The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department violated the Mississippi Public Records Act for refusing to give incident reports about the deaths of three men killed by sheriff’s deputies or while in their custody, a Rankin County court ruled last week.
On March 10, the Rankin County Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom ruled the sheriff’s office wrongly withheld requested incident reports by incorrectly claiming they were investigatory reports, which are exempt under the public records law.
“The public has an absolute right to know the who, what, when, and where,” Odom said during the Feb. 16 bench trial. “ … But the day that our law enforcement officers start shielding this information from the public, all the while repeating, ‘Trust us. We’re from the government,’ is the day that should startle all Americans.”
New York-based media company Insider, Inc., represented by the Mississippi Center for Justice, brought a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office in 2022 for refusing to turn over all records even after a reporter paid a fee invoice. Research editor Hannah Beckler asked the records officer to reconsider its denial, but that was denied.
Insider requested records were for the following deaths:
Cory Jackson, died in the sheriff’s office custody on May 15, 2021.
Damien Montrell Cameron, died in the sheriff’s office custody on July 26, 2021.
Shannon Trevor McKinley, shot Aug. 21, 2021.
Robert Rushton, shot Dec. 21, 2021.
“As the Court recognized in this case, public access to public records — particularly law enforcement incident reports — is the law of the land,” Mississippi Center for Justice President and CEO Vangela M. Wade said in a statement. “In Mississippi, we value a functioning democracy above any tradeoffs of obfuscation.”
In its 2022 complaint, Insider asked the court to order the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department to produce the public records and award Insider all costs and expenses, including attorney’s fees.
Odom said in his Feb. 16 bench ruling that the requested documents were later provided to Insider once the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation completed its investigation. As a result, the court denied Insider’s request for expenses, costs and attorney’s fees.
Records are also being sought in another incident involving Rankin County deputies.
In January, Rankin County deputies allegedly raided a Braxton home where they beat and threatened two Black men, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, and shot Jenkins in the mouth, according to Malik Shabazz, the men’s attorneys. Federal authorities have opened a civil rights investigation into the deputies’ actions.
The USGA and the Royal and Ancient, the two governing bodies of golf, want to change the golf ball and thus the game of golf. The modern ball goes too far – at least it does for elite golfers and the powers that be want to scale that back. If that happens, it will reduce the distance that pros and top amateurs can hit the ball. Randy Watkins, a former touring pro and a golf course owner, joins us to talk about what the changes might mean.
The Mississippi State University basketball team slipped out of town to play in the NCAA tournament against Loyola University. Mississippi officials had refused to allow the team to play in any tournament that included integrated teams. This time, the State team took matters into its own hands, defying a state injunction. Dubbed “The Game of Change,” it played a key role in the crumbling of segregation in Mississippi and the South. The Loyola team that defeated Mississippi State went on to win the national championship.
Nearly two weeks after being put on administrative leave, Thomas Hudson has resigned as president of Jackson State University.
According to a Tuesday news release from the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, Commissioner Alfred Rankins has accepted Hudson’s resignation. It will be effective March 31. Hudson will remain on administrative leave, with pay, until then.
A call and text to Hudson’s cell phone was not returned. A JSU spokesperson told Mississippi Today that the university would not be releasing its own statement.
Elayne Hayes-Anthony will continue serving as temporary acting president, according to the release. At a press conference last week, Hayes-Anthony told students, faculty and members of the media that IHL gave her no timetable for the appointment.
“I’m going to be here as long as I’m needed,” she said.
Hayes-Anthony has been over JSU’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies. She told Mississippi Today she would receive the same salary and bonus that Hudson did: A $300,000 annual salary from IHL plus a $5,000 annual bonus from the university foundation.
Hudson is a JSU alum and Jackson resident who was appointed president by the IHL board in November 2020 in the wake of a scandal. Earlier that year, his predecessor, William Bynum Jr., had resigned after he was arrested in a prostitution sting at a Clinton hotel. Bynum had been an unpopular pick for president, and under his tenure, JSU’s enrollment fell faster than any other public university in Mississippi.
Hudson was tasked with stabilizing the university. He had worked at JSU since 2012 in various roles, including Title IX coordinator and chief diversity officer. Under his leadership, the university’s finances appeared to blossom. JSU’s days cash on hand grew from 39 to 115, and annual alumni giving tripled.
“We have saved approximately $5,000,000 by restructuring our debt, cleared all audit findings, and have been removed from (accreditation) financial monitoring,” he wrote in a campus-wide letter on Feb. 10 to celebrate his third year as president.
At the time, Hudson said in a statement he was proud of the work his administration had accomplished and that he was “committed to continuing the work to collaboratively execute the strategic plan to make Jackson State the best institution it can be.”
A group organized by Black Voters Matter on Tuesday called on Mississippi lawmakers to kill House Bill 1020 and other measures they see as a “hostile takeover” of Jackson by state leaders.
“This is ruthlessly racist … a land and power grab by a majority-white Legislature,” said Carol Blackmon, state manager of Black Voters Matter Fund, at a press conference at the state Capitol.
HB 1020, as originally drafted, would create a special judicial district within the city of Jackson with judges appointed instead of elected as they are everywhere else in the state. The original measure, billed as a way to fight crime in Jackson, would create permanent judicial posts appointed by the white chief justice of the state Supreme Court instead of elected by the Black majority population of Jackson.
The original measure would also expand an existing Capital Complex Improvement District patrolled by Capitol Police to cover an area of north Jackson that contains most of the city’s white population.
The Senate recently made major changes to the bill, including making chief justice-appointed judges temporary, through 2026, then adding another permanent elected judge for the Hinds County district that covers Jackson. The Senate also changed it to give Capitol Police jurisdiction throughout the city of Jackson, not just in the CCID.
But those protesting the measure on Tuesday — and most of the city’s legislative delegation — still oppose the Senate amended version. The House has also overhauled a separate Senate bill to include its original CCID Capitol Police expansion.
“Our position is if you have real interest in eliminating crime, then why not provide resources to the city’s official police force, instead of creating an alternate one,” Blackmon said.
Unless the House concurs with Senate changes, a panel of House and Senate negotiators will likely try to hammer out a final version of the bills in the final days of the legislative session.
Wendell Paris, of the Minority People’s Council, likened the legislation to the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, which held the Constitution did not extend citizenship or rights to Americans of African descent. He also said it would “violate the spirit and the letter of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”
“This would create a superstructure that takes away the power of the vote of duly qualified electors,” Paris said. “… Mississippi is one place where we cannot tolerate going back to pre-the Civil War era and violating federal law … It will not stand.”
Wendell and others noted the national attention Mississippi is garnering from the fight over the legislation and warned it could hurt the state economically and “you might not be able to play football in the SEC here.”
Former state Rep. Kathy Sykes of Jackson urged Jacksonians who are not to register to vote or, “this is the kind of thing we get.”
“This (legislation) would have you believe that Black folk cannot govern, and we can,” Sykes said. “… We are asking for help. We are not asking for a takeover … or Jim Crow 2.0.”
Rukia Lumumba, director of the People’s Advocacy Institute and Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s sister, told people and media gathered on the Capitol steps Tuesday a story about a youth she once counseled at summer camp, who later started getting into trouble. A Jackson city police officer was often called about problems with the youth. He knew the girl, knew her family and knew the community well enough to find resources to help her get back on the right path instead of locking her up, Lumumba said. She said an occupying state police force cordoning off parts of the city will not provide such community policing.
“Kill these bills,” she said. “The consequences are not minor.”
In just over two weeks, the state’s Division of Medicaid will begin the daunting process of determining for the first time in three yearswhether hundreds of thousands of low-income Mississippians are still eligible for health coverage.
As a result, Mississippians, adults and children, who have had coverage as the result of a federal pandemic-era policy of continuous enrollment could lose health insurance as soon as July, according to the division.
Mississippi’s Medicaid division will begin examining its roughly 890,000 recipients to determine their eligibility starting April 1. But with a staff vacancy rate of 12% and an onslaught of work, national health care experts and local advocates are worried about eligible children, especially, falling through bureaucratic cracks and losing coverage.
Those who work with Medicaid recipients have a litany of concerns: from the division’s ability to effectively communicate with families known to frequently move to the low rate of automatic electronic renewals the state has done in the past.
“It’s nothing new that parents, once they get over a very low income level, they have no coverage because the state hasn’t expanded Medicaid,” said Joan Alker, the executive director and researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “What is new is we might see thousands of eligible children lose coverage during this process.”
The stakes are high.
Mississippi children in low-income families make up more than half of the state’s overall Medicaid recipients. Some have coverage through Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. During continuous coverage, Medicaid rolls in Mississippi have increased by more than 130,000 people – 80,000 of whom are children.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said as many as 15 million people nationwide could lose Medicaid or CHIP coverage. About 6.8 million people could be disenrolled even though they are still eligible, the department estimates, because of enrollees struggling to navigate the renewal processes, states unable to successfully contact enrollees or other administrative hurdles.
On its end, the state’s Medicaid division said it’s hired 22 new workers in the past week and has 100 contractors to help manage caseloads. The biggest push from the office so far has been asking recipients to ensure their contact information and mailing addresses are up-to-date.
“To raise awareness about redeterminations and the importance for members to update their contact information, (Mississippi Division of Medicaid) launched a Stay Covered campaign in January and invited community partners to sign up to be Coverage Champions,” spokesman Matt Westfield said in a statement. “Our Coverage Champions partners include a diverse mix of health centers and advocacy groups.”
Posts are all over Facebook. Flyers have been shared both online and in-person with scannable codes that link to an online form.
Medicaid coverage is determined by income, but the threshold for children to still qualify in Mississippi is higher than that of their parents and other adults.
Joy Hogge, the director of Families of Allies, a statewide nonprofit that supports children with health challenges, said her office is going to start asking every family who contacts them if they’re aware of the upcoming renewal process.
“We haven’t had families ask questions (on their own),” Hogge said. “So, I don’t know if it’s not reaching them. I’m not sure of what the awareness level is from families being affected.”
So far, Mississippi hasn’t published a detailed unwinding plan. The one document the division was required to upload for the federal government includes a long checklist of measures where the agency could check “already adopted” or “planning or considering to adopt.”
But details of where the state was in the process of adding improvements wasn’t included. That makes it hard to decipher exactly what’s going on, said Garrett Hall, a policy analysis at health advocacy organization Families USA.
Westfield said the state does plan to post a more detailed unwinding plan online once it’s ready. This is something states such as California and Arizona have already done.
Mississippians, for example, don’t have online accounts to easily log in to Medicaid – something 48 other states have, according to KFF. In a tweet earlier this month, Mississippi Division of Medicaid Director Drew Snyder said it was something his office was testing and planned to deploy this year.
Mississippi is taking the full 12 months allowed by the federal government to work through its redetermination process. Arkansas, for example, is planning to do the same process in only six months – something that raises major red flags for health care advocates.
While Hall is glad Mississippi won’t rush through the process in half the time, he does point out that Mississippi doesn’t have a high percentage of “ex parte,” or automatic, renewals. The division told Mississippi Today its automatic renewal rate was 24% before the pandemic – though that’s a rate they expect to go up over the next year.
Hall said states should hit a 50% ex parte rate at minimum.
Using state databases – like of families who qualify for food assistance or individuals receiving unemployment – Medicaid divisions can automatically enroll people they know are still eligible. Hall said it’s the most seamless way to ensure people retain coverage who still qualify.
“No one who is still eligible for coverage should lose it because they are subjected to a confusing and cumbersome renewal process,” Hall said. “Looking at Mississippi’s unwinding plan, they have some steps in the right direction but they need to follow through on some of those further steps.”
Alker worries about whether notices will even reach families. Low-income families are often mobile, and may not know they need to update their address. If the letter does find them, she wonders what the language will be like and if it could be misleading. Alker pointed to a prior instance where Mississippi’s Division of Medicaid shifted enrollees’ coverage without making a public announcement.
“Is it going to be clear that even if a parent loses coverage, their child may still be eligible?” Alker said. “Is there going to be adequate support at the call center to work through the renewal process or questions? Sometimes there are just glitches and delays due to short staffing. All sorts of things can go wrong.”
Westfield said when the Mississippi division begins its redetermination process, it will first focus on auto-renewing benefits using state data systems for electronic verification. If someone can’t be approved this way, they will be mailed a renewal form which they will have 30 days to return to the office.
If the Medicaid division determines someone is no longer qualified, they will receive a notice by mail explaining the decision and how to file an appeal, according to Wesftield. Their information will also be sent to the Health Insurance Marketplace, and they will be notified about their options through the Affordable Care Act.
Michael Minor, the executive director of Oak Hill Regional Community Development Corp., has been working closely with families who qualify for Medicaid or CHIP since 2019. The initiative is called “Healthy Kids MS,” and it aims to keep kids covered and up to date on doctor’s visits.
“We see ourselves as being that unseen, invisible hand there that’s helping folks to work with the system,” Minor said. “It’s a matter of meeting folks where they are.”
That means churches, schools, and doctors offices. Volunteers will even drive forms to Medicaid offices on behalf of families with transportation struggles. Hogge and Minor both said their workers will sit on a phone call to Medicaid with a recipient if that’s the support families need.
Minor and his team of Medicaid navigators are bracing for the surge of questions – but they’re not worried.
‘We’re set up for this,” he said. “And we’re just doing what we normally do.”
A new Mississippi Today/Siena College poll shows Mississippi voters across the spectrum want their right to put issues directly on a statewide ballot restored.
The poll, conducted March 6-8, comes as lawmakers continue to argue mainly about how restrictive these rights should be compared to the Mississippi’s previous ballot initiative process, which the state Supreme Court struck down in a 2021 ruling on medical marijuana.
The poll showed 72% favor reinstating ballot initiative, with 12% opposed and 16% either don’t know or have no opinion. Restoring the right garnered a large majority among Democrats, Republicans, independents and across all demographic, geographic and income lines. Among the wealthiest voters making $100,000-plus a year, support was at 83%.
Editor’s note: Poll methodology and crosstabs can be found at the bottom of this story. Click here to read more about our partnership with Siena College Research Institute.
Many Mississippians were angry when the state’s high court stripped voters of this right in 2021. This was in a ruling on a medical marijuana initiative voters had overwhelmingly passed, taking matters in hand after lawmakers had dallied for years on the issue. Legislative leaders were quick at the time with vows they would restore this right to voters, fix the legal glitches that prompted the Supreme Court to rule it invalid.
But lawmakers could not reach agreement last year on a measure to restore the right, and an effort this year faces an uncertain future as the 2023 legislative session enters its final weeks. The House and Senate have differing versions of the legislation, but both are more restrictive than the process struck down in 2021.
The Senate version would require the signatures of at least 240,000 registered voters to place an issue on a statewide ballot. The House version would require about 106,000, nearer the previous threshold required.
The new poll asked respondents who supported restoration of the ballot initiative whether they supported the higher signature or lower signature threshold. Among respondents, 65% said they wanted the lower threshold of about 106,000 signatures compared to just 26% support for the new proposal of 240,000 signatures.
Opponents of the larger threshold of signatures say that would mean only well-funded, organized interest groups could realistically get a measure on a ballot, not grassroots groups of Mississippians.
Under both proposals, lawmakers by a simple majority vote can change or repeal an initiative approved by voters. The House version would prohibit abortion issues being placed on ballots by citizens.
Under the old process, initiatives passed by voters were enshrined in the state constitution — requiring another statewide vote for changes or repeal. Under both versions now being considered by lawmakers, voters would only be allowed to pass state laws, not constitutional provisions.
Supporters of ballot initiative say voters need a safety valve — a way to bypass the elected Legislature on issues of great importance. Opponents say the process can lead to “mob rules” and democracy should be tempered through legislative representation, protective of minority rights and checked by the judicial and executive branches.
Failure by lawmakers again this year to reinstate the initiative right, or passage of a process voters believe is too restrictive, would likely be an issue in this year’s statewide elections. Both main candidates for governor, incumbent Republican Tate Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, said they support restoring the right to voters.
Siena has been rated as one of the top pollsters in the nation by the FiveThirtyEight Blog, which analyzes pollster data. The poll, conducted on March 6-8 of 764 registered voters, has a margin of error of 4.6%, meaning the results could vary by that margin.
The respondents had a racial breakdown of 57% white voters and 35% African American voters. It also included 35% Republicans, 33% Democrats and 31% independent and other parties. The poll was conducted via cell phones, landlines and “from a proprietary online panel of Mississippians.”
Quincy Jones was born in Chicago. His trumpet play won him a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Time magazine named him one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, and his gift for arranging songs made him sought after as an arranger, a musical director and a producer. He has received a record 79 Grammy nominations, which includes 28 wins.
Jones also showed a talent for scoring films, starting with the 1964 film, The Pawnbroker, breaking through many color barriers. In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
In 1995, he received the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charity work. In 2013, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Two years later, his daughter, Rashida Jones, produced an award-winning documentary that detailed his life from battling poverty on Chicago’s South Side to producing some of the world’s most beloved music.
Fewer Mississippians in mental health crises are stuck waiting in jail cells for a hospital bed each day than they were a year ago, but the state has yet to eliminate the troubling practice completely, according to a new report.
The latest data available shows that from December to mid-January, an average of 23 people in crisis waited for a hospital bed each day. Eight of those waited in jail, despite not being charged with any crime.
Those numbers were much higher not long ago: In the first quarter of this fiscal year, which started in July, an average of 72 people waited for a bed with 24 in a jail cell each day. Similar numbers had been reported for the prior fiscal year.
“The scope of progress is substantial,” wrote Dr. Michael Hogan, the author of a court-mandated biannual report on the state of Mississippi’s mental health system. “But the work is not complete, and some conditions remain that should satisfy no one.”
Hogan’s report comes as the result of a 2016 lawsuit filed against the state by the U.S. Department of Justice. A judge sided with the federal government in 2019, finding the state had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by separating people with mental illness in hospitals from their homes and families. Hogan, a former New York State Commissioner on Mental Health, is now tasked with writing the twice-yearly reports on the state’s compliance with the lawsuit’s consent agreement as a court monitor.
Ultimately, the report found DMH was compliant or in partial compliance with all key issues pointed out in the agreement.
Wendy Bailey, executive director of the Department of Mental Health, speaks to an audience during the Mental Health Meet Up at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, May 26, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“The Mississippi system could fairly be described as the most unbalanced state system in terms of preferences for institutional care in the country,” Hogan wrote, referring to alarming issues in patient care first documented by the DOJ in 2011. “As this report is being written, a decade of attention means this imbalance in care has been substantially addressed.”
Late in 2022, DMH reopened a 30-bed unit at East Mississippi State Hospital that had been closed because of staffing shortages. A closed 20-bed unit at Mississippi State Hospital was reopened in January. The added beds contributed to keeping people with mental illness out of jail cells.
Patient counts that the department supplied to Mississippi Today show the number of people waiting in jail for a state hospital bed has been steadily declining for months.
“This is not a small undertaking and is due to the unwavering dedication of an incredible team of staff at DMH Central Office, the four state hospitals, and community mental health centers who strive daily to improve the state’s system of care,” the department’s executive director, Wendy Bailey, told Mississippi Today in a statement, “and to state leaders and legislators who are supporting and funding the efforts.”
The latest report, the third ever, was published this week and charted much of the Mississippi’s Department of Mental Health’s progress in care access across the state. However, lingering staffing retention troubles, data collection and use, patient outreach and communication issues, and jail stays remain sore points in need of improvement, according to Hogan’s report.
When community mental health centers were created 40 years ago – each with their own designated region – they operated with little oversight from the DMH, which focused on running state hospitals. As a result, statewide mental health care was often disjointed or inconsistent.
Hogan’s report studied discharge documentation to better understand how often patients across the state were getting intervention to lessen the likelihood they hit a severe crisis point again requiring inpatient treatment.
While entering inpatient treatment can help stabilize severe mental illness, it doesn’t cure it, Hogan points out. Follow ups are needed to prevent relapses and readmission. Hogan and his team found that community mental health centers contacted a hospitalized client, while the individual was in the hospital, at a rate of 45%.
He said “lukewarm success” in establishing relationships while people are still hospitalized impacts whether they attend a follow-up appointment after discharge. The overview found that initial visits were completed in 59 of 89 incidents they could track – about 66%. The rate of follow-up and engagement efforts were adequate in 56 of 87 cases they could track – or 64%.
“Some Regions do a good job on some elements and all do a good job some of the time,” Hogan wrote. “But consistency is lacking.”
Workers like peer support specialists who help contact patients after discharge are often paid at or below what a fast food worker can make, Hogan pointed out. The staffing shortages among these roles were higher than that of other vacancies, such as registered nurses and therapists.
Bailey acknowledged the same hardships but hopes average annual salaries for those support staff positions reach $30,000 by fiscal year 2025. The department has asked the Legislature for more funding to help raise wages and improve retention rates.
“We are not only dealing with competition from the private sector, we are dealing with burnout from staff dealing with patients who require 24/7 care who have significant mental and behavioral challenges,” Bailey said in her statement.
Hogan’s first report, issued in March, described Mississippians sometimes waiting weeks in jail for a bed at a state hospital. He also found that some people admitted to state hospitals did not have a serious mental illness – meaning the hospital wasn’t the right place for them and they were occupying a bed that could have been used by someone else.
In his second report, he surveyed North Mississippi State Hospital and community mental health centers in the northern part of the state and did not find patients admitted without a serious mental illness diagnosis.
Bailey said that DMH expects to also see more positive results from people now working as court liaisons who help staff identify community treatment options. The department has also grown programs that provide transitional housing, supported employment and community outreach over the last several years.
Recently the agency began fidelity monitoring, or progress monitoring, of its mobile crisis teams, another positive step Hogan recognized.
“Are there improvements still to be made?” Bailey posed, reflecting on state’s mental health system. “Yes.”
Mississippi voters, by an overwhelming margin, support full funding of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides to local school districts the state’s share of money to pay for their basic needs.
A Siena College/Mississippi Today poll released on Monday found that 79% of respondents — including 91% of Democrats, 73% of Republicans and 77% of independents — support fully funding MAEP, while just 9% are opposed. Eleven percent of respondents are undecided.
The poll was conducted on March 6-8 of 764 registered voters. The poll was conducted soon after the state Senate, in a surprise move, voted unanimously to make a few changes to the MAEP formula and appropriate an additional $181 million to achieve full funding.
Editor’s note: Poll methodology and crosstabs can be found at the bottom of this story. Click here to read more about our partnership with Siena College Research Institute.
If the House and Gov. Tate Reeves agree to the Senate proposal, it will mark the first time the formula, viewed as landmark legislation nationally when it was passed in 1997, has been fully funded since the 2007-08 school year.
Siena asked poll respondents if they support “fully funding, with the addition of about $275 million, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program or MAEP, the formula that sends state money to local schools for basic school needs.” (Note: Mississippi Today commissioned the Siena poll before the Senate released its final additional cost estimate of $181 million — about $94 million less than the $275 million asked of poll respondents.)
The Senate passed legislation, now pending in the House, that would make technical changes, resulting in less than $275 million to provide full funding. Even with the changes to the formula, all 138 school districts, plus charter schools, would receive more funding than they garnered last year and are scheduled to get this year under the budget proposals of the governor and legislative leaders. The formula was underfunded by $273 million last year and was scheduled, to be underfunded by about $275 million for the upcoming year.
The Senate plan would not require any school district to raise taxes to receive the additional funding.
MAEP was approved in 1997 and fully funded in 2003, its first year of full enactment. It also was fully funded in 2007.
According to the Parents’ Campaign, an education advocacy group, MAEP was underfunded by $3.3 billion since 2008. But still, it is generally the largest state expenditure each year. In the 2022 session, the Legislature appropriated $2.1 billion for MAEP.
State Superintendent of Education Robert Taylor said of the possibility of full funding for the local districts: “It would be significant. That (fully funding) means that they now have the resources to put toward things that they haven’t been able to do. We know that proper funding in education is what is going to give any district the capacity to do the work.”
MAEP covers most of the state costs for the basic operation of school districts, ranging from textbooks to utilities to teacher salaries.
Siena has been rated as one of the top pollsters in the nation by the FiveThirtyEight Blog, which analyzes pollster data. The poll has a margin of error of 4.6%, meaning the results could vary by that margin.
The respondents had a racial breakdown of 57% white voters and 35% African American voters. It also included 35% Republicans, 33% Democrats and 31% independent and other parties.
The poll was conducted via cell phones, landlines and “from a proprietary online panel of Mississippians.”
Mississippi Today’s Julia James contributed to this report.
