Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge Jim Greenlee will retire from the bench on June 30, leaving a vacancy on the state’s 10-member appellate court.
Greenlee, an Oxford resident, wrote a letter recently to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves informing him of his decision to retire from the state court and said it was a privilege to serve Mississippi citizens, the state and the justice system for over eight years.
“It’s been a great privilege and honor to be here and work on these cases,” Greenlee said in a news release. “We are a court that has to give our attention and focus on (appeals of) what occurred in the trial courts and the state agency administrative appeals.”
Reeves will make an appointment to fill Greenlee’s vacancy, and a special election is expected to be scheduled for November 2026, according to a news release from the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Judges on the Court of Appeals are elected from five districts across the state. Greenlee’s district is located in north Mississippi, so Reeves must appoint a replacement from that area.
Greenlee’s retirement announcement bookends a long tenure in public life. President George W. Bush nominated him as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi in 2001 — a position he served in until 2010.
Former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Greenlee to a vacancy on the Court of Appeals in January 2016, after Bryant appointed former Court of Appeals Judge James D. Maxwell II to the Mississippi Supreme Court. Greenlee was elected twice without opposition.
Forty-seven-year-old Selinda Walker had to move back in with her elderly mother after an untreated and severe case of Graves’ disease left her unable to work and live independently.
As a single, low-income individual with no children, Walker has no path toward health care in the state of Mississippi, which remains one of 10 states in the country not to expand Medicaid. And as lawmakers advocate for work requirements in Medicaid expansion bills, Walker faces a Catch-22: she needs health insurance first to get healthy enough to be able to return to work.
The progression of her disease made it impossible for her to continue working at her jobs in retail and car sales. The worst of her symptoms cause her to suffer dizzy spells and temporarily-paralyzing falls throughout the day, among a slew of other problems.
“I feel like I’m a burden to my mother,” Walker, who lives in Columbus, said. “She has to do so much because I can do so little. There are days where I am just useless, the pain is so bad.”
Selinda Walker, 47, takes one of several medications at her mom’s home in Columbus, Miss., on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Selinda has an autoimmune disease called Graves’ Disease. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Since she inherited the gene from both her parents, Walker has a textbook case of the autoimmune disease with all of its worst symptoms. The condition, which causes the immune system to mistakenly attack healthy tissue, gets progressively worse if left untreated.
Without health insurance, Walker’s only recourse is a free clinic in Tupelo, about an hour and a half away from where she lives in Columbus. The clinic is able to prescribe her thyroid medications to varying degrees of success, but it’s nothing compared to the quality of life improvement she might experience if she were able to get the proper tests done and potentially undergo a more permanent solution like thyroid surgery.
One of the 10 medications she’s currently on helps treat the insomnia associated with Graves’ disease, but it sometimes causes her to sleep through the day. None of the medications help alleviate her back pain or the gut issues, chills or tremors she lives with.
“It’s very scary to think I don’t have anybody to check me out every month … every day I’m wondering if I’ll wake up,” she mused.
As a childless adult, Walker doesn’t qualify for Medicaid – period. She says the last two times she applied for disability Medicaid, case workers told her they could only help her if she got pregnant.
Credit: Bethany Atkinson
“I was shocked,” Walker said. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Mississippi is one of the strangest states ever. The only way to help me is if I have children?”
Even if she had children, or if that rule didn’t exist, Walker was at that time making more than 28% of the federal poverty level, a mere $7,000 annually for a family of three – the maximum salary a Mississippi family can make and still qualify for Medicaid – working full-time at her jobs in retail and car sales.
And she’s far from the only one. Anyone making at least minimum wage working full-time makes more than 28% of the federal poverty level, which then counts against them and disqualifies them from Medicaid.
Walker is one of tens of thousands of Mississippians who fall into the “coverage gap.” These individuals don’t qualify for Medicaid under the state’s current restrictions but make less than the 100% of the federal poverty level, about $15,000 a year for an individual, that would qualify them for subsidies that make marketplace insurance affordable.
The coverage gap exists in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which presumed all states would automatically expand Medicaid. However, a 2012 Supreme Court ruling made expansion optional for states.
New proposals in the Mississippi Legislature would expand Medicaid, as 40 other states have done, covering families and adults with a household income of up to 138% of the federal poverty level, under the House plan, or 99%, under the Senate plan.
Both plans would cover more Mississippians than are currently covered. But under both plans, the threat of a work requirement could leave individuals like Walker behind.
Policing and enforcing the work requirement costs more than it would cost to insure the population of unemployed people who would become eligible for Medicaid under expansion. Experts say developing new administrative systems would burden an already precarious system and could cost up to tens of millions of dollars. What’s more is the paperwork can be confusing to enrollees, causing legitimately employed and income-eligible individuals to be denied coverage.
The House plan would expand Medicaid regardless of whether the federal government approved a special waiver necessary to implement a work requirement. But the Senate plan is entirely contingent on the approval of the work requirement – unlikely to happen under the Biden administration, which has rescinded work requirements previously granted under the Trump administration and not approved new ones.
Dr. Dustin Gentry, a family physician at Winston Medical Center in Louisville, is a self-described Republican who says he can’t abide by his party’s long-standing belief that Medicaid expansion isn’t the most financially responsible decision for Mississippi.
“I want Mississippi to have coverage for uninsured patients in the coverage gap, and I want us to do it in a way that makes most sense financially, which is the House plan,” Gentry said. “It doesn’t make sense for us to not take the (federal) money, when everybody else is taking it. It puts us further behind.”
A plan like the Senate’s would leave $1 billion federal dollars on the table. An expansion plan that doesn’t cover people making up to 138% of the federal poverty level, about $20,000 annually for an individual, isn’t considered “expansion” under the Affordable Care Act, and therefore doesn’t qualify for the increased federal match rate, nor the additional two-year financial incentive the ACA gives to newly-expanded states.
Mississippians are already paying for Medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands of poor, working people – in other states.
“It’s important to note that the residents of Mississippi and the other holdout states have not been spared from paying for Medicaid expansion,” Dr. Joe Thompson, the Arkansas surgeon general under Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee and Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe told Mississippi Today. “They have been helping to fund it for over a decade through their federal tax dollars, but the money has been flowing into states like Arkansas and Louisiana instead of benefiting the working poor, hospitals, and economies of their home states.”
And hospitals are dying because uninsured individuals’ only recourse for medical care is the emergency room – the most expensive place to receive care. One report estimates that nearly half of all Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure due to uncompensated care costs hospitals must front to cover these individuals each year.
Selinda Walker’s medications for Graves’ Disease and other illnesses are seen placed at her mother’s home in Columbus, Miss., on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“Everybody’s got heartburn over people ‘getting something they don’t deserve,’” Gentry said. “But these people get free care anyways. They’re getting it from the emergency room, and it’s uncompensated care, and it’s the most expensive way to get care possible. So they’re getting it for free, we’re just bickering over who is going to pay for it.”
And while emergency rooms cannot turn down individuals who require immediate life-saving care, they do nothing to provide the necessary preventative care to improve the quality of life for people like Walker.
Walker believes if she could get the proper tests and treatment plan, she could go back to work and live independently. But with Gov. Tate Reeves promising to veto any expansion bill and the Senate hung up on a stringent work requirement, the chances Walker will get the care she needs look slim.
We recently reported that Mississippi’s community colleges are struggling to secure funding for buildings to house growing workforce development programs. It’s one of a number of challenges that face our state’s vital but oft-overlooked community college system.
There’s more to report, and we want to hear from the people who know our community colleges best. If you’d like to help us report on your college, please fill out the survey below or reach out to our reporter Molly Minta at mminta@mississippitoday.org. We won’t publish or share anything you tell us without contacting you first.
Mississippi’s largest community college violated Title IX when it failed to provide a pregnant student with proper accommodations and course adjustments, resulting in the student failing the semester, a federal civil rights agency said last week.
The student had to pump milk in a bathroom stall because Hinds Community College did not give her a private space, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found. An instructor evenreferred to this student’s unborn child as a “parasite” that was “sucking out minerals” from her body.
“Instead of assisting the Student with her pregnancy-related needs, these College administrators attempted to discourage the Student from trying to complete the Program due to her pregnancy, and even mocked and penalized her for requesting adjustments,” states a letter the agency sent Hinds last week.
Hinds did not respond to Mississippi Today’s requests for comment. In a campus newsletter earlier this week, President Stephen Vacik noted that Hinds had agreed to a settlement with the federal agency, which includedrevising its policies pertaining to pregnant students and reimbursing the student for her final semester at Hinds.
“The whole situation was regrettable, and shouldn’t have happened, but we are committed to meeting the required activities set forth in the agreement with OCR,” Vacik wrote. “Our goal is to be better prepared in the future to serve the needs of our students.”
Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or education program receiving federal funding.
The student’s name, area of study, and the identity of the instructor were redacted from the Office of Civil Rights letter, but the spring 2021 incident took place at the Jackson campus. The dean of health sciences was involved.
As a result of Hinds’ treatment of her, the student had to retake her final semester,causing financial hardship, the agency found. But Hinds repeatedly denied the student’s requests to reconsider her grades, and the health sciences dean ultimately told the student that “caring for a newborn while still trying to attend class, [redacted content], and study were likely contributing factors to you being unsuccessful in the course.”
Hinds also claimed the student had not reported issues with the instructor’s treatment of her earlier, even though the student had repeatedly done so, according to the Office of Civil Rights. The agency found the college had “no process in place” to handle the student’s complaints.
Nationally, more than one-fifth of community college students are parents, and the majority of those are mothers who are likely to be unmarried. Though these students are more likely to have higher grades than students who are not parents, they can struggle to graduate on time due largely to a lack of childcare and financial support.
In the Hinds’ student’s case, the college’s treatment of her was “humiliating and degrading,” according to the federal government.
Before giving birth, the student’s instructor bemoaned giving her breaks to express milk, according to emails reviewed by the feds, writing to other college employees to ask, “do I just let her do it? . . . it’s not like she would leave a lecture at 9:30 because of her ‘pumping schedule’.”
The student delivered three weeks early after developing preeclampsia, a condition she attributed to the stress caused by the instructor’s treatment of her.
While recovering in the hospital, the student attended a Zoom meeting for class, but had to leave 20 minutes early for medical treatment. Because she had not notified her instructor that she had to leave earlier, the student was marked absent for the entire class. And she was not provided study materials until the afternoon of a test, which she ultimately failed.
When the student returned to school, the initial room she was provided to pump in had a glass wall. Instead, she pumped sitting on a toilet in a bathroom stall. Her uneven pumping schedule resulted in pain and anxiety about her milk supply.
Meanwhile, her instructor complained about the student when she was absent from class, telling her fellow students that she was “allegedly pumping” and casting doubt on whether she would be able to graduate from the program.
The instructor also belittled the student in front of her peers, the agency found.
“Later that day, when the Student finished her pumping session just before lunch, the Student stated the [redacted content] Instructor told the Student in front of the other students, “you cannot pump and then go to lunch,” the letter states. “You have to pump during your lunch break, and you are supposed to find me and tell me anytime you are going to pump.”
The student ultimately submitted a Title IX complaint. That instructor resigned, though Hinds claimed during the course of the Title IX investigation that it had fired the instructor. The three campus police officers assigned to investigate the complaint did not interview key witnesses, the agency found.
When the North Carolina legislative session ends, Jim Burgin, a conservative Republican state senator who serves as chair of his state’s Senate Health Care Committee, will go back to his daily life as a businessman.
The owner of an insurance company and a partner in a local car dealership group, Burgin fully understands the virtue of hard work. That’s why when Medicaid expansion, the federal program that 10 states including Mississippi have refused to pass, came up for debate in his legislature over the past few years, he wasn’t immediately sold.
“I don’t think we ought to have any kind of government program that people stay on the rest of their lives,” Burgin told Mississippi Today in an interview this week. “Like most of my Republican colleagues, I wanted to put a work requirement in. But we realized the feds would never approve it, so we had to think about what we really wanted to do as it related to work.”
Many Mississippi Republican lawmakers currently face the same dilemma. Though Medicaid expansion is being seriously considered here for the first time, Senate Republicans, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, appear convinced that the only way the state should expand Medicaid is if a work requirement is in place. But with the federal government having shot down 13 states’ previous efforts to implement a work requirement, Mississippi Today reached out to leaders in North Carolina, the most recent Republican-led state to expand, to see how they came to an agreement.
Burgin and his colleagues, knowing the feds wouldn’t allow the work requirement, went to the drawing board to determine if they could come up with a Medicaid expansion bill that still promoted work without requiring it. They started with a “trigger law,” of sorts, to mandate that if the federal government ever changed their policy on allowing states to implement a work requirement, North Carolina would move immediately to adopt one. They also added a separate trigger that allowed the state to immediately drop out of the expansion program if Congress ever defunded it or changed its funding structure.
They also developed some creative ideas for spending the additional federal dollars the state would receive from the expansion program that were designed to promote work. Shortly after they expanded Medicaid, the North Carolina lawmakers designated hundreds of millions in expansion “signing bonus” funds on mental health reform. The state’s mental health system was in crisis with major funding concerns, so Republicans appropriated $835 million — all money they got from the feds to expand Medicaid — to rebuild the crumbled system.
“That’s going to help so many hospitals and law enforcement officers who often had nothing to do with mentally ill people but take them to emergency rooms, whether those people had health insurance or not,” Burgin said. “Hospitals will never have to treat or pay for care for people in those situations in ERs ever again.”
Additionally, North Carolina Republicans in the coming weeks will work on getting the federal government to grant a waiver to spend federal Medicaid dollars on providing free community college — and workforce skills training — to North Carolinians enrolled in the Medicaid expansion program. Additionally, some Republicans want to add child care vouchers to that list of offerings.
“This is all to get people jobs and to keep them working and ultimately to get them off Medicaid,” Burgin said. “Even though it can’t be a requirement, we’re promoting work. We want to make it easier and better for people to get work that they won’t want to stay on Medicaid. They’ll want a job and hopefully eventually get on a group health plan through their employer.”
So what ultimately convinced Burgin, who wanted the work requirement all along, to move forward on expansion even without it?
“Billions of dollars,” he said plainly. “Look, I’m a business guy. I don’t spend money, I invest money. I looked at (Medicaid expansion) as a great investment. I had a fiduciary responsibility to my constituents to take that money. So we wrote a bill that said that if the feds changed the work requirement, if they change anything, we can add it here or opt out of our program altogether.
“I just couldn’t turn down billions of dollars that we needed in so many areas,” Burgin said. “And we get to spend that on a wide variety of things, and all of it is designed to get people across this state working.”
North Carolina state Rep. Donny Lambeth, R-Forsyth, speaks to reporters following the House Health Committee meeting at the Legislative Office Building in Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. Lambeth is a primary sponsor of a bill that the committee approved that would expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of low-income adults through the 2010 Affordable Care Act. (AP Photos/Gary D. Robertson)
Republican state Rep. Donny Lambeth was the primary author of what became North Carolina’s Medicaid expansion program.
For years before an expansion program actually passed, Lambeth filed numerous expansion bills that included work requirements.
“I was a big advocate for work requirements because, well, I felt like it was just one of those things,” Lambeth said. “We shouldn’t want to just add more people to Medicaid rolls. You have to figure out how to help them and get them off Medicaid and into the workforce. But when we talked to people in Washington, it was obvious there was no way, if we went through all the trouble to get votes and get it passed, we would get a work requirement.”
So Lambeth, like Burgin, went to the drawing board. They wrote into their expansion plan a provision similar to red-state Montana: State government agencies would work with private partners who had experience with job training to create a program that would pay for Medicaid enrollees to get job training. They couldn’t require people to participate, but they could make it worth their while.
“We looked at what other Republican states that had expanded had done,” Lambeth said. “What we came up with in lieu of the work requirement was an optional jobs training program. The idea was that even though you’ve got the vast majority of people on Medicaid working, they’re working in low-income jobs. They couldn’t afford health insurance even though they worked. The theory is that if you take advantage of expansion dollars from the federal government with a job training program like this, you can go back and further your education. You can then get a better job, have a higher standard of living, get off Medicaid and be able to afford your health insurance.”
Peg O’Connell, a health care advocate and consultant who for several years led North Carolina’s push to expand Medicaid, explained how the jobs training program worked in Montana before her state included it in its program.
“A man had been a hit-or-miss carpenter and really wanted a commercial drivers license,” O’Connell said. “So the Montana caseworker under their expansion program helped get him his CDL. They paid for him to take the classes as well as lodging when he had to travel to take his exams, and they even bought him a pair of work boots. This man is now doing what he wants to be doing, he’s got full-time employment with health insurance, and he has worked himself off the Medicaid program. That’s the idea behind our program here.”
Lambeth, like Burgin, is a small business owner. He owns a logistics contracting company, and he “can’t afford to offer my employees health insurance,” he said.
“Are there some quote-unquote deadbeats, people who are not working, playing off the system? Sure,” Lambeth said. “But we were able to identify the farmers in the east part of the state, small, mom-and-pop businesses that were growing at significant rates but couldn’t quite afford to offer health insurance, hard-working people who desperately wanted and needed health insurance but couldn’t afford it. We saw that the vast majority of these people are working, and the ones who weren’t working, we felt like if we could get them training or education and child care, that would help get them off Medicaid.
“If we’re really all about getting people working, then let’s figure out ways to work within the system, draw down those billions of dollars, and use them to get them working,” he continued. “It was really that simple.”
Burgin and Lambeth both supported work requirements but saw they wouldn’t get approval from the federal government. They listened to their constituents, they considered the heart of their desire to get North Carolinians working and they found creative solutions.
As Mississippi lawmakers consider Medicaid expansion over the next few days, what advice might the North Carolina Republicans offer to their counterparts here in the Magnolia State?
“You tell any of the hardest nos, the most conservative ones, that if they have any doubts, give them my number. My cell is 919-207-7263,” Burgin said. “I’ll be happy to answer any question they may have and talk to them about why this is so beneficial. I’ve been tracking Mississippi. I testified the other day to Kansas lawmakers. We’ve already talked to folks in Georgia, Florida, Kansas and now Mississippi. All of these holdout states are looking at the same thing saying, ‘We’ve put it off. Why did you do it?’ For me and my Republican colleagues, it came down to a business decision. How could we, in good faith, leave billions on the table?”
Lambeth answered the question with an anecdote.
“I heard from just dozens and dozens of North Carolinians while we were debating this,” Lambeth said. “But I got one letter, in particular, from a Christmas tree farmer in Ash County. She couldn’t afford health insurance, and she was worried they were going to lose their farm because of out-of-pocket medical bills they had.
“These are real people. They’re not the traditional Medicaid where they’re poor and not trying to improve their lives. They are hard-working people just not able to afford health insurance. I promise the average Mississippian is not much different than the average North Carolinian in that way. Why would we be in the positions we’re in and not help them? I mean really, why?”
It’s one of our mottos here at The Center for Practical Ethics (TCPE). To put another way, we might say our goal is to foster conversations rather than diatribes. This task is more difficult than most realize. What we know as ethicists is that merely having conversations isn’t enough. There’s a wide variety of skills needed for fruitful dialogue to take place, and some are harder to come by than others.
The ideal conversation partner is curious and humble, able to actively listen, knowledgeable about his or her own positions, familiar with basic principles of logical argument, charitable when interpreting claims, and—most importantly—willing to be wrong. Our work centers around equipping students with these skills and helping them navigate the complex ethical issues within our society’s most contentious disagreements.
This year, National Week of Conversations (NWoC) coincided with Ethics Week here at the University of Mississippi (UM). Many of our events are conversation-based because dialogue is the best way to evaluate the ideas of others and open ourselves up to new information and interpretation of facts, while gaining a better understanding of our own views.
Two of our events in particular are worth examining more closely to see why NWoC and the work we do at TCPE are critical for sustaining civil society and the myriad public goods we all take for granted. First is our signature Just Conversations event. Students are placed in small groups and given a couple of ethical dilemmas to discuss. Trained student moderators guide the discussion to point out important aspects of the dilemmas, such as logical fallacies, analysis of stakeholders, ethical concepts and assumptions, and varying methods to achieve goals. Students often discover they agree with others—on the dilemma outcome and the details—far more than they expected.
Second, we have invited free speech scholar Sigal Ben-Porath to give a talk about her new book “Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy”. Ben-Porath contends that universities are laboratories of democracy where students must learn to engage with disagreement. If the university is to be a place where truth is discovered, it must take seriously its historic social and educational obligation to train students in the skills needed for civil discourse and critical thinking. Her work is especially relevant in our ever more polarized times.
What these events demonstrate is that conversations—that is, engaged and fruitful conversations—must take place at all levels. Students must learn to talk to students just as much as faculty must learn to talk to faculty and administrators to administrators. What’s more, these groups must talk to each other because while each of us have a role within academia (faculty, staff, student, dean, vice chancellor, etc.), we are also all citizens who work and live together.
Policies must be made, votes cast, businesses founded, churches attended, friendships established, and life lived. TCPE focuses on the skills of civil discourse by providing opportunities to cultivate those skills through Ethics Week, and highlights conversations that ask us to reflect on the role of universities as part of the NWoC.
Join the conversation.
Join us at Noon on Friday, April 19 for a VIRTUAL lunch and learn session exploring tools to make us better listeners, and in turn, better equipped to engage in meaningful conversations across differences.
The session will be led by Dr. Graham Bodie, professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Media and Communication in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi.
Hundreds of people rallied at the Mississippi Capitol for a second day Wednesday, urging lawmakers to expand Medicaid to provide health coverage for an estimated 200,000 Mississippians.
After faith leaders spoke at the Capitol on Tuesday, Care4Mississippi, a coalition of advocates, held a rally Wednesday. Speakers recounted their struggles with access to affordable health care in Mississippi and chanted for the Legislature to, “Close the coverage gap now,” and for “Full Medicaid expansion now.”
Stephanie Jenkins of McComb, a former social worker, lost her job and health insurance after a car wreck left her with debilitating injuries.
She said she later received some medical treatment from the University of Mississippi Medical Center, but still suffers from chronic pain and other ailments. She said she was told she could not receive Medicaid coverage because she owns too much property.
Jenkins said that years after her accident, “I’m still fighting that battle. I’m still trying to get health insurance. I am still trying to get Medicaid … The state of Mississippi does not realize that it is not about money. It is not about race. It is about people. People are dying because they have no health insurance.”
Dr. Randy Easterling, a Vicksburg family physician and former executive director of the Mississippi Medical Association, spoke in favor of Medicaid expansion. He said the people who would be helped by the expansion primarily work at jobs that do not provide health care and they do not earn enough to purchase private insurance. Many are small business owners.
Easterling said often times the insurance policies available through the federal marketplace exchange have out-of-pocket costs that make them unaffordable for working people if they get sick.
Easterling recounted a story of two of his friends diagnosed with similar cancers. One was uninsured and self-employed, and did not get early diagnosis or treatment. He’s now in hospice and on death’s door. The other friend, with insurance, received an early diagnosis and treatment and is now cancer free.
“This is a matter of life and death. It is certainly more than a political debate,” Easterling told the crowd.
But the issue of expanding Medicaid is currently engulfed in the political process of the Mississippi Legislature. The House has passed a bill to expand Medicaid as is allowed under federal law to cover those earning up to 138% of the federal poverty or about $20,000 annually for an individual. Under the House plan, the federal government would pay 90% of the health care costs and provide the state with almost $700 million more over the first two years as incentive to expand Medicaid as 40 other states have done.
Under the Senate plan, coverage would be provided to working people earning less than 100% of the federal poverty level and the federal government would pay much less of the costs.
Studies indicate that the Senate plan would cost the state more and cover fewer people. At the rally, people wore yellow T-shirts that read, “close the coverage gap” and “leave no one behind.”
Easterling said that by refusing to expand Medicaid for the last 11 years, “This state has struck a match to $12 billion … and that money was earmarked specifically to increase access to health care.”
He added, “Two days ago most of us wrote a check to the IRS. Now explain to me in simple terms, I am pretty simple, why my (federal) tax money in Mississippi went to increase access to health care in 40 states and not any of it came back to Mississippi.”
Dr. Randy Easterling, a Vicksburg family physician, speaks about Medicaid expansion during a Medicaid expansion rally at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“We take federal money right and left,” Easterling said. “We take hundreds of millions of federal dollars for highways, education, the Health Department, law enforcement and natural disasters … But for some reason we push back on additional money for health care. I would submit to you this is a matter of life and death.”
Robin Y. Jackson, with the Mississippi Black Women’s Roudtable, told of dropping out of school to care for a family member. In the process she developed a chronic health problem. She said she was unable to get help, but later got a job with health insurance even though her employer knew she had costly medical maladies. After surgeries costing tens of thousands of dollars, she said she is finally well.
“I was lucky,” she said. Others are not so lucky. She said with Medicaid expansion everyone could receive the treatment she was lucky enough to receive.
She said as shepherds of Mississippians, politicians should strive “to leave no one behind.”
Sonya Williams Branes, a former legislator, a small business owner and state policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, recounted the struggles she faced with her young son who had chronic asthma. As a small business owner at the time, she struggled to provide health care for her family and her employees.
“To ensure my son remained eligible for CHIP, a program that provided him with vital medical care, I was forced into a corner,” Barnes said. “Making more money, expanding my business and hiring more staff – all paths to improving our lives – would disqualify him from the program, pushing essential health care out of reach.
“Our system is broken,” Barnes said. “It punishes ambition and stifles growth.”
Before the Care4Mississippi rally, the Legislative Black Caucus on Wednesday morning held a press conference calling for adoption of the House’s more expansive Medicaid coverage plan.
“We remain committed to having full expansion and covering as many working Mississippians as possible,” said House Minority Leader Robert Johnson, D-Natchez. “Our goal is to sustain health care in Mississippi and sustain it in a way that it doesn’t matter where you live or what your income is.”
In his annual State of the State address in February 2024, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, highlighted Mississippi’s recent improvement in education and the need for further progress.
This is a mission shared by the SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy, a science- and technology-focused institution located within 20 miles of the high school area that the governor proposed using in his address.
Statement from the Governor
In his annual statement, Gov. Tate Reeves highlighted the progress Mississippi has enjoyed in the education sphere over the last few years, commonly known as the “Mississippi miracle.” This miracle references the state’s impressive feats in closing the test score gap it used to have with the rest of the US.
In 2013, Mississippi was the second-worst state for fourth-grade reading abilities. Yet by 2022, it had achieved a ranking of 21 out of all the states—a significant achievement. These improvements have been attributed to state policies like holding back third graders with poor reading skills and focusing on phonics to better cover the basics of literacy. The state has also boosted its graduation rates, which went from 75% (below the national average) in 2011 to 87% (above the national average) by 2020.
But the Governor doesn’t want to stop there, saying: “Now we must discover how to go from good to great.” To achieve this, he cited ambitions to embrace new education models, such as schools that take a fresh approach. The Mississippi School for Math and Science was named as one success story. Located on the campus of Mississippi University for Women and aimed at academically gifted children, the school has become one of the best public high schools in the nation since launching in 1987.
A Call for More STEM Education
Gov. Tate Reeves proposed creating more schools dedicated to STEM subjects in Mississippi to recreate the success stories shown by projects like the Mississippi School for Math and Science.
He said in his speech: “I propose that we create 12 Mathematics and Engineering Magnet Schools throughout the state. By establishing eight Pre-K through 8th-grade schools and three more high schools, we can help to ensure Mississippi kids are given the education required to be successful in an increasingly technological economy.”
The state is also capitalizing on this growing technological economy outside of education, with Mississippi benefiting from various industry titans basing themselves in the state. Namely, there are plans to build an EV battery factory in Marshall County and two data centers in Madison County. Both of these will offer employment opportunities for students.
Gov. State Reeves asked the Legislature to enact an apprenticeship education model for high school seniors, allowing them to opt for practical education over classrooms to gain skills if they so wish.
He even got specific by naming the location of the old Central High School as the perfect location for building more schools dedicated to growing the next generation of technologists and engineers.
However, the governor seemingly failed to realize that a school recently opened that meets all his criteria and shares a similar vision: the SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy.
Introducing SR1
As its name suggests, SR1 is focused on STEM education and shares many of the objectives outlined in the governor’s address.
Spanning 270 acres, the campus itself is a testament to science and technology, with various developments that allow students to benefit from first-hand learning.
One standout feature is its farm vernacular learning structure, which boasts constructions for egg harvesting, seasonal planting, and more. Other constructions of note throughout the school campus include:
Trail system spanning wetlands, rivers, woodlands
Earth tubes with climate control
Controlled grow environments with climate control
Green growing towers and growing trays
Composting toilets
SR1 has a comprehensive STEM curriculum and ample extracurricular activities that facilitate STEM learning outside of the classroom. For instance, the school regularly runs trips to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.
The school is located on Towne Center Blvd, Ridgeland, which means it’s located within 20 miles of the Governor’s proposed central high school (and within 10 miles of the mega site).
While it’s still a fairly new project, SR1 enrolled 100 students for its 225 slots in grades K-2 for 2024-2025. It also plans to open a PreK to boost students’ learning before they start school, giving them the best start possible for a STEM education.
An Emphasis on Minorities
SR1’s focus on STEM has parallels with the Mississippi School for Math and Science. But while the aforementioned school is for gifted children only, the SR1 takes a different approach.
For one, it’s a free public charter school open to everyone. The school also focused on promoting equity in STEM education — a point the Governor missed. Minority groups like African American, Native American, and Hispanic students — as well as female students — often don’t enter STEM due to the lack of representation and failing to receive the much-needed foundational education early in their life.
SR1 aims to amend this issue through its partnership with a nonprofit (of the same name), which works with organizations in Mississippi to boost social mobility for minority groups.
An Exciting Time for Mississippi
Mississippi has already garnered a reputation across the US for its stellar educational offering and impressive advancements over the last few years. Going by success stories like The Mississippi School for Math and Science and upcoming developments that could make the state a center for technology and industry, its future may be even brighter.
The SR1 School is showing strong potential for contributing to this positive future.
Ridgeland, MS — In its inaugural year in 2023-24, the SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy (CPSA) located in Canton, MS, is leading an educational transformation in Mississippi, backed by the visionary non-profit organization SR1. With a focus on college preparatory and STEM education, the academy leverages extensive grassroots experience to pioneer new educational pathways, aiming to nurture unparalleled student achievements.
Despite facing initial skepticism about the feasibility of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education at the elementary level, SR1 CPSA has surmounted initial hurdles, including narrow recruitment windows and a community not fully aware of the potential of STEM and charter schools. Starting with just 15 students, the academy’s enrollment has impressively expanded to over 100, nearing its full capacity of 225 students for the 2024-25 academic year.
Founder Tamu Green believes that the essence of a charter school’s success lies in its innovation and adaptability. “The charter realm harbors incredible potential for innovation,” Green asserts. Coming from a humble background in rural Forest, MS, and evolving into a two-time college STEM graduate with an MBA from Mississippi State University, Green’s journey from head start programs to professional leadership embodies a remarkable blend of resilience, cultural competency, and expertise.
The academy’s commitment to quality is evident in its policy of limiting enrollment to 75 students per grade while planning to expand gradually. SR1 CPSA will have K, 1st, and 2nd grades for 2024-25 while adding one grade per year.
To broaden its impact, SR1 CPSA has initiated strategic efforts to enhance enrollment and community engagement. Highlighting student achievements, parent testimonials, and utilizing social media, the academy aims to integrate more deeply into the local fabric. These initiatives are bolstered by partnerships and active participation in community events to promote its STEM-focused curriculum further.
SR1 CPSA is expanding its educational offerings to include PreK early learning, intending to improve school readiness from a young age. Additionally, the academy is tackling the challenge of an innovative wastewater system, in developing a cutting-edge campus that exceeds the norms of traditional educational settings. This displays SR1 CPSA’s sustainable commitment to environments that support both academic success and well-being.
Guided by the latest in neuroscience, psychology, and other fields, the upcoming campus will embrace principles of Neuroarchitecture, Biophilic Design (increased connectivity with nature), and Salutogenic Design (an environment that supports health and well-being). This comprehensive approach marks a departure from conventional school designs, prioritizing spaces that foster both educational excellence and personal well-being.
SR1 CPSA is calling on stakeholders to actively participate in redefining educational environments to fulfill the needs of upcoming generations. Crucially, to align with the Mississippi Charter Authorizer Board’s recent stipulations for the 2024-25 academic year, due to an increase in student numbers, SR1 CPSA is tasked with securing a $700,000 educational contingency fund.
This requirement comes despite the academy’s projections of financial profitability for the next academic year. We invite our community to support us in meeting this essential milestone, ensuring that we continue to offer unparalleled educational opportunities.
This venture aims not only to raise educational standards but also to equip students to face the complexities of the future confidently. For more information visit our website at www.sr1cpsa.org , email: info@sr1cpsa.org or call: 769.275.0330.
This ambitious project, based on evidence-based strategies to enhance student outcomes and well-being, is set to significantly transform the landscape of educational design, heralding a new era of educational excellence in Mississippi and beyond.
