Undefeated Jackson State made short work of Grambling at The Vet, and Shedeur Sanders made a believer out of the elder Cleveland. The kid can play. The Cleveland boys also discuss Title IX and football at all levels – from high schools to the NFL with a lot of college football in between.
Stream all episodes here.
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Merit Health Central is struggling: services and units are closing or being moved, and current and former employees say the hospital is unable to maintain safe staffing levels.
The private hospital, one of nine Merit Health facilities in the state, has already moved or is planning to move its cardiovascular services, neonatal intensive care unit and endoscopy to other Merit Health locations outside of Jackson. The hospital is also planning to “consolidate” its behavioral health beds, according to records with the Mississippi Department of Health, though it is unclear where.
And the hospital garnered headlines in early September for announcing it would close its burn center — the only such program in the state.
Meanwhile, several current and former staffers of the hospital interviewed by Mississippi Today said many employees have left or are seeking employment elsewhere, often leading to shifts that aren’t fully or properly staffed.
Merit Health Central declined Mississippi Today’s request for an interview for the story with someone in administration but provided several emailed statements.
“The five Jackson-area Merit Health hospitals share a commitment to serve residents of Jackson and the surrounding region,” said Jana Fuss, director of marketing at Merit Health. “We regularly review our operations and evaluate how we can best apply our resources to offer needed services and strengthen our operations.”
The hospital’s struggles could have an outsized effect on the livelihood of many Jacksonians and those who live in rural parts of Hinds County. Merit Health Central, formerly Hinds General Hospital, has long been a health care and employment hub in south and west Jackson — majority-Black neighborhoods that have a higher concentration of people living in poverty than the rest of the city.
According to U.S. Census data, the neighborhood the hospital is located in is 87% Black and 9% white. The median income for families is $29,500.
In contrast, Merit Health River Oaks in Flowood, where many services are being moved, is 61% white and 28% Black. Its median income is $46,389 — 57% higher than the south Jackson neighborhood.
State Sen. Sollie Norwood, D-Jackson, whose district includes Merit Health Central, had not heard about any changes at the hospital other than the closing of the burn unit. He said he fears what a drastic change would mean for the residents he represents.
“We don’t need to reduce the accessibility of (health care) at this time,” Norwood said.
The Jackson hospital reported the largest amount of net uninsured costs, or cost of services for which the patient had no insurance coverage, of any of the Merit Health hospitals in the state for fiscal year 2022. The hospital reported nearly $16 million in net uninsured costs. The next-highest, Merit Health Biloxi, reported just $7.9 million.
The hospital is owned by the county and leased by Merit Health’s Nashville-based parent company, Community Health Systems. Community Health Systems made headlines recently for its financial challenges: the company reported a $327 million net loss in the first half of 2022, and Fitch Ratings downgraded the company’s rating outlook from stable to negative.
Fuss declined to answer questions about how that has impacted Merit Central specifically.
She pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic and the “challenging staffing and recruitment environment” as contributors to the closing of the burn center. They have made it difficult to hire the specialists needed to run the burn program, she said, adding that the hospital has been in discussions with other regional providers interested in potentially establishing such a program.
On top of the ongoing problems, the hospital, which runs on city water, recently hemorrhaged money bringing in water tankers amid the city’s months-long boil water notice.
Mississippi Today spoke with several current and former staffers at Merit Central for this story. None of the employees were willing to speak on the record because they feared retribution from their current or future employers.
One employee said the hospital staff is “dwindling,” and most employees are looking for jobs elsewhere.
“People in various departments (who) have been told they will likely be impacted are leaving for other opportunities, and it is because they feel there will no longer be opportunities here… We have basically been told since this came to light that it will be predominantly a psych facility,” she said.
Rumors are swirling at Merit Central that the long term plan for the hospital is to transition to a majority psychiatric facility, and records from the Mississippi Department of Health also show the hospital intends to “consolidate” its behavioral health beds.
The facility currently has 71 behavioral health beds with an occupancy rate of around 80%, according to state health department records from 2020.
The hospital had been struggling before the pandemic, but things got worse during it, according to three former employees who worked in the emergency department but have since left.
They said staffing levels were, at times, unsafe – so much so that on certain occasions when the next shift’s nurses arrived to take over, they would refuse.
“There were several instances where we didn’t have – we didn’t know how to give reports because you were going to be handing a 20-bed ER to one nurse,” one former employee said.
The hospital terminated its contracts with travel nurse staffing agencies, including a local agency, the employees said. At the same time, the hospital decreased the remaining nurses’ pay and took away incentives – an unusual move at a time when most other hospitals were offering financial incentives to battle the nursing shortage exacerbated by the pandemic.
The result was severe understaffing, several employees told Mississippi Today, and the nurses who remained were frustrated and overwhelmed. Instead of the six to seven nurses previously covering each ER shift, there were between one and four, they said.
“It caused frustrations, it caused further burnout, it caused some nurses to retire completely from nursing, and it caused a lot of other nurses who worked at Central to leave,” one nurse said.
In response to questions about staffing, Fuss said the hospital is “working hard to recruit and retain permanent employees rather than relying on costly contract labor” and, as a result, services have been consolidated as a result.
“As part of our work to retain employees, in select areas we have implemented market wage adjustments, added a student loan repayment program, increased our education reimbursement program, and covered the cost of any necessary licensure or training that is not already offered to employees at no cost to them,” she said in an emailed statement.
Before the pandemic, the nurses said, the hospital was taking an inordinate amount of transfer patients – a sign they took to mean the hospital was desperate to bring in revenue.
“They would take every transfer from every outside hospital, utilized every room (in the ER) for admission holds that it got to the point where half of our ER capacity was admissions … We all kind of felt weird about the patients getting an inpatient bill, but they weren’t even making it upstairs (to the hospital floor) for 24 to 48 hours,” one nurse said.
Norwood, the state senator, said he plans to reach out to hospital officials this week and hopefully meet with them to “take a deeper dive into exactly what’s happening.”
One former employee has a guess as to what’s at play.
“I think a lot of it is contributed by business suits that work hundreds of miles away. People who are trying to answer mostly to shareholders rather than trying to treat a community,” the former nurse said.
The post Merit Health Central is moving many services from Jackson to the suburbs. Employees wonder what’s next appeared first on Mississippi Today.
The contract dispute between the state’s largest insurer and hospital is still not resolved more than three months after the two parties began mediation proceedings.
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Medical Center have been locked in a dispute over reimbursement rates throughout 2022. The Medical Center went out of network with Blue Cross on March 31, and since then, thousands of Mississippians have been forced to take on higher out-of-pocket costs for their health care or leave the state for certain specialty care.
The two parties agreed to utilize a mediation process to settle the dispute in April after Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney urged them to do so.
“The commissioner (Mike Chaney) is certainly very hopeful that the parties can make great progress, if not find a resolution, by early June,” Mark Haire, deputy commissioner of insurance, told Mississippi Today in early May.
Evidently, that hope was misplaced.
Patrice Guilfoyle, director of communications at UMMC, told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that there’s “no update at this point” on mediation proceedings. Blue Cross did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Chaney told Mississippi Today he has not had any contact with either party or the mediator relating to mediation since before Sept. 5. Under state agency rules, Chaney is not allowed to directly mediate or help settle disputes over contacts between insurance companies and health care providers.
There is no requirement the two parties come to an agreement.
A targeted market conduct examination of Blue Cross that Chaney ordered on July 1 is ongoing. The examination is to determine whether the insurer is in compliance with the state’s network adequacy regulations since UMMC provides specialty care that cannot be found elsewhere in Mississippi.
Chaney told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that the network adequacy review is nearly complete but cannot be finished until UMMC provides his office with materials that have been subpoenaed.
“It (the network adequacy review) will probably be surprising to a lot of folks,” Chaney said.
Blue Cross sued top UMMC employees on July 28 over the public relations campaign the hospital has been waging against the insurer due to their contract dispute. The insurer claims the campaign was “designed to disseminate false and defamatory statements about Blue Cross to the public.”
In advertisements and public statements made by employees, the claim was made that the insurer “excluded” UMMC from its network of providers, though it was UMMC who voluntarily allowed its contract with Blue Cross to expire.
It is unclear how that lawsuit has impacted the progress of mediation proceedings.
The post Nearly four months in, still no developments in mediation between UMMC and Blue Cross appeared first on Mississippi Today.
An Oxford woman who stole $2.9 million from a Mississippi State University sorority was ordered to pay back all of the money and serve nearly four years in federal prison.
Betty Jane Cadle, 75, was sentenced Friday to serve 45 months for one count of wire fraud at the federal courthouse in Oxford. Over seven years, she wrote checks from the account of Delta Omega Chapter House Corporation for the Kappa Delta Sorority to her personal bank accounts and business.
“The defendant abused her position of trust and authority by stealing money she was entrusted with for her own personal gain,” Clay Joyner, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, said in a statement.
As treasurer, Cadle was responsible for managing sorority dues, purchasing items for the sorority house, paying utility bills, filing tax documents and general bookkeeping, according to court records.
At her sentencing, representatives from the sorority said Cadle bullied members and “maintained an attitude of superiority” to avoid questions about the sorority house’s finances, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
U.S. District Court Judge Glen Davidson imposed restitution for $2.9 million.
Court records state Cadle received millions as part of a “scheme,” but she only faced one count of wire fraud.
She pleaded guilty in March for writing a $20,000 check from the sorority corporation and depositing it in 2018 into an account for her business, the Oxford children’s clothing store Belles and Beaus, which is now closed.
Between 2018 and 2019, Cadle deposited another five checks totaling about $111,500 into the business, according to court documents. As part of her plea deal, the federal government dismissed five counts of wire fraud.
Court records did not say where the rest of the money went.
The maximum sentence she could have faced was 20 years incarceration, a $250,000 fine, three years supervised release and a $100 special assessment.
Cadle is scheduled to report to prison Oct. 24. The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not say at which facility she will serve her sentence, and Bureau of Prison records do not list her as of Tuesday.
The post Oxford woman who stole millions from MSU sorority sentenced to nearly four years in prison appeared first on Mississippi Today.
A class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Jackson residents seeking unspecified damages and to order the city to remove lead contamination, fix supply issues and not charge residents for water until issues are resolved.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, includes as defendants the City of Jackson, its current and former mayors, the former city public works directors, and companies that have contracted with the city “for their involvement in the ruination of the public water system in Jackson,” attorneys said in a statement. The lawsuit is filed on behalf of four residents to represent all customers. It comes after a nearly two-month long boil-water notice lifted only last week, and a complete failure of the system that resulted in loss of water pressure for most of the 200,000 residents it serves for several days in late August and early September. This prompted an emergency state takeover of the system, and a governor’s state of emergency is still in effect.
The lawsuit was filed by the law firms of Gibbs Travis PLLC, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Larry D. Moffet PLLC and Kershaw Talley Barlow PC.
The Jackson Mayor’s Office had no immediate comment on the lawsuit Monday.
There have been three other lawsuits filed over Jackson’s troubled water and sewage system since 2021, including one in October alleging that lead in the water is harmful to children.
READ MORE: Lawyer suing over Jackson water wins $626M settlement in Flint, Michigan
On Monday, a chlorine leak at the city’s main treatment plant resulted in workers being temporarily evacuated.
A statement from lawyers filing the new lawsuit said: “the City of Jackson’s water supply has been neglected for decades, culminating in a complete shutdown in August 2022 that left over 153,000 residents, 82% of whom are Black, without access to running water. These residents lacked safe drinking water, or water for making powdered baby formula, cooking, showering or laundry” and residents could not flush toilets for days.
“We’re suffering because of the lack of leadership and planning by government officials and others,” said Raine Becker, one of the named plaintiffs, in a statement. “The purpose of the lawsuit is to force them to fix the water mess, care for our community that has been put in danger, and put the right systems in place so that this never happens again.”
The post Another lawsuit filed over Jackson water crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.
One year after a law expanded parole eligibility to more people incarcerated in Mississippi prisons, the state’s parole grant rate has declined by more than a third, a sign criminal justice reform advocates say shows the law isn’t being fully implemented.
Senate Bill 2795, known as the Mississippi Earned Parole Eligibility Act, became law in July 2021 with the goal of giving more people the opportunity to be heard by the Mississippi Parole Board and potentially be released from prison. As a result, about 5,700 additional people are expected to become parole eligible within the next five years, according to an estimate in the Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force’s January report.
FWD.us, a criminal justice and immigration reform group, supported SB 2795. Once the law was implemented, results were encouraging; the parole grant rate climbed and the prison population rate declined to its lowest point in more than 20 years, the group said.
By November 2021, the parole grant rate reached a high of 93% and the board held over 1,000 parole hearings, according to numbers from the Mississippi Department of Corrections obtained by Mississippi Today. But soon after, parole rates and hearings began dropping each month. In July 2022, the most recent data available, the grant rate was 40% and the board held 633 hearings.
“Parole grant rates have fallen by more than half, reducing the incentives of people in Mississippi’s prisons to participate in programs and prepare to safely reenter society,” FWD.us State Director Alesha Judkins said in a statement to Mississippi Today.
Judkins said parole is an evidence-based policy that gives people second chances, reunites them with their families and community and curbs taxpayer spending. It is also a way to address Mississippi’s long prison sentences.
Parole Board Chair Jeffery Belk stepped into his role at the beginning of the year, around the time the board was coming down from working through a wave of hearings spurred by parole eligibility expansion taking effect.
He said the board is aware that since he’s become chairman, the parole grant rate has fallen. Belk said the numbers don’t dictate decisions, and the board looks at a range of available information to decide whether to grant parole.
“I would rather have the numbers be true and accurate and go back and look at them then just ‘we did whatever we did to get the numbers down’ mentality,” he said during an interview with Missisisppi Today.
When writing the law, Belk said legislators had faith that the Parole Board would review and determine who would receive parole and who wouldn’t.
Generally, a person can become eligible for parole after serving a certain amount of time on their sentence and having been convicted of a crime that is parole eligible.
Under SB 2795, those convicted of nonviolent crimes and non habitual drug offenses committed after June 30, 1995 must serve either 25% of their sentence or 10 years before becoming parole eligible.
Those who committed a violent crime must serve half their sentence or 20 years, and people convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon, a drive-by shooting or carjacking must serve 60% of their sentence or 25 years.
People who have reached the age of 60 and served at least 10 years of their sentence for a parole-eligible crime can also receive it.
Capital offenses, murder, drug trafficking, sex crimes and being a habitual offender are among the crimes in the state that are not eligible for parole.
When Gov. Tate Reeves signed the Mississippi Earned Parole Eligibility Act in April 2021, he called it “a measured approach to (second) chances” and said it would be a “net positive for (Mississippi)” with proper implementation.
Under SB 2795, a parole hearing date shall be set when a person is within 30 days of their parole eligibility date.
Belk said there is a misunderstanding that a parole eligibility date means automatic release or sentence reduction. He said he often gets emails from family members of incarcerated people asking why they haven’t been released.
Newly-parole eligible people have had hearings, Belk said, but some may not be ready for release because they have not had access to programs such as skills and job training to succeed outside of prison.
If someone is not ready for parole, he said the board will give them time, maybe a year, to be reconsidered.
“Now that they’re parole eligible, just because they missed their first parole eligibility date, doesn’t mean they’re going to miss their next one if they start taking advantage of (programs),” Belk said.
In an Aug. 17 interview with Supertalk Radio, MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain said he asked the parole board not to approve parole for gang members to protect public safety and to send a message that gang membership in prison won’t help.
“So that kind of makes the (prison) numbers spike up, but it’s public safety and that’s what we’re all about,” he said.
In response, Belk reiterated that the Parole Board has shifted from a numbers-driven perspective and takes time to make tough decisions about parole, including for those who are gang members.
While parole hearings have decreased, Belk said there has been a related wave of hearings to determine whether someone should have their parole revoked. A revocation may happen if a person commits a new crime or fails to report to a parole officer for a certain period of time.
Belk said the board will give the person a chance to clear up any issues to be able to continue on parole. Otherwise, the person will be returned to prison.
As the parole rate has fallen, the state is seeing its prison population increase. Mississippi is a world leader in incarceration. The prison population has grown and is higher than last year when parole eligibility expansion became law, according to MDOC records.
Judkins, of FWD.us, said less opportunities for parole and a growing prison population don’t just hurt people who are incarcerated. Those situations also don’t improve public safety and can cost taxpayers more.
“Unfortunately, the rapidly declining parole grant rate is not only blunting the impact of the new law but also denying meaningful opportunities for release to those who were parole eligible before the new law,” she said.
The post A year later, parole rates lower than before law went into effect appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Let’s go back 50 years to 1972. Title IX has just weeks earlier become the law of the land. To paraphrase Bob Dylan: The times, they were a-changin’.
I was a young sports writer at the Hattiesburg American, working my way through college. My editor told me to go report on a seminar at the university. The federal government – the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), specifically – was sending a representative to explain the ramifications of Title IX. I went.
But first I had to look up the Title IX legislation. It was all of 37 words: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
I didn’t see the words “sports” or “athletics” in the wording anywhere. I wasn’t sure why I was being sent to cover it. The answer came quickly.
The woman from HEW didn’t mince words. She said all public schools – elementary schools through universities that received federal funding – would have to spend money equally on boys and girls and men and women – in athletics, as in every other aspect of education. And, if they didn’t, they would lose all federal monies.
Hands shot up. People had questions. One of the first: How are universities such as USM, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, already struggling to make ends meet, supposed to double their spending on scholarships, salaries, expenses, etc. within their athletic programs?
Her answer: That wasn’t the government’s concern. They’d do it or else.
At that point, I muttered something to the effect: “That’s insane. It’ll never fly. It’s not fair.”
The man next to me, a professor in the health and physical education department, looked at me and replied, “Obviously, you’ve never had a daughter.” He had three. One became the point guard on the first Hattiesburg High basketball team.
Fifty years, a son and a daughter later, I get it.
Last week, the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at Ole Miss celebrated 50 years of Title IX with a panel discussion that featured Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter, women’s basketball coach Yolette McPhee-McCuinn (better known as Coach Yo) and Rita Igbokwe, a senior player on the Ole Miss women’s basketball team. I moderated. You can find it here.
If the discussion did nothing else, it surely highlighted the remarkable change in the American sports scene those 37 words have spurred. I’ve lived it. I’ve covered it.
In 1972, no co-ed Mississippi college or university had a single women’s athletic team. Since then, Delta State has won six national women’s basketball championships. Ole Miss has won a national championship in golf. Mississippi State has made it the NCAA women’s basketball championship twice. Southern Miss made the women’s College World Series in softball. In track and field, USM’s Tori Bowie of Pisgah won NCAA championships in track and field and later an Olympic gold medal and three world championships. Last season, Coach Yo’s Ole Miss team won 23 games and made the NCAA Tournament.
More importantly, over the last 50 years, thousands upon thousands of young women have competed in multiple sports and had their educations financed as was never the case before.
In more than half a century of covering Mississippi sports, the two most meaningful transformations I have witnessed: One, the widespread racial integration of sports at all levels; two, the meteoric rise of women’s athletics.
Fifty years ago, I think I would have predicted what has happened as far as integration. As for what has happened with regard to women’s athletics, I had not a clue.
Thirty-seven words. Amazing.
The post Title IX, 50 years later: The 37 words that changed our sports world appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Serenity Moore stood patiently off the side of the stage in the Galloway Church reception hall one afternoon late last month, waiting for a turn to ask her favorite author a question.
The energy in the room had become serious after a local teacher stood up to ask the panel of Black female authors what they thought about districts in Mississippi restricting access or banning their books completely from school libraries.
Angie Thomas answered first.
“We’re being made into the big bad wolves that are coming in,” Thomas said. “Half the people who banned my book haven’t even read it.”
While Thomas spoke, the 12-year-old paced in her white Nike tennis shoes, clutching her copy of “The Hate U Give.” When it was finally her turn, Moore shared with the panelists — all in attendance for an event at the Mississippi Book Festival — that she’d actually discovered Thomas’ book through her own classroom library. Since she picked it up, she’d not been able to put it down: not at volleyball practice, not at the grocery store; she brought it with her everywhere. Her question was simple — would Thomas please sign her copy?
“I was so surprised because, like, my mom was telling me this book was getting banned almost everywhere,” Moore later told Mississippi Today. “I was like, I have to read this. I literally have to get this.”
Moore is a student in the Jackson Public School District, which has not banned books to date. She got her book signed and intends to return it to her classroom for her peers to read. But in recent months, school districts and libraries across Mississippi have begun restricting access to books deemed to have “mature content.” This means students like her in other districts no longer have easy access to a world of literature filled with characters and situations that mirror their own lives.
Nationally, attempts to ban books hit a record high in 2021 since the American Library Association started tracking the challenges 20 years ago. The organization announced last week that 2022 is on track to surpass last year, and the majority of challenged books were by or about Black or LGBTQ+ individuals.
In Mississippi, public libraries in Ridgeland and Biloxi have debated pulling books off shelves, with the Ridgeland mayor holding back funding from the library over LGBTQ+ books. After several months of negotiations, the library had to reduce its operating hours before an agreement was reached to restore funding.
In the Madison County School District, the school board placed 10 books in restricted circulation, meaning they require parental permission to check out. Nearly all the authors are people of color or LGBTQ+.
Adam Maatallah, a senior at Madison Central High School and president of the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Club, said he was disheartened, but not surprised, when he learned about the efforts to ban books in his school district. He’s encountered a lot of prejudice as a kid, he said, and “ … after coming out and being comfortable with my sexuality, I’ve seen the true Mississippi, and it’s not a pretty place for queer people, especially queer youth.”
“We never really expected that (the restrictions) would come from people who are trying to educate us,” Maatallah said. “We were very shocked and sad that apparently, that’s what our educators in charge think is best for us. In reality, it only shows us that we’re not welcome here or that we should be excluded and isolated and not exposed to other people.”
He said he and his peers were grateful it wasn’t a complete ban of books and they could still be accessed with parental consent, but pointed out this poses a challenge for students with less accepting parents.
“To put that book on parental restriction is really banning the book altogether,” he said. “The presence of the book in the library is what matters to us. The availability and having the choice to read that book is what makes us feel safe and secure and like we’re people at our school.”
Students have also felt the impact of these efforts to ban books in communities where books are not restricted.
Alex Palmiter, a 10th grade student in Meridian, said they’ve witnessed classmates and teachers having disagreements about the issue.
“I feel kinda disappointed when it happens because usually, I’m not part of the conversation, I’m just an observer,” Palmiter said. “Hearing them talk about me like I’m not there makes me feel like I don’t exist and I don’t matter.”
Palmiter emphasized the impact diverse representation has had on them personally.
“There was a moment when I realized that I don’t feel love the same way others do, and it was weird for me, but I have come to terms with it and I accept myself,” they said. “But seeing those characters and that representation in other media really did help me. It showed me that I’m not the only one in the situation and there are others who feel the same way.”
Raymond Walker, a trans 10th grade student at Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, echoed Palmiter.
“I have a giant shelf of books in my room all by trans authors or about trans people,” Walker said. “I travel a lot, and sometimes when my dad and I go up to St. Louis, he’ll take me to the gayborhoods and gay bookstores and buy me queer books, and I really find a lot of strength in having those.”
Walker, who switched districts from Madison County to Rankin County Schools to give him a fresh start when transitioning, said he has found his new district more accepting.
Though the bans come at no surprise, he wishes there was more pushback from the community.
“They can’t erase queer history,” he said. “It’s impossible. The only thing they’re going to succeed in doing is confusing young queer kids, pushing the denial that some queer kids have even deeper by erasing the part of themselves they can see in literature.”
Walker’s mother, Katie Rives, said she believes people advocating for book bans are just scared that their children will end up identifying as LGBTQ+.
“I just always think, I wish they could meet Ray, and just see what he is, there’s nothing to be scared of,” she said.
Jerome Moore, Serenity’s father, told Mississippi Today he thinks it’s a good thing his daughter has access to books like “The Hate U Give” and that she enjoys reading.
“Information is always a good thing,” he said. “She’s being exposed to things and learning as she grows, and that’s great.”
Thomas, the author who spoke at the panel, is a Jackson native whose books have been put on restricted lists. This is a travesty, she said, not just for the kids who won’t have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in her work, but for children to learn about people and experiences unlike themselves.
“Kids that see themselves in my books need those mirrors,” she said. “But there are other kids that need those sliding glass doors and those windows because when you have young people who don’t see lives unlike their own, who don’t understand people unlike themselves, they grow up to be narrow minded leaders who don’t care about nobody beyond themselves.”
The post Book bans are on the rise. How do Mississippi students feel about it? appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, who has been closely involved in discussions about a long-term fix for the Jackson water crisis, discussed several options and what may work or not. He also discussed the importance of leadership over the next three months, before the 2023 legislative session and election cycle begins.
The post Podcast: Brandon Presley on Jackson water crisis, long-term solution, leadership appeared first on Mississippi Today.
