It was a dark Saturday for Mississippi’s Big School football teams. Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss all lost, but Todd Cooley’s Delta State Statesmen won again to move to 4-0, headed into the meat of their Gulf South Conference schedule. Patrick Shegog leads the way for the high scoring Statesmen.
Stream all episodes here.
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A federal judge ruled late last week that Southaven, Horn Lake and some unincorporated parts of DeSoto County have eight years to redirect their wastewater after relying on Memphis for nearly 50 years.
The sections of DeSoto County, represented by the Horn Lake Creek Basin Interceptor Sewer District, have argued with Memphis officials for years over when Memphis could stop treating the north Mississippi suburbs’ wastewater. Memphis has treated the Mississippi towns’ sewage since 1975.
Memphis notified the sewer district in 2018 that it wanted to end the relationship so it could focus resources on its own residents. Since then, the two sides have battled in court over how much longer the sewer district could send sewage to Memphis before building its own new infrastructure, which the district estimates costing $230 million.
The district’s consulting engineer, Tim Verner, said it would take a minimum of eight to 10 years for it to build its own sewer treatment facility, but could take up to 13 years if the district runs into permitting issues, according to court filings.
U.S. District Judge Mark Norris, in his ruling last Friday, explained that he was giving the sewer district only eight years because it’s been five years since Memphis first said that it would not renew the contract.
Keith Turner, an attorney for the sewer district, told Mississippi Today that there are still some obstacles that need addressing.
“As we’ve told the court, there are a lot of variables that are out of our control,” Turner said.
He listed funding as the primary concern. In June, Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite told Mississippi Today that the district plans to get about half of the $230 million from state and federal funding, and then procure the rest of the funds from bonds and low-interest loans. Turner also said that acquiring property and easements to run new sewer lines through could also be a challenge.
The new sewer system, which would be operated under the DeSoto County Regional Utility Authority, would require significant expansions to the already-existing Johnson Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility.
Norris’ ruling also requires the sewer district to increase its rates. Under the previous agreement, the district only pays Memphis 96 cents per 1,000 gallons. Norris sided with Memphis officials, who argued that the DeSoto County towns should pay the wholesale $3.32 per 1,000 gallon rate that other suburbs — such as Collierville, Lakeland, and Millington — pay. The judge’s order gradually increases the rates for the DeSoto County customers until the sewer district disconnects from Memphis’s infrastructure.
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Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley called for fully funding public schools and increasing teacher pay as he laid out his education policy priorities in a Monday town hall.
Presley, who is challenging Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves in the November election, laid out his proposals in a Jackson town hall hosted Monday evening by the Mississippi Association of Educators.
Presley, who was endorsed by the association in June, and MAE President Erica Jones spoke to an audience of about 25 people, answering questions about teacher retention, equity in school funding and their goals for education in Mississippi.
“The most important thing we can do as a state is educate our children,” Presley said. “Not only for their wellbeing, but for economic development, for our workforce and for moving our state forward.”
Here are some of the major issues Presley covered:
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The Leflore County Board of Supervisors, almost two weeks after rejecting Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s request to draw $1 million from its $10 million line of credit, approved giving the hospital $3 million on Monday night.
The vote was unanimous, according to The Greenwood Commonwealth.
The money should be enough to keep the hospital, which has long financially struggled, open until next year, by which time it expects to hear a decision on its application to become a critical access hospital. The federal designation would allow the hospital to be reimbursed at a higher rate from Medicare.
Interim CEO Gary Marchand said the $10 million line of credit was established earlier this year in order to pay one of the hospital’s two monthly payrolls until it hears a final decision about its application. It costs about $2 million to pay the hospital’s nearly 600 employees every month.
The hospital is currently losing about $1 million a month, Marchand said.
The board approved the hospital’s first two requests earlier this year, which totaled $4.3 million, but denied its request on Sept. 13. Their decision came after the hospital’s application to become a critical access hospital was denied by the regional Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services office in Atlanta, citing the hospital’s proximity to other hospitals.
The hospital has long hinged its survival on achieving critical access designation. Critical access hospitals must be located at least 35 miles from another hospital — Greenwood’s nearest is just 28 miles away in Indianola.
However, Marchand maintains that decision was expected, and that the hospital still expects approval on the federal level.
After the board’s last vote, hospital leadership said it was unclear how they were going to make payroll. Marchand, in a recent interview with Mississippi Today, walked the comment back and said the hospital would prioritize paying its employees, even if it meant forgoing other needs.
According to the newspaper’s report, board president Reginald Moore, who voted to deny the hospital’s previous request, changed his vote to ensure the hospital’s employees were paid.
Moore previously told Mississippi Today he’d like to see a more comprehensive plan that ensures the hospital’s survival, regardless of its critical access status.
“We’re up against the clock right now,” he said. “Come January 2024, if we’re turned down again, then what’s the alternative?”
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Most school districts only used the state’s new telehealth program a few times in the 2022-23 school year, but program administrators say they are working to increase participation and have already seen positive results.
The school-based telehealth program was created by the Mississippi Department of Education, which gave $17.6 million of pandemic relief money to the University of Mississippi Medical Center to administer the program. The grant, which expires in Sept. 2024, covers laptops for video conferencing, rapid strep and flu tests, and specially equipped stethoscopes and otoscopes that transmit information to the doctors or nurse practitioners on the other end of the call.
The program, which is free to students, began under the direction of former State Superintendent Carey Wright, with the goal of increasing access to medical care and keeping children in school more hours each day. Over half of the counties in Mississippi have no practicing pediatricians according to the Office of Mississippi Physician Workforce, something this program aims to help address by decreasing the amount of time families spend traveling to access care.
The program was open to all 145 school districts in the state, and 100 signed up. Of those 100, data from UMMC shows only 34 districts had at least one visit in the 2022-23 school year. However, some visits were not assigned to a school district, making it possible that more participated.
Dr. Saurabh Chandra, the hospital’s chief telehealth officer, said he is very proud of the speed at which his team has been able to successfully roll out the telehealth program. This is the largest school-based telehealth program in the country he is aware of, adding it was implemented faster than many others. While he was pleased that connectivity did not end up being a major issue, he said the shortage of school nurses has been a challenge.
After spending the first year focused on implementation, Chandra said the goal is now increasing participation. He said nurse educators are communicating regularly with school districts to understand their concerns. UMMC has already made at least one change – allowing school nurses to call and schedule an appointment instead of doing it in the computer software – based on the feedback.
The outreach already seems to be helping: the program averaged about 150-170 visits a month last year, but August and September of this year have seen about 275 visits each month.
“(The program) is in a stage of infancy,” he said. “You have to implement the program, you have to understand the barriers, you have to do the engagement, this is a continuous work, but we are seeing good trends.”
Lauren Hunt, the nurse at Stone County Elementary School, is a regular user of the program. Stone County does not have any practicing pediatricians, but there are several in neighboring coast counties, according to the physician workforce data.
Hunt brings up the service to parents when she thinks a student could benefit and said she has had very few parents refuse. She said she “has not been able to brag on it enough” and expressed a desire for more school nurses to start using it so it can be a greater benefit to the state.
“The school nurse is really the keyholder – she is the one that has to want to implement it and use it,” Hunt said.
She also emphasized the importance of outreach to parents so they’re aware they can request visits and don’t automatically take their children to the doctor on their own. Hunt said she has seen this be effective in action, particularly for children without health insurance who have used it for ear infections and other small issues.
Parent outreach is also a priority for UMMC, but Chandra said his team depends on school districts to spread the word. He hopes as parent awareness of the program increases, their trust in it will rise as well leading to increased participation.
Jana Miller is one of two nurses covering five rural schools in the Greene County School District. Her favorite part of the program is the convenience: appointments are usually available within 30 minutes, and students are not required to check out and wait to be seen, saving parents time as well.
Miller said her district has also utilized the teletherapy portion of the program, which provides mental health services to children. The school identifies students for it based on parental requests, school staff’s knowledge of difficult circumstances, or a child reaching out for someone to talk to. She also schedules these appointments but does not participate in them like the telehealth visits.
“I was really apprehensive (of the telehealth program) at first because I just didn’t know how it was going to work, but I’m very glad we took the leap of faith and went through with it,” she said.
One district hopes to use the program more now that technical issues have been resolved. There are no pediatricians in Chickasaw County, where nurse Dawn Vance works in the schools.
“I think with a little push, maybe the nurses get a little more training and the IT stuff gets all worked out, I think it would really pick up, especially in an area like ours where there’s not many options,” she said.
Other districts have said they don’t have as much of a need for the program because of existing school-based clinics or parent preference for local pediatricians.
Hunt, the Stone Elementary School nurse, said she hopes more schools start using it so the state will have an incentive to keep funding the program after the federal pandemic relief money expires.
UMMC is looking for other grants to continue funding the project or considering turning it into a program that takes insurance, Chandra said.
“We know that there’s a need for it out there,” said Scott Clements, director of healthy schools for the Mississippi Department of Education. “We have a lot of rural areas … and in those rural areas you oftentimes don’t have the services you have in a metropolitan area.”
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No state in the contiguous United States has had more rainfall than Mississippi over the last five years. But even the wettest parts of the country are seeing their crops dry up due to unrelenting drought this summer.
A variety of plants, from cotton to soybeans to peanuts, are taking a hit in Mississippi. Livestock farmers, faced with dried up pastures, are either having to sell their cattle or feed them hay that’s supposed to be saved for the winter.
“Normally, we don’t start feeding hay to cattle until November usually,” said Shelby Bearden, Mississippi State University’s Extension agent for Copiah County. “And there were people feeding hay in August this year.”
Experienced farmers, like Louis Guedon in Jefferson County, said it’s been decades since Mississippi has seen conditions like this year.
“It ain’t been this dry in thirty-something years,” said Guedon, adding that he’s grown just a fifth of the number of corn bushels he gets under average weather conditions. “It’s a bloodbath.”
About a third of the state is experiencing “severe to exceptional” drought, according to the state’s agriculture department, and over two-thirds are seeing at least minimal drought. Over the last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared emergencies for 24 counties in Mississippi to help farmers in those areas access federal assistance.
While most of Mississippi is seeing at least “abnormally dry” weather, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the worst conditions are concentrated in the southern half of the state, especially in Amite, Pike, Walthall, Lawrence, Lincoln, Copiah and Simpson counties.
“It’s the worst drought we’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson in a Sept. 8 news release. Gipson later told Mississippi Today that it’s too early to know where this year’s drought ranks versus previous ones, but that it’s so far comparable to one the state had in the late 1980s.
Hazlehurst farmer Walter West Jr. said the dry conditions have lasted since mid-July. At his family’s farm, he said they were able to plant corn early enough to get a good yield, but have lost about $100,000 from reduced cotton output. A third-generation farmer, West said the variance in weather conditions is just part of the job.
“That’s the risk you take,” he said, adding that some years the crops suffer from too much rain. “It’s just a big gamble I guess. Mother Nature, she’s the ultimate determination of what you do, and you’re at her mercy year in and year out.”
West said he could potentially tap into his crop insurance to stabilize the farm’s finances for next year, but hopes to not have to go that route. Gipson encouraged farmers to contact their local USDA office to report their losses and to see what types of federal aid they can access.
Guedon, whose farm has been in his family for over 150 years, emphasized that the issue is the combination of the lack of rain with the intense heat.
This summer, Jackson saw its hottest August ever, with an average temperature of 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service. This July was the third-hottest ever in the city.
“If you don’t think that doing nothing in 100 degree heat will exhaust you, just go put your chair out in the middle of the parking lot and just sit in it for eight hours,” Guedon said. “Your clothes will be wet with sweat, you’ll be able to wring water out of your underwear.”
He said in addition to drying out crops, the high temperatures affect his cows’ reproductive cycles.
“They’re less likely to ovulate when it’s hot, hot, hot,” he said. “And the bulls… they don’t breed the cattle as well when it’s hot, hot, hot.”
Gipson said livestock farmers are having to make tough decisions to survive financially.
“It truly is a disaster, that’s the only word for it,” the commissioner said. “A lot of the (livestock producers) are being forced into a position of having to sell out because they can’t afford to hold these cows through these conditions.”
As of Sept. 14, Mississippi farmers in 32 counties were eligible for the USDA’s Livestock Forage Disaster Program, which provides compensation to livestock producers who suffer grazing losses due to drought.
Gipson said the tough year for Mississippi farmers goes back to March, when a winter freeze took out much of the state’s blueberry production.
Despite the trying conditions, he hopes those who can will try again next year.
“I encourage every one of our farmers to get back in as soon as possible because we really need every farmer in this state,” Gipson said. “We already have fewer farmers than we’ve ever had.”
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Mississippi State and Southern Miss men’s basketball teams will play an exhibition game this fall, and tornado victims in the Mississippi Delta will benefit.
The game will be played at USM’s Reed Green Coliseum on Oct. 29 at 2 p.m.
It will mark the first time Mississippi State has played in Hattiesburg since 1995, the same season State later won the Southeastern Conference Tournament and then later advanced to the Final Four under Coach Richard Williams.
“This is something both schools are excited about. It will be great preparation for the season and at the same time raise some money for some Mississippians who really need some help,” Ladner said.
Much of the southern part of the Mississippi Delta is still reeling from the March 24 tornado that devastated Rolling Fork and Silver City with winds that reached 195 mph, killing 17 people and injuring scores of others.
The MSU-USM charity game began with discussions between Southern Miss coach Jay Ladner and State’s Chris Jans about playing a regular season game. When that didn’t work out, the two coaches first talked about a closed scrimmage but then landed on the idea of an open exhibition to help tornado victims.
“We’re excited about State coming to Hattiesburg and thankful to Coach Jans for helping make this happen,” Ladner said.
Southern Miss, defending Sun Belt Conference regular season champions, will be coming off a 25-8 season. State will be coming off a 21-13 record in Jans’ first season in Starkville. Mississippi State advanced to the NCAA Tournament. USM played in the NIT postseason tournament.
State leads the all-time rivalry 16-4 and won the last meeting between the schools 70-64 in December of 2017. They last played in Hattiesburg on Dec. 16, 1995, when Williams’ Final Four team defeated M.K. Turk’s last Southern Miss team 72-69 in overtime.
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The U.S. Department of Education has placed Mississippi’s public university system under a form of oversight that restricts the flow of federal financial aid dollars and hinders the creation of new academic programs, according to a letter obtained by Mississippi Today.
The Institutions of Higher Learning is planning to appeal the sanction, known as heightened cash monitoring. It comes after IHL was 75 days late in submitting its system-wide annual audit and financial statements for fiscal year 2022.
“This untimely audit submission constitutes a failure of financial responsibility under the Department’s regulations,” according to an Aug. 4 letter the federal education department sent to Gov. Tate Reeves, the IHL commissioner, and the presidents and financial aid directors of the eight public universities.
For the next five years, when Mississippi universities seek to cover tuition with federal financial aid dollars — everything from Pell Grants to student loans — they will be required to first provide certain documentation. Typically, universities are able to draw down federal funds in advance.
This creates an administrative headache because universities rely on federal financial aid to cover a significant chunk of tuition, and Mississippi is no exception. About two-thirds of full-time undergraduate freshmen at the public universities receive federal financial aid like the Pell Grant, according to the most recently available federal data.
“It’s a much bigger concern for small private colleges that are really tight on cash, but for a public system that has some money it’s much more of a slap on the wrist,” said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education finance at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The more significant penalty is that IHL will also be required to submit any new academic programs for a full review by its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, before the Board of Trustees can approve.
Sometimes universities need to extend credit lines or shift funds in response to heightened cash monitoring, but Kim Gallaspy, an IHL spokesperson, wrote in an email that the agency won’t need to do that. Reeves’ office did not respond to questions by press time.
To date, IHL has not publicly announced the stricter status, even though it was in place before the start of the fall semester. Just last week, some of the universities started notifying faculty and staff about it at meetings and via internal email.
Gallaspy wrote the reason for the delay was IHL’s third-party auditor, the national accountancy firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, needed more time to perform additional audits after discovering that “some institutions had inaccurately classified federal program funds,” including major programs. Gallaspy did not specify which institutions.
“To be clear, although the funds were misclassified there were no findings from our auditor which indicate that federal funds were inappropriately spent,” she wrote.
This resulted in IHL submitting its audited financial statements on June 14 of this year when they were due on March 31, according to the letter.
The letter asked IHL to upload information to an online portal if the agency believes it did not err in submitting its audited financial statements late. It’s unclear if IHL did that, though Gallaspy wrote the agency is working to appeal the decision.
“We have also required written corrective action plans to be submitted,” Gallaspy write. “These corrective action plans will be tested for effectiveness by the Board’s Office of Internal Audit. Ineffective corrective actions will warrant further corrective measures by the Board.”
It’s not unusual for universities to be sanctioned in this way by the U.S. Department of Education, according to Inside Higher Ed.
IHL will be joining six other universities in Mississippi that are under heightened cash monitoring as of June 2023, including Belhaven University, Coahoma Community College and Traxler’s School of Hair, a for-profit college in Jackson.
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Students applauded, cried and jumped with excitement at the news that Mississippi’s first charter high school was approved Monday afternoon.
The school, Clarksdale Collegiate Prep, has been approved to open in the Clarksdale Municipal School District in the fall of 2025. It is an expansion of Clarksdale Collegiate Public, a K-8 public school already operational in the school district.
Two groups applied this year to open charter high schools in Mississippi, and Clarksdale Collegiate Prep was the only finalist. About 35 students and school employees came to Jackson today to watch the Charter School Authorizer Board vote on the proposal, which had been approved by an outside evaluator and passed unanimously.
Charter schools are free public schools that do not report to a school board like traditional public schools. Instead, they are governed by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, which oversees the application process to open a new charter school. They have more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction, and are funded by local school districts based on enrollment.
Charter schools can apply directly to the authorizer board if they’re planning to open in a D or F district. If an operator wants to open in an A, B, or C district, they need to get approval from the local school board. Clarksdale Collegiate Prep will be opening in the Clarksdale Municipal School District, which is currently F-rated.
This is Clarksdale Collegiate’s second year applying to open a high school after having their application denied last year. Amanda Johnson, the executive director of the Clarksdale Collegiate schools, told Mississippi Today that she believed the school succeeded this time because they were two years out from opening instead of three, which allowed them to be more detailed in their application.
In her comments to the board asking them to approve the proposal, Johnson talked about her school’s commitment to the success of its students.
“We’re here in order to make sure we’re fulfilling the promise that we made to scholars back in 2017-18,” she said. “We told (families) we were putting their child on a path to go to and through college. So opening up a high school, even though it’s hard, even though it’s expensive, we believe that work is worthy and that our scholars and the scholars of the Delta deserve the absolute best.”
When the vote came up on the agenda, board member Jennifer Whitter said it gave her great joy to make a motion to approve the school.
Students began celebrating immediately after the vote was announced. Johnson said her students have been invested in this application process and have provided input at points, particularly the students who were present as they will be the first graduating class of the high school.
Johnson said her next steps include announcing the location of the high school to parents and the community, fleshing out the academic plans, and looking at merging the contracts for each school into one in order to reduce duplicates in reporting. Currently, each charter school in Mississippi is categorized by the state as its own school district, but the Authorizer Board is considering a process to allow schools run by the same operator to come under one contract.
“I’m excited to get started,” she said.
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