Just over 75% of Mississippi third-graders passed the “third grade reading gate” test on their first try, a rate that is higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The results of the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program third grade ELA exam were presented at the Thursday meeting of the State Board of Education.
The Mississippi Legislature created the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013, which requires all third-graders to pass a reading test before moving up to the fourth grade. Students must score a three or higher out of five on the test to be promoted, which indicates they are competent in skills such as identifying main ideas, paraphrasing texts, understanding figurative language, and using root words, prefixes and suffixes to change word meanings.
Department officials expressed satisfaction with the results, particularly as they surpassed previous years.
“You can see my smile,” said Kristen Wynn, state literacy director. “Our students and our teachers exceeded pre-pandemic results. In 2019, we got those results that put us number one in growth for NAEP and now we’ve surpassed that in 2023 … For us I feel like the sky is the limit.”
The 7,500 students who did not pass had the opportunity to retest May 8-12 and will have the opportunity again June 19-30. Many districts host summer reading programs to prep students for their retests. For these, the education department recommends developing individualized plans for targeting students areas of need, partnering with local community organizations, and working with the department’s 52 literacy coaches.
The State Board of Education also voted to approve spending $2.7 million in grants to local school districts to fund their summer reading camps as part of the effort to improve performance on the gate test. The 13 districts receiving the grants were selected for several reasons, including status as a literacy support district, having a flexible school calendar, school improvement status and reading proficiency scores. The districts selected had varying passing rates on this year’s test, ranging from 38-80%.
Last year, an additional 3,500 students passed on the retests, raising the passing rate to 85%, and 3,900 were promoted with “good cause exemptions,” such as passing an alternate assessment during the retest periods, having disabilities, or having been previously held back.
“I applaud the teachers, administrators, literacy coaches and families who worked to support students in achieving this goal,” Interim State Superintendent Mike Kent said in a statement. “The work will continue until all students are proficient and showing growth.”
View initial passing rates for individual schools and districts here.
Gulfport Memorial Hospital CEO Kent Nicaud wrote Gov. Tate Reeves a $25,000 campaign check about three weeks before the governor appointed him to a significant government job.
Nicaud, who has long been among Reeves’ top campaign donors, landed the governor’s Gaming Commission appointment on March 8, 2023. A little more than three weeks before the appointment, on Feb. 13, 2023, Nicaud wrote Reeves’ campaign the $25,000 check, according to a campaign finance report released last week.
Gaming commissioners receive a modest salary from taxpayers — $40 per day — and are reimbursed by the state for travel and meals. The commission is tasked with regulating the casino gaming industry, which brings the state hundreds of millions in tax revenue each year. That revenue has become necessary to fund basic public services across Mississippi, and because gaming commissioners wield great influence over changes to the industry, they are broadly considered critical figures to one of the state’s most powerful and wealthiest lobbies.
The hospital executive is the latest Nicaud to receive a government appointment from Reeves. Kent’s wife Jenny Field Nicaud, an attorney, scored a Reeves appointment in 2021 as an administrative law judge for the Mississippi Workers Compensation Commission. In that role, Jenny earns an annual salary of $120,768.98, according to Mississippi State Personnel Board records.
The couple’s son Jourdan Nicaud, a well-known Gulf Coast restaurateur, is also a major campaign donor to Reeves. According to last week’s finance report, Jourdan wrote Reeves a separate $25,000 check, which was dated about two weeks after his father was confirmed to the Gaming Commission by the Senate.
All told, the Nicaud family has given close to $200,000 in campaign donations to Reeves over the past few years, according to the governor’s finance reports.
And they’ve facilitated even more donations to the Reeves camp. The couple hosted a fundraiser for Reeves at their Pass Christian mansion in late 2020, the same week that the state’s top physicians issued dire warnings about a lack of hospital bed space to accommodate COVID-19 patients, and during a period Reeves signed mandates limiting the number of people allowed to gather in one place at a time. Kent Nicaud, whose Gulfport hospital had just five beds available on the day of the fundraiser, told Mississippi Today the guests were “very conscious of all the social distancing.”
“This was a very small group of people, and the reason it was at my home was because of the ability to keep everyone separate,” Nicaud said, pointing out that his house is 11,000 square feet. “There were probably never more than 21, 22 people there at one time. This was an event that I felt was meeting safety criteria, and the governor was already in town for a tourism commission and chamber of commerce. This was an opportunity for people to talk to (Reeves) about specific things. We did it safely.”
Nicaud did not return a request for comment on this story.
The Nicauds are among several Reeves insiders who have received government jobs in his first term in office. In 2021, the governor appointed Franc Lee, a consumer loan magnate and Reeves’ largest individual campaign donor, to the Gaming Commission.
Reeves appointed three campaign donors to the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees — among the state’s most powerful government seats — and two campaign donors to the Mississippi Community College Board in 2021.
Businessman Johnny McRight gave Reeves $50,000 in the four years before his 2021 MCCB appointment. Businessman Luke Montgomery gave Reeves $14,500 in the years before his 2021 MCCB appointment.
Gregg Rader, a Columbus businessman, gave Reeves $85,000 in the months leading up to his 2021 IHL appointment. And Rader has continued the flow of money to Reeves’ campaign coffers even after his appointment, writing another $30,000 check to the governor in 2022.
William Symmes, a Gulfport lawyer appointed by Reeves to the MCCB in 2021 after a small 2020 donation to the governor, acknowledged in an interview at the time that his personal connections to Reeves led to his appointment, but said it is logical the governor would pick people who know and support him.
“Obama said it best: ‘Elections have consequences,’” Symmes told Mississippi Today in 2021. “I think that one of those consequences is you’re able to put people around you that you feel comfortable and work well with.”
Another one of Reeves’ appointments from 2023 is Gerard Gibert, the host of a conservative Supertalk Mississippi radio show and regular campaign donor of Reeves. Gibert, first appointed to the Mississippi Lottery Corporation board by former Gov. Phil Bryant, was reappointed by Reeves this year after writing several checks to Reeves’ campaigns since 2017.
Mississippi Today reached out to Reeves’ campaign before this story was published and asked if Reeves worries about the optics of giving major campaign donors or their family members taxpayer-funded government appointments.
Elliott Husbands, Reeves’ campaign manager, responded by email late Wednesday: “This is our statement, please be sure to print it all: ‘Mississippi Today is a liberal Democrat SuperPAC run by proven liars, and in fact was just legally forced to apologize for lying about Republicans as recently as today. Anything written by this blog should be viewed in that context.’”
Editor’s note: The Reeves campaign statement in this story references an apology our CEO issued on May 17 that had no bearing on Reeves.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center has hired a former Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi executive as its new chief financial officer.
Jennifer Sinclair will oversee the finances and budget for the entire medical center, according to a release last month from UMMC. Her first day was April 24.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the medical school, described the position as “challenging” and introduced Sinclair to the Institutions of Higher Learning trustees at April’s health affairs meeting.
“I’m looking forward to it, really,” Sinclair said at the meeting. “My heart and passion and experience are on the provider side, so UMMC is obviously the largest in the state, so I’m excited to be a part of it.”
UMMC is the state’s largest public hospital. The medical center was appropriated more than $180 million this year from the Legislature and posted about $1.7 billion in revenues and expenses in fiscal year 2022.
Sinclair, who has more than 23 years of experience as a health care executive, comes to UMMC from Blue Cross where she was vice president. Previously, she was the vice president and regional CFO at Bon Secours Mercy Health, the largest health system in Ohio. She also worked at St. Dominic Memorial Hospital in Jackson for 17 years in several different capacities, including executive vice president of operations and senior vice president of finance.
She graduated from Mississippi State University and is from Morton.
Sinclair replaces Nelson Weichold, who’s been in the position just a few months shy of four years. Weichold has accepted a position with Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, his home state.
The reason for his departure has not been disclosed. UMMC could not be reached by press time.
“I want to thank Nelson for his steadfast and exemplary work as our CFO,” Woodward said in the release. “Under his leadership and through his strategic support, UMMC navigated through some unprecedented challenges and the trajectory of the Medical Center is better because of him.”
Weichold was at the helm of the hospital’s finances during the COVID-19 pandemic and a nearly year-long dispute between UMMC and Blue Cross, the state’s largest private insurer, that put UMMC out of network with the company for months.
“We’re not glad that Nelson is leaving,” Woodward said at the meeting. “But we are very glad that we were able to secure somebody like Jennifer and have her join our team.”
Executive session meeting minutes show that the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees “terminated” Felecia Nave as president of Alcorn State University — a modicum of information but more clarification than the board has provided in other instances of presidential turnover this year.
The board initially refused to say if it had fired Nave or let her resign, but per executive session meeting minutes released Thursday, the unanimous decision on April 20 was to terminate Nave “for the board’s convenience, effectively immediately.”
Just two days earlier,Nave — the first Black woman to lead Alcorn State, the oldest public historically Black university in Mississippi — interviewed as a semi-finalist for thechancellor positionat Louisiana State University, Shreveport.
Nave did not get the position.
Though it’s unclear what role that interview played in the board’s decision,Tom Duff, the outgoing IHL board president, said in a press release announcing her departure last month that “the Board wishes Dr. Nave well as she pursues new opportunities.”
The board appointed Ontario Wooden, whom Nave hired as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs in 2020, as interim president with a salary of $300,000. He reported directly to Nave, and the two overlappedin administration at North Carolina Central University.
Nave’s contract was set to end on June 30 of this year, per a version obtained by Mississippi Today in 2021. The contract lays out three paths the board could take to terminate her employment: “Financial exigencies as declared by the board,” “for good cause,” and “for the Board’s convenience, without any showing of good cause or other cause.”
It is not clear if the board could have terminatedNave for its convenience with good cause or without. If the board terminated Nave without cause, the contract shows that Nave is entitled to a payout of the remainder of her state-funded salary, which was $300,000. She has had 30 days from the date the board voted to terminate her to vacate on-campus housing.
Nave’s termination made her the fourth public university president to step down or leave since June 2022. In each instance, IHL has provided little information about the circumstances surrounding those decisions — details on why presidents leave usually comes from the individuals themselves.
Earlier this month, Rust College, a private college in Holly Springs, announced its president Ivy Taylor was leaving.
Jared Gilmore, an Alcorn State alumnus, said he was shocked by the board’s decision to terminate her. He is involved with a group called Alcornites for Change that had sought to hold Nave accountable for widespread issues on campus like declining enrollment, dozens of employee resignations and “deplorable” conditions in athletic facilities.
The board should answer if Nave’s handling of those problems played any role in its decision to terminate her, Gilmore said.
“The goal was never to just get her fired,” Gilmore said. “The goal was to have some accountability for the position because again there were so many things that were going on that were detrimental to the institution.”
Gilmore said Alcornites for Change had repeatedly sought meetings with the board and with IHL Commissioner Alfred Rankins, the president of Alcorn State before Nave, about their findings. But prior to firing Nave, IHL never returned their inquiries.
“It was a shocker to us because my thing was, we’ve been presenting the information, we have been rallying the stakeholders, and all of a sudden, boom, they make a decision,” he said. “We need to know where we go from here because we have some issues.”
IHL has yet to announce a timeline for a presidential search.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation on railroads or similar public places was constitutional, forging the “separate but equal” doctrine that remained in place until 1954.
In his dissent that would foreshadow the ruling six decades later in Brown v. Board of Education, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that “separate but equal” rail cars were aimed at discriminating against Black Americans.
“In the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens,” he wrote. “Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law … takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”
I misspoke at a recent media conference regarding the accusations against former Governor Phil Bryant in the $77 million welfare scandal. He has not been charged with any crime. My remark was inappropriate, and I sincerely apologize.
Mississippi Today has published at least 29 times over the course of its coverage of the welfare scandal, including multiple times in “The Backchannel” investigative series, that Gov. Bryant has not been charged with any crime. My mistake was unintentional and an inaccurate representation of the facts.
This statement will be shared across Mississippi Today’s platforms, including our website, social media, newsletter, mobile app and text service. I have requested that the video of my remark be retracted with this apology.
Longtime state Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of evading federal income taxes.
Sentencing is set for Aug. 21. Banks faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release according to court documents.
Court documents unsealed this month claimed Banks reported $38,237 in income on his 2018 federal tax returns even though he “knew that he had received more than $500,000 in additional income” that year — profit from selling real estate.
Banks’ attorney Rob McDuff said Wednesday, “Mr. Banks has cooperated with the U.S. attorney’s office and today had the opportunity to speak directly to the judge and admit that he made a mistake in failing to report on his tax return the proceeds from the sale of land that had belonged to his family for many years.”
Banks, an attorney and funeral home director, has served in the state House since 1993 and in 2012 ran unsuccessfully for the state Supreme Court.
Banks is unopposed for reelection to his House seat this year.
While the Mississippi Constitution prohibits anyone convicted of most state or federal felonies from serving in the Legislature, section 44 of the constitution exempts federal tax crimes as a disqualifying offense.
“This section shall not disqualify a person from holding office if he has been pardoned for the offense or if the offense of which the person was convicted was manslaughter, any violation of the United States Internal Revenue Code or any violation of the tax laws of this state unless such offense also involved misuse or abuse of his office or money coming into his hands by virtue of his office,” the Mississippi Constitution says.
VERONA — Party leaders and campaign staffers scrambled this week after incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves over the weekend appeared to suggest that only one conservative is competing in the hotly contested GOP primary for lieutenant governor.
Reeves told Mississippi Today at a Saturday event in Lee County that he will not endorse either leading candidate — incumbent Delbert Hosemann or challenger Chris McDaniel — in the lieutenant governor’s race, but opined that a spirited campaign would be healthy for the state Republican Party.
“We’ve got a conservative candidate running, and they’re going to talk about the issues,” Reeves said. “And we’ll see how that comes out.”
When pressed to clarify if he thought one of the contenders in the election was not a bonafide conservative, Reeves demurred and offered a vague description that one of the candidates has pushed for certain issues over the past decade, though he declined to specify the issue or which candidate he was referring to.
“What that means is we have two candidates that are running,” Reeves said. “We all know the issues that one of the candidates has focused on over the last 10 years. And so, again, I’m focused on my own campaign.”
The comments stirred several top Republicans to speculate if Reeves was tacitly lending support to McDaniel over the incumbent Hosemann in the state’s most watched primary, which could likely decide the ultimate winner of one of the most powerful seats in state government. How Reeves, the first-term governor and de facto state Republican Party leader, views and talks about the down-ballot race could have an impact on GOP voters.
In two separate statements to Mississippi Today on Monday, Elliott Husbands, Reeves’ campaign manager, attempted to clarify Reeves’ remarks but did little to shed light on what the governor actually meant in his remarks to the press.
Husbands said in a Monday morning statement that the governor’s comments about only “a conservative” running in the race were meant to describe McDaniel, further implying the governor believed the Jones County lawmaker to be the only conservative in the race.
But Husbands walked that initial statement back, and said later on Monday evening that Reeves’ remarks about “the issues that one of the candidates has focused on over the last 10 years” were instead meant to describe McDaniel, though he still did not specify which issues the governor was referring to.
After Mississippi Today began to ask the McDaniel and Hosemann campaigns to respond to the governor’s comments early this week, Mississippi GOP Chairman Frank Bordeaux privately stepped in to mend any bruised feelings between the two statewide officials.
Bordeaux told Mississippi Today in an interview on Wednesday that he reached out directly to both Reeves and Hosemann regarding the matter.
“My job as chairman of the party is to make sure that there is unity in our party,” Bordeaux said.
Reeves, according to a statement from Hosemann, also made a personal phone call to Hosemann on Monday night to assure the lieutenant governor that he was not making an endorsement in the race.
Hosemann’s statement to Mississippi Today also pointed out that several pieces of legislation Reeves touted on social media as accomplishments this year are also items that Hosemann advocated for such as infrastructure investments, salary increases for public K-12 educators and financial assistance for Mississippi hospitals.
“The two items the governor did not include were reducing the number of state employees by 2,300 and paying off a half a billion dollars in debt while not borrowing money in the last two years,” Hosemann said. “All of these originated in the Legislature with our leadership and the leadership of the speaker.
“We are grateful for the governor’s endorsement of the direction we have led the state in over the past four years. Conservative leadership producing results.”
After Mississippi Today’s reported on Reeves’ remarks, McDaniel, in a statement accused Hosemann, the current leader of the state Senate, of blocking some of Reeves’ policy proposals over the last four years.
“As Mississippi’s next lieutenant governor, I look forward to working alongside Governor Reeves to pass conservative policy, fight for our values, and ensure Mississippi leads our country back to prosperity and conservative values,” McDaniel said.
The state senator found himself at odds with the GOP establishment when he challenged longtime U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in 2014, and when he challenged Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2018.
McDaniel was even a political foe of Reeves during his two terms as lieutenant governor, at the time often claiming, as he does now with Hosemann, that Reeves was not conservative enough when he ran the state Senate.
“Since ’14, he’s done everything in his power … to make sure my legislation doesn’t see the light of day,” McDaniel said of Reeves in 2014. “If I introduce a bill in a post-’14 environment, the establishment has given the order that if my name is the primary author, to have that bill killed.”
Now, McDaniel and Reeves have mended their relationship, with the longtime legislator even endorsing Reeves’ bid for governor in 2019.
If he is elected to a second term as governor, Reeves will have to work hand in glove with the elected lieutenant governor, who serves as the leader of the state Senate, to get any major policy achievements across the finish line.
But despite the governor and legislative leaders all belonging to the same political party, Reeves at times has had a frosty relationship with the speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor, who sometimes wield more political power than the governor himself.
The Republican primary will take place on Aug. 8 between McDaniel, Hosemann, Tiffany Longino and Shane Quick. If no single candidate wins an outright majority of the votes, a runoff election will take place on Aug. 29.
Editor’s note on 5/17/23: This story has been updated updated to include a statement from Sen. Chris McDaniel, which his campaign emailed hours after the story published. His campaign had not responded to a request for comment before the story published.
With Tyler softballing down in Hattiesburg this week, long-time Mississippi sports writer Billy Watkins joins Rick to discuss about 100 years combined of writing Magnolia State sports. Favorite players, favorite games, favorite interviews are just a few parts of a wide-ranging discussion.
