Joe Burrow has deep roots (and quite the gene pool) in Amory, Mississippi
Joe Burrow, the superb Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, inherited much of his remarkable athletic ability from a northeast Mississippi gene pool on his father’s side of the family.
His dad, Amory native Jimmy Burrow, was an all-star safety on a Nebraska national championship team after walking on at Ole Miss and then transferring to the Cornhuskers. His uncle, Johnny Burrow, was a starting safety at Ole Miss. His grandfather, James, was the starting point guard for Mississippi State basketball in the early 1950s.
That’s a lot, but that’s not all. His grandmother, Dot Burrow (the former Dot Ford) once scored a state record 82 points in a high school basketball game for Smithville, six miles up the road from Amory, and averaged 49.5 points a game for an entire 30-game season.
In fact, when someone mentioned that Kobe Bryant once scored 81 points in a game for the Los Angeles Lakers, Joe Burrow quipped, “Yeah, but Kobe’s still one short of my grandma.”
Late Sunday afternoon, James Burrow, 92, and Dot Burrow, 91, will watch the grandson they still call “Joey” and the Bengals take on the Kansas City Chiefs from their living room in Amory, where they watch all his games.
“Joey has told us he’ll send a jet to fly us to the games,” James Burrow said Tuesday by telephone. “I told him, ‘But, Joey, we’re too old to do all that walking, especially up all those steps.’ So Joey said we wouldn’t have to walk and that we can take an elevator up to his private suite. The truth is, we’d just rather watch here. That’s a lot of travel when you’re our age.”
Both of Joe Burrow’s paternal grandparents were fine athletes in their day — as James puts it, “back in the dark ages.” James Burrow walked on at Mississippi State and became a two-year basketball starter at point guard for Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Paul Gregory. He averaged 10 points per game, third highest on the team, as a senior. But James will be the first to tell you his high school sweetheart, Dot, was the better basketball player.
“When I was at State, I told all my teammates about my girlfriend back in Smithville who was averaging 50 points a game,” James Burrow said. “Nobody believed me, so I took a couple of them to a game when Smithville played near Starkville in Hamilton. Well, she scored 72 that night.”
A few nights later, nearly the entire State team went to nearby Caledonia to watch the amazing Dot Ford. “That was the night she scored 82, breaking her own state record,” James Burrow said.
Asked whether he ever played his future wife in a game of H-O-R-S-E, James Burrow chuckled and answered, “Oh no, I didn’t want to mess with her.”
Years later, James Burrow was involved in Mississippi sports history in another way. He was the Amory schools administrator who hired high school football coaching legend Bobby Hall as the head football coach at Amory High.
“When he interviewed, I warned him, ‘Bobby, our cupboard is bare. You might not win a game,’” James Burrow recalled. “Bobby said, ‘If you hire me I guarantee you we’ll win more than we lose.’ Well, he won seven that first year.”
Three Amory state championships followed. Bobby Hall went on to win 309 games as a coach. Yes, and when Southern Miss head coach Will Hall (Bobby’s son) attended his first day of school in kindergarten in Amory, Dot Burrow drove the yellow school bus that delivered him to his dad’s football practice that afternoon.
“The Burrows are salt of the earth, good as gold,” Bobby Hall said.
James and Dot Burrow haven’t always been too old to travel to watch grandson Joey play. During summers, they would travel to Athens, Ohio, and watch him play Little League baseball and summer league basketball. Said James, “Joey could hit the baseball a mile and field every position. In basketball, he could shoot it from anywhere on the court. He played varsity in the ninth grade. He played varsity in the ninth grade in football, too, both offense and defense, but when they went to the spread offense in his 10th grade season, he really took off.”
Most football fans know the rest of the Joe Burrow story. He was the Ohio Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior and signed with Ohio State. He transferred to LSU in 2018 and led the Tigers to the national championship and a 15-0 record in 2019, throwing for seven touchdowns in a semifinal victory over Oklahoma and six touchdowns in the national championship game against Clemson. That’s perhaps the equivalent of scoring 82 points in a 32-minute high school basketball game.
That 2019 season, Burrow threw for 60 touchdowns, while throwing just six interceptions. Said Archie Manning, who knows the Burrow family well, “I really believe that’s the best season any quarterback ever had and probably ever will have.”
It is difficult to imagine a better one. Naturally, Joe Burrow was the first pick of the 2020 NFL Draft. Through three NFL seasons, Joe Burrow has thrown for nearly 12,000 yards and 82 touchdowns. When the situation calls for it, he runs for crucial first downs as well. His original NFL contract called for $36 million over four years, but he becomes eligible for a contract extension this off-season. The Bengals would be fools not to act on it. They will need a calculator with fresh batteries.
Needy children in Ohio and Louisiana will surely benefit, as they already have. The Joe Burrow Foundation, founded just last fall, has already donated $200,000 toward helping children facing food insecurity and mental health issues.
Said James Burrow of his grandson’s passion for helping children who desperately need help, “We’re proud of Joey for a lot of reasons, especially that.”
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‘The state threw them to the wolves’: Health Department struggles to manage massive medical marijuana program
Behind closed doors, Mississippi’s eight-person medical cannabis office is struggling against its workload.
The Health Department office charged by the Legislature with running Mississippi’s new medical marijuana program is steeped in disorganization: agents rarely visit cultivation sites, application backlogs reach hundreds deep, and lags in communication with licensees often stretch on for weeks, a Mississippi Today investigation found.
Business owners feel frustrated, unheard and worried that the millions of dollars they invested — and the tens of thousands they paid in fees to the state — could go up in smoke.
“The state threw them to the wolves,” cultivator Joel Harper said of the fledgling marijuana office. “They should have paid the money to bring in professionals, even a third-party consultant. Instead, they’re sending people out into the cannabis world who have no idea about anything cannabis.”
At the center is a handful of workers, tasked with unrolling a massive program without enough staffing to operate efficiently. Cultivators say when they do hear back from the office, the messages are incomplete or inconsistent – especially when it comes to how they construct their farming facilities.
And that’s if they hear back at all. The office already has mountains of unprocessed paperwork.
As of the second week of January, 277 work permit applications sat in a queue waiting to be processed, according to copies of the office’s records obtained by Mississippi Today. Could-be cannabis workers can’t start their jobs without permits. Another 995 patients had yet to to be told whether or not they’ve been approved for their dispensary cards.
Three dozen businesses had their own applications stuck, along with almost 40 other medical practitioners, the records show.
In a statement to Mississippi Today, Department of Health spokesperson Liz Sharlot acknowledged the backlogs.
“We are working with the MMCP (Mississippi Medical Cannabis Program) licensing director and the team on how to put more efficient processes in place,” she said.
Even when the office hired new workers – growing from four to eight in recent months – little was done to train them on the law and the industry, an employee of the health department told Mississippi Today. The employee spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of repercussions.
The Health Department said in October, when Mississippi Today first reported the backlogs, it was working to fill 25 more positions. That has yet to happen.
The Health Department worker said much of the disorganization stems from the office’s former director Kris Jones Adcock.
The Health Department did not answer questions related to plans to increase staffing levels or what medical marijuana-related training their current staffers received.
“The people of Mississippi deserve better,” the worker said.
During one five-week period, Adcock held three jobs simultaneously within the health department: the cannabis role, the head of a domestic violence office, and a promotion to a department-wide role as assistant senior deputy.
The Health Department didn’t respond to questions about the effects managing three positions may have had on her ability to run the cannabis office. Adcock now holds only one department-wide role: assistant senior deputy to the senior deputy.
Adcock announced two weeks ago that the office’s attorney, Laura Goodson, would be the acting director.
The Health Department employee also said Adcock set a tone of rushed processes and absentee leadership that has left the marijuana office in clean-up mode.
“There was no due diligence on some of the applications,” the worker said. “Some of it was her knee-jerk reaction to get stuff out the door after it (the backlog) built up. Instead of an orderly process, it was just rushed.”
Emails obtained by Mississippi Today show that it wasn’t just cultivators struggling to hear back. The head of a lab testing facility also expressed frustration.
“The complete lack of communication is just not feasible any longer,” Rapid Analytics director Jeff Keller wrote to Adcock on Dec. 16. “I am begging you to please just name the time on Monday and I will make it work.”
A month later, one of Keller’s employees sent his own desperate plea to the office.
“I’m trying to find out when I’ll be able to start working there,” he wrote about his job at the lab. “My background check was cleared on December 15th … I’ve left multiple messages but have not received a response.”
The CEO of test facility Steep Hill, Cliff Osbon, sent his own email on Jan. 13 on behalf of four employees who still needed their work permits so they could begin work and the lab could start testing marijuana.
Neither testing lab responded to Mississippi Today’s request for a comment.
Zack Wilson, a micro-grower in Potts Camp, said he had a worker waiting more than two weeks on a work permit.
“You send an email. Wait two weeks. Email again,” Wilson said. “You just sit and wait. I know they’re short staffed, but come on guys.”
Cultivators say unanswered questions have led to a murky-at-best understanding of how some of the regulations are being interpreted and enforced.
That’s bubbled up with the use of so-called “adapted greenhouses,” putting already competitive cultivators more at odds. The regulations call for no outdoor growing, a solid roof, permanent walls and slab foundations.
In the early days after the law was passed, Harper, the head of Como-based Pharm Grown Canna Co., said officials made it clear to industry hopefuls that greenhouses would not be approved as growing facilities. So he, like many others, invested money in renovating a large warehouse that would rely on artificial lights.
In the last few months, he’s noticed much cheaper greenhouse-style structures popping up with the health department’s approval.
Harper and others who followed the bill’s creation closely say greenhouses go against the spirit of what legislators intended.
The debate comes down to word definitions that aren’t spelled out in the law itself. If the bill doesn’t allow any “outdoor” growing, that should mean the structure can’t utilize the sun, some argue. The greenhouses have clear-plastic roofs to use a mix of sun and artificial light. If the facility needs to have a solid and secure roof, clear plastic shouldn’t be permitted, according to some interpretations.
Cultivators like Wilson don’t see it that way.
“The roof certainly isn’t made of liquid or gas,” he said. “Plastic is a solid.”
Wilson said his site plan, including the materials he was using, were all approved by the health department when he handed in his application. He was given his cultivation license in August, according to public records.
Another cultivator, Jason McDonald, is building his own greenhouse under the company name SADUJA. He received his license on Dec. 22. He said his roof is two layers of clear plastic. He has screened-in shutter windows, a cement foundation and plumbing. McDonald runs a tea farm. He’s used to meeting regulations and dealing with bureaucracy and hopes to start growing marijuana by the end of the month.
Mississippi Today also obtained documents Adcock signed off on the site plan, including a hand-drawing where the facility was labeled “greenhouse.”
“I emailed them and asked: ‘Will this greenhouse we’re planning to build meet regs?” McDonald recalled. “They came back and said: ‘you need to read the regulations’ so, I quoted the regulations and said ‘what’s the ruling on this?’ and they said ‘you need to read the regulations.’ I added the specific subsection, and then never got an answer back.”
The word greenhouse, he said, can summon something different depending on the cultivator. He, like others, agrees Mockingbird Cannabis should have been cited for its greenhouse that was under scrutiny in the fall because it had roll-up sides, not permanent walls.
Mockingbird also built a massive state-of-the-art warehouse as its main cultivation site.
“I will tell you we haven’t done anything we didn’t disclose to the Department of Health and in our application,” Mockingbird CEO Clint Patterson told Mississippi Today in October.
Harper and other warehouse operators don’t blame the small businesses for building greenhouses — they’re cheaper to construct and run, leading to significantly higher profit margins. They blame the state for approving them.
“We want them to succeed,” Harper said of greenhouse growers. “We just want them to do it in the way everybody else had to.”
The leading authors behind the bill that created the medical marijuana program could not be reached by Mississippi Today after repeated requests for comment. Rep. Lee Yancey said in the fall that it was the health department’s job to interpret the rules, and if the statutes were not clear enough, it would be addressed in the Legislature.
Sharlot, the Health Department spokesperson, said it did not approve a model for greenhouses and pointed to the “regulations that specify the physical requirements for a cultivation facility.”
“The MSDH met and continues to meet its statutory requirements as it did with the aggressive timelines in creating the MMCP,” she said.
On Jan. 11, Adcock brought her recommended changes to cannabis regulations before the Board of Health hoping for the members’ swift approval.
Public commenting regarding updates to the regulations were open for less than a week, ending the day before Christmas Eve. It got about 150 comments, Adcock told the board.
The end result was a thick stack of paper delivered to each board member fewer than two days before the meeting.
“To get 1,000 pages, less than 48 hours before our meeting, it’s almost impossible to review to know what we’re really doing,” said Jim Perry, the head of the board’s cannabis committee.
Adcock’s proposed changes covered everything from batch sizes for testing to whether a cultivation license could cover more than one growing space under a single license.
During the meeting, Perry said he wasn’t comfortable with passing changes without time to review them and ask questions. State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney apologized to the board for the ream of paper and the lack of notice. He promised it wouldn’t happen again.
“Cannabis is special and unique and needs to be heavily vetted,” Edney said at the meeting.
Adcock went over some of the regulation changes she said were the most “emergent,” but ultimately the board chose not to act on most of them.
Following the meeting, Perry told a Mississippi Today reporter the committee process was created so “we can hear from people and be able to make well-informed and not rushed decisions.”
A committee meeting about the regulations has been scheduled for Jan. 26 at 3 p.m.
With the constant flood of applicants, strapped-for-time staffers aren’t making regular site visits, according to cultivators and those with inside knowledge of the office. That means growers can get their provisional four-month licenses extended, begin growing, finish batches and have them tested and sent to market without having ever met an agent in person.
Onsite visits are required for a renewal of a license, but not for moving a provisional license to a permanent one, according to the health department. When asked about the frequency of agent visits, Sharlot emphasized that the office is remotely monitoring all cultivators with the seed-to-sale tracking program.
Meanwhile, the 163 licensed dispensaries are eyeing the number of patients – Sharlot said 1,732 as of Monday – who have licenses to purchase medical cannabis. They’re worried it won’t be enough to sustain a business after months paying rent without revenue.
The Department of Health worker who spoke to Mississippi Today said whenever they make a dent in the patient queue, it doesn’t take long to climb back over 1,000.
The health department says it has licensed a total of 73 cultivators; 12 processors; four waste disposal companies; nine transportation companies; three testing labs; 151 medical practitioners; and 975 workers with permits.
It’s a constant battle to keep up.
Correction 1-26-2023: A previous version of this story stated the Board of Health did not approve any regulations for the medical cannabis program at its Jan. 11 meeting. The story has been updated to reflect some regulations were approved.
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Bills to watch in the 2023 Mississippi legislative session
Editor’s note: This list will be updated throughout the legislative session.
About 3,000 bills have been filed in the Mississippi Legislature to be considered during the 2023 session. Last week was the deadline for legislators to file general bills.
The deadline, though, does not apply to revenue and appropriations bills that face a February deadline.
Ballot initiative
Senate Concurrent Resolution 517, authored by Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, and House Concurrent Resolution 26, authored by Rep. Tracy Rosebud, D-Tutwiler, are among multiple bills filed to revive the state’s initiative process where voters can bypass the Legislature and place issues on the ballot for the electorate to decide. The state Supreme Court rendered the state’s initiative process unconstitutional in 2020 on a technicality and the legislative leadership has vowed to renew it. But that did not occur in the 2021 session.
Medicaid expansion
Senate Bill 2070, authored by Sen. Angela Turner Ford, D-West Point, and House Bill 108, authored by Rep. Bryant Clark, D-Pickens, are among multiple bills filed to expand Medicaid coverage as is allowed under federal law to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor. Under the proposal, the federal government would pay the bulk of the costs.
Postpartum coverage
Senate Bill 2212, authored by Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaen, and House Bill 426, authored by Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, are among multiple bills filed to extend Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months for mothers after giving birth.
Health care & hospital crisis
Senate Bill 2371, Senate Bill 2372, Senate Bill 2373 and Senate Bill 2323, authored by Senate leaders with support from Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, are aimed at helping Mississippi’s struggling hospitals and shoring up the health care workforce. The bills would spend a combined $111 million of the state’s federal pandemic relief money. This includes $80 million in grants to hospitals based on their number of beds and type of care, a nursing student loan repayment program, grants to help community colleges beef up their nursing programs. Senate Bill 2323 would eliminate legal barriers to consolidation of or collaboration among hospitals.
Senate Bill 2793 and House Bill 1081 would create licensure and regulation — by a new board — for midwives in Mississippi. Currently, midwifery is not regulated in Mississippi as it is in 36 other states, meaning anyone here can claim to be a midwife without formal training or certification. More than half of Mississippi counties are considered “maternity care deserts,” with no hospitals practicing obstetric care, no OB-GYNs and no certified nurse midwives. Advocates say midwives could help in these areas. But many physicians groups say child delivery should be overseen by trained physicians.
Burn center
House Bill 469, authored by House Speaker Philip Gunn, would provide $12 million for Mississippi Baptist Medical Center to create a burn center or unit at the hospital in 2024. The state’s only accredited burn center closed last year, but recently the University of Mississippi Medical Center announced it will increase its burn treatment capabilities.
Welfare agency reform
House Bill 184 and House Bill 188, authored by Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, would establish a board to oversee Department of Human Services, taking the agency out of the sole oversight of the governor’s office. House Bill 1054, filed by Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, would require legislative watchdog PEER to evaluate TANF subgrants. Senate Bill 2331, filed by Sen. Rod Hickman, D-Macon, would remove the child support cooperation requirement for TANF and SNAP beneficiaries.
Felony suffrage
Senate Bill 2405, authored by Sen. Sollie Norwood, D-Jackson, and House Bill 1247, authored by Rep. William Tracy Arnold, R-Booneville, are among multiple bills filed to change the state Constitution to allow people convicted of felonies to regain their voting rights at some point after finishing their sentence.
Elections & voting
Senate Bill 2299, authored by Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, would establish a mechanism for voters to recall state and local officials, including legislators.
House Bill 370, authored by Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, would establish a mechanism for voters to recall municipal officials.
Government accountability
Senate Bill 2667, authored by Sen. Jason Barrett, R-Brookhaven, with multiple co-sponsors, would reiterate that the open meetings law covers the Mississippi Legislature. The bill is a response to a controversial 2022 ruling by the state Ethics Commission saying the Legislature is not covered by the open meetings law. The bill also increases the fine for violations of the open records law from $100 to $500.
Gender procedures ban
House Bill 1125, the “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures Act,” is similar to measures passed or debated in other states and was authored by Rep. Gene Newman, a Republican from Pearl. The bill, passed on a partisan 78-28 vote by the full House early in the session, would ban gender affirming surgery and drugs for Mississippians 18 and under.
Taxes
House Bill 418, authored by Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, and co-sponsored by others, would eliminate the sales tax on most grocery items.
The deadline to file tax bills is not until Feb. 22, so most likely others will be filed.
Education
House Bill 294, authored by Carolyn Crawford, R-Pass Christian, would prohibit public schools and universities from imposing mask mandates.
Senate Bill 2079, authored by Angela Hill, R-Picayune, would create the Mississippi School Protection Act and authorize that schools could designate personnel with gun permits, to be armed.
House Bill 112, authored by Bryant Clark, D-Pickens, would create the Mississippi Universal Preschool Act.
House Bill 595, authored by Bo. Brown, D-Jackson, would authorize the Department of Education to create curriculum for African American studies and racial diversity.
House Bill 1070, authored by Lee Yancey, R-Brandon., would create grants for schools to teach patriotic education.
Law enforcement
House Bill 1020, authored by Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, creates a separate judicial district within the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which is an area around downtown Jackson where many of the state-owned buildings are located. The judges, who would hear civil and criminal cases, would be paid equivalent to chancery and circuit judges, but would be appointed by the Supreme Court chief justice instead of elected like other judges in state.
House Bill 1222, authored by Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany with other co-sponsors, would make a number of changes to state mental health policies, including requiring law enforcement agencies to offer “first aid mental health training.” It would appoint court liaisons to work with families in counties where more than 20 people are involuntarily committed each year, require chancery clerks to keep more detailed records on civil commitments, and aim to reduce delays in conducting screenings of people being civilly committed. Under the bill, community mental health centers would be required to hire an accountant and conduct regular audits. It would also change the composition of the board of mental health to include more subject matter experts and at least one sheriff and reduce board members’ term lengths.
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Democrats, not Republicans, seek to reform Mississippi welfare agency in wake of embezzlement scandal
Several bills filed by House and Senate Democrats would reform the state’s welfare agency, which remains plagued in scandal and criticism after it squandered at least $77 million in federal welfare funds.
The Mississippi welfare scandal, which has received broad scrutiny by Mississippi Today and news outlets across the nation, has ensnared several high-profile Republicans in the state.
The known misspending occurred over a period of several years in part because of lax reporting standards and requirements at the state and federal levels. Leaders of the Department of Human Services and politically powerful individuals who misspent the federal funds from 2016 to 2020 often did so within the bounds of existing state and federal regulations.
No Republican lawmaker has called for a hearing or filed a bill to reform the agency’s spending based on the legal and journalistic revelations of the scandal.
“How, after two full years, is a system that allowed this kind of wrongdoing to run rampant still without a plan to prevent it from happening again?” said Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez who filed a bill that would require a legislative watchdog to regularly probe the welfare agency’s spending of federal grants and subgrants. “Since that information came to light, our Republican colleagues have held no hearings and made no attempt to get to the bottom of how this could have happened and how we could prevent it from happening again.”
Here are the bills filed this session — all authored by Democrats — that would implement spending safeguards, prioritize the needs of low-income families, or create methods to regularly track how the agency spends its federal funds.
- House Bill 184 & House Bill 188: Create a board to oversee Department of Human Services, taking the agency out of the sole oversight of the governor’s office
- House Bill 463: Use the first $40 million of Mississippi’s $86.5 million TANF grant on child care
- House Bill 502: Increase the monthly cash benefit amount of TANF
- House Bill 613: Limit TANF grants to serve people below 200% of the federal poverty line
- House Bill 774 & Senate Bill 2794: Transfer 30% of TANF funds to supplement the Child Care Development Fund, the block grant that provides child care vouchers to working parents
- House Bill 971: Loosen eligibility for TANF applicants, including removing up front job search
- House Bill 1054: Require legislative watchdog PEER to evaluate TANF subgrants
- Senate Bill 2331: Remove the child support cooperation requirement for TANF and SNAP beneficiaries
- Senate Bill 2806: Remove drug testing requirement for TANF recipients
Republican Sen. Melanie Sojourner of Natchez filed several bills that would increase restrictions on who can receive TANF and other welfare benefits, though these bills do not address the misspending allegations of the broader scandal. Those bills include Senate Bill 2804, which would prohibit TANF funds from going to people convicted of several felonies, and Senate Bill 2776, which would require TANF recipients to participate in community service programs.
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Mississippi charters receive $600k in federal grant funding
Mississippi charter schools received $600,000 in grant funding from the federal government to use on technology and general supplies, the Charter School Authorizer Board announced Monday.
The money comes from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, passed by Congress in December of last year, through a community project grant. In a press release, the authorizer board said the funding is the result of collaboration between the board and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the authorizer board, said she was approached by Hyde-Smith’s office to submit a proposal for congressional funding.
“At the congressional level we have a lot of support,” Karmacharya said. “They’re always looking to see what they can do to help us, which in turn helps all the schools.”
Charter schools are free public schools that do not report to a school board like traditional public schools. Instead, they are governed by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board. They have more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction, and are funded by local school districts based on enrollment. There are currently 10 charter schools approved to operate in Mississippi.
Eligible schools are ones that added a grade in the 2022-23 school year, Karmacharya said. The funding will be divided into $150,000 grants to four schools.
The schools receiving this funding are:
- Ambition Preparatory Charter School (K-4, Jackson)
- Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School (K-6, Clarksdale)
- Leflore Legacy Academy (6-8, Greenwood)
- Midtown Public Charter School (4-8, Jackson)
Schools will learn more about the grant’s spending rules at a webinar later this month, but are generally authorized to use them for supplies and technology needs.
Amanda Johnson, executive director of Clarksdale Collegiate Public, said shehopes to use the funding for classroom furniture and supplies as the school expands into offering seventh grade next year.
Leflore Legacy Academy hopes to use the grant to update some chromebooks and purchase technology for its app-building and robotics classes, among others.
“It was great to learn that politicians, the U.S. Department of Education, and even our local Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board office are really looking into opportunities to fiscally support charter schools,” said Leflore Legacy Executive Director Tamala Boyd Shaw.
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Anna Wolfe to discuss welfare scandal at Delta State University
In a free event open to the public, investigative reporter Anna Wolfe will discuss her reporting on the Mississippi welfare scandal.
Delta State University’s event featuring Wolfe will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31 in Jobe Hall Auditorium.
Wolfe’s series The Backchannel gained national attention in 2022 when she revealed text messages and emails between key players of the welfare scandal, including former NFL player Brett Favre and Gov. Phil Bryant.
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Will Baptist and UMMC battle over burn care?
The University of Mississippi Medical Center and Mississippi Baptist Medical Center are vying to run a burn center in Mississippi — and both are seeking lawmakers’ help to establish them.
Dr. Derek Culnan, the former medical director of the now-closed JMS Burn and Reconstruction Center at Merit Health Central in Jackson, said Merit gave him 30 days’ notice that the hospital would shut down the center because of financial strains brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and recruitment challenges. Culnan continued caring for existing patients and started talking to hospitals about how to open a new center — and fast.
“This is a state that has a need for this service, and I wasn’t going to quit on the people just because it was hard,” Culnan said.
The burn center at Merit Health Central — which was the only accredited center in the state — saw around 600 to 800 patients a month, according to employees who worked there.
Culnan, who completed a fellowship in burn surgery where he worked with adults and children at the University of Texas, struck a deal with Baptist in Jackson and got privileges at the hospital. When he was admitted to the staff, he began taking care of patients immediately, he said.
“We’re not working at the scale we were working on at Merit quite yet, but I’m operating on somebody essentially every day,” he said.
Culnan, who says he is one of about 250 specially trained burn surgeons in the United States, also performed complex hand surgeries at the former center, which was the only hand replantation center in the state. Replantation is the surgical reattachment of a finger or hand.
Culnan’s operation has the backing of House Speaker Philip Gunn, who penned a bill that would award $12 million in one-time money to establish a burn center at Baptist.
Gunn said he was approached by Baptist and believes Mississippi needs a burn center, regardless of who runs it.
“It will all be worked out. There are a lot of different ways to go about that,” he said.
Officials with Baptist said to move forward with a burn center, they must acquire specialized equipment and additional intensive care capacity. Culnan is currently operating in standard operating rooms.
“As a result, we have reached out to our elected officials and shared that we are willing and capable of operating this service if we were successful in receiving one-time financial support for some of these costs,” said Bobbie Ware, chief executive officer of Mississippi Baptist Medical Center.
The hospital has not yet submitted its application for accreditation to the state Department of Health, a spokesperson said.
But at the same time, UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center, has been in pursuit of a burn center — despite a history of walking away from the opportunity.
After the burn center in Greenville closed in 2005, state lawmakers in 2006 approached then-vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center Dr. Dan Jones about establishing a burn center at UMMC. Jones told Mississippi Today he asked lawmakers for a yearly commitment to help UMMC run the program, but lawmakers only offered one-time money.
UMMC walked away, citing financial constraints, but lawmakers nevertheless passed a bill in 2007, sans funding, authorizing the university to create the Mississippi Burn Center.
In September of last year, University of Mississippi Medical Center officials were mum about whether they planned to pursue opening a burn center following the closure of the center at Merit Health Central. They did say, however, they would increase their capabilities for care of such patients, but offered no specifics.
But UMMC officials have been quietly — and now more overtly — pursuing state funds to establish the burn center. Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the medical school, spoke in front of an appropriations subcommittee at the beginning of the session, and a bill by Sen. John Polk brings forward the code section from 2007 that authorized UMMC to create the Mississippi Burn Center. Lawmakers could use Polk’s bill to appropriate money and make other amendments to the law.
Polk told Mississippi Today he’s made no decision on which hospital he supports establishing a burn center.
“The (burn center) legislation was last looked at in 2007 best I can tell. This is a whole new Legislature,” said Polk. “All kinds of things have changed. We need to bring legislation forward to study it to see if we need to make some changes.”
It’s unclear how much UMMC is asking lawmakers for and if the money would be recurring. UMMC doesn’t have any outside funding for the center at the time, Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, said at a press conference Friday.
He referenced the Mississippi Burn Care Fund, which runs anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million each year, and the hope UMMC will have access to that once it receives accreditation from the Health Department, which manages the fund.
UMMC announced it would be establishing its own burn center one day after submitting its application for accreditation to the Health Department. Dr. Peter Arnold, a plastic surgeon, has been named as the medical director.
UMMC officials say Arnold’s past experience treating burn patients qualifies him for the position, which regulations say must be filled by a physician who has completed a burn fellowship or who has spent two of the previous five years treating burn patients.
“Dr. Arnold … has had extensive training and experience in caring for patients with acute burns and complex wounds in his nearly 20-year career,” said Jones. “He is assisted at the Mississippi Burn Center by five other highly qualified, expertly trained plastic surgeons, all of whom have significant experience treating pediatric and adult acutely burned patients.”
Jones also told media at a press conference Friday that the hospital has “the necessary infrastructure in place” but will need to make additional hires, including around 30 nurses trained specifically in burn care.
“That won’t be immediately. Over time, it will grow,” said Jones.
He also said they will not have to add additional beds to accommodate running a burn center. Currently, burn patients are being treated on a regular unit in the hospital.
Jones said the university has treated about 75 burn patients through the emergency room in the past four months.
“But as the volume grows, we’ve identified a dedicated space that’s actually ready to go. So after this approval (by the Health Department) has taken place, we’ll begin to operationalize,” he said.
Editor’s note: Kate Royals, Mississippi Today’s community health editor since January 2022, worked as a writer/editor for UMMC’s Office of Communications from November 2018 through August 2020, writing press releases and features about the medical center’s schools of dentistry and nursing.
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As lawmakers hear proposal to redesign financial aid, education policy experts say it’s a ‘bad idea’
A proposal that would substantially overhaul how the state doles out money to help Mississippians pay for college was presented to a joint hearing of lawmakers on Tuesday.
Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, told lawmakers that she does not believe a “perfect plan” exists, but she can’t think of a proposal that has consensus and “would advance the state more than this one does.”
She credited this support to the closed-door task force that created the proposal. Last year, the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a nonprofit, invited public officials from higher education and workforce development to participate with the goal of redesigning state financial aid. Student recipients of state financial aid were not invited to attend.
If the wide-ranging proposal becomes law, it would be the first time that lawmakers have updated Mississippi’s undergraduate grant aid programs since they were created in the late 1990s. The committees plan to consider two identical bills based on this proposal later this week.
Rep. Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville, the vice-chairman of the House Colleges and Universities Committee, said the goal of the bill is “simply to try to get more people into the workforce.”
He speculated Tuesday’s meeting was the first time the House and Senate committees ever held a joint meeting, signaling broad legislative support for this year’s proposal after prior efforts to redesign state financial aid have failed to get off the ground.
The Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant (MESG), the state’s only merit-based program with the primary purpose of rewarding academic achievement — and the most racially inequitable program — is the only state aid program that would remain untouched. The task force didn’t propose changes to MESG, Rogers told the committee, recognizing it has “broad political support.”
The bill seeks to reduce the amount of money that Mississippi spends on its only grant aimed at helping low-income students afford college — the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students, or HELP grant — while expanding the Mississippi Resident Assistance Tuition Grant (MTAG).
It proposes kicking an additional $18 million in state funds to MTAG but lowering spending on the HELP grant by $7 million.
As written, the bills would reduce awards made under the HELP grant, which currently pays for all four years of college, no matter the institution a recipient chooses to attend. Officials are continuing to target spending on the HELP grant even though the cost, which had been increasing over the last decade, appears to be reaching a cliff, according to OSFA’s annual report this year.
HELP recipients, by and large, choose to spend the generous grant at four-year universities, not community colleges. The growing cost of tuition at the universities is one reason why the state spends the most money on this grant each year. But the bills’ changes aim to push more recipients toward community college by turning the HELP grant into what’s commonly called a “2+2 program.”
Awards for freshmen and sophomores would be lowered to the average cost of tuition at the community colleges, even if recipients decide to attend a four-year university. Juniors and seniors would receive the average cost of university tuition, an attempt to encourage them to transfer.
This way, the HELP grant would have reduced buying power at the universities, increasing the likelihood that low-income students would initially choose community colleges as the more affordable option.
While this move would save the state of Mississippi money, education policy experts told Mississippi Today that it also likely means the rate at which low-income recipients graduate from public universities would plummet.
Nationally, just 1 in 6 community college students successfully transfer to universities.
“Cutting HELP in a way that directs talented low-income students to community colleges is definitely problematic,” said Sandy Baum, a fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied Mississippi’s state financial aid policies.
Scoggin acknowledged that with the changes, HELP recipients “may very well just stay at the community college and not transfer” to university but he speculated that would depend on a student’s degree field.
Philip Bonfanti, the executive vice president of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and a member of the task force, said that he believes Mississippians transfer out of community college at a higher rate than the national average.
According to federal data, MGCCC’s transfer-out rate is 11% — less than the national average.
Bonfanti emphasized the changes to HELP are fiscally responsible. HELP students who wanted to go directly to university could supplement the new, lowered award amount with the Pell Grant or institutional or private scholarships.
“No student loses access to higher education because of this proposed change,” he said, “but it almost cuts the HELP program in half.”
Rep. Lataisha Jackson, D-Como, asked if the task force considered lowering the ACT requirement to the state average of 17 so more students could qualify. Right now, HELP recipients have to get at least a 20.
“I don’t think there was any objection to it,” Bonfanti replied. “I think it was a monetary decision.”
Lawmakers also discussed the proposed changes to MTAG.
The number of students served by MTAG would increase from 17,000 to 34,000, according to HCM Strategists, a consulting firm hired by Woodward Hines to assist the task force.
Under the bills, eligibility for MTAG would broaden so that Pell Grant recipients would no longer be excluded by statute, part-time students could qualify, and the requirement of a 15 or higher on the ACT would be dropped.
Award amounts would increase to $1,000 for community college students and $2,000 for university students.
Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, asked if it was fair to MESG recipients for MTAG awards to increase.
“So if you’re an Eminent Scholar, you only get $500 more than a student that breathes air,” he said, referring to the accessible requirements for MTAG. “We’re trying to keep Eminent Scholars in Mississippi.”
“I think it looks a little awkward,” he added.
MTAG would also be retooled in an effort to incentivize students to pick degrees that serve the state’s workforce needs as identified by Accelerate MS. Students who choose “high value pathways” would receive a $500 bonus.
Toren Ballard, K-12 policy director for Mississippi First, said the bills would result in a “huge shift” in resources away from lower-income students.
Ballard added that MTAG is not an efficient use of state resources, citing one study requested by the Office of Student Financial Aid that showed the grant does not have a statistically significant impact on if students obtain a college degree.
“At the end of the day, HELP is need-based, MESG is merit-based,” he said. “We can argue about which one of those should take precedence. But MTAG is nothing-based. It’s a hand out. That’s all it is.”
An extra $500 is likely not enough money to change students’ behavior, said Baum, the Urban Institute fellow.
“The idea that students will change their degree programs for $500 is questionable to begin with — and probably a bad idea,” she said.
Baum added that the state’s priorities of increasing educational attainment to 55% by 2030 are undercut by the lack of changes to MESG.
“In order to be more effective in increasing educational attainment, the system would have to stop showing so much favor to high-achieving students,” she said. “But I guess that is unlikely to happen any time soon.”
Editor’s note: The Woodward Hines Education Foundation is a Mississippi Today donor.
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