under par for 54 holes and won by 10 shots.

“I think we’re playing some really solid golf,” said State coach Dusty Smith. “Winning at Kentucky was certainly a step in the right direction. We’re looking forward to building on that at Fallen Oak.”

Eddie Brescher’s Southern Miss team might be the best in school history, featuring Mississippi State Amateur champion Jake Moffitt of Ripley who won the State Am in record-breaking fashion at Grand Bear, just a few miles from Fallen Oak. Moffitt, a 19-year-old freshman, has averaged a team-best 69.67 strokes per round for his first 12 rounds of college golf.

The Golden Eagles are coming off a disappointing final round performance in the Little Rock Buick GMC Classic earlier this week, dropping from second to sixth place in the 16-team field with the team’s first over-par round of the season.

“We weren’t happy with how we finished,” Brescher said. “But I know we have a good team. We’ll just hit the reset button and try to get on another win streak.”

All three of the Mississippi coaches believe their collective success is a reflection on junior golf in the state. All three feature players who came up through various Mississippi junior programs, including the Rebels’ Trolio of West Point, who made the U.S. Amateur semifinals as a 17-year-old high school player at Oak Hill Academy, and his younger brother Colin. 

“I think the success these teams have had is a reflection on Mississippi golf as a whole,” said State’s Smith, whose team includes junior Drew Wilson of Potts Camp and freshman Jackson Cook, another product of the remarkable Oak Hill Academy program that plays out of Old Waverly in West Point.

All three Mississippi coaches also take pride in hosting the Fallen Oak event, which has some unique features, including Jumbotrons behind the ninth and 18th greens that will be showing college football teams during Saturday’s first round. The tournament also includes a Friday pro-am-styled event during which the college golfers will be paired with sponsors and hosts of the tournament.

Besides the three Mississippi teams, the field includes Alabama, Arkansas, Chattanooga, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana State University, South Carolina, Tennessee, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Wisconsin. Said USM’s Brescher, “It’s about as close as you’re going to get to a post-season quality field during the fall.”

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality permit board on Wednesday reversed a decision from earlier this year and granted wood pellet manufacturer Drax a permit that allows it to release more emissions from a facility in Gloster, in the rural southwestern corner of the state.

The board held a two-day evidentiary hearing after denying the company the permit in April. The permit falls under Title V of the Clean Air Act and allows Drax’s facility Amite BioEnergy, to become a “major source” of Hazardous Air Pollutants, or HAPs.

The board voted unanimously in favor of granting the permit said Kim Turner, a state assistant attorney general who served as hearing officer. Evidence from the hearing “sufficiently addressed” concerns the board previously had over Drax’s compliance history, Turner said.

MDEQ has found the facility in violation multiple times since Drax opened the Amite County plant in 2016. Last year, the agency fined Drax $250,000 for releasing over 50% more than its permitted limit of HAPs while it was a “minor source.” In 2020, MDEQ fined Drax $2.5 million for underestimating its release of Volatile Organic Compounds since 2016.

For years since learning that the company had underestimated its emissions, nearby Gloster residents alleged that air pollutants, dust and noise from the facility were causing an array of health issues. Several who testified to MDEQ and people who spoke to Mississippi Today reported issues such as headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing. Nonprofit Greater Greener Gloster represented those residents as an intervenor in the hearing and asked the permit board to affirm its April decision.

Drax applied for the permit in order to better reflect its production capacity. Since violating the current permit, Amite BioEnergy has had to decrease its pellet output. The company maintained a commitment to staying in compliance going forward, advertising the facility’s ability to automatically shut off when emissions exceeded legal limits.

It argued that the new regulation would be more stringent than any other the company has at its 17 locations in North America.

“ What we’re asking you to do is confirm that if a company works with MDEQ to develop a technically sound, environmentally protective permit  which is feasible and enforceable, then that company can do business in Mississippi,” said Abram Orlansky, an attorney for Drax.

The United Kingdom-based company turns locally sourced wood into pellets that it then ships to other countries for their clean energy goals, although many scientists believe the practice is actually more harmful than other energy sources in terms of net carbon emissions. Drax and other wood pellet companies have faced a wave of both local and international scrutiny for repeated air emissions violations across multiple Southern states.

The distinction of a major source means that the wood pellet facility no longer has a limit on how many tons of HAPs it can release into the air, but it also means the facility has to follow stricter limits over the rate at which it can release the pollutants.

Extended exposure of large amounts of HAPs can increase the chances of health effects such as cancer, damage to the immune system, neurological, reproductive, developmental and respiratory issues among other symptoms, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Much of the hearing’s debate centered on the facility’s “control efficiency,” or how much of its HAPs it could destroy before releasing. While the permit MDEQ presented outlined a 96% destruction rate, witness testimony argued the facility could achieve a 99% rate, which would yield a quarter of the potentially harmful emissions.

“These devices, as installed, could be operated a lot better,” said Ranajit Sahu, an engineering consultant.

Yet, MDEQ Air Division Chief Jaricus Whitlock said no place he has seen requires such a high rate.

In contrast with April’s hearing, attendees on Tuesday and Wednesday included a dozen or so people with blue “Drax” stickers supporting the company’s permit application. Matt White, the company’s executive vice president, said the local community supported Drax because of its job creation and tax contributions. While Drax staff testified that most of the facility’s employees live within an 11-mile radius of the plant, they could not say how many live in Gloster.

“We are pleased that the (permit board) has listened to the clear recommendations of its own technical staff, and the voices of Gloster community leaders, local businesses and a large number of our neighbors in Gloster, to approve our Title V permit application,” Michelli Martin, the company’s U.S. communications manager, said in a statement after the hearing.

Following the permit board’s decision, law firm Singleton Schreiber announced Thursday morning that a group of Gloster residents filed a federal lawsuit against Drax, alleging the company has for nearly the last decade violated the Clean Air Act. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, seeks injunctive relief and penalties over the loss of property value and safe use of the plaintiffs’ homes.

Update 10/16/25: This story has been updated to include a comment from the company about DEQ’s decision and that a lawsuit against Drax has been filed in federal court.

Charles Ray Crawford died by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Mississippi State Penitentiary over 30 years after he kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered 20-year-old community college student Kristie Ray in Tippah County. 

It was Mississippi’s second execution of the year and the third in the U.S. this week, following executions Tuesday in Florida and Missouri. Including Crawford, 38 people have been executed in the U.S. this year, and six more executions are scheduled in the nation through the end of the year.

The execution got underway at 6:01 p.m. and Crawford could be seen taking deep breaths, The Associated Press reported. Five minutes later, he was declared unconscious. At 6:08 p.m., his breathing became slower and shallower and his mouth quivered. A minute later, he took a deep breath and then his chest appeared to stop moving.

Crawford, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m.

He had spoken his final words while strapped to a gurney. 

“To my family, I love you,” Crawford said just before the lethal-injection drugs started flowing. “I’m at peace. I’ve got God’s peace. … I’ll be in heaven.”

He also said, “To the victim’s family, true closure and true peace, you cannot reach that without God.”

His final words were, “Thank you, God, for giving me the peace that I have.”

In 1994, Crawford was convicted of capital murder and received a death sentence. The next three decades he pursued appeals challenging the sentence, as well as separate sentences for aggravated assault and rape that were used as a basis for the death penalty. 

At the time of Ray’s killing in January 1993, Crawford was days away from a separate trial for sexual and physical violence in 1991 against two teenage girls. He cut through the screen to the bedroom of Ray’s home and left a ransom note demanding $15,000. 

He took her to a wooded area where he raped her and then stabbed her in the chest. He claimed to experience blackouts but was able to show law enforcement where to find her body. 

On Wednesday, Ray’s mother Mary traveled to Parchman to witness the execution, but her father Tommy was not able to be there because of his health, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.  

Mary Ray did not offer comment after the execution, but last week she told the Tupelo newspaper that witnessing it would not change a thing. 

“I don’t like the word ‘closure,’” she said. “I have a hole in my heart as big as my heart that will never be closed.”

After the execution, Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch said her office has pursued justice for the Ray family and Crawford’s other victims and prayed they received long-awaited closure. 

Leading up to the execution, Crawford petitioned the U.S Supreme Court to halt the execution. The high court denied his final appeal Wednesday evening. 

The day of the execution he also filed emergency motions to stay the execution with the Mississippi Supreme Court, which were denied by the afternoon. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves denied a clemency petition, noting circumstances of the crime and how Crawford did not claim innocence. 

A consciousness check was performed on Crawford after the first of the three lethal injection drugs were administered, which prison officials said earlier in the day was required at the state’s most recent execution in June. 

In a statement after the execution, Crawford’s attorneys from the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel said he was put to death without receiving a fair trial.

“Despite a legal system that failed him, Charles Crawford (‘Chuck’) spent every day in prison trying to be the best person, family member, friend and Christian he could be,” the statement read.

Crawford’s surviving family members include a sister, his father and stepmother. 

At trial, prosecutors asked several of Crawford’s family members if they still loved him in spite of the crimes and if they wanted him to be executed. They said they love him but don’t support what he did, and that they did not want him to receive the death penalty.

In closing arguments before the death sentence was handed down, prosecutors said the Crawford family shifted blame onto others for his actions and they criticized his mother for a number of actions, including not calling law enforcement earlier, helping him pay for bond and “letting him out” of the house with a shotgun. 

Hours before the execution Wednesday, Parchman Superintendent Marc McClure said Crawford seemed relaxed and visited with his family and a preacher he requested. 

Crawford asked for a double cheeseburger, fries and two desserts – peach cobbler and chocolate ice cream – for his last meal, prison officials said. 

Starting in the afternoon, demonstrators gathered outside the prison gates in the Delta community of Parchman and the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson. 

Organizations including Death Penalty Action and Catholic Mobilizing Network circulated petitions that called on the governor to stop the execution, citing Crawford’s argument about how his trial attorneys admitted his guilt and pursued an insanity defense against his wishes. 

Crawford was the second Mississippi inmate executed this year, following the lethal injection of Richard Jordan in June. The state resumed executions in 2021 after a 12-year hiatus. 

Thirty six people remain on death row in Mississippi, and the attorney general’s office is seeking execution dates for two – Willie Jerome Manning and Robert Simon Jr.

The Associated Press contributed to the reporting. 

Updated, 10/15/2025: This story has been updated to add information about the timeline of Crawford’s execution and to include information about other executions in the U.S. this year.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to gut a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has helped root out racial discrimination in voting for more than a half century, a change that would boost Republican electoral prospects, particularly across the South.

During more than two hours of arguments, the court’s six conservative justices seemed inclined to effectively strike down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana because it relied too heavily on race.

Such an outcome would mark a fundamental change in the 1965 voting rights law, the centerpiece legislation of the Civil Rights Movement, that succeeded in opening the ballot box to Black Americans and reducing persistent discrimination in voting.

A ruling for Louisiana could open the door for legislatures to redraw congressional maps in southern states, helping Republican electoral prospects by eliminating majority Black and Latino districts that tend to favor Democrats. Legislatures already are free to draw extremely partisan districts, subject only to review by state courts, because of a 2019 Supreme Court decision.

In September, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to to sharply curtail the federal Voting Rights Act by limiting who can sue to enforce protection against racial discrimination at the ballot box.

Fitch, a Republican, is appealing a federal district court judge’s ruling that said state lawmakers must redraw the three Mississippi Supreme Court districts because they dilute Black voting strength. The district court judge’s ruling forbids the state from using the current maps in future Mississippi Supreme Court elections. It is pending before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, the appellate court has paused all proceedings in the appeal until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on redistricting cases.

Just two years ago, the nation’s highest court, by a 5-4 vote, affirmed a ruling that found a likely violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a case over Alabama’s political boundaries. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined their three more liberal colleagues in the outcome.

Roberts and Kavanaugh struck a different tone Wednesday, especially in their questions to civil rights lawyer Janai Nelson.

The chief justice suggested the Alabama decision was tightly focused on its facts and should not be read to require a similar outcome in Louisiana.

Kavanaugh pressed Nelson on whether the time has come to end the use of race-based districts under the Voting Rights Act, rather than “allowing it to extend forever.”

The court’s liberal justices focused on the history of the Voting Rights Act in combating discrimination. Getting to the remedy of redrawing districts only happens if, as Justice Elena Kagan said, a court finds “a specific identified, proved violation of law.”

A mid-decade battle over congressional redistricting already is playing out across the nation after Republican President Donald Trump began urging Texas and other GOP-controlled states to redraw their lines to make it easier for the GOP to hold its narrow majority in the House.

The court’s conservative majority has been skeptical of considerations of race, most recently ending affirmative action in college admissions. Twelve years ago, the court bludgeoned another pillar of the landmark voting law that required states with a history of racial discrimination to get advance approval from the Justice Department or federal judges before making election-related changes.

The court has separately given state legislatures wide berth to gerrymander for political purposes. If the Supreme Court now weakens or strikes down the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, states would not be bound by any limits in how they draw electoral districts. Such a result would be expected to lead to extreme gerrymandering by whichever party is in power at the state level.

The court’s Alabama decision in 2023 led to new districts there and in Louisiana that sent two more Black Democrats to Congress.

Now, though, the court has asked the parties to answer a fundamental question: “Whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

Louisiana and the Trump administration joined with a group of white voters in arguing to invalidate the challenged district and make it much harder to claim discrimination in redistricting.

The arguments led Justice Sonia Sotomayor to assert that the administration’s “bottom line is just get rid of Section 2.”

Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan disagreed and said state lawmakers would have no incentive to get rid of every majority-Black district because doing so would create swing districts and imperil some Republican incumbents.

In addition, Mooppan said, only 15 of the 60 Black members of the House represent majority-Black districts. “But even if you eliminated Section 2 entirely, fully 75% of the Black congressmen in this country are in districts that are not protected by Section 2.”

In the first arguments in the Louisiana case in March, Roberts sounded skeptical of the second majority-Black district, which last year elected Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields. Roberts described the district as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles to link parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.

The court fight over Louisiana’s congressional districts has lasted three years. The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning, majority-white districts and one Democratic-leaning, majority-Black district.

Civil rights advocates won a lower-court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.

Louisiana eventually drew a new map to comply with the court ruling and protect its influential Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. But white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit that race was the predominant factor driving it. A three-judge court agreed, leading to the current high court case.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by early summer in 2026.

___

AP’s Mark Sherman reported from Washington. Mississippi Today’s Taylor Vance contributed from Jackson.

Vice President JD Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk will speak at the University of Mississippi in Oxford on Oct. 29, according to a social media post from the university’s Turning Point USA chapter. 

The event is part of  “The Turning Point Tour,” where the conservative grassroots organization is visiting college campuses across the nation. Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point and a conservative activist, was scheduled to speak at the event before he was assassinated last month in Utah. 

After Kirk’s death, his widow and other conservative leaders have banded together and promised to continue with the tour to honor Kirk’s memory. 

Tickets are free but require registration, and attendance will be first-come, first-served. The event begins at 5 p.m. on Oct. 29, according to the event details on Turning Point’s website. 

Updated, 10/15/2025: This story has been updated to add photos.

We’ve got a huge week in Mississippi sports coming up. Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss all have huge conference football games and the three schools are hosting a huge college tournament at Fallen Oak on the coast this weekend and Monday.

Stream all episodes here.

Barring last-minute intervention, the state of Mississippi is set to execute Charles Ray Crawford Wednesday evening. 

For decades, the 59-year-old has pursued appeals across state and federal courts challenging his death sentence as well as a separate aggravated assault and rape case. As of midday Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court had not announced whether it would hear Crawford’s case and stay the execution. 

Crawford was convicted of capital murder in 1994 for taking 20-year-old Kristie Ray from her family’s Tippah County home to a wooden cabin where he handcuffed and raped her and stabbed her in the chest. 

As of this year, 37 executions have been carried out around the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Crawford’s planned execution will be the third in the U.S. this week, following Tuesday executions in Florida and Missouri. Six more are scheduled through the end of the year. 

Ray’s mother, Mary Ray, told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal after years of waiting, she is glad that Crawford’s execution will happen. 

“We are not vengeful people; we just want justice for our daughter,” she said.

Over the years and the days leading up to the execution, her mother, family and friends shared pictures of Kristie on social media and set them as their Facebook profile pictures. 

On Monday, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves denied Crawford clemency because of the nature of the crime and because he had never claimed innocence. This execution will be the fourth Reeves has declined to block since he’s been in office: one in 2021, another in 2022 and the last in June of this year. 

“Mississippi is praying for Ms. Ray and her family,” Reeves said in a Monday statement. “Justice must be served on behalf of victims. In Mississippi, it will be.”

At the time of the killing, Crawford was out on bond and days away from another trial for the rape of a teenage girl and assault of another one in the same county. Members of his family and a former attorney testified how they contacted law enforcement because they feared Crawford was committing another crime, which led to his arrest in Ray’s death. 

Crawford has said he didn’t remember the killing and that he experienced blackouts. But after his arrest, he showed law enforcement where to find Ray’s body. He said he experienced similar blackouts for the earlier assault and rape. 

In a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Crawford’s attorneys argued his trial attorney conceded his guilt to the jury and told jurors during the closing arguments that he was “legally responsible” for the crimes and “still dangerous to the community.” 

They argued it was a Sixth Amendment violation of the accused’s right to defense because the attorneys made the concessions against Crawford’s repeated objections, according to court records. 

After the nation’s high court declined to take up his case in 2014, the Mississippi attorney general’s office asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution. But the justices did not set one because Crawford was appealing his rape conviction, which prosecutors considered an aggravating factor when pursuing the death penalty. 

In post-conviction motions, he argued that reversing the conviction would invalidate his death sentence and require him to be resentenced. 

Crawford has been part of a few lawsuits challenging the use of certain drugs in executions. The most recent and ongoing lawsuit filed in July of this year is a federal class action with four other death row inmates challenging the Mississippi Department of Correction’s three-drug lethal injection protocol. 

In a separate federal lawsuit challenging the drugs used in Mississippi, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate allowed the executions of two of the plaintiffs to proceed: that of Richard Jordan and Thomas Loden. 

Starting Wednesday afternoon in the hour before the execution, death penalty opponents plan to stand in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson and some will demonstrate outside the main gate of Parchman. 

Anti-death penalty organizations circulated petitions against Crawford’s execution that together have received over 1,000 signatures. Death Penalty Action’s petition was delivered to the governor’s office Tuesday. 

Last week, Mississippi prison reform advocate Mitzi Magleby and the Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to death row prisoners, spoke out in front of the Mississippi Supreme Court to call on Gov. Reeves and the state to stop pursuing executions, which they said are part of a system built on vengeance. 

They said Crawford should be held accountable for Ray’s death, but that can be done by having him serve life without parole. Both have spoken with Crawford and said they have found a changed man who works a prison job and has stayed out of trouble during his incarceration. 

“We are not God,” Magleby said about carrying out death sentences. “Mississippi is not God. We are humans who are not supposed to kill other human beings … The death of Charles Crawford will do nothing to heal anyone. It will do nothing to make the state of Missisisppi any safer than it is now.” 

Scott Colom of Columbus, a Democratic candidate running against Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, says he has raised nearly $600,000 since launching his campaign. 

Colom’s campaign shared with Mississippi Today ahead of Tuesday’s campaign fundraising reporting deadline that he has over $580,000 in cash on hand, a sizable amount for a first-time Senate candidate. The campaign said this was the largest amount a Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi has ever raised in its initial three-month period. 

The campaign did not share the itemized list of contributions, making it unclear what the largest source of donations is, though it did say that Colom received donations from more than 3,400 individuals. More information on who gave to the Colom campaign should be available later Wednesday when the reports are filed with the Federal Election Commission.

If Colom, the current district attorney in the Golden Triangle area, wants to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Mississippi since the 1980s, raising the money necessary to topple an incumbent Republican will be crucial. 

Hyde-Smith’s latest fundraising numbers are not yet available. From January to June, she reported to the Federal Election Commission raising around $1.2 million and having around $1.4 million in cash on hand. 

Mississippi’s party primaries for 2026 federal elections are March 10.

Thanks to a new partnership between the Mississippi Department of Education and Mississippi Public Broadcasting, students across the state will be getting new teachers this year. 

But those teachers won’t be in classrooms, sitting behind desks. They’ll be on the screen. 

The REACH MS program, also called the Mississippi Virtual Synchronous Learning Initiative, funded by a $2.2 million appropriation from the Legislature, is a response to the teacher shortage afflicting swaths of Mississippi schools. 

There are thousands of vacant teaching posts in Mississippi, according to a recent MDE survey. While the virtual-teacher program doesn’t replace recruitment efforts, said associate state superintendent Bryan Marshall, it’s one of the state’s latest attempts to address the teacher shortage. Those include a revamped teacher recruitment website and increased funding to pay tuition and licensure expenses for college students who commit to teaching in “critical shortage areas.” That’s a category that 56% of Mississippi school districts fall into. 

Participating districts that are struggling to staff core subjects can get a virtual teacher through the program. All they have to do is make sure special-education students are accommodated, enter grades and attendance, provide a classroom, in-person facilitators and reliable internet. 

Five districts — Hinds County, Yazoo County, Yazoo City, Claiborne and West Point — are part of the pilot program, as well as three certified teachers and three teacher assistants who are college students on the cusp of finishing their teaching degrees. 

In this way, Marshall says the initiative addresses the state’s teacher shortage in two ways: staffing hard-to-teach subject areas and strengthening the teacher pipeline.

“The idea is that we would keep the student teachers for a period, and then they would go on into the classroom, and we’d bring on a new set,” Marshall said. “We’re trying to provide resources to districts without taking teachers away from them.”

It’s clear the agency is proud of the new program and optimistic about what it can accomplish. State Superintendent Lance Evans has been publicly championing the initiative for the past year — at Capitol hearings, board meetings and press events. A powerpoint about REACH MS claims each teacher has the capacity to serve up to 450 students. 

Post-pandemic, though, it’s hard not to wonder if the program is promising more than it can deliver. Research shows that when education is online, student learning, focus and engagement suffer.

But the agency — and students — argue that this initiative, with its classroom setting and in-person facilitators, is different.

The classroom experience

Teenagers in red-collared shirts and khaki pants peer over their laptops at their teacher, Caitlin Perkins. She’s at the front of the Yazoo City High School classroom, giving a lesson on how to write thesis statements. 

In actuality, she’s about an hour away at the Mississippi Public Broadcasting offices in Jackson, but it doesn’t seem to matter to the students.  

They’re engaged, paying rapt attention to their on-screen teacher and even answering her questions out loud. Another teacher, on what’s supposed to be her planning period break, walks around as an in-person facilitator, keeping students quiet and passing out worksheets. 

It’s pretty close to what Sametra Brown, assistant superintendent of federal programs, imagined when the agency reached out about the district’s participation in the virtual teacher program. 

“In a critical teacher shortage area, these are certified teachers,” she said. “We felt that this would be a wonderful opportunity for our students to still have a highly qualified certified educator in front of them, but give them that virtual experience.” 

Yazoo City Municipal School District has struggled for a long time, in general. 

The district was merged with Humphreys County School District in 2019, creating Mississippi’s first Achievement School District. The partnership created a single state-run district in an effort to turn the low-performing schools around. The districts divorced this summer but remain under state control. 

While the state education department reports that there are almost 3,000 open teaching jobs across Mississippi, teacher shortages disproportionately impact schools with high rates of poverty and larger minority student populations. 

More than a third of children under 18 in Yazoo County live in poverty, 2020 Census data shows. Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows the 2023 median household income in Yazoo County was $42,434.

Yazoo City, which dropped from a C grade to an F in the latest district rankings, currently has 10 open teaching positions, administrators said. Three of those are at the high school, with two in core subject areas. Staffing challenges, ample national research shows, directly impact student achievement.

The program, Marshall said, was created for districts such as Yazoo City.

“Many people are not going into education now, so that’s a challenge,” Brown said, of the district’s staffing struggles. “We have to be creative in how we attract and retain teachers … Rather than our students having a substitute teacher in the classroom that has maybe no credentials, this was an opportunity for them to get live instruction.”

The virtual teacher came as a shock to Rodrianna Drain, Mikeria Brown and Devin Gibbs, three of the 14-year-olds in Perkins’ ninth-grade English class. They’re among some of the top students in the high school. School leaders chose the cream of the crop, they said, for the pilot program to better prepare them for online college classes and an increasingly virtual world. 

But now that the surprise has worn off, Brown actually prefers the virtual element over her other classes. She largely does classwork online, and typing out answers to writing prompts gives her time to think through her responses instead of immediately answering out loud. 

It makes sense that the set-up is appealing to this generation of students, who spent a chunk of their education learning at home during the pandemic. 

However, another vestige of pandemic-era learning is throwing some wrenches into the program: Technology problems. 

Perkins’ lesson buffered a little, her face momentarily frozen while her class waited patiently. The students noted that occasionally the computers are slow and the Wi-Fi sometimes goes out. 

Those issues are usually quickly resolved and the kinks are worth it, they said. The three students really like Perkins, one of the program’s student teachers, describing her as a dramatic storyteller when she reads out loud which makes it easier for them to engage with the text. 

“We’re not just writing more, but we’re actually understanding more about it,” Drain said. “She talks to us like she’s one of us.” 

Before she logs off, Perkins confirms the students don’t have any more questions. Then they wave goodbye, and the screen goes black.  

Futuristic technology

Much of what makes the virtual teacher program stand out compared to pandemic virtual learning, Marshall said, are eGlass systems. 

They’re also partially what makes the program so pricey (in addition to the technology and infrastructure needs of districts and employee salaries). All of the equipment required for the futuristic contraptions, which the company describes as “illuminated transparent lightboards” that have a camera to monitor the classroom, costs about $3,000. 

Marshall said the lightboards are essential because they’re interactive and allow teachers to teach in real time. Leslie Hebert, one of the teachers in the program and the education program development specialist for K-12 literacy at MPB, said while the program is less hands-on, the lessons are more in-depth because of the technology.

“This is not your normal sit-and-get-lectured style of teaching,” Marshall said. “When the pandemic was here, it was really that the teachers talked and the kids listened and that was it … This is almost like having a real person in the classroom. When you couple it with a facilitator to keep kids on task, that’s a game changer.” 

Right now, the program uses two eGlass systems and offers English I, English III, Algebra I and Algebra II classes. About 150 students are involved across the five districts, but the program has the capacity for 5,400 students, six teachers and six assistants when it’s fully scaled up. 

They’ll be adding math and science classes to the program in the spring, Marshall said, and 12 more eGlass systems are on the way. The initiative started small because the agency’s appropriation wasn’t finalized until late in the summer due to legislators bickering over the state budget. 

And Evans is pushing for more resources. He said recently that he’s asking the Legislature to continue funding the program next year to expand it. 

The more students, the better, Hebert said. The program is helping her reach more students than she used to teach in a traditional classroom setting. The medium matters less. 

“At the end of the day, it’s about teaching children,” she said.

KILN – In the days leading up to the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hancock County emergency director Brian “Hooty” Adam recalled an eerie moment, one he fully recognizes sounds made up. 

Trudging through a pile of debris in the woods, Adam stumbled upon an opened book. Staring up at him, he said, were pages from the Book of Genesis telling the story of Noah’s Ark, in which God forewarns of a catastrophic flood. 

“If I hadn’t witnessed it, people would probably have never believed it,” said Adam, who took over as director two years before Katrina flooded his county with a nearly 30-foot storm surge. 

In 2005, he rode out the storm of biblical proportions in the county’s old emergency office, a defunct bowling alley near the shore in Bay St. Louis. Adam, sporting a full mustache and a red polo, now works in a state-of-the-art, bunkered operations center in Kiln, about 10 miles north. 

Proudly walking through the new stronghold, he explained the progress Hancock County and the rest of the Mississippi Gulf Coast made over the last 20 years, such as adopting modern building codes, updating their emergency plans and elevating construction in flood prone areas. 

But while the Coast is spearheading resilience in Mississippi, it also exemplifies an economic dilemma creeping into all corners of the region and country as a whole.

“The biggest remnant of Katrina that is still causing a disaster is the insurance,” said Rhonda Rhodes, president of the Hancock Resource Center.

Coast life’s rising cost

Vandy Mitchell, a retired state employee in Biloxi, said he could throw a dart at the city’s map and find someone with home insurance problems, whether they’re worried about their policy being renewed or their premiums skyrocketing. 

Katrina was a major turning point in the insurance market. Before the storm, Mitchell said the premium for his 1,400-square-foot home was about $900 a year. Now, he said, he pays $4,200 a year, a 360% increase over 20 years. That’s more than he pays for the mortgage on his house, Mitchell added.

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” he said. “It’s getting harder and harder to justify living in this area.”

Home insurance is the primary way homeowners can secure their shelters and belongings in case of a natural disaster. Those with little or no insurance have to rely on donations or hope the disaster is large enough to secure a federal declaration, something that is difficult in small, rural areas such as those throughout Mississippi. 

Even if a declaration does come, the Federal Emergency Management Agency as of 2023 capped housing assistance payments at $42,500 – far below most homes’ value. Moreover, as The Associated Press reported, the government is taking longer than before to issue declarations, extending the limbo for uninsured storm victims.

In Mississippi, nearly a quarter of homeowners pay less than $100 a year in home insurance, which, as experts told NBC News last year, means they have such scant coverage they’re essentially uninsured. Only two states, West Virginia and New Mexico, had a higher percentage. 

Within Mississippi, though, several counties have much higher rates. In Jefferson County, where more than 1 in 4 lives below the poverty line, 48% of homeowners lack meaningful insurance. 

Across the country in places with increasing disaster risk, insurance companies are both hiking premiums and pulling out altogether. David Krenning, an insurance agent in Ocean Springs, said large carriers such as Allstate and Progressive have stopped writing wind and hail policies on the Coast in Mississippi. 

Coast residents often are left with policies from either the “wind pool” – a state-funded program – or an “unadmitted carrier.” The Mississippi Insurance Department allows unadmitted, or unregulated, carriers to work in the state to bridge the gap left by larger companies. But those options come with higher costs for the homeowner and less regulation by the state. 

Living on the Coast, Krenning said, is becoming tougher for blue-collar families who have been there for years. He said it’s common to see houses for $250,000 – just over the area’s median value – to have $5,000-$6,000 annual premiums just for wind and hail policies. 

“It’s tough for folks who lived here their entire life, they paid off their home,” said Krenning, who grew up around his family’s insurance business. “For a long time, people were coming here because the cost of living was so cheap. But the continually rising insurance costs could really hinder some areas of the Coast.”

Rhodes, of the Hancock Resource Center, said rising premiums are preventing homeowners from making improvements to better storm-proof their houses. The effect, she said, is translating to renters, too.

“We have apartment complexes that were built after Katrina, and they’re having issues because they have capital improvement needs.” Rhodes said. “But they can’t keep the housing affordable and make those improvements with the cost of insurance looming over their head.

“The frustrating thing is, it’s been 20 years (since Katrina), and we’re still paying for insurance like it was last year.”

Couches on blocks

After hurricanes Zeta and Ida – in 2020 and 2021, respectively – Jackson County received about $18 million in federal disaster grants, and is now developing what officials there say is the state’s first resilience plan. Part of the plan includes improving drainage in the low-lying, flood-prone city of Moss Point. 

Moss Point Mayor Billy Knight said flooding has become so common in the city that during a heavy rain, residents elevate couches and beds inside their homes onto blocks to keep them dry. 

“It’s just become a normal thing,” he said. 

Like other parts of the Coast, Moss Point sits in a swampy, wet ecosystem, and early developers didn’t always consider drainage when planning new housing, Knight said. Now, increasing rainfall is overwhelming the city’s aging stormwater system. 

Most of East Moss Point sits in a “high-risk” flood zone, which means mortgage lenders require homeowners there to have flood insurance. Residents in the city pay on average about $1,300 a year in flood insurance premiums and fees, federal data show. 

But East Moss Point, where the median household income is $26,000, is also the poorest part of the city. Many of the city’s low-income families settled there, Knight explained, because that’s where the cheapest property is.

“People have to go to where they can afford,” Knight said. “Sometimes they don’t realize why the houses are not as much as on the other side of town. They’re cheaper because you’re in a flood zone.”

‘Long overdue’ solutions

Insurance experts agree that as climate volatility continues to trend upward, the cost of protecting disaster-prone homes will only grow. 

“It’s really strange to say, but the insurance industry was one of the first industries talking about the impact of climate change,” said Chip Merlin, an attorney who specializes in insurance claims and who worked with Katrina survivors in Mississippi. “If you go back 20, 30 years ago, it was some of the largest multinational insurance companies saying, this is going to be a problem, and it seems to be getting worse.” 

Those on the Coast, such as Krenning and Rhodes, fear rising premiums are already pushing lower- and middle-income families away from what used to be blue-collar communities. 

In Alabama and Louisiana, lawmakers fund incentives encouraging homeowners to mitigate their roofs using “FORTIFIED” standards, a program through the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. The grants provide up to $10,000 per house. 

A study this year by the University of Alabama found, during Hurricane Sally in 2020, FORTIFIED homeowners in the state filed fewer than half as many claims as everyone else. Upgrading the roofs for every home, the research said, would have slashed total damage costs by about two-thirds. 

Policy and planning experts point to mitigation grants and statewide, uniform building codes as key avenues towards climate resilience at the local level. Mississippi lacks both. 

“The only way we’re going to lower (insurance) rates on the Gulf Coast is through mitigation, building a stronger home,” said Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney.

Mitchell, the Biloxi resident, said he would love to upgrade his roof, especially if it means chopping down his insurance bill. But doing so costs thousands of dollars – close to $20,000 for a 2,000 square-foot home, according to Habitat for Humanity. It’s so expensive that he joked it’d almost be easier if a storm came and blew his roof off for him. 

“I think we’re long overdue for that in Mississippi,” Krenning said of a state-funded mitigation grant.  

Rhodes, whose nonprofit has worked to improve housing in Hancock County since Katrina, said outside of insurance issues, the Hancock County community has “bounced back beautifully.” Waveland was decimated by the hurricane and is finally starting to see new development arrive, she said, although businesses there now have to navigate costs to elevate their buildings. 

“They’re going to get there, it’s just a little slower,” Rhodes said. “The people who live here, the ones who were here during Katrina, it’s enough of a memory in their mind now that we can appreciate all the good that’s come from it. I do think the people’s spirit and attitude is resilient.”

Getting ready to retire after 22 years as the Hancock County emergency director, Adam recognized not everyone wants to relive the horrifying events of Hurricane Katrina that took 238 lives in Mississippi. But for him, he said, it’s a duty to impart whatever knowledge will help others learn, calling those lessons a “blessing in tragedy.”

“Here’s the thing: People are not going to want change,” Adam said, describing stricter regulations on the Coast. “They didn’t want change when (Katrina) happened. But it’s inevitable. As long as I’ve been in this, if I don’t change and I don’t learn, I shouldn’t be in this job.”