Students in Mississippi approached pre-pandemic levels of achievement on state tests this spring, showing significant growth from the previous year.
The results from the 2022 administration of the state tests, or Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP), show that 2-4% fewer students passed English, science, and math exams this year than in 2019.
Last year in 2021, the first time that state tests were administered following the pandemic, around 10% fewer students passed their tests than in 2019, which education officials said was evidence of the impact of COVID-19 and were reflective of national trends.
These results, presented to the State Board of Education on Thursday, are a testament to the hard work of students and educators, as well as the return to in-person learning, according to Department of Education officials.
“They provide clear and indisputable evidence of the resilience of students and educators and their ability to recover from the disruptions to learning,” said Kim Benton, interim state superintendent of education. “We don’t always see that, but there’s a lot that has been going on to mitigate this disruption in learning and people have pulled out all the stops to make sure that’s happened.”
The number of students who scored proficient was exactly the same as or slightly above numbers from 2019, indicating that higher performing students possibly bounced back faster. Proficiency refers to the percentage of students who scored at a level 4 or 5 (proficient or advanced) on a 1 through 5 scale. A level 1 indicates a score of “minimal,” 2 is “basic” and 3 is “passing.”
Benton said these results show the need to look at the data of individual students and identify which areas they require support to advance.
“When I looked at the distribution, what it looked like to me was that we moved children up, we regained the proficiency levels pre-pandemic, but you also have children right there on the cusp (of passing)…which means we’ve got to push further faster,” she said.
Research from the Nation Bureau of Economic Research published in May of this year showed that, nationally, high-poverty schools were more likely to go remote and suffered larger declines in academic achievement when they did so.
Benton said the department is reviewing this new data to ensure that they are providing support appropriately, since literacy and math coaches are assigned to districts based on the number of students who did not reach proficiency.
A more detailed look at the state test results, including performance by subgroup and growth data, will be available in October when the state publishes districts’ accountability results.
Brittney Reese, former Olympic gold medalist and now tickled to be the girls track coach at Gulfport High School. (Photo: Vickie King) Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
GULFPORT — Yes, track and field superstar Brittney Reese says, there are times these days when she walks the hallways of Gulfport High School, she feels a powerful sense of deja vu.
“It wasn’t that long ago, you know, I was one of these kids trying to figure it out,” Reese says.
Actually, it was 18 years ago – 2004 – when Reese graduated from Gulfport High. There are other ways to look at it. Such as: For Reese, it was four Olympics Games ago. It was three Olympic medals (one gold, two silver) ago. It was two NCAA championships at Ole Miss, 12 U.S. championships and six world championships ago. It was before she became the greatest female long jumper in history.
Rick Cleveland
And now, after a professional career spent traveling the globe and leaping distances few can even imagine, Reese has returned to her hometown, to her high school, as a coach.
“It’s time to give back,”Reese says. “I’ve always said I was going to come back and try to give back to the people who have done so much for me.”
Reese is the new coach of the Gulfport girls cross country and track and field teams. She is also developing an indoor track and field program, for which she will be the head coach of both boys and girls teams.
Her mission: To help return Gulfport High track and field to the powerhouse status that the program enjoyed back when she was running and jumping and her Gulfport coach, now retired Prince Jones, was coaching championship teams seemingly year after year.
“We’ve had some success in recent years, but not to the standards Gulfport has had in the past,” says Gulfport’s new athletic director Matt Walters. “Who better to help show us the way than homegrown world champion, a living legend?”
You should know that Reese called Walters – not the other way around – about the job.
Joe Walker Jr., the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame coach who recruited Reese to Ole Miss, believes Gulfport has made a grand slam hire.
“Brittney has all the tools to be a great coach,” Walker said. “She knows the sport, has great character and always has had the perfect blend of humility and ego to coach. She has what it takes.”
What Reese needs – what any coach worth his or her stopwatch needs – are athletes. In Gulfport’s case, more athletes are needed.
As Prince Jones, the 77-year-old ex-coach puts it: “When you load a bus up full of really good athletes, it makes you a really good coach. The key is numbers.”
To that end, Reese has spent much of her first few days on the job recruiting. No, she isn’t recruiting from other schools. She is recruiting from other Gulfport sports teams: football, basketball, soccer, tennis, you name it. Her belief is that participation in track and field and cross country will help athletes in their other respective sports and vice-versa.
She is finding allies in that approach. One is Marcus Price, the new head coach of the Gulfport girls basketball team, who says, “I told my girls I wanted them to get out there and learn everything they can from her. There are so many lessons these kids can learn from her about preparation and perseverance, as well as technique. I am in awe of her myself.”
Brittney Reese talks with members of the Gulfport High track team shortly before practice on Aug. 9, 2022. (Photo: Vickie King) Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Reese, who is by nature quiet and reserved, doesn’t have to just talk a good game, either. She stands as living, breathing proof that playing more than one sport is not only possible but preferred. After all, Prince Jones once recruited her off the basketball team. She competed in basketball, track and field (jumping and sprints) and cross country. She was all-state in all.
Indeed, basketball was her primary sport even into junior college at nearby Gulf Coast.
At first, Reese ran cross country and then sprints during the track season. But Jones was short of athletes in the field events and asked for volunteers to try the long jump. “I was looking for someone who could jump at least 17 feet,” Jones says.
Several girls tried without success, Jones says. Reese said, “Coach, I can do that.”
Says Jones, “I told her you’re already running the 100, 200 and all the relays, but she said it again, ‘Coach, I can do that.’”
So Jones let her try. She jumped 17 and a half feet. I told her to try it again, and she jumped 18 and a half. Suddenly Reese had another event, one in which she would eventually set a world record and earn the nickname “Da Beast.”
Reese believes her versatility – she also high jumped – will help her in coaching. “I’ve done pretty much all of it and been around it at a high, high level,” she says.
She has also coached when she wasn’t competing. Before moving back to Gulfport, Reese lived in San Diego, where she worked out at the Olympic Training Center and coached at San Diego Mesa Community College. She also worked as a private coach for runners and jumpers.
It is an old axiom in sports that not all great athletes make great coaches. The theory is that great athletes have so much natural ability they don’t necessarily have to work as hard on fundamentals and training. But both Prince Jones and Joe Walker say Reese was a tireless worker.
Gulfport track team member Lania McDonald and girls head coach Brittney Reese share a laugh during practice at the school. (Vickie King) Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Matt Walters, the athletic director, says Reese “has hit the ground running.”
“Naturally, there was a concern about how an Olympic and world champion would react to coaching high school kids,” Walters said. “She has been extremely humble and has really connected with the kids. She’s been going to all the teams on campus and the kids have embraced it. She’s going to the junior highs and even the elementary schools.”
Sixteen-year old Lania McDonald, who will run both cross country and track and field, says she can scarcely believe she will be coached by a former Olympic gold medalist from her own hometown. “I’d be crazy not to soak up as much of her knowledge as I can,” she said, calling her new coach “down to earth” and “funny.”
Reese will also help the Gulfport boys team jumpers, because, well, why would she not?
Deavious Weary Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Deavious Weary, a 15-year-old, is running cross country now but plans to long jump in the spring and says he can’t wait to be coached by a former world champ. When Reese is told what Weary has said, she smiles and says, “He’s got the bounce, I can see that. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course.”
But that’s the deal: Few people in the world know more about the “a lot more to it” than Brittney Reese, who also looks forward to coaching her adopted son Alex Wilde, who is a ninth grader currently practicing with the Gulfport football team. Alex has shown some promise as a long jumper.
Reese made her last competitive jump at the Tokyo Olympics in June of 2021, winning the silver medal, coming just 1.18 inches short of the gold. She will turn 36 in September and says she knew in her heart it was time to get on with the rest of her life And she knew where she wanted to live it – and what she wanted to do.
She says she is proudest of “my longevity, to be as successful as I was for as long as I was. I was at the top or near the top of the world for more than 10 years. I can’t complain in any way about my career.”
As for the move across the continent back to Gulfport, Reese says, “San Diego was nice, really expensive, but really nice. But this is home. I’ve got family and so many friends here. This is where I want to live. Every day that I have been back has re-enforced it was the right decision to me.”
For Mississippi Today’s first members-only book club, managing editor Kayleigh Skinner was joined by award-winning chef and now author Vishwesh Bhatt to answer questions from Mississippi Today members. Chef Bhatt discussed the inspiration behind his book, how he came into cooking, and the importance of community, among many other topics like how to properly approach cooking okra. His new book, “I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef” debuted August 16 and is a collection of recipes and stories from his unique perspective as a chef who has made a home here in the South. Read a full review of Bhatt’s book.
Watch the full event:
A native of Gujarat, India, Bhatt later moved to the United States where he’s become known for his inventive dishes that bring southern staples together with subcontinent cuisine, such as Peanut Masala–Stuffed Baby Eggplant and Collard-Wrapped Catfish with a spicy Peanut Pesto. He is 2019 Southern Living’s Southerner of the Year, 2019 James Beard Foundation Best Chef South, and was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs in 2022. Bhatt has been a part of Chef John Currence’s City Grocery Restaurant Group since 1997, becoming executive chef of Snackbar in Oxford, Miss., in 2009.
Bhatt will host a book signing prior to participating in the Taste of the South panel during the Mississippi Book Festival on August 20.
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Caden LeMieux smiles for the camera on Wednesday, three days after receiving his liver transplant. Credit: Courtesy of Cristi Montgomery
The 28-year-old Neshoba County man who had to travel to Houston for a liver transplant because of a dispute between his insurer and the hospital that runs the state’s only organ transplant program received his new liver on Saturday.
Ironically, Caden LeMieux’s new liver came from someone in Mississippi, his mother Cristi Montgomery said.
“His surgeon actually flew back to Mississippi himself and picked up the organ, then flew back to Houston,” said Montgomery.
After the four-hour surgery late Saturday afternoon at Hermann Memorial Health System, LeMieux has made marked improvement: both his chest and nasogastric tubes have been removed, and on Monday, he was able to eat and take several steps. By Tuesday, he was making laps around the hall in the hospital, Montgomery said.
Montgomery posted a picture of LeMieux’s hands two days before surgery and two days after surgery on her Facebook page. In the first, his hands are a dark yellow – in the second, they have the appearance of a normal skin tone.
LeMieux, who was diagnosed with liver disease 10 years ago, was admitted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in early July following excruciating stomach pain and high levels of bilirubin, which caused his skin and eyes to turn yellow. His 6-foot-2 frame weighed in at less than 130 pounds, and the weight kept coming off.
He was told he was in active liver failure and needed a transplant imminently. But UMMC couldn’t do it because of the hospital’s ongoing contract dispute with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, which has left the state’s largest hospital out of network with its largest private insurer since April 1.
While the two parties are currently in mediation, there is no resolution in sight.
After the family got the call late Thursday, Montgomery and her husband, who own their own business in Philadelphia, closed their bakery on Friday to make the 450-mile drive to Houston. Montgomery said she expects her son will be discharged from the hospital by Monday. Before that, they will give her and his other family members instructions for how to care for him.
“He has to have round-the-clock care, 24/7, and has to go back to the doctor twice a week for four weeks,” she said.
While LeMieux’s father and stepmother live in Houston, the rest of his family – including six of his seven siblings – are all in Mississippi. Montgomery said she plans to be in Houston every other week and will travel back and forth for the foreseeable future. LeMieux will likely have to remain in the Houston area for at least a year.
Montgomery said it will be a balancing act to care for LeMieux while he’s so far from their home.
“It’s tough being nine hours away, especially with me being self employed. But obviously, Caden’s health and well being is our main priority,” she said. “So we’ll just have to make it work.”
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. A longtime journalist in major Mississippi newsrooms, Royals had served as a Mississippi Today reporter for two years before her stint at UMMC. At UMMC, Royals was in no way involved in management decisions or anything related to the medical center’s relationship or contract with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi.
The Clevelands discuss the upcoming college football season, specifically the over-and-under on victories for each of the Mississippi schools. Oddsmakers have set the over-under on victories for Ole Miss (7.5), Mississippi State (6.5) and Southern Miss (5). Also, Ole Miss ranks No. 21 in the first AP poll. That’s the good news. The bad is that the Rebels are sixth among SEC teams. Also, we celebrate the life of Corky Palmer, the legendary Southern Miss baseball coach.
Black residents in a small Delta town have been subjected to excessive force, intimidation and false arrests by its police force for over a year, a federal lawsuit alleges.
JULIAN, a civil rights organization, is asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order against the Lexington Police Department to prevent mistreatment against residents.
“It’s both unconscionable and illegal for Lexington residents to be terrorized and live in fear of the police department whose job is to protect them,” Jill Collen Jefferson, president and founder of JULIAN, said in a statement.
Subjects of the lawsuit are the city, police department, Interim Police Chief Charles Henderson and former Chief Sam Dobbins. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Lexington, which has a population of about 1,800 people, is 86% Black. It is located in one of the state’s poorest counties – Holmes County.
The lawsuit says former chief Dobbins and interim chief have violated Black residents’ constitutional rights for over a year and continue to. That behavior has included retaliation against residents who speak out against police, false arrests, baseless vehicle searches and unreasonable force by police.
Over 200 Black citizens formally or informally complained about treatment by Lexington police in the past year, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit comes a month after an audio recording surfaced of Dobbins making racist and homophobic language and bragging about killing multiple people as a member of the police force.
Robert Lee Hooker, a Black officer who resigned from the Lexington police department, recorded the conversation with Dobbins and gave it to JULIAN. The Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting first reported the recording.
“Justified, bro’,” Dobbins said in the recording. “I shot that n—– 119 times, OK?”
“I don’t give a f— if you kill a motherf—er in cold blood,” he said in another portion of the recording.
A day later, the Board of Aldermen fired Dobbins in a 3-2 vote and made Henderson the interim chief.
When reached for comment about the lawsuit, Dobbins declined to comment to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting Tuesday.
Five Black men who experienced retaliation, arrest and other mistreatment by Lexington police are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Plaintiffs Robert and Darius Harris, who are brothers, were approached by officers on New Year’s Eve and threatened to arrest them for violating the city’s fireworks ordinance, according to the lawsuit. The men asked them to leave their home and verbally resisted the threats.
Stills from cell phone footage accompany what happened next: Robert Harris raising his hand to ask police to stand down as his brother stands behind him. Darius Harris on the ground after an officer used a taser on him. Police, including Dobbins, shining a flashlight and trying to give Darius Harris commands while he is still being tased. Officers arresting Darius Harris as he lays on the ground.
Plaintiffs are also asking the court to award the plaintiffs compensatory damages and punitive damages against Dobbins and Hendersen, attorneys fees and court costs.
Community members have also expressed concern about Henderson’s appointment. In its statement, JULIAN said he is a protege of Dobbins and also has a troubling reputation.
In the lawsuit, Henderson is accused of authorizing misconduct of Lexington police officers against Black residents. He has also used excessive force, including during an incident where he and a group of officers broke down the door of a 60-year-old woman’s home without a warrant, arrested her, hosed her down with a fire hose and left her outside during wintertime, according to the lawsuit.
Lexington Mayor Robin McCrory, City Attorney Katherine Barrett Riley and Henderson were not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
The organization has also contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI to call for a federal investigation of systemic racism in both the city’s police department and municipal government as a whole.
“The culture of Lexington is corrupt,” the lawsuit states.
The Mississippi Department of Health is reevaluating its COVID-19 guidance for K-12 schools following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) loosening its own recommendations on Aug. 11.
The new CDC guidance further emphasizes individual risk mitigation over population-level precautions.
“We know that COVID-19 is here to stay,” Greta Massetti, a CDC epidemiologist, said at a press conference following the release of the new guidance. “High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection, and the many tools that we have available to protect people from severe illness and death, have put us in a different place.”
Over the course of the pandemic, COVID-19 has infected over 896,000 Mississippians and killed nearly 13,000. Mississippi has the highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 of any state in the nation, with 427 deaths for every 100,000 people, compared to a national average of 311, according to the New York Times.
CDC guidance no longer differentiates between vaccinated and unvaccinated people in its recommendations. Mississippi remains one of the least vaccinated states in the nation, only ahead of Wyoming, according to CDC data. Just 53% of the state’s population has been fully vaccinated and only 21% have received a booster dose.
The state health department’s COVID-19 guidance for the current school year was released in July. In its current form, it recommends actions no longer included in CDC guidelines.
The CDC removed a recommendation that kids who are contacts of someone who tested positive for COVID-19 take regular tests, and test negative, to remain in the classroom. The process was known as “test-to-stay.”
Schools in Mississippi are able to receive at-home BinaxNOW COVID-19 tests through its School Based Screening Testing Initiative. One of the allowed uses for these tests is test-to-stay initiatives, and the department recommends that asymptomatic teachers and students receive a negative test on days one, three and five after exposure to remain in the classroom.
“MSDH is aware of the updated guidance from CDC and is currently reviewing to determine the modifications and updates that will be needed in Mississippi’s guidance to schools moving forward,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said.
The CDC no longer recommends a practice known as cohorting in schools. In cohorting, students are divided into smaller groups and contact between them is limited to avoid potential transmission.
The new guidelines note that schools should consider continuing surveillance testing in certain situations, such as when students are returning from school breaks or for certain groups at higher risk of transmitting the virus, such those who play contact sports.
Indoor masking is still recommended for areas with high levels of community transmission.
The new CDC guidance no longer recommends quarantining after exposure, but instead wearing a high-quality mask for 10 days and testing on day 5 after exposure. The new guidance also removed the recommendation for social distancing by standing six feet apart from others.
Officials with Greenwood Leflore Hospital announced it is working on clean-up efforts as the result of clogged manholes that forced sewage into the crawl space below the hospital. They cannot say when the hospital will be able to resume its operations.
The hospital on Monday closed its clinics, canceled outpatient testing and transferred 17 patients to eight other hospitals, according to hospital spokesperson Christine Hemphill. Sixteen patients were discharged.
“We are in the process of submitting a report and scope of work that remediates the situation to the Life Safety Code Inspector at MSDH (Mississippi Department of Health),” Hemphill said in an email. “If the problem is not as significant as initially thought and isolated to some extent, we could remediate without an on-site survey by the Life Safety Code Inspector. If an on-site survey is required, we feel certain it will happen in a timely fashion as he is fully aware of the urgency to reopen services at the hospital.”
Hemphill said a “partial reopening of services” is also being considered.
Employees of Greenwood Leflore who spoke to Mississippi Today on the condition their names not be used said there was a “foul odor” in certain areas of the hospital for several days. One employee said staff was either sent home without pay or told to use vacation time.
The hospital, which is jointly owned by Leflore County and the city of Greenwood, laid off 30 people in May to offset losses during the pandemic. It announced in June that it is in talks with UMMC on a joint operation agreement.
“GLH began the process of seeking affiliation partners as the hospital emerged from the Delta and Omicron waves of the pandemic,” the hospital said in a press release. “Affiliation, particularly with a larger system like UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center and largest hospital, can result in cost efficiencies that are necessary to attain sustainable operations over the long term.”
Editor’s note: This story includes graphic language.
In “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns paint a vivid picture of a country confronting crisis after crisis.
Credit: Mississippi Book Festival
Covering everything from President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud and efforts to overturn the election results, to President Joe Biden’s unwillingness to decide what kind of president he is going to be, this book shows the degree to which our institutions and political leaders are failing us, and the increasingly thin lines separating the country from even greater catastrophe.
The book is filled with those behind-the-scenes anecdotes and vivid retellings that are the bread and butter of the best campaign books, like John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s “Game Change,” about the 2008 presidential election, or Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’ “Shattered” on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. All of it is deeply reported, drawing on hundreds of interviews and documents from the highest levels of government.
Split into three parts, the book covers the pre-election period starting in March 2020 that saw the coronavirus pandemic upend the country and the presidential campaigns, the election itself up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the first year of Biden’s presidency.
The Republican and Democrat camps are kept separate for most of the book, except for in scenes where the two are in the same place, such as during the insurrection, which makes the ever widening gulfs between the two groups even more jarring to take in. One one side, you have Trump, tightening his grip on the Republican Party even after trying to overturn a free and fair election that he lost. On the other, you have Biden, unwilling to decide whether he wants to be a business-as-usual unifier or a FDR-like transformational figure, and upsetting almost everyone in his fragile coalition in the process.
The Trump-focused sections of the book do a great job painting vivid pictures of Republican leaders. The authors dive into the complete deterioration of the relationship between U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Trump, who have not spoken since McConnell recognized Biden’s victory as legitimate. The authors report a hostile phone call between the two after that event where Trump raised his voice at McConnell.
The book also details McConnell’s shift from being ready for Trump to be purged from the Republican party in the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6 to realizing that the former president’s grip on his party would endure long after he left the Oval Office.
“The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” McConnell said, referring to the second impeachment vote in the House over Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6 riot. Soon though, the anger McConnell felt towards Trump took a backseat to the need to avoid inter-party conflict if Republicans were going to retake the Senate in 2022.
The book also details the wide gulf between the public and private attitudes towards Trump by prolific Republicans. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is portrayed as someone who hates his job but is also singularly focused on becoming speaker of the House. Despite audio recordings in which McCarrthy told Liz Cheney that he thought Trump should resign, he was soon again doing all he could to gain favor with a man who calls him a “pussy” with an “inferiority complex” behind his back.
On the Democratic side, the book details Biden’s failure to unify “a vast set of constituencies that shared a deep antipathy to Trump and little else.” The authors note the distinct possibility that Biden will be a one term president due to his age and his deep desire to have a transformational term that leaves a legacy that can compete with the accomplishments of the Obama Administration.
“I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” Biden told one adviser.
The major question Martin and Burns examine in this account of “an existential battle for the survival of the democratic system” is whether or not our institutions can continue to function amidst these compounding crises. The answer they give early in the book is “a resounding: sort of.” As this is the work of reporters and not fortune tellers, I think that’s the best answer we’ve got right now.
Jonathan Martin is a featured panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 20.
