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HATTIESBURG — Toughness, grit and playing with pain are terms we usually associate with the manly sport of football. Here Thursday, at the Mississippi High School Softball State Championships, is living, limping proof that those terms also can apply to young ladies who play fast-pitch softball.

Meet Hallie Burns, an 18-year-old senior at Booneville High, who pitched and helped hit the Blue Devils to a 7-4 victory over West Marion for a third straight Class 3A State Championship. And, yes, she’s the same Hallie Burns who helped Booneville win a second straight state basketball championship less than three months ago. She’s the same Hallie Burns who has signed a softball scholarship to play for Ole Miss.

Burns now has been the winning pitcher in six straight state championship series games over three years, allowing only two earned runs over 40-plus innings. None of the previous five victories were nearly as difficult — or painful — as the one Thursday when she went six innings despite painful left hip and back injuries that had her literally limping to first base after her two singles she added to the Blue Devils’ cause.

How bad was she hurting?

“It felt like a knife stabbing me in the back,” she said after the Booneville victory celebration.

Burns’ hip and back woes are a long, fairly complicated story that we’ll try to make as short and simple as possible. Pitching softball, the fast-pitch variety, requires much violent twisting and resulting torque of the left hip (for a right-hander, as is Burns). She first experienced fairly serious pain toward the end of her 10th grade season two years ago.

“It doesn’t bother me much when I’m fresh but over the course of a season it wears down,” she said. It probably didn’t help this year when the day after Booneville won the state basketball championship, she was pitching softball.

The usual wear and tear was exacerbated last Saturday night when she slid into second with a double in Booneville’s 4-3, North State Championship victory over Kossuth.

“I jammed my hip,” Burns said. “It was all out of whack.”

She spent Sunday alternating ice baths with back rest. She missed Monday’s practice for a doctor visit. But Tuesday night she pitched the Blue Devils to a 6-1 victory, giving up three nits, no unearned runs and striking out 10 in Game One of the best of three championship series.

On Wednesday, she rested. On Thursday Booneville coach Jessica Taylor asked her, “Can you go?”

“Yes ma’am,” Burns answered, and go she did. The first two innings — actually the first eight outs – were a breeze, and then on the last batter of the third inning (with a no-hitter going), something happened.

“Something in my hip or sacrum slipped,” she said.

The next three innings were pretty much a matter of pain tolerance and no small amount of courage. She didn’t have her best stuff, but she persevered, striking out 11 and giving up just four hits and two earned runs over six innings. She threw 76 pitches, 60 for strikes.

Booneville plated six runs in the sixth inning to take a 7-3 lead. With a 7-4 lead going into the bottom of the seventh, Burns told Taylor, her coach, she should put Olivia Garrett in to pitch the last inning, saying she had little gas left in her tank and that Garrett would give them the best chance to win.

“She sacrificed her last inning pitching,” Taylor said. “How selfless is that?”

But Burns didn’t come out of the game. She shifted to third base. And wouldn’t you know it, with two outs the last West Marion batter hit a two-hopper to Burns at third. She fielded it cleanly and threw a perfect strike to first base, clinching her fifth state championship godmedal (two basketball, three softball).

Over five softball seasons, she has achieved a pitching record of 71-10, striking out a whopping 1,062 batters. 

When a sports writer half-jokingly suggested that she should spend the next month doing nothing but resting she laughed and replied, “Right now, that sounds pretty good.”

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The ACLU has sued the Harrison County School District over its refusal to allow a transgender student to wear a dress to her graduation ceremony. 

The student, referred to as L.B. in the ACLU press release, has been openly transgender for her entire high school career and her gender is known by classmates and teachers at Harrison Central High School, according to court documents. The complaint also says that throughout her high school career, she has “frequently and consistently worn dresses, skirts, and traditionally feminine clothing items and accessories to school and school-sponsored events and activities, without issue or repercussion.” 

Last week, Harrison Central High School Principal Kelly Fuller called L.B. to the office to inquire what she was planning to wear to graduation, according to the complaint. Upon being told that L.B. planned to wear a dress, Fuller replied that she could not do this and would need to wear what the boys were wearing, adding that this conversation was prompted by Harrison County Superintendent Mitchell King calling the school and asking what transgender students would wear to graduation.

“My graduation is supposed to be a moment of pride and celebration and school officials want to turn it into a moment of humiliation and shame,” said L.B. in an ACLU press release. “The clothing I’ve chosen is fully appropriate for the ceremony and the superintendent’s objections to it are entirely unfair to myself, my family, and all transgender students like me. I have the right to celebrate my graduation as who I am, not who anyone else wants me to be.” 

In a conversation between King and L.B.’s mother Samantha Brown, it was communicated that if L.B. wore a dress to the ceremony, she would not be allowed to participate. 

The lawsuit alleges gender discrimination as a violation of constitutional rights and federal law, specifically Title IX, the First Amendment’s freedom of expression clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The temporary restraining order asks the court to prohibit the district from taking action for alleged noncompliance with its graduation dress code policies. 

The Harrison County School District did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

According to the press release, the district has not taken any action to check the planned outfits of any other students. 

The Harrison Central High School graduation is scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at 6:30 p.m. 

The post ACLU challenges school district’s dress code for trans youth in graduation ceremony appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Another health care facility in Mississippi is in danger of shutting its doors. 

KPC Promise Hospital in Vicksburg, a 35-bed long-term care facility, has leased space at Merit Health River Region’s main campus since 2018. But that lease is being terminated, as first reported by WJTV.

The hospital was behind on rent by $1 million as of January, said Dr. Torrance Green, KPC Promise’s medical director and a nephrologist. However, there was a pay schedule in place to bring the rent current, he said. 

Since that January resolution, KPC Promise sent two checks to Merit in April and May, totaling $526,694 and paying off half of their debt, hospital officials said.

On the same day the last check was sent, the hospital got a notice from Merit demanding they vacate the premises by June 8, Green said. 

“We were kind of taking care of things, and then we get this,” he said. “It’s very disappointing because we had finally stabilized ourselves and finances.”

While Merit marketing director Alicia Carpenter confirmed that Merit plans to terminate the lease, she did not address the claim that half of the debt had been paid by publication time. 

“KPC Promise Hospital, which has been leasing space on the hospital’s 6th floor, has been unable to fulfill its contractual obligations for more than a year,” she said in a statement. ”Prior to terminating the lease, we worked with KPC Promise for several months toward a mutually agreeable resolution.”

Carpenter’s statement to Mississippi Today said that Merit’s team will help identify facilities for affected patients who need long-term care, but their statement to WAPT said patients could be admitted at “two long-term care facilities in Jackson.” She did not answer questions about which two facilities those were. 

The hospital’s status being in flux is already having an impact. At the time of the notice, Green said the hospital was serving a significant number of patients and had to start turning others away, forcing them to travel as far as Jackson for care. 

“The biggest question for us is whether or not Merit is really invested in our community in a way that they want to maintain service,” Green said. “We saw what happened to Jackson and to the whole state of Mississippi when they called the burn unit … and here they are now, again, making decisions to curtail services. Where’s the accountability?”

Merit Health Central, citing challenges related to staffing and the pandemic, closed the state’s only burn center in October. The hospital reduced many of its services and moved others out of South Jackson to its facilities in the suburbs. The move left the state — and Mississippians who need burn care — scrambling to find another facility. 

“The effects on the families and the community gets kind of lost,” Green said. “I think that what is sinister here is a repeated pattern.”

Merit Health, which operates nine facilities in Mississippi, is owned by Nashville-based Community Health Partners. 

KPC Promise CEO Kerry Goff released a statement Thursday about the eviction notice. Goff took the helm of the hospital four months ago. 

“We were completely shocked, dismayed, and blindsided by this development because Merit Health had previously agreed to a payment schedule for past rent,” he said. “Given the agreement that was in place and recent payments that had been made in good faith, this action appears to be nothing more than a profit-motivated money grab at the expense of important healthcare services our community depends on.”

Goff continued to say the hospital is looking into legal options and would do what it could to stay open.

Green said they’re hopeful they can come to a new agreement with Merit or that Merit will decide to honor the already-existing one. Otherwise, he’s not sure what’ll happen to the hospital and said it would be difficult to find another suitable space in Vicksburg or nearby that Merit doesn’t already own.  

KPC Promise is the latest hospital showing signs of financial distress. Alliance Hospital in Holly Springs ended inpatient care weeks ago in an effort to keep its doors open, and Memorial Hospital in Gulfport announced layoffs this month. Ochsner Health System, which operates dozens of hospitals and clinics in Mississippi, last week slashed nearly 2% of its workforce. 

Other hospital systems, particularly those in the Delta, are reducing services to stay open. 

One report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform puts a third of Mississippi’s rural hospitals at risk of closure, and half of those at risk of closing within a couple of years. 

Following the news that the hospital could be forced to close, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley released a statement Wednesday placing the fault of the hospital crisis on incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

Reeves has adamantly opposed expanding Medicaid, which research shows would bring in millions to Mississippi’s struggling hospitals. 

“When Tate Reeves finally wakes up and realizes another hospital in this state has closed, he will only have himself to blame,” he said in a statement. “This healthcare crisis lies squarely at the feet of Tate Reeves, who has blocked Medicaid expansion, which has left hospitals across Mississippi scrambling to keep their lights on and 220,000 Mississippians without life-saving healthcare.”

Spokespeople for Reeves did not reply to requests for comment. 

Kate Royals contributed to this report. 

The post ‘Where’s the accountability?’ Merit Health to evict Vicksburg hospital appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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. 

The initial passing rate has hovered around 75% since the Legislature raised the passing threshold from a two to a three on the exam. 

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. 

The post Third graders score above pre-pandemic levels in state reading test appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.

READ MORE: Kent Nicaud hosts in-person fundraiser for Gov. Tate Reeves during major COVID-19 spike

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.”

READ MORE: They wrote campaign checks to Tate Reeves. Then he appointed them to powerful ed boards.

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 post He wrote Tate Reeves a $25,000 check. Three weeks later, Reeves appointed him to the Gaming Commission. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.”

The post Former Blue Cross executive takes helm of UMMC finances appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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 the chancellor position at 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 overlapped in 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 post Former Alcorn State President Felecia Nave was terminated, IHL minutes show  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

MAY 18, 1896

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.”

The post On this day in 1896 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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