OurTupelo

As clergy, physicians and business leaders have for weeks rallied at the state Capitol to expand Medicaid coverage to the working poor, observers can often spot the same conservative lawmaker listening attentively on the sidelines. 

Sen. Chad McMahan, a Republican from Guntown, hasn’t attended the events as a participant, a supporter or an opponent of the rallies. Rather, he goes because he wants to listen to the debate or because his constituents are there. 

In fact, McMahan has been a quiet, yet constant supporter of Medicaid expansion, or Medicaid reform as he calls it. He believes the policy can give rural hospitals like North Mississippi Medical Center in his hometown of Tupelo a major boost and create a healthier population. 

The three-term lawmaker is widely known for telling reporters that his main duty at the Capitol is to vote how the majority of the people in his district want him to vote. But he also openly shares his childhood story that he believes gives him a unique perspective on how steep medical debt can crush hard-working Mississippians. 

When McMahan was in the ninth grade, he suffered an injury and had to be treated at the local emergency room. When the $20,000 bill came due for the medical services, though, there was a major snag: McMahan’s family had no health insurance. 

“That doesn’t sound like a lot of money today, but in 1986, $20,000 would buy two top-of-the-line Chevrolet pickups,” McMahan said. “Today, it won’t even buy a piece of a Chevrolet pickup truck.” 

The legislator’s father owned a cabinet-making business in north Mississippi, and his mother did clerical work. But the medical debt forced them to make tough decisions that thousands of Mississippians still face today. 

It was impossible for the McMahan family to pay the bill in one swoop. Instead, they set up a payment plan with the hospital to pay the bill off over several years. 

“It put a lot of stress and anxiety on my family,” McMahan recalled. “I saw my mom and dad having to decide at the dinner table whether they were going to pay a mortgage, buy groceries or pay the hospital bill that month.” 

READ MORE: Medicaid expansion negotiators still far apart after first public meeting

Roughly 74,000 Mississippians don’t make enough money to afford insurance, yet make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and find themselves in positions similar to the one the McMahan family was in decades ago.

But the state Legislature has a chance this year to address this issue because for the first time since the federal Affordable Care Act became law, it’s considering expanding Medicaid to the working poor as the ACA envisioned. 

The House and Senate this week are locked in negotiations on a final expansion bill after the two chambers passed vastly different proposals. 

The House’s initial plan aimed to expand health care coverage to upwards of 200,000 Mississippians, and accept $1 billion a year in federal money to cover it, as most other states have done.

The Senate, on the other hand, wanted a more restrictive program, to expand Medicaid to cover around 40,000 people, turn down the federal money, and require proof that recipients are working at least 30 hours a week. 

The negotiators met publicly for the first time on Tuesday, but the six lawmakers remained far apart from a final deal. The Senate simply asked the House to agree to its initial plan. But the House offered a compromise “hybrid” model that uses public and private options to implement expansion. 

McMahan said he personally supports the House’s effort to expand to the full 138% of the federal poverty level, or an individual who makes $20,782 annually. But he also supports the Senate’s effort to have an ironclad work requirement for the recipients. 

While McMahan has compassion for uninsured people he doesn’t think fiscally conservative Republicans should agree to expansion legislation that leaves out a work requirement or sets up a process for people to remain on the system indefinitely. 

“I’m proud that I live in a country where there is a safety net to catch people and help people, but I’m not for turning the safety net into a hammock,” McMahan said. 

The Senate negotiators were noncommittal on the hybrid compromise. House Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee scheduled a second conference committee meeting for Thursday afternoon. 

McMahan applauded the House and Senate leaders for trying to come to a resolution on expansion, especially after the policy has been a nonstarter for the last 10 years at the Capitol.

He doesn’t think it’s his job to convince his Senate colleagues to change their minds. But he does want people who remain unabashedly opposed to the policy to listen to the stories of people across the state who still can’t afford basic health care. 

“I see the people who are out there,” McMahan said. “A lot of construction workers, a lot of fast food employees. I see the people who are working every day getting up and going to work who have never taken a hand out in life for anything who are not covered by health insurance.”

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They were the 1974 Lake High Hornets football team, 29 players strong. But in Scott County, right there just off Highway 80, they are forever known, for good reason, as The Un-Team.

That’s “un” as in: undefeated, untied, un-scored upon, and virtually un-challenged. The Hornets, coached by Granville Freeman, a maniacally demanding 26-year-old in only his second year as a head coach, out-scored opponents 312 to zero over 10 games. No opponent came within three touchdowns of Lake. This was before Mississippi had statewide high school football playoffs, but Lake was the undisputed champion of the old Cherokee Conference. The Hornets won the south division and were supposed to play French Camp for the league championship. Apparently, French Camp decided that discretion really is the better part of valor and declined to play.

Fifty years later, looking at the scores, it is difficult to blame them.

Said Freeman Horton, the team’s best player, who later was a four-year starter at Southern Miss, a longtime coach, and now lives in Horn Lake, “We achieved something back then that can never be surpassed. Some other team, somewhere, might tie our record, but I doubt it. One thing’s for sure, they can’t beat it. There’s no way.”

Coach Granville Freeman was an old school coach in some ways but decades ahead of most high school coaches in so many others, as we shall see. “When I went to Lake in 1973, I told them we would have a team that when opponents got ready to play us, they would be shaking in their shoes,” Freeman said. “I’d say we accomplished that in 1974.”

Old school? Lake ran out of a straight T-formation, nothing fancy. The Hornets played a standard four-man front defensively. Freeman demanded all-out effort, all the time. He drove the team bus to practice 5.3 miles away from the school. After what was usually a long, tortuous practice if he wasn’t satisfied with the effort or performance, he followed in the bus, lights on, while the players ran all the way back to the high school. If they were going too slow, he’d rev the engine. If that didn’t work, he might even bump a straggler’s rear end. 

“You couldn’t do that these days, could you?” Freeman said, chuckling. “I’d need a really good lawyer.”

He would also have needed a jury made up of avid Lake football fans who knew there was method to his madness.

Said Vance of his coach, “He coached 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And he was crazy smart.”

Horton, who starred as an outside linebacker on defense and left tackle on offense, was widely recruited. Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Southern Miss all offered scholarships. So did Bear Bryant at Alabama, and this will tell you much about Granville Freeman’s crazy intellect. Bryant and Ken Donahue, his top recruiter, visited Lake to recruit Horton. Freeman was discussing Horton with Bryant and Donahue after practice when Donahue asked, “Coach, I don’t understand why you don’t you play your best athlete at middle linebacker? At Alabama, Horton would be playing in the middle.”

Responded Freeman, “Well, Coach, I’ll tell you why. If I line up Horton in the middle, I don’t have any idea which way the other team is gonna run. But if I line him up one side, I know for damn sure which way they ain’t about to run. This way, we only have to defend half the field.”

Freeman says he looked over at Bryant. The legendary, old coach was chuckling, as he told Donahue: “Well, now you know, Coach, makes a whole lot of sense to me.”

Many in Lake thought Freeman really had lost his mind during the spring of 1974. That’s when he called his players together and told them summer workouts would be different that year. Twice a week, a ballet teacher was going to come from Jackson and work them out in the gymnasium. Yes, they were going to take ballet lessons, and they would each pay for the lessons. “We thought Coach Freeman was nuts when he told us about it,” said Dewey Holmes, the team’s star running back who rushed for more than 1,200 yards. “But we all did it.” These weren’t rich kids, mind you. Many of the Lake players picked up aluminum cans on roadsides to earn the money to take ballet.

It made all kinds of good sense to Freeman. “Ballet is all about balance, about footwork, about flexibility and core strength,” Freeman said. “I thought it was perfect training for a football player. We called ourselves the twinkletoes Hornets.”

A lot of folks laughed when they heard about it. They weren’t laughing a few months later, not after 312-0.

And nobody was laughing in the locker room at halftime of a game at Hickory. Lake led only 7-0 and Freeman was furious. So, he yanked the helmet off one player and threw it through a window. “I surprised myself with that,” Freeman said. “I thought, ‘Now, I’ve done it.’”

So he did it some more. He grabbed more helmets, threw them through more windows. Final score: Lake 42, Hickory 0. Of course, Hickory wanted those windows fixed and when the bill arrived, Lake Hornets fans raised the money to pay.

Another time, after a scoreless first half with Stringer, Lake players feared what would happen in the locker room. They expected another tirade. Instead, Freeman walked in and told them he was so disgusted he was quitting on the spot. So, he walked out of the locker room and took a seat in the stands. And that’s where he was when the Hornets returned to the field and proceeded to score 40 straight points.

Why? Burnout was surely one reason, and there were at least 485 more. His last monthly paycheck at Lake was for $485. Said Freeman, I did the math and figured out what I was making per hour. I was coaching the junior high and high school teams, mowing and lining the fields, watching film, carrying it to Jackson to be developed, doing scouting reports, washing uniforms, running the summer program, teaching, driving the bus. It came out to 17 cents an hour. I wasn’t sleeping much.”

As many coaches in Mississippi have, Freeman stopped coaching and started selling insurance. Fourteen years ago, when he explained the reasons for his his early retirement from coaching, the interview was interrupted when someone knocked and slipped a payment under the door of his State Farm office. Freeman never missed a beat, laughing and telling this writer, “You know, that right there never happened back when I was coaching.”

Now 77, he has retired also from State Farm. The insurance money was far better in those later years but nothing ever happened to come close to the satisfaction of that unparalleled autumn half a century ago.

Undefeated. Un-tied. Un-scored upon. Perfect. That’s why all 26 living players are coming back. That’s why end Dexter Brown is traveling from Frankfurt, Germany, to take part. That’s why Holmes, the star running back who later rose to the rank of full-bird colonel and traveled the world in the U.S. Air Force, is coming from his home in Tucson, Ariz.

“We grew up together, we achieved together,” Holmes said. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

So many stories will be told, none more than what follows.

Nobody had come really close to scoring on the Lake Hornets until the final game, when a fourth quarter fumbled punt gave Edinburg the ball at the Lake 8-yard line. Three plays later, the ball was still on the 8, and Edinburg, trailing 38-0, lined up for a field goal. Moochie Weidman, the Hornets’ nose guard who might have weighed 140 pounds, broke through the center of the line so quickly he blocked the kick with his chest.

How did it feel, someone asked Moochie, after he regained his breath. He answered with a grin. “It hurt so good,” he said.

Freeman Horton says it remains probably his favorite memory of that un-season. “Moochie was our smallest guy, the one you’d least expect, and he was the hero,” Horton said.

Sadly, Moochie Weidman is one of the three deceased 1974 Lake Hornets, but he will be remembered, ever so fondly, Saturday night.

The post At Lake High School in Scott County, the Un-Team will never be forgotten appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Senate on Wednesday unanimously confirmed Bill Cork as Gov. Tate Reeves’ pick for a permanent chief economic development officer, despite a background report provided to senators that he “created a toxic workplace” and had faced complaints including sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.

In a hearing before his Senate confirmation, Cork said he did nothing wrong, has a winning economic development record, has overhauled MDA.

“… If that takes a little hostility to get that done, that’s what’s going to happen,” Cork said in the hearing on Tuesday.

Cork is now the first permanent director of the state’s economic development agency since 2021, when former agency director John Rounsaville resigned after sexual misconduct allegations.

Cork is credited with recently helping the state land record-setting large economic developments, including Amazon Web Services’ commitment to spend $10 billion to construct two “hyperscale data centers” in Madison County.

A background report provided to the Senate Finance Committee before members voted to confirm him said that Cork, who has worked at MDA since September of 2020, was investigated by the Mississippi Personnel Board in 2021. The investigation followed a claim against Cork of sexual harassment, age discrimination and creating a hostile work environment while he was serving as chief economic development officer at MDA.

The personnel board said it conducted the investigation at Gov. Reeves’ request. It submitted a report to Reeves after the investigation that said Cork had been uncooperative with the investigation, and that while no legal violations were found, “Cork’s management style has created a toxic workplace.” Personnel recommended Cork receive a written reprimand and that he complete at least 12 hours of training on workforce harassment, which he completed.

Cork was traveling Wednesday, his office said, and could not be reached for comment. In a Senate Finance confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Cork addressed the report after Sen. Bradford Blackmon asked about it.

Cork said he helped lead “reorganizing and reforming” MDA, resulting in two-thirds of the project management and international teams leaving the agency, and “we had a small cadre of employees that didn’t like what was happening.”

“At the end of the day, the state Personnel Board found I hadn’t done anything illegal, but that I was a tough boss,” Cork said. “Some people find that level of tough and directedness to be a little hostile. None of it was directed at anyone, but when you’re trying to put together a winning team, you just don’t settle for second-place.

“… I don’t apologize for anything I’ve done because I didn’t do anything wrong,” Cork said. “I didn’t cooperate with the investigation because I didn’t do anything wrong, and that’s exactly what that investigation found.”

State Personnel Director Kelly Hardwick said: “Regretfully, (Cork) didn’t cooperate with the investigation, which might have changed our determination. Because he didn’t, we were left with only the testimony of the accusations.”

Hardwick declined to provide details of the allegations against Cork, and his office would not release its report to Mississippi Today, citing public records exemptions for personnel records.

Hardwick said Cork did successfully complete the state workplace harassment training and implemented some of the practices recommended in the training.

“He’s been shown to be successful and there have been no other complaints on him since,” Hardwick said. “From our standpoint he successfully did what we recommended to the governor.”

Both the Senate Finance Committee and full Senate voted unanimously for Cork’s confirmation.

Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins noted the report said personnel board found no legal violations, and that Cork openly addressed the allegations in committee. He said he received recommendation letters for Cork from across the state and country and, “It’s hard to argue with the product MDA has put out in the last few months.”

A spokesman for Reeves praised Cork, said the “old” personnel complaint is not credible and criticized Mississippi Today.

“Bill Cork has gotten better results for the people of Mississippi than almost any other employee of state government in decades,” Reeves Deputy Chief of Staff Cory Custer said in a statement. “… (Cork) opted to make the results of the investigation known, addressed it in detail in his confirmation hearing yesterday, and was then unanimously confirmed. It would not be a surprise to see a biased article that hypes up discredited nonsense, but it would be a disservice to a great, hard-working man.”

Cork has previously served as deputy director and chief economic development officer at MDA. He formerly led the Hancock County Port and Harbor Commission and before that was the CEO of an industrial complex in New Boston, Texas. He is a Marine Corps veteran and received a master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reeves on Aug. 13, 2021, announced Cork’s predecessor, Rounsaville, would be “stepping down” at the end of that month as MDA director to spend more time with his family and less time traveling. Reeves thanked him for his service and wished him well.

But Mississippi Today reported that sexual misconduct allegations had led to Rounsaville’s resignation, and that Reeves had in July received a personnel investigation report and recommendation Rounsaville be fired. After that report, Reeves said Rounsaville had been put on administrative leave and removed from day-to-day operations at MDA and that his resignation had been tendered Aug. 13 after an investigation into his conduct.

An allegedly intoxicated Rounsaville allegedly made sexual advances toward three subordinate female MDA employees at a bar in Biloxi while attending a business conference.

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Supporters of Medicaid expansion would argue that it is wholly appropriate that Leah Hendrix has recently been a featured speaker in rallies at the state Capitol in favor of providing health care coverage for primarily working poor Mississippians.

No doubt, her activism brings symmetry.

Hendrix, a Jackson mother of four and the wife of a physician, is the granddaughter of Alton Cobb, the state’s former longtime state health officer who played a pivotal role in Mississippi opting into the original Medicaid program 55 years ago.

In more recent times, her father, Tim Alford, a Kosciusko physician, was beating the drums in favor of Medicaid expansion longer than almost any other Mississippi health care provider.

“He said he was leaving that to me because no one had listened to him,” she joked in an interview with Mississippi Today this week after one of the Capitol rallies.

Medicaid expansion has become the major focus of a contentious 2024 legislative session, with hundreds of Mississippians, top state business leaders, health officials and even religious leaders publicly advocating at the Capitol for full Medicaid expansion that stands to significantly help the poorest, unhealthiest state in the nation.

For the first time, state lawmakers are earnestly debating expansion. Hendrix has been on the front lines of the fight to get it across the finish line.

“It seems we have been talking about this for more than 13 years,” she said, referring to the fact that the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 with the provision allowing Medicaid expansion to cover those earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level or about $20,000 annually for an individual. “But it really has been going on much longer than that. When did Al work on that?”

READ MORE: Top Mississippi business leaders endorse full Medicaid expansion

The story of Alton Cobb and Mississippi’s reluctant decision to opt into Medicaid in 1969 is one of an unlikely alliance and political courage by a governor who eschewed his political philosophy to do what he believed was right for the people of Mississippi.

That governor was John Bell Williams. And Cobb, an employee at the state Department of Health who was initially reluctant to take a key position on Williams’ staff, helped the governor reach that decision.

“I didn’t vote for him,” Cobb told Mississippi Today in 2019, recalling when he was approached to work for Williams. “I think he probably knew that.”

But former U.S. Rep. David Bowen, who had joined Williams’ staff, was a friend of Cobb and convinced him of the potential of Williams’ health advisory board.

“I wanted to be part of that,” Cobb said.

READ MORE: Is history repeating itself on Medicaid expansion in Mississippi?

The panel held hearings across the state, listening to health care providers and others. Cobb said Williams attended the meetings, though he seldom spoke. He primarily listened.

At the end of the process, Williams informed his staff he was calling a special session to take up the issue of opting into the Medicaid program. That special session lasted from July 22, 1969, until Oct. 10. In the midst of the long and extraordinary session, Hurricane Camille ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

But by the end, Mississippi opted into the Medicaid program as most other states had already done.

The Williams-backed move was a shock to many political observers. As a U.S. House member prior to being elected governor, Williams had voted against the legislation to create the Medicaid program and had campaigned for governor railing against the excesses of the federal government.

But in a joint session of the Legislature on the first day of the special session, he told members, “In fairness, I must point out that my philosophical reasons for resisting the program as a member of the United States Congress is neither relevant nor applicable to the present issue before us. The program is a reality. It is available to our state and now devolves wholly into a question of whether you, in your wisdom, should determine our participation will be in the best interests of our state and people.”

Back in 1969, Williams’ argument for opting into the original Medicaid program sounded much like the one made today for Medicaid expansion. He said the program would provide health care for a segment of the population that needed it, it would help the state’s health care providers, and it would benefit the whole state by pumping more funds into the economy.

“Al used to love to tell about becoming John Bell Williams’ chief ambassador for starting Medicaid in Mississippi,” Hendrix said. “… After having several meetings, a light came on for Williams.

“… Two opposites politically flew around the state (on the state plane) selling Medicaid,” Hendrix continued. “Al did not like to fly.”

But she added it was “a good example of a politician who did a 180 because it just made economic sense.”

Hendrix said her grandfather, who died in 2021, wanted his support for Medicaid expansion to be included in his obituary.

Hendrix is hopeful that current Mississippi politicians will do as Williams did back in 1969 and set aside their previous political beliefs and do what is right for the people of Mississippi.

“Despite the stereotypes, Medicaid does so much good,” she said. “This is the insurance that helps children who have no other choice. Where are the Beatitudes when our neighbors need them? I will never understand why Mississippi politicians of late have decided we should not expand — turning down millions of federal dollars our state so desperately needs because of politics while we’re all still paying into a system that’s funding states that did expand.”

Perhaps today’s politicians need someone like Alton Cobb to help them reach that decision. Maybe that person is already part of the debate and is advocating for it at the Capitol every day — if only those Mississippi politicians would do like John Bell Williams did in 1969 and listen.

READ MORE: Medicaid expansion negotiators still far apart after first public meeting

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The family of a Jackson man who died in 2019 days after an interaction with police officers will receive nearly $18,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit settlement. 

That $17,786.25 settlement, according to city council documents, “does not constitute an admission of liability” by the city of Jackson and the three former Jackson police officers who the family say pulled 62-year-old George Robinson from his car and beat him in the Washington Addition neighborhood. 

Robinson died days later on Jan. 15, 2019, and the state medical examiners said his death was a homicide from three blunt head injuries. 

One of the officers, former detective Anthony Fox, was convicted of culpable-negligence manslaughter in 2022, receiving a 20-year sentence with 15 years suspended. Charges against the other two officers, Desmond Barney and Lincoln Lampley, were dismissed in 2021. 

Fox’s conviction stood for about two years, until January when the Mississippi Court of Appeals reversed the conviction and issued an acquittal. In a majority opinion, the judges agreed the evidence was insufficient for the verdict and that Robinson’s medical history made it difficult to tell whether his injuries from Fox was the sole contributor to his death. 

The Hinds County district attorney did not support challenging the conviction, while Attorney General Lynn Fitch asked for it to be reversed. 

Fox left prison in February and went back to work for the Clinton Police Department, where he was employed up until his conviction after leaving the Jackson Police Department.
Bettersen Wade, Robinson’s sister who was a plaintiff in the wrongful death lawsuit, is also the mother of 37-year-old Dexter Wade, the Jackson man who died last year and was buried in the Hinds County pauper’s grave, despite having identification and his family calling the coroner’s office and Jackson police.

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An education company that helps bring free college-level science courses to poor, rural public schools, many in the Mississippi Delta, will lose federal funding after the Biden Administration did not renew its grant last year. 

The Global Teaching Project has received more than $3.5 million from the U.S. Department of Education to support its work offering Advanced Placement science courses to nearly 40 high-poverty schools.

Over 1,000 have enrolled in the project’s classes, according to its founder, former tax attorney Matt Dolan, who says he has put more than six figures into the project since starting it in 2017. Districts could offer AP courses that they never had before. 

Global Teaching Project’s “blended” instructional model — online course content taught by in-class teachers who are supported by virtual STEM tutors from universities such as Harvard — was even praised by school choice and school voucher proponent Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration’s education secretary. Experts have heralded this approach as “the future of education, especially for rural schools,” and the Global Teaching Project has drawn the attention of entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban.

It’s also a model that has the interest of powerful Mississippi Republicans. Senate Appropriations Chair Briggs Hopson told the Magnolia Tribune earlier this legislative session that he hopes to expand virtual learning for schools that struggle to find qualified teachers. 

But the Global Teaching Project’s growth could falter without more financial support when its federal Education Innovation and Research grant expires this summer as, Dolan said, a majority of that funding went to the program costs. The minimum needed to operate this coming year is $1.2 million, Dolan said. 

The Mississippi Public School Consortium for Educational Access, a coalition of rural public school districts, was technically the recipient of federal funds, but Dolan said the Global Teaching Project was the driver of the initiative, a relationship that grant reviewers in 2019 said could be clarified. 

“My guess is they’ve never seen such a thing where somebody not only develops and implements the program, but they provide the money,” Dolan said. “That’s what we told the school districts when we first started in 2017. We said we want to do this, and we’re not asking you to give us a penny.” 

Last year, the Biden Administration awarded more than $275 million in funding to projects in 20 states. Projects in three states — California, Massachusetts and Texas — received almost as much funding as the remaining 17.

Without the project, the Quitman County School District would not be able to offer AP Computer Science, said Baxter Swearengen, a special-education teacher who acts as a “facilitator” for the courses. 

Neither would the Holmes County School District, said Iftikhar Azeem, the science department chair at Holmes County Central High School. He teaches AP Physics and AP Computer Science. 

That’s because these districts, which have a small tax base, can’t compete with other counties and even states that pay teachers much better, or with other science-professions.

“The very fundamental thing is funding,” Azeem said. “I’ve taught several hundred physics students, but nobody came back as a teacher because when they do get a masters in science, they get a better job. … Why should they work as a teacher?”

Both districts struggle to retain college-educated graduates amid population losses since 2010. 

“A place like Holmes County, Mississippi, has fewer residents today than it did when the Civil War broke out,” Dolan said. “That teachers are not moving there is symptomatic of broader issues about exodus from these communities.” 

The Global Teaching Project helps fill this gap, Dolan said, by providing schools with “turnkey courses,” as well as textbooks and workbooks that students don’t have to pay for. And teachers like Swearengen and Azeem are offered stipends for professional development courses. 

“We are paying our teachers, not the other way around,” Dolan said. “We are providing services to our students. They never pay us a penny. Their parents never pay us a penny. We’ve never used a dollar of state or local tax dollars.” 

More than 90% of students who take Global Teaching Project’s classes go to college, though Dolan couldn’t provide the exact number, he said, due to limitations collecting data from public schools. But when students get to college, they are prepared, he said. 

“Where we make a difference, and here I am confident, is where they go to college, how well they do in college, how prepared they are in college, their persistence and scholarships,” Dolan said. 

Dolan said he has partial data on pass-rates on the AP national exams for Global Teaching Project students and that the pass-rate for AP Computer Science tends to be higher than AP Physics. A majority of students do not earn a qualifying score for college credit on the exams, which is a three or higher, Dolan said. 

“By taking this exam, you are part of an elite group,” Dolan tells his students. 

Both teachers said their classes’ exam scores aren’t as high as they wish due to a myriad of factors. 

In Quitman County, students don’t struggle with the curriculum, Swearengen said, because the Global Teaching Project provides tutors from Ivy League schools. It’s more about attention: Swearengen said his students tend to miss class for major athletic events. Cellphones are another distraction. 

But the biggest struggle, Swearengen said, is technology. His district has limited bandwidth. During end-of-year testing, only so many students can use a computer at one time, he said. Sometimes, all nine of his students have to crowd around one computer.

That’s a huge reason his AP Computer Science pass-rate isn’t where Swearengen wants it to be. 

“We have so many students on computers to where the technology person will just shut the entire network off,” he said. 

Still, Swearengen said the Global Teaching Project has benefited his students in ways that can’t be quantified. Through the project, they have an opportunity to experience college-level curriculum and visit campuses like Jackson State University. 

Their self-regard increases, he said. 

“They get to spend a night in a hotel room when they’ve never been,” he said. “They get to go to conferences and eat different food. And talk about computers. It’s just so much. It’s a bigger picture than I think anybody could have imagined.” 

That was Demeria Moore’s experience when, as a junior and senior at McAdams Attendance Center in Attala County, she took AP Physics and AP Computer Science, the latter course she was able to claim college credit for at Holmes Community College. 

Though it was lonely to be the only student in the AP Computer Science course, Moore said participating in the class helped her understand the “why” behind the world. 

“When I look out the window and I see the leaves, how they’re full of chlorophyll and the sun will allow them to have energy, and how that energy can get transferred to me and that just creates the circle of life,” Moore said. “All those little things have some type of science or math attached to it. It all just blew my mind.” 

Moore said the Global Teaching Project also provided a sense of community at her school where teacher turnover is high. McAdams is a junior-senior high school and, by the time she graduated, all her teachers from seventh grade had left.

“I had some really good teachers and even the students who may have just maybe caused a few issues in class, even they would listen to these teachers. And I just wish they would have stayed so everybody could have a better learning experience,” she said. 

Dolan said one of the successes of the Global Teaching Project also comes with irony. His initiative can help teachers become AP certified, which can lead them away from high-poverty school districts to ones that can pay better. 

“We recognize there are certain issues that we cannot affect,” Dolan said. “We don’t determine who is in the building, but we will serve whoever is there.” 

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Mississippi State baseball great Jay Powell won Game 7 of the World Series, among many other career highlights and then had his career ended by one of the most gruesome arm injuries in baseball history. Who better to talk about the alarming rate of pitching injuries in MLB and college baseball than Powell?

Stream all episodes here.

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The special geology of Mississippi is again giving the state a stab at playing a key role in the energy sector, this time for a burgeoning renewable power source called “green hydrogen.”

The company Hy Stor Energy, founded in 2019, is looking to take advantage of the state’s salt domes, which provide valuable underground pockets for gas storage. Hy Stor will store its hydrogen in different salt domes around the state, Chief Executive Officer Laura Luce said, but will primarily operate in Perry and Smith counties. The company is looking to start production by the end of 2026, she said.

“We’re really at the beginning of this green hydrogen revolution,” Luce said. “We really see the next three to 10 years where you’re going to have a lot of infrastructure be brought up and expanded and this industry stood up, and we’re confident that Mississippi is going to be the leaders in that industry.”

The technology behind renewable hydrogen has been around for about a century, Luce explained. The energy source materializes through a process called electrolysis, which uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. But it wasn’t until the last few years that both the United States and the Europe began heavily investing in the technology. As part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021, the federal government appropriated $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen development. 

In a roadmap the U.S. Department of Energy released in 2023, the agency explained that “clean hydrogen,” as it’s also referred to, can be a key tool in meeting the country’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The plan says that clean hydrogen can reduce economy-wide emissions — targeting sectors like transportation, metal production, and fertilizer — by 10% over the next 30 years.

Last month, the DOE announced up to $500 million in funding for a “green steel” project, which would include producing iron in Perry County using clean hydrogen from Hy Stor. That facility, which would be operated by Swedish company SSAB, would then send the iron to Iowa to be made into steel. While the agency is still negotiating an exact award amount, the DOE projected that the project would create 540 permanent jobs as well as 6,000 construction jobs.

Hy Stor plans to use energy from other renewable sources, like solar and wind, to produce the green hydrogen, Luce said.

“The sun and the wind, even though they’re tremendous resources, they’re not available 24/7,” she said. “They’re available on an intermittent basis. So by taking those and converting them to hydrogen, now I have something that is dispatchable on minutes notice.”

Luce said the “epicenter” of Hy Stor will start out by a salt dome in Richton, near the proposed SSAB facility, with a pipeline connecting down to Port Bienville in southwest Mississippi.

An array of political leaders in the state have backed the project in letters to the DOE, including Gov. Tate Reeves, the State Oil and Gas Board, and the Mississippi Public Service Commission.

Even before Hy Stor, Mississippi’s geology has opened up the state to a number of energy sector investments. For instance, companies have long used the state’s salt domes to store natural gas. Mississippi has also recently positioned itself to become a hub for carbon storage, something that could be especially abundant in Gulf states because of the spaces between subsurface rocks.

The cost of the green hydrogen project will be steep, though. Luce said that the first phase of the project will cost over $10 billion, and that Hy Stor will look to enter into 10-, 20- or 30-year agreements with industrial customers to finance the operation. So far, she added, Hy Stor hasn’t received any federal or state government funding, but it will look for potential support from the DOE as well as renewable energy tax credits.

As far as who will buy the green hydrogen, Luce said Hy Stor’s initial customers in its first couple years of operations will include plastic, maritime and other transport companies, in addition to the proposed green steel project.

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