A bill to open a college financial aid program for the first time ever to Mississippians who are adult, part-time and very low-income students fell to the wayside in a legislative session dominated by fights over Medicaid and K-12 funding.
The effort to expand the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant, called MTAG, died in conference after it was removed from House Bill 765, legislation to provide financial assistance to teachers in critical shortage areas. The Senate had attached MTAG’s code sections to that bill in an attempt to keep the expansion alive.
This takes Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid, back to the drawing board after years of championing legislation to modernize the way the state helps Mississippians pay for college.
“At the end of the day, there was no appetite to spend any additional money on student financial aid,” Rogers said. “Obviously, I’m disappointed.”
All told, the original proposal would have resulted in the state spending upwards of $30 million extra each year, almost doubling OSFA’s roughly $50 million budget.
The increase derived from two aspects of the proposal: An estimated 37,000 Mississippians who have never been eligible for college financial aid would have become eligible to receive it, and the scholarship amounts would have increased.
While college students from millionaire families can get MTAG, the state’s poorest students are not eligible, Mississippi Today previously reported.
Rep. Kent McCarty, R-Hattiesburg, said he supports efforts to help low-income Mississippians afford college, but that HB 765 was not an appropriate vehicle to do so because it was not an appropriations bill. Attempting to expand MTAG through that legislation would have put the original subject of HB 765, the Mississippi Critical Teachers Shortage Act, at risk.
“We didn’t feel it was appropriate to include an appropriation in a bill that had not been through the appropriations process,” he said.
McCarty, a member of the House Universities and Colleges Committee, added that he is in favor of changing MTAG and doesn’t understand the logic behind excluding from state financial aid Mississippi college students who receive a full federal Pell Grant, meaning they come from the state’s poorest families.
“What is the purpose of financial aid? To aid those who need financial aid,” he said. “Excluding a group of students because they’re eligible for other financial aid doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
Ultimately, the Mississippi House deemed the proposal too expensive. It never passed out of that chamber’s Appropriations Committee.
Rogers said she plans to work with lawmakers to convince them that it is a good use of state dollars to invest in financial aid. She added that the support of the business community helped keep the bill alive as long as it did this session. The Mississippi Economic Council supported the legislation.
“I don’t understand why there is such a hesitancy to invest more in the future workforce of the state,” she said. “I don’t understand why there isn’t a willingness to invest in student financial aid as a way to help more Mississippians complete meaningful certificates or degrees, valuable certificates or degrees and improve the quality of the workforce.”
Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, told Mississippi Today that he hopes to take a closer look at MTAG this summer, noting that the Senate’s version of the proposal, which also included a last-dollar tuition scholarship, was a priority of the lieutenant governor on last year’s campaign trail.
“We had so many issues last session,” DeBar said. “Hopefully there won’t be as many next year so we can just focus this year and get it across the finish line.”
Advocates from some of the state’s conservation groups — such as Audubon Delta, Mississippi Sierra Club and Steps Coalition — spoke out Wednesday against a recent decision by the Mississippi Public Service Commission to suspend several solar programs, including “Solar for Schools,” less than two years after the previous commission put them in place.
“This is particularly disappointing because the need for these incentives in the state of Mississippi is significant,” said Jonathan Green, executive director of Steps Coalition. “Energy costs in the South, and in particular the region known as the Black Belt, are higher than those in other parts of the country for a number of reasons. These regions tend to have older energy generation infrastructure, and housing that has not been weatherproofed to modern standards. For many low- to moderate-income residents in the state of Mississippi, energy burden and energy insecurity represent real daily economic challenges.”
The PSC voted 2-1 at its April docket meeting to do away with the programs, reasoning in part that new funds through the Inflation Reduction Act would be available to the state. About 10 days later, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded $62 million to the state, through the Hope Enterprise Corporation, to help low-income Mississippians afford adding solar power to their homes. The funds are part of the Biden Administration’s Solar for All program, one of the several recent federal initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The PSC decision ended three programs the previous commission put in place to encourage wider adoption of solar power through the two power companies it regulates, Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power: “Solar for Schools,” which allowed school districts to essentially build solar panels for free in exchange for tax credits, as well as incentives for low-income customers and battery storage.
Last Friday, the Sierra Club filed lawsuits in chancery courts in Hinds and Harrison counties against the commission, arguing the PSC broke state law by not providing sufficient reasoning or public notice before making the changes. Advocates also argued that new funding going to Hope Enterprise won’t go as far without the PSC’s low-income incentives.
The programs were part of a 2022 addition to the state’s net metering rule, a system that allows homeowners to generate their own solar power and earn credits for excess energy on their electric bills. Mississippi’s version is less beneficial to participants than net metering in most states, though, because it doesn’t reimburse users at the full retail cost. Mississippi’s net metering program itself is still in tact.
Northern District Commissioner Chris Brown said that, while he supported efforts to expand solar power, he didn’t think programs that offer incentives from energy companies were fair to other ratepayers.
Solar panels on the roof of the performing arts center at North Forrest High School. Credit: Mike Papas / Forrest County School District
“It’s the subsidy that we take issue with,” Brown said at the meeting. “It’s not the solar, it’s not the helping the schools. We just don’t think it’s good policy to spread that to the rest of the ratepayers.”
Brown and Southern District Commissioner Wayne Carr voted to end the programs, while Central District Commissioner De’Keither Stamps voted against the motion. All three are in their first terms on the PSC. Brown’s position is in line with what the power companies as well as Gov. Tate Reeves have argued, which is that programs like net metering forces non-participants to subsidize those who participate.
Robert Wiygul, an attorney for the Mississippi Sierra Club, countered that argument during Wednesday’s press conference, saying that net metering actually helps non-participants by adding more power to the grid and reducing the strain on the power companies’ other infrastructure. Moreover, he said, the PSC hasn’t offered actual numbers showing that non-participants are subsidizing the program.
“Look, if the commission wants to talk about that, we are ready to talk about it,” Wiygul said. “But what we got here is a situation where these two commissioners just decided they were going to do this. We don’t even know what that claim is really based on because it hasn’t been through the public notice and hasn’t been through the public comment process.”
While no schools had officially enrolled in “Solar for Schools,” which went into effect in January of last year, Stamps told Mississippi Today that there were places in his district getting ready to participate in the very programs the PSC voted to suspend.
Mississippi Public Service Central District Commissioner De’Keither Stamps, discusses current agency operations across the state during an interview at district headquarters, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“My issue was we should have talked to the entities that were going through the process to (understand what they were doing) to participate in the programs before you eliminate the programs,” he said.
Several school districts in the state are already using solar panels thanks to funding from a past settlement with Mississippi Power. Officials there told Mississippi Today that the extra power generated from the panels has freed up spending for other educational needs. During the public comment period for the 2022 net metering update, about a dozen school district superintendents from around the state wrote in to support the initiative. Ninety-five school districts in the state would have been eligible for the program because they receive power from Entergy Mississippi or Mississippi Power.
Former commissioner Brent Bailey, who lost a close reelection bid in November to Stamps, was an advocate for the schools program that the PSC created while he was there. At the April docket meeting, he pleaded with the new commission to reconsider, arguing that the new federal funding won’t have the same impact without those programs.
“My ask is to at least give this program a chance, see where it goes, and hear from stakeholders that have participated,” Bailey said. The solar programs, he added, weren’t just about expanding renewable energy, but taking advantage of a growing economy around solar power as well: “We can just stand by and watch it go by, or we can participate in this and bring economic development to the state.”
For the third consecutive year legislative efforts to direct state money to renovate LeFleur’s Bluff in Jackson have been stymied, thanks in large part to Gov. Tate Reeves.
Earlier this week, the Republican governor vetoed a portion of a bill that directed $14 million to the office of Secretary of State Michael Watson for work on developing and improving a nature trail connecting parks and museums and making other tourism-related improvements in the LeFleur’s Bluff area.
It is not clear whether the Legislature could take up the veto during the 2025 session, which begins in January, though, that’s not likely. The Legislature had the option to return to Jackson Tuesday to take up any veto, but chose not to do so.
Of the project, Watson said, “Our office was approached late in the session about helping with a project to revitalize LeFleur’s Bluff. As Mississippi’s state land commissioner, I was more than happy to help lead this effort not just because it’s a natural fit for our office, but also because I believe Mississippi needs a thriving capital city to retain our best and brightest. Investing state funds in state property on a project to enhance the quality of life in Jackson makes good sense.
“Unfortunately, some only support it when it equates to campaign contributions. Sadly, through the line-item veto of the appropriation, Mississippians will once again wait another year for the opportunity to benefit from state investments for the greater public good.”
Various groups, such as representatives of the Mississippi Children’s Museum and many other community leaders have been working on the project for years. The area already is the home of the Children’s Museum, Museum of Natural History, Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, state Agriculture Museum and a state park.
The issues with LeFleur’s Bluff first arose in 2022 when Reeves vetoed a $14 million appropriation that in part was designed to redesign and create a new golf course in the area. Previously, there had been a nine-hole, state-owned golf course operated by the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks at LeFleur’s Bluff State Park.
In 2022, the LeFleur’s Bluff project was one of literally hundreds of projects funded by the Legislature – many of which was tourism projects like LeFleur’s Bluff. The governor only vetoed a handful of those projects.
When issuing the LeFleur’s Bluff veto, Reeves said the state should not be involved in funding golf courses.
Then last year $13 million was directed to the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to spend on the LeFleur’s Bluff project. But legislative leaders said state money would not go toward a golf course.
Lawmakers opted to transfer the project to the Secretary of State’s office late in the 2024 session, apparently in part because they felt the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks had not made enough of an effort to begin the project.
Lynn Posey, executive director of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, said that before moving forward with the project, “We felt like we needed to do engineering work and see what the situation was. We never got a chance to move forward” because the Legislature redirected the money.
Posey said an engineer’s report was needed because “it is a unique piece of land.” He said much of the land is prone to flooding.
He said before that work could begin the Legislature switched the authority to the Secretary of State’s office. Posey was appointed to his current position by Reeves, whose office had no comment on the veto.
While the Constitution instructs the governor to provide to the Legislature a reason for any veto, Reeves did not do so this year when vetoing the money going to the Secretary of State’s office.
On Monday, the governor also vetoed a portion of another bill dealing with appropriations for specific projects. But in this case, the veto was more of a technicality. The bill was making corrections to language passed in previous sessions. In that language were five projects the governor vetoed in 2022.
The language, as it was written, would not have revived those previously vetoed projects, the governor said. But Reeves said he vetoed the five projects out of caution. He did the same in 2023 when those five projects, which included money appropriated in 2022 for the Russell C. Davis Planetarium in Jackson, were carried forward in a bill also making corrections to previously passed legislation.
College baseball’s regular season is in its last week, which means baseball bracketology is a popular activity. State needs to finish strong to become a Regional host. Southern Miss probably has already punched its ticket as a 2- or 3-seed. Ole Miss, playing its best baseball presently, needs victories, period. Meanwhile, the State High School softball tournament is this week in Hattiesburg, and the state baseball tournament comes to Trustmark Park in Pearl next week.
A week ago, Arkansas officials unveiled a new statue at the National Statuary Hall to represent the state, civil rights leader Daisy Bates.
Her statue now stands next to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, one of two statues representing Mississippi.
“This is absolutely embarrassing to the Mississippi that I love,” said Al Price, who has called for changing the state’s statues ever since he saw them in 2012 in Washington, D.C. He sought unsuccessfully in 2017 to get state Sen. Lydia Chassaniol, R-Winona, to sponsor a bill to do so.
He recommends that author William Faulkner and civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer represent the state. “This would be a profound statement by the state of Mississippi,” he said. “It would challenge a lot of the negative stereotypes about the state and would go a long way to healing a lot of wounds.”
Since 2000, 17 states have installed new statues or moved to replace existing statues at the hall in the U.S. Capitol.
Alabama now has Helen Keller. Arizona has Barry Goldwater. California has Ronald Reagan. Kansas has Amelia Earhart and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Michigan has Gerald Ford. Missouri has Harry Truman. Ohio has Thomas Edison. And North Carolina will add Billy Graham on Thursday.
Mississippi, however, has the same statues that were erected almost a century ago, both of them Confederate leaders.
Some Southern states are replacing Confederate icons with more modern heroes. Arkansas now has Bates; Virginia, Barbara Johns; and Florida, Mary McLeod Bethune, one of the most important Black educators of the 20th century. Congress has added Rosa Parks as well.
The contributions of Native Americans have also been recognized in a number of states, including Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming.
A state can change its statues through a resolution that is adopted by the Legislature and approved by the governor.
“We just need to have someone courageous enough in the Legislature to do so,” Price said.
In 2019, Arkansas voted to replace both of its statues, Uriah Rose, who supported Arkansas seceding from the Union, and former U.S. Sen. James Paul Clarke, who vowed to uphold “white supremacy.”
Their replacements are Bates, a mentor to the Little Rock Nine, and music legend Johnny Cash, whose statue is slated to arrive in September.
At the same time Arkansas is switching out the statues that represent the state in Washington, Mississippi has not seriously considered such a change.
“Mississippi could learn a lot from its neighbor,” said Robert Luckett, associate professor of history and director of the Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African American Experience at Jackson State University.”It’s long past time that the Blackest state in the nation recognize the courageous men and women who, like Daisy Bates, believed in this nation and its great potential. There are plenty to choose from: Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer in particular.”
During his time as Mississippi’s governor, Phil Bryant talked of Elvis Presley and B.B. King as “good possibilities” for possible replacements for a statue.
Mississippi’s most controversial statue is that of Davis, who believed, like many of his Southern peers, that those of African descent were meant to serve the white race.
“We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race by the Creator, and from cradle to grave, our government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority,” he declared in an 1860 speech.
The state’s other statue is a political figure that many Mississippians may not recognize — J.Z. George, who fought in the Civil War and later became the charging force in disenfranchising Black Mississippians through the 1890 state constitution and restoring “white supremacy” to government.
James K. Vardaman, the racist governor and U.S. senator who aided George in that fight, said the constitution was adopted “for no other purpose than to eliminate the n—– from politics.” White supremacy had to be maintained, even if it meant every Black Mississippian had to be lynched, he said.
Within a decade, the number of Black registered voters fell from more than 130,000 to less than 1,300.
Credit: Courtesy of Charles Sims
George’s great-great-great grandson, Charles Sims, recently recommended that his ancestor’s statue be moved from Statuary Hall back to Mississippi, where he said it belongs.
“We cannot erase the past, but neither should we be a prisoner of it, either,” Sims said. “I think the statue should be removed from the Capitol because we cannot honor racial hatred.”
Statuary Hall still holds the statues of sixConfederate leaders, a third of them representing the Magnolia State.
In a recent online poll, 592 Mississippi Today readers gave their top votes for possible statues to Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in 1963 and who was honored recently with the Presidential Medal of Honor, as the top choice with 40% of the votes. Hamer received 26%; Faulkner, 21%; crusading journalist Ida B. Wells, 16%; music icon Elvis Presley, 15%; author Eudora Welty, 12%; former Gov. William Winter, 11%; and blues legend B.B. King, 9%.
Kevin Greene, history professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, said his nomination would be Evers, who fought for his country, first on the battlefield against the Nazis and later on the battlefield against Jim Crow, he said. “All of the good things embedded in America are embedded in Medgar Evers.”
He suggested discussions across communities regarding what statues should represent the state. “Mississippi needs to lead the way in these conversations,” he said. “These are opportunities to teach and to reconcile our past as some nations ought to and haven’t.”
Pam Junior, former director of the History of Mississippi Museum and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, said the state is supposed to have experienced this paradigm shift, starting with the state flag, “but we keep going backwards and allow statues like these to continue to represent Mississippi.”
As a replacement, she suggests “Medgar Wiley Evers, who was for all people, not just one group of people,” she said. “Until we make that paradigm shift, we’re never going to move up. We have to start with us.”
Rght fielder Carson Paetow noisily scores the tying run for Southern Miss, which erased a 4-0 Ole Miss lead, in a 7-4 USM victory at Hattiesburg Tuesday night. Paetow had three hits, including a triple, knocked in three runs and made a spectacular diving catch to help the Eagles win before a home crowd of 5,706. (Photo by Sean Smith)
HATTIESBURG — Ole Miss was hoping for some baseball deja vu Tuesday night. Southern Miss, still with nightmares from about this time two years ago, was trying to avoid the same.
Remember? Ole Miss, getting white-hot at just the right time, came to Pete Taylor Park here in May of 2022, beat the highly ranked Golden Eagles, then returned to Hattiesburg a couple weeks later for an NCAA Super Regional and thrashed USM twice more en route to that amazing national championship run.
Rick Cleveland
Early on Tuesday night at the jam-packed “Pete,” Mike Bianco’s Rebels seemed to be re-writing that 2022 script. Andrew Fisher’s two-run, 416-foot blast gave the Rebels a 2-0 lead two batters into the game. The Rebels scored two more in the second inning for a 4-0 lead.
“It looked like it was going to be our night at the plate,” Bianco would later say.
The Southern Miss bullpen had other ideas. Four Golden Eagle relievers combined for seven innings of one-hit, shutout baseball, and, cheered by a sellout crowd of 5,706, the home team reeled off seven unanswered runs for an important 7-4 victory.
The victory moved USM to 35-17 on the season and vaulted the Eagles to a No. 29 national RPI headed into the last weekend of the regular season. For Ole Miss, hopes of an at large NCAA Tournament bid took a hit, although just how much remains to be seen. Ole Miss still has an NCAA-worthy No. 24 RPI, but the Rebels record stands at 27-25, just two games above .500 heading into the last weekend of the season.
“Winning here might have raised our RPI a few points,” Bianco said, “but I still think this weekend’s series (at LSU) is what really matters. We need to go win that series.”
Southern Miss first-year head coach Christian Ostrander, when asked about the early 4-0 deficit, said this: “This team doesn’t panic when it gets down. Ole Miss is a really good team playing well lately, and they popped us in the mouth early. But we stayed in the middle of the ring and kept punching. Our bullpen was fantastic, our offense did what we needed and our defense made some really clutch plays. This team has grown up a lot over the course of the season.”
Southern Miss has done just that. Replacing more than 70 percent of the players who started games last season, the Eagles started slowly and have had to overcome several injuries along the way. Only three players – Slade Wilks, Carson Paetow and Nick Monistere – who were everyday starters last season started Tuesday night.
“I know a lot of people will make a big deal about this because it was Ole Miss, but this was important or a whole lot of reasons,” Ostrander said, turning and pointing to left field and USM’s huge “Tradition of Excellence” sign, which lists the program’s many accomplishments. “What’s most important is adding to that tradition you see right there. This win tonight helps keep us headed in that direction.”
It likely guaranteed Southern Miss an eighth straight NCAA Regional berth. Southern Miss already had achieved its 22nd consecutive 30-victory season, the nation’s longest such streak. Tuesday night’s victory moves the Eagles a step closer to an eighth straight 40-victory season. They are the only Division I program that owns seven straight 40-win seasons.
Hard-throwing sophomore right-hander JB Middleton from Yazoo City probably had the most to do with turning Tuesday night’s game around. He entered to begin the third inning with the Eagles trailing 4-1. He pitched three innings of no-hit baseball, facing only 10 batters and striking out five of those.
Middleton, who prepped at tiny Benton Academy, has always thrown in the mid-to-upper 90s, but he entered the game with a 5.32 earned run average and giving up a hit an inning. In high level college baseball, a 97-mph fast ball that doesn’t move often leaves the ballpark going even faster. His fast ball was moving more against the Rebels and he also used a fast-dropping change-up for a couple of big strikeouts.
“In the last couple weeks, I have been throwing a two-seam fast ball that seems to have a little more run to it than the four-seam fast ball I was throwing,” Middleton said. “It looks like I am going to stick with the two-seamer.”
The Eagles also got excellent bullpen work from lefty Ben Riley Flowers, true freshman right hander Josh Och and sophomore right hander Colby Allen, who appears to have settled into the role of closer. USM pitching benefitted from a couple of remarkable defensive plays, including right fielder Carson Paetow’s diving ninth inning catch that robbed Reagan Burford of at least a double and shortstop Ozzie Pratt’s acrobatic play that nailed Campbell Smithwick at first in the eighth inning.
Pratt, who grew up in Oxford, and Paetow were also the Eagles offensive heroes. Pratt had two hits, including a run-scoring double, and scored twice. Paetow added three hits including a triple high off the center field wall and drove in three runs. Monistere added a two-run double.
So now, Southern Miss will begin its final regular season series Thursday night against Sun Belt rival Texas State before heading to Montgomery next week for the Sun Belt Conference Tournament. Ole Miss was to spend Tuesday night in Hattiesburg and then head for Baton Rouge for the huge series with LSU. The Rebels probably need to win that series or make a huge run at next week’s SEC Tournament in order to make the NCAA Tournament. Southern Miss, on the other hand, is playing for seeding now. In Hattiesburg, the NCAA Tournament has pretty much become a foregone conclusion.
CLEVELAND — Last summer, record-sized hail caused millions of dollars in roof damage across Delta State University’s aging campus.
Had school been in session, the regional college in the Mississippi Delta would not have had enough cash to recover and stay open, Daniel Ennis, the president, told a packed room of students, faculty, staff and community members on Monday.
“That’s frightening,” he said. “That’s like running a family and having no money if you blow out a tire, no money if your car breaks down.”
The stark anecdote underscored the reason for the gathering: 49 vacant positions will be left unfilled, 17staff have been laid off and an unknown number of faculty will be next as Delta State has proposed cutting 21 of its 61 programs — majors like history, English, chemistry and accountancy— as part of a drastic restructuring. The program closures will be presented to the university’s governing board, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees.
“It’sdramatic, upsetting, and I get this is shocking to many,” said Ennis, who added that there are only 238 students in those 21 programs. “So you can do the math.”
The College of Arts and Sciences will be eliminated; its remaining programs will be doled out among the still-surviving colleges. Other changes are underway: Library Services has been restructured, the Career Services, Housing and Student Life offices consolidated, and the Hamilton-White Child Development Center will be shuttered unless a committee can write a financially sustainable plan for it this summer.
The goal is not just to save money but to direct the university’s funds into self-sustaining initiatives, an approach Ennis outlined in a memo that many were still digesting by the time the information-packed town hall began.
Delta State University’s new president Dr. Daniel J. Ennis, speaks with students and staff at E.R. Jobe Hall on Delta State’s campus, where he was introduced to students and faculty, Thursday, April 6, 2023.
“If we fail to do these things, we’re just running hand to mouth, year after year, crisis after crisis,” Ennis said. “It ends today.”
There was one piece of good news: State appropriations for the university haveincreased by about $1.4 million, Ennis told the room, though he isn’t sure yet if the funds are flexible or must be spent on salaries.
After the meeting, the university’s chief marketing officer and vice president for university relations told a Mississippi Today reporter they could provide answers to questions such as from which low-enrolled departments instructors were laid off. On Tuesday, they said it would be a personnel matter and directed Mississippi Today to submit a records request instead.
In an interview, Ennis said he envisioned renaming the two remaining colleges,potentially one could be called the “College of Humanities.” But, he acknowledged, a majority of the programs on the chopping block are traditional liberal arts degrees — the result, he said, of students voting with their feet.
“The productivity standards that I need to meet through IHL were far more important than statements made about workforce development,” Ennis said. “But I do think indirectly, in the big picture — I’ve been in the humanities my whole career — a generation of students have been told to go to college and get a job, and that makes things like art and music and English and history a harder sell to parents. I regret that.”
In lieu of the 21 programs, Ennis is proposing four new interdisciplinary degrees: Visual and performing arts, humanities and social science, digital media and secondary education. The university will encourage students with less than 60 credit hours in a degree that will be cut to enroll in one of these four programs, Ennis said.
Students with more than 60 credit hours will still be able to graduate with their degree, even if it is going to be cut.
That is why Ennis can’t yet say the number of faculty who will be terminated. Some will be needed for “teach-outs” — the plans for the students with more than 60 credit hours. Others will stay on to teach general education. And, Ennis said, the budget for the four new degree programs, which will be created over the summer, hasn’t been set. He hopes to have the programs up and running by the fall.
But, Ennis still needs to find $750,000 to cut in fiscal years 2026 and 2027 — an indication, he said, of the number of faculty that may need to go.
When Ennis got to Cleveland, he said, Delta State had depleted its cash reserves to just 24 days.
“Just like a household that has a savings account, and one year you have a loss of income and you start spending out of your savings accounts, the challenge I faced was when I arrived here, there was no more savings account,” Ennis said.
For fiscal year 2024, the university is projected to have clawed its way to 29 days cash-on-hand, according to a powerpoint Ennis presented. But it has a long way to go before it finds the $12 million needed to achieve the minimum 90 days required by IHL — a task made all the more difficult by the financial headwinds facing higher education.
“You feel like you’re on a treadmill,” Ennis said. “You save $1 million, but two years later the actual (amount) is $750,000” because of inflation.
At times, the town hall was tense and divided. When it came time for questions, some speakers commended Ennis, while others were more critical.
Jamie Dahman Credit: Courtesy of Delta State University
After Jamie Dahman, a music professor, protested Ennis’ proposed changes to the marching band, a police officer walked over to Dahman, leading Ennis to tell the officer “we don’t need that.” Earlier, Dahman had asked why the university and the foundation had paid hundreds of thousands for a search firm to help with replacing the dean of the arts and sciences college when, it turns out, that college is just going to be eliminated.
Christy Riddle, Delta State’s chief marketing officer, said she could not answer by press time how many university funds were used for the search.
That decision had only happened a few days ago, Ennis replied. The search to replace Ellen Green, who was the subject of a faculty senate no-confidence vote last year, was canceled earlier this month.
“It was a late call, because this process was ongoing until, frankly, 10 p.m. last night,” Ennis said.
A recent graduate, Anna Schmitz, read a letter to Ennis, describing what she called unacceptable conduct by his administration, such as an instructor who learned they were out of a job earlier this year with a letter “silently and unexpectedly slid under the door of their office.” Four other instructors across multiple departments also did not have their contracts renewed.
“As of late, it seems that students have no choice but to blindly take out thousands of dollars in loans not knowing if their major will even exist next semester, and faculty members are constantly unable to confirm if they will even hold a position for the next school year,” Schmitz read.
Ennis’s initial response was short.
“It pains me that I have disappointed you and your fellow students,” he said, adding her statement was courageous before concluding, “we don’t agree on many things, and I will take your comments to heart.”
“What’s the answer?” Someone demanded from the left side of the room, as others hesitantly clapped in support. “No response to the student?”
“Well, okay, first response,” Ennis said. “Every effort was made to personally tell individuals about their job change. … I can’t speak to that individual faculty status. … I wish that we could’ve done this gradually, but point of fact, when you talk about people’s jobs, you shouldn’t do it piecemeal. I chose to give all the information today, so everybody got the maximum information as simultaneously as possible. Any other method would’ve disadvantaged someone.”
When he finished, the middle section of the room broke into applause.
‘None of us were prepared for this’
Toward the end of the town hall, someone asked Ennis about the elephant in the room: What was the IHL’s role in all this?
Ennis answered that IHL had charged him with fixing the university’s budget when he was hired, but that wasn’t the whole picture.
“I appreciate you letting me put that out there as if IHL is the ‘big bad,’” he said. “I’m owning this.”
But, Ennis also noted repeatedly throughout the town hall that he had help. An ad hoc committee of faculty, staff and administration has been meeting since last fall. It made several recommendations, spanning broad ideas such as “restructuring the Academy” to specific suggestions, like cutting $750,000 from executive and administrative salaries over two years, and adjusting the athletic department’s budget by $350,000.
Ennis said he took all of the committee’s recommendations into account.
The committee also proposed a retirement incentive program, which IHL approved, to save as much on salaries as possible without layoffs. Just 16 of 53 people who were eligible took the offer — less than Ennis had hoped, he said.
With all these cuts, one attendee asked how will Delta State ensure the quality of its remaining course offerings?
“That’s a great question,” Ennis responded. “This is what I want to get to. We have not been able to resource the areas that are healthy in enrollment because we’ve been minimally resourcing all areas. We’re freeing up resources that we can put toward places where they’re going to be the most good.”
During a campus town hall meeting Monday, May 13, 2024, Delta State University President Daniel Ennis displays the 21 degree programs he proposed cutting from the Cleveland university’s offeings. Credit: Molly Minta/Mississippi Today
To determine which programs would likely survive, the university conducted an academic program review. A spreadsheet ranks all departments — the ones with the lowest score were asked to submit a report justifying their existence. Music, art and English were the lowest scoring, while the highest were nursing, alternate-route teaching and business administration.
Some faculty, after seeing the list of programs that could be eliminated, felt like their report wasn’t taken into account.
“We were never involved in the conversation other than writing the reports,” said Cetin Oguz, the chair of the art department who spoke to Mississippi Today in his personal capacity and not on behalf of the university. He had joined dozens of other stunned faculty members to commiserate at a bar a few blocks from campus called Hey Joe’s.
Over pints, some were realizing what IHL had hired Ennis to do. Their focus was shifting from the financial mess that Ennis wasn’t responsible for to the problems they felt he was creating: Decisions they believed could have been made sooner, or with more input, and more transparency.
Specifically, multiple faculty said they didn’t believe the ad hoc meetings were open to attendees, and they were frustrated by the sparseness of the meeting minutes. Ennis told Mississippi Today the meetings were open.
Oguz, who was involved in an employment lawsuit the university settled last year, said many of Ennis’ changes have been good. Oguz said he can’t remember the last time Delta State asked him to review his department’s productivity, and he’s taught at the university for 21 years.
But it’s been far from easy.
“I just recruited students,” Oguz said. “They said, I just refused a scholarship from the University of Southern Miss to come to Delta State. What do you want me to do?’ I don’t have any answers for them. None of us were prepared for this.”
About a week after the Environmental Protection Agency determined that two Mississippi state agencies didn’t discriminate against Jackson in providing water funds, the EPA Office of Inspector General released a new report examining issues in state and local governance ahead of the capital city’s 2022 drinking water crisis.
The EPA OIG launched an audit in November 2022, a couple months after the water crisis that led to a federal takeover of the system. The report, which came out on Tuesday, found that the Mississippi State Department of Health failed to provide flexible loan options to disadvantaged communities like Jackson. After interviewing city employees, the audit also listed several issues with Jackson water plant staff and internal communications.
For one, a former manager at the O.B. Curtis treatment plant didn’t “effectively conduct routine maintenance, delayed routine maintenance, and did not retain new hires, hampering the day-to-day operations of the entire treatment plant,” the audit said, adding more work to an already understaffed team of water operators.
Interviews also showed that operators, whose salaries were below market rates, often worked seven days a week and more than 12 hours a day, and yet the plant still did not always have a certified operator on site, as required by state law.
On top of staffing problems was ineffective communication within the city, the audit said, prolonging issues such as hiring staff for the treatment plant. The report also found that water operators didn’t feel comfortable reporting issues “outside of their chain of command at the water treatment plant,” leading to a “reactive approach” by city leadership to address the plant’s issues.
A Health Department spokesperson told Mississippi Today the agency is reviewing the report. The city of Jackson did not reply to a request for comment by publish time.
Health Department lacked flexibility in loans to Jackson
In last week’s report by the EPA’s Office of External Civil Rights Compliance, the agency found no evidence of discrimination in how the Health Department and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality awarded loans to Jackson under the federal revolving loan program. In Mississippi, loans under that program for drinking water funding go through Health Department.
Tuesday’s report, though, found that the state agency didn’t make loan repayments — both as far as interest rates as well as the loan term lengths — as flexible as it could have for economically disadvantaged places like Jackson.
“(The Safe Drinking Water Act) provided different funding options for states to help disadvantaged communities better afford (funds from state revolving loans), including increased loan subsidies, extended loan terms, and reduced interest rates,” the audit says. “However, the MSDH did not make these flexible loan and subsidy options available to disadvantaged communities, including Jackson, until after June 2021.”
Between 2016 and 2021, the Health Department awarded three loans to the city totaling about $52 million. The audit notes Jackson leadership’s past statements that the limited loan options discouraged the city from applying for more funds through the program, and that the city unsuccessfully tried to procure money elsewhere, such as through the state Legislature.
“Had the MSDH provided flexible loan options for disadvantaged communities in a timelier manner, Jackson may have decided earlier to request and use them to lower its financing costs to improve its water system,” the report reads. “Additionally, these funding options could help other disadvantaged communities in Mississippi better afford investing in their drinking water infrastructure.”
To improve the state’s loaning practices, the EPA says it will train the Health Department in offering assistance to disadvantage communities by June 30.
Update 5/14/24: This story has been updated to clarify that the EPA Office of Inspector General is independent of the agency and provides oversight of EPA.
The 10 candidates competing in contested judicial elections this year have collectively raised nearly $400,000 in donations since January, and some have injected a substantial amount of their own money into the race, setting the stage for a competitive November election.
Amy St. Pe, a Pascagoula-based attorney running for a seat on the Court of Appeals, accepted $107,300 in donations since January, making her the candidate who amassed the most in campaign donations. She only spent $942 of that money, leaving her with over $106,000 in cash on hand.
Her other two competitors for the south Mississippi appellate seat, Ian Baker and Jennifer Schloegel, have also amassed a large amount of campaign cash, making the race for the open seat likely to become extremely expensive.
Baker, an assistant district attorney on the Coast, raised over $40,000 and loaned his campaign $25,000, giving him at least $65,000 to spend on the race. Schloegel, a chancellor for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties, raised over $97,000.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation in the first campaign finance report is the massive amount of money candidates loaned to their campaign accounts.
Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Philadelphia loaned her campaign account $250,000, as amount more often seen in a statewide or congressional campaign. Branning’s loan and around $68,000 in donations give her around $318,000 to spend.
Branning is challenging longtime incumbent Jim Kitchens, the second-most senior justice on the court who would become chief justice if current Chief Justice Mike Randolph were to leave his post.
Kitchens, who occupies one of the seats in the Central District, has been on the court since 2009. He reported raising over $42,000 and spending nearly $20,000, leaving him with around $22,000 in cash on hand.
The other candidates in the race, Aby Gale Robinson, Ceola James and Byron Carter, did not raise nearly as much as Branning and Kitchens. Robinson reported $0 in donations, James reported $584, and Carter reported nearly $5,000 in donations, supplemented by a $8,000 loan from himself.
The other contested Supreme Court race between incumbent Dawn Beam and challenger David Sullivan for a seat in the Southern District is also shaping up to be competitive on the fundraising front.
Beam reported raising over $17,000 since January, while Sullivan, the only challenger, raised $15,000 during that same timeframe.
Judicial offices are nonpartisan, so candidates do not participate in party primaries. All candidates will appear on the Nov. 5, 2024, general election ballot. If a candidate does not receive a majority of the votes cast, the two candidates who received the most votes will advance to a runoff election on Nov. 26.
Judges on Mississippi’s two highest courts do not run at large. Instead, voters from their respective districts elect them.
The nine members of the Supreme Court are elected from three districts: northern, central and southern. The 10 members of the Court of Appeals are each elected from five districts across the state.
