For sports writers, sometimes the trips to cover the games are more interesting than the games themselves, especially for two sports writers named Cleveland with classic cases of attention deficit disorder.
Stream all episodes here.
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Mississippians love candy corn, they want to buy Nintendo Switch consoles, they don’t get enough sleep, they’re unlikely to work remotely or try to quit smoking and they have the country’s eighth-most beautiful aquarium.
This is the age of the survey, and any reporter’s inbox especially around the holidays is likely overflowing with them.
Surveys and polls were once the domain of large companies that specialized in gathering such data from respondents. And the cost and effort involved — thousands of dollars and hours and hours of calling and collecting responses — limited the subject matter and made it easier to reduce inaccuracy or fraud.
But online platforms now allow most anyone to quickly and cheaply conduct an online survey, aggregate data — or fabricate it — and distribute it. These reports often include scant information on how data was collected, margins of error, or about the company or group conducting it.
Many surveys pushed out by marketing or public relations firms are repackaged data collected from the U.S. Census, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or various government agencies or bureaus.
October, according to National Highway Transportation Safety Administration data, is the most dangerous time to drive in Mississippi. The most dangerous hours to drive are 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with the safest between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Mississippi saw the eighth-highest increase in car crash fatalities from 2012-2021 — a 27.7% increase.
More than 1 in 10 Mississippians avoid visiting a doctor due to health care costs — we’re the fourth-worst state, according to CDC data gathered by Wealth of Geeks.
Mississippi has the seventh-shortest wait time in emergency rooms, an average of two hours and nine minutes — 28 minutes less than the national average.
Many surveys are simply rankings of online searches for a particular topic. For instance, a recent “survey” report said Mississippians are among the least likely to quit smoking, based on the number of online searches here on how to quit. Never mind we’re one of the least online connected states, according to another survey.
Another surmised that Mississippi has “the lowest interest in learning a new sport,” based on searches. It also reported the most popular new sport in the Magnolia State is pickleball.
Another said the states to which Mississippians most want to move are Texas, Florida and Tennessee, based on Google search data.
Some surveys sound highly questionable if not outright absurd on their face.
Mississippi, according to the Nature and Bloom online CBD store, is the second-most “CBD obsessed” state, behind Alabama.
Mississippi is the state suffering the least from pain, according to a survey from online kratom retailer Happy Go Leafly.
It’s the state getting the third-least amount of sleep, based on the number of online searches about melatonin.
Gulfport’s Mississippi Aquarium is the eighth-most beautiful in America, based on reviews from visitors that mention beauty. An aquarium in picturesque Detroit was crowned most beautiful.
Mississippians most wanted to buy a Nintendo Switch console for Black Friday and candy corn is their favorite Halloween candy, which is just wrong and gross.
Mississippi has long suffered slings and arrows from surveys and rankings on poverty, obesity, mortality, education — you name it. But in the survey age, there has been better news, whether accurate or dubious.
Mississippi is the best state in which to retire, followed by Alabama and Ohio, one survey reported. It has the lowest number of drunk drivers involved in fatal crashes, according to one survey, and it’s the “fifth best state for gamers.”
But one should take note: A Pew Research study suggests opt-in online surveys have 4% to 7% “bogus respondents.” A recent survey of surveys, using a statistical testing method, found that 1 in 5 surveys tested showed a high likelihood of fabricated data.
The post A survey of surveys in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Mississippi school districts’ average internet bandwidth was 20 times lower than neighboring states in the 2021-22 school year, according to a report from a legislative watchdog committee.
The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) published a report this fall evaluating a sample of 30 school districts across several categories, which included finance, human resources, information technology, nutrition, operations and transportation. The analysis was conducted through a contract with Glimpse K-12, an education efficiency group from Alabama.
Glimpse K-12 has previously evaluated six Mississippi school districts on these same criteria through a contract with the State Auditor’s Office. The PEER committee used a portion of their annual allocation to expand this work at the request of the Legislature.
The volume of the report addressing information technology highlighted deficiencies in the technology used for learning in Mississippi’s schools, proposing several adjustments at the state and local levels. According to the evaluation, more than half of the districts sampled did not have a strategic plan for technology use in the district, while around 40% did not have plans for data recovery in the event of a natural disaster or cyberattack. The report recommends that the Mississippi Department of Education create templates of both plans to aid school districts in developing them.
The report also found that during the 2021-22 school year, the average internet bandwidth capacity in MS schools was 2.55 megabits per second (mbps) compared to 52 mbps in neighboring states. The report recommends increasing bandwidth, but particularly encourages districts to do so in a manner commensurate with device usage since many classrooms were only utilizing devices for each student during state testing rather than throughout the year.
“Districts should provide training, curriculum development, and technology tools to teachers,” the report recommends, as “this balance empowers teachers to utilize online resources effectively, create engaging learning experiences, and align infrastructure with educational goals.”
Multiple sources of funding have recently been allocated to expand bandwidth in the state, which the report highlights as opportunities for districts to increase access. The Legislature formed the Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM) office in 2022, which will oversee the distribution of $1.3 billion in federal money. While these resources offer promising opportunities for support, the report also notes the implementation of these funds may take time.
An additional area for improvement identified in the report is the structure of tech support services. While nearly 75% of surveyed districts operated one office for traditional IT needs and education technology support, the remaining quarter used the more costly option of operating separate offices for the two functions. While the report did not directly advocate for collapsing the two offices into one, it did suggest that districts evaluate what added benefits justify the additional cost.
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I sat down with Warwick Sabin, the new President & CEO of Deep South Today, a networked hub of nonprofit newsrooms, including Mississippi Today and Verite News, serving the Southern region of the United States. We talked about his backstory and the future of nonprofit journalism.
Sabin is a distinguished alumnus of the University of Arkansas who was elected to three terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives and previously served as Publisher of the Oxford American, an award-winning national magazine that focuses on the American South.
Earlier in his career, Sabin was the founding leader of the Innovation Hub in Little Rock, which later became part of Winrock International, which along with the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation is among the three institutions created to sustain the legacy of Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. More recently, he served for four years as the executive director of strategic engagement at the Aspen Institute.
The post Mississippi Stories: Warwick Sabin appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Note: This Q&A first published in Mississippi Today’s InformHer newsletter. Subscribe to our free women and girls newsletter to read stories like this monthly.
Dr. Christina Glick is a retired neonatologist who runs Mississippi Lactation Services, one of the only free-standing breastfeeding clinics in the Jackson area. She is an advocate of family-centered care, a system of practice that incorporates the family in therapeutic, management and even diagnostic decision-making, and a proponent of breastfeeding as medicine.
Research around breastfeeding – which lowers the incidence of numerous diseases, infections and depression in both mother and baby – has made strides in the last few decades. Still, Glick says she sometimes encounters colleagues who joke that she “quit practicing real medicine” when she opened her clinic in 2015.
With the highest rate of preterm birth, Mississippi could stand to benefit from increasing its breastfeeding rate – one of the lowest in the country. Mississippi Today spoke with Glick about the science and stigma of breastfeeding, the multi-billion dollar infant formula industry, and what would be needed to eradicate unnecessary pharmaceutical intervention in baby feeding practices.
Editor’s note: This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Mississippi Today: How did you first get into breastfeeding research and, at the time, did you feel like it was a rather underappreciated or niche area?
Dr. Christina Glick: When I first did my training back in the early ‘80s, there was no breastfeeding training in medical school at all. It wasn’t even mentioned. And one of the things we were regularly losing babies from was malnutrition. So, the smallest babies were the hardest ones to be able to feed. And so there was some early work in the late ‘80s that breast milk was maybe a solution for some of our malnutrition issues in the tiniest, sickest babies who had chronic lung disease and just weren’t able to get enough nutrition. I got certified as a lactation consultant by the International Board of Certified Lactation Consultants, IBCLC, in the early 2000s. I started working with breastfeeding for my NICU patients at that time, and when I was in private practice I began to do a lot of breastfeeding medicine in the NICU.
When I opened my clinic, I thought ‘well I know a lot about breastfeeding and it’s going to be a pretty easy adjustment from intensive care medicine to lactation,’ and it was not – at all. I found that I knew very little about breastfeeding – and I’ve breastfed three children of my own. It’s a very confusing thing: you think it’s natural so it’s going to be simple, but it’s a very complex field of work. I have found that it’s absolutely critical to be able to coordinate the teamwork between the provider and the family to be able to successfully advocate for breastfeeding.
It is an extremely underrepresented field, still to this day. It’s getting more and more recognition but I still get people kidding me, ‘well, you quit practicing real medicine’ and stuff like that.
MT: Tell us a little bit about the research around breast milk and how breastfeeding has been shown to be mutually beneficial for mother and baby.
CG: There are so many aspects of breastfeeding that are just, seemingly magical. There’s the nutritional part of it – it’s the perfect food for the baby. So it’s exactly matched to the proteins that babies need. And we’ve found that breastfed babies actually need less volume, less protein, less calories when they’re fed breast milk – because it’s the perfect food.
Babies that are breastfed, we know, have a lower incidence of some of the diseases that are the most common causes of adult bad outcomes including cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke. So breastfed babies have less of that. And we always thought it was a nutritional thing but as we’ve been discovering, the human genome is actually affected by breastfeeding. So the epigenome, which is the part of our genetics that is changeable, is actually impacted greatly by breastfeeding. And so we think now that breastfeeding changes the likelihood of having heart attacks and strokes, based on the changes in the genome, not as a nutritional result – which I find pretty amazing. The breast milk actually turns off bad genes and turns on good genes.
And as we studied the microbiome, we found that breastfeeding dramatically changes the microbiome and probably has a really big effect on our overall long-term health as well as the epigenome. So breastfed babies have completely different colonies of bacteria in their gut and we think that affects their overall health and their immunological response to infections. So it’s not just the nutritional benefit but also the microbiome that helps fight infections.
MT: Aside from all the benefits for the baby, what are some of the benefits for the mother? Can it help with things like postpartum depression?
CG: Yes. And one of the confusing things about breastfeeding is that the first couple of weeks are usually pretty stressful. We always paint it as a time of bonding and rainbows and unicorns or whatever but establishing breastfeeding in the first couple of weeks can be extremely stressful.
And sometimes the first few weeks are so stressful that people imagine that postpartum depression is increased by breastfeeding – but the data shows that it’s actually protective. One of the best things that happens with breastfeeding is the hormonal changes that breastfeeding brings on are really unique. So, breastfeeding moms have really high levels of prolactin. And they have huge oxytocin surges which is what stimulates the transfer of milk to the baby. And it turns out that the oxytocin surges are pretty unique in breastfeeding mothers, and those oxytocin surges help reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease long-term in the mother. So, we see less heart attacks and strokes in mothers who have breastfed for any significant time that is more than a matter of weeks.
In addition, breastfeeding helps reduce breast cancer. So breastfeeding mothers have a lower risk of developing breast cancer throughout the rest of their lives.
MT: Why do you think Mississippi has one of the lower rates of breastfeeding in the country?
CG: One of the things that gave formula such a strong foothold early on in the ‘50s and ‘60s was that it was called formula, so it was like the perfect scientific formulation of milk for a baby that was going to make babies healthier than breast milk. And so it became a socioeconomic incentive that well-off people can feed their babies with this new, special formulation of milk. So, it became a status symbol, if you will, that formula-fed babies are better off than breastfed babies. And that lingers in our culture today in America that it’s considered an advantage to be able to formula feed babies.
And one of the things that has happened is that one of the programs that serves lower socioeconomic groups, particularly single women, is the WIC program – Women, Infants and Children Program – and that has really translated to a sort of formula chain. There are some lactation consultants who work on supporting breastfeeding, but it’s not a perfect system and it tends to be sort of a knee-jerk to offer women formula instead of breastfeeding. It just seems easier, so if there’s any bump in the road they tend to switch to formula.
Breastfeeding is a cultural thing. If your mother breastfed you and your sisters and your cousins and everyone is breastfeeding their babies, then there is a lot of community support. If you come from a culture where everyone is formula feeding, there’s no one there who really understands. So when you hit problems, the answer is formula.
And unfortunately, the indigent population in Mississippi, and in the country as a whole, is still on the formula highway. There’s not support in our culture by a long history of breastfeeding. So, if you’re in a formula culture, you tend to formula feed and that is the case in Mississippi.
MT: Mississippi also has one of the highest rates of cesarean sections in the U.S. Are these two things, high rate of cesareans and high rate of formula use, connected?
CG: Right, great question. With a cesarean, there are a number of things that interfere with the initiation of breastfeeding. So, one of the big things is that a woman who has a C-section gets a big bolus of fluids, and that translates pretty quickly straight into the baby. So babies born of C-sections have higher water content in their bodies. And when we’re water overloaded what we do is pee it all out pretty quickly. And so babies born by C-section tend to lose weight really quickly. And we have this 10% cutoff, based on a terrible study that said that babies who lose more than 10% of their birth weight are in danger, and immediately supplement them with formula. So, just the weight loss piece of surgical deliveries makes them be at higher risk of formula supplementation recommendation right off the bat.
And then the second thing that happens is that surgical delivery delays the milk coming in. So, there’s breast milk and there’s colostrum. And normally, we transition from colostrum to regular milk by the second or third day, but with surgical deliveries that’s delayed to the fourth or fifth day. And oftentimes when a breastfed baby is only getting colostrum for four or five days, they’re pretty darn hungry by the time the milk comes in. And they’ve lost a lot of weight. So you have a crying, fussing baby who is acting unsatisfied and the natural response is to give the baby supplementation, instead of saying ‘it’s ok for that baby to cluster feed for 10 or 15 times a day to get that milk.’ And the data is that if you use more than four ounces of formula in a 24-hour period in the first month, it dramatically interferes with sustainability of breastfeeding in the long term.
MT: In your view, do you think more Americans are using formula than need it? What would be needed to shift the paradigm?
CG: Absolutely. That is completely, absolutely true. And one of the unfortunate things that has happened as a result of the move toward formula is the companies who have produced formula are very powerful political forces in this country. So it’s an economic incentive for hospitals and doctors to push formula. And that’s become a real driver in the supplementation of formula in our country. And breastfeeding is not a powerful money-making industry, right? So it’s very hard to fight the pharmaceutical intervention in infant feeding practices in our country.
We would need to strip the pharmaceutical power and make that not a factor anymore … Most mothers are given a sample of formula when they register at the prenatal clinic. So that’s a huge tool to get formula in your front door by sending you free formula. That should be banned. It should be illegal to do that.
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In its first month of operation, the new Uber program that takes Mississippians to county health department appointments received 58 transportation requests.
Without a marketing plan for the initiative and just a month of data, it’s not clear how effective the program is yet at increasing health care access in Mississippi.
The Uber initiative is aimed at making it easier to get to county health departments where an increasing number of Mississippians may be seeking care. The ongoing health crisis has forced hospitals to stem services to stay open, making it harder to access care nearby.
Transportation can be a major barrier to receiving health care in rural Mississippi, resulting in “no shows” at county health department appointments. According to State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney, Mississippi county health departments currently experience a 50% no-show rate.
More than 1 in 5 people without transportation missed or skipped a medical appointment in 2022, and people of color and people with low incomes were more affected, one survey says.
However, the new program is only available in counties with Uber services, which many rural parts of the state don’t have.
The state Department of Health did not answer a question about which Mississippi counties have Uber services.
In November, the first month of the program’s operation, the requests came from 21 counties: Alcorn, Clarke, Copiah, DeSoto, Forrest, Grenada, Hinds, Jones, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lincoln, Madison, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Pontotoc, Rankin, Tippah, Tishomingo, Walthall, Warren and Yazoo.
The state Department of Health’s one-year emergency contract with Uber says that the agency will pay Uber Health up to $1 million for non-emergency services transporting patients to their health department appointments, to a pharmacy if needed and then returning them home. It’ll all be scheduled by the health department through an internal dashboard, and the rider doesn’t have to pay.
All patients have to do is contact the health department’s call center, said Victor Sutton, the state Health Department’s chief of community health and clinical services, or ask about a ride when they schedule an appointment.
“The great thing about this program is MSDH patients will not need the Uber app,” he said via email. “The Health Equity Team will ensure that rides are scheduled, clients have received their notifications and reminders, and will round out the process with a follow up after the rides are completed.”
The program is being funded by a grant through state and federal programs to address COVID-19 health disparities.
Agency officials also say they hope the initiative creates jobs by bringing Uber to more parts of the state.
It’s not clear if that’s happened yet — an agency spokesperson said the state Health Department is still gathering data to “address gaps” and will soon create a marketing plan “to support driver availability within the program service area.”
Rideshare services have expanded to the health care market in recent years. However, some studies show that rideshare availability doesn’t have a significant impact on missed health care appointments.
The post Dozens of Uber rides requested in first month of health access program appeared first on Mississippi Today.
The board of the Jackson Public School District approved a plan Tuesday night to close 13 school buildings, with one board member dissenting.
In October, JPS district leadership introduced a plan to close 16 school buildings because of declining enrollment in the district. The district has lost around 9,500 students between the 2015-16 and 2023-24 school years, about a third of its population. The district has also previously consolidated schools.
Earlier this month, district leadership presented an amended plan that removed three elementary schools from this list of proposed consolidations, citing feedback they had received at community meetings.
The following schools are on the updated consolidation plan:
At the meeting Tuesday, several people spoke for and against the proposed closures, including community activists, current teachers and state legislators.
Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, said he supported the consolidation plan because he did not want financial issues to open the district up to state takeover again.
“JPS has risen from the ashes,” he said. “Under the leadership of Dr. Greene, we have risen to a point where individuals have pretty much washed their hands of trying to take over JPS.”
When Superintendent Errick Greene spoke before the vote, he emphasized this decision cannot be delayed or pushed down the road without putting the district in serious jeopardy.
“If we do not take drastic action right now … we could, in effect, create a situation where our system cannot survive because we didn’t take the measures to stop the bleeding,” he said.
Nearly every board member agreed that something needed to be done to decrease costs for the district, but some questioned the way the plan was communicated.
“Everybody knows that we have too many buildings and we have too much real estate and we don’t have any money to take care of it,” said Cynthia Thompson, JPS board member for Ward 6. “It’s not so much that I, or even the community, is upset with the plan, it was just the presentation.”
Thompson motioned to remove Wingfield High School from the list, a measure that failed 3-3. She was also the only board member who did not vote in support of the consolidation plan.
“We face, in Jackson, the challenges that we face because of the state of Mississippi (government),” said Frank Figgers, board member for Ward 3. “People in our communities … should know on whose feet and backs to place this blame that we are in this position.”
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The Mississippi State Board of Education has named Mississippi native Lance Evans as the next state superintendent.
Evans, the current superintendent of the New Albany School District, would assume the position in July of 2024 if confirmed by the state Senate.
He will replace Ray Morgigno and Mike Kent, the two interim superintendents who have led the Mississippi Department of Education since the Senate rejection of Robert Taylor. Taylor was selected through a national search process last year to replace outgoing State Superintendent Carey Wright.
READ MORE: Rejected State Supt. Robert Taylor says the situation ‘puts a stain on the state’
Evans’ 24-year career in education spans multiple leadership roles in the New Albany School District, including principal of New Albany High School and Elementary School. He has led the district since 2017, earning an A rating every year since 2019 and implementing a workforce development initiative. Before joining the New Albany School District, he also worked in the Oxford and Itawamba County school districts.
“I am deeply honored and humbled to accept the position of State Superintendent of Mississippi,” he said in a statement. “My commitment to fairness, equity, and innovation in education aligns seamlessly with the values of this great state. I look forward to collaborating with educators, stakeholders, and communities to forge new pathways for our graduates, ensuring every student has the opportunity to thrive and succeed.”
Evans is the 2023 Mississippi Superintendent of the Year and has served on the boards of multiple professional organizations for school administrators. He holds degrees from Itawamba Community College, Mississippi State, the University of Mississippi and Delta State.
At the time of publication, MDE communications said they did not know what Evans’ salary would be. Both Taylor and Wright received a salary of $300,000.
McPherson and Jacobson, a national superintendent search firm based in Nebraska, conducted the search on behalf of the board. The firm also led the search last year which resulted in Taylor’s selection and oversaw this one as an extension of its initial contract. The firm received $51,200 in total for its services.
“Dr. Evans is a visionary leader who is committed to continuously improving student achievement,” said Glen East, board chair. “The Board sought broad public input about the qualities and priorities the next state superintendent of education should have, and Dr. Evans meets all of our expectations.”
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The board overseeing Mississippi public universities failed to pass a series of policy changes in November that would have increased its oversight of off-campus degree programs following months of unusually spirited discussion for the typically rehearsed public body.
The trustee pushing the changes said the new policies would address an issue of growing concern among higher education officials in Mississippi: Larger and better-resourced universities moving into the geographic area of regional colleges and forcing direct competition for a decreasing pool of in-state college students.
For example, Mississippi State University announced in October that it was launching the Gulf Coast Aquatic Health Laboratory, an expansion of its offerings in what has been traditionally considered the University of Southern Mississippi’s backyard.
Mississippi’s eight public universities currently have wide latitude to move on-campus degree programs offsite — think of Mississippi State University’s Meridian campus — even if those programs tiptoe into a region of the state another school traditionally recruits in.
Under the board’s existing policies, universities seeking to set up new off-campus programs are supposed to do so “without unnecessary program duplication in the same geographic area.” If another institution is within 50 miles of a university’s proposed program, the two schools are directed to discuss the conflict and possibly obtain mediation from IHL, but it’s unclear what criteria IHL uses to make a decision.
When the number of high school graduates in Mississippi begins to decline in 2025, this could become a problem, according to Trustee Gee Ogletree, an attorney and a University of Southern Mississippi alumnus.
So in April, Ogletree started working on policy changes that would have required every university to receive approval from the IHL board before moving already-approved programs off-campus, with the idea that trustees would yay or nay requests based on “objective criteria” that factors in the best interest of the university system.
The proposal would result in months of back-and-forth that culminated in a confusing vote against the changes at the board’s November meeting.
Ogletree, who told Mississippi Today he had nothing to add to statements he has made at public meetings, introduced the changes in September during the board’s annual retreat at the White House Hotel in Biloxi, 170 miles from the board’s usual Jackson meeting place. As is typical for these retreats, it was not attended by any member of the public except a Mississippi Today reporter.
But two trustees — both Mississippi State alums — had some questions. A spirited discussion ensued.
“One is, what is the intent of this?” asked Hal Parker, a businessman who founded a successful fiberglass insulation distribution company. “Are there issues that we’ve neglected in the past, or?”
This policy could become “political,” Parker added, something Ogletree said he didn’t foresee happening.
“Can I ask a question? Why do we really need this,” said Bruce Martin, the president of an insurance agency, a few minutes later. “I’m having trouble understanding what the issue is that we need to solve.”
“Well,” Ogletree replied, “as I had indicated earlier, if I have some holes in my yard, I don’t wait till I step into them and break my leg before I fill the hole—”
“Gee, I’m not interested in what can,” Martin interrupted. “Has anything happened that makes this an issue?”
“Yes, what has happened, as we’re all aware, is that we will have over the next decade much fewer traditional students,” Ogletree stated, adding that he thought the board would be abdicating its responsibility to be a good steward of state dollars if it permitted the universities to duplicate off-campus programs without more oversight.
It did not convince Martin who said he believed the universities currently must “work to have the best programs” and that Ogletree’s policies sounded like “protectionism which I would not be in favor of.”
“It seems to me what we’re doing is not providing freedom of choice for the people and giving people all the opportunities,” Martin said.
The three trustees also sparred over whether the most powerful president in the university system — MSU’s Mark Keenum — was on board. The September meeting was on a Thursday. Ogletree said when he spoke to Keenum that Monday, Keenum was supportive. But Parker said when he spoke to Keenum the day before the board meeting, Keenum had concerns.
Martin did not respond to an inquiry from Mississippi Today, and Parker said he thought the policies were not needed because “the intrusion on IHL universities into the territory of other IHL universities” is protected by the board’s existing policies.
This dispute could have easily gone down between trustees who had graduated from any school in the university system. When the University of Mississippi expanded its Oxford-based nursing program offerings earlier this year, there were concerns that it would draw students away from Delta State University. In Natchez, Southern Mississippi used to have a nursing program that the board transferred to Alcorn State University in 1977.
By the time Ogletree reintroduced the policies in November, the IHL board staff had made some edits. A phrase was removed that would have directed the commissioner to develop guidelines that considered the “potential harm to existing similar degree-granting academic programs.” But the bulk of the policy remained the same.
It was approved for a first reading during the regular meeting. Then, before the board adjourned, Parker asked for a motion to reconsider, then a roll call vote.
Parker’s motion passed. But there was some initial confusion. Van Gillespie, the board attorney, asked the board to redo the vote so the secretary could accurately take notes.
Ogletree, who read a statement about why he disagreed with the board, made a motion to let the vote stand.
“I understand we’re a democracy and that majority rules,” he said. “I’ve counted the votes and I understand those. In this case I simply don’t think the majority is correct.”
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