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Lance Bass was just another freshman at Clinton High School in 1994 when he auditioned for Attaché, the school’s award-winning show choir. Barely a year later, he was a member of the “boy band” vocal group *NSYNC and well on his way to becoming a teen pop icon.

It’s no coincidence that he spent the intervening time learning how to use his voice and perform under the direction of David and Mary Fehr in what has become known as a showbiz bootcamp and de facto finishing school.

Nashville singer-songwriter Shelly Fairchild — who has three solo albums to her credit, has appeared on records by Jason Aldean, Eric Church and Terri Clark, and has carved a successful niche by placing songs in television shows — had a similar experience after joining Attaché as a shy teenager. So did Broadway star Heath Calvert, known for his roles in “Hair” and “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.”

All three former Clinton High School and Attaché students, with the addition of fellow alums Brittany Wagner, the breakout star of Netflix’s “Last Chance U,” Drew Wardlaw and Max Lyall, appeared onstage at the Attaché Alumni Theater at Clinton High School on April 2.

The four-act performance celebrated the 42^nd anniversary of Attaché by bringing alums back to the stage to raise money to support the program, which has earned the title Grand Champion at 85 competitions since 1992. The group’s current run of 23 consecutive Grand Champion wins dates back to 2014, and their 2019 bid was captured in ‘Attaché,’ a PBS and Reel South documentary film.

Bass, in his first Attaché appearance since *NSYNC made their debut as opening act for the group in December 1995, served as host and emcee for the evening. After learning to sing in church choir and while receiving further guidance from Fehr through Attaché, Bass began vocal instruction with Bob Westbrook in Germantown, Tennessee—the same voice coach Justin Timberlake used, and the man who introduced him to Bass when *NSYNC was searching for a bass singer.

Although Bass’s time in Attaché was relatively brief, it opened his eyes to his own talents and changed the course of his life. But much of the inspiration he felt came from watching his classmates. “I got to do ‘West Side Story’ with Shelly Fairchild,” he says. “She was our Maria, and good Lord, we knew then she was going to do something. She was so talented. I was just a freshman then and it was so new to me; I just couldn’t believe that high school students could be so talented.”

Fairchild did find success when she moved to Nashville and signed a record deal with Sony in 2004. The label released her debut album, Ride, the following year, and sent Fairchild on a whirlwind of promotion including radio appearances and concert tours with country music stars Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and Rascal Flatts. But her journey began when she arrived at Attaché around the same time as the Fehrs, who took over after founder Winona Costello retired.

“The first year that I was there, Mr. David Fehr was our new director,” Fairchild says. “I’ll never forget him coming up to us as we were learning some of the songs and yelling at me in my face, like, ‘Open your mouth, Fairchild!’

“To this day,” she adds, “people will ask me, ‘How in the world do you sing from your toes all the way up through the top of your head?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, if you had David Fehr as a director, then you would understand why your whole body is involved in this.’ So, it really made a big difference in my life.”

Fairchild remembers when Fehr brought Heath Calvert, then a freshman, to the group — an unheard-of move, since membership was usually open to students beginning with the sophomore year. He had just moved to Clinton, and while his mannerisms weren’t disrespectful — he didn’t say “sir” or “ma’am” like most of his new peers, Fehr says — they were a hard sell with his teachers. He had racked up nine detentions for such minor infractions, and one more would suspend him from school and activities.

“I went ahead and gave him his 10th detention so that he could serve his one day or whatever. It was so that we wouldn’t miss the performances coming up,” Fehr laughs.

On April 2, alums performed solo, in pairs and in groups throughout the three-hour program. Calvert performed “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz and “Anthem” from the musical ‘Chess,’ while the current Attaché students performed their 2022 competition showcase, “Vacation!” Bass and Wagner joined the chorus for a number of songs.

The third act, though, was all about the Fehrs. Fairchild debuted “What We Leave,” a song she wrote specially for the event, as a duet with her sister, Lindsey Fairchild Lenoir. The performance was a surprise to the Fehrs, organizers and the audience, but the current students were in on it; Fairchild recruited the daughter of a friend to circulate the lyrics to them so they could join her on the song’s finale.

While Attaché provides the platform for students to explore their talents, they also learn life skills, Fehr stresses. Work ethic is crucial to the success of the students who perform and those who run the show after graduation; perseverance is another. Fehr recalls a competition in California where Wagner performed while in pain from a broken finger she suffered during warm-ups, a show of grit and determination the public would later see on “Last Chance U.” 

“We produce just good kids; the talent and desire comes from good families,” he adds. “Don’t credit that to Attaché. I can develop whatever is there and help them out, but those families and kids, they have goals and missions, and my job is to help them along. But the 90 percent that don’t go into the arts, they’re still getting the same thing.”

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Mississippi Today’s “The Backchannel” series, which examines former Gov. Phil Bryant’s involvement in what officials have called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history, is renewing calls for a federal investigation.

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on April 7, three days after the beginning of Mississippi Today’s series, asking for him to prosecute the people responsible for stealing federal funds meant to serve the nation’s poorest residents.

READ MORE: Phil Bryant had his sights on a payout as welfare funds flowed to Brett Favre

“We decided to move forward to request the Department of Justice to do a thorough investigation after the investigative reporting from Mississippi Today,” Johnson said Friday. “It is obvious others were involved. This is perhaps the largest federal fraud situation that we have seen in the state of Mississippi and maybe one of the largest in the country. The fact that the former governor could be involved and others, it requires a thorough investigation by the federal authorities to ensure that taxpayers in the state of Mississippi and across the country are made whole.”

In 2020, the State Auditor’s Office released a report that questioned $94 million in federal grant spending from the Mississippi Department of Human Services. While the office arrested six people in February of 2020 related to the alleged theft of $4 million, no one else involved in the sprawling scheme has faced charges.

Mississippi Today’s series uncovered never-bef0re-published private conversations Bryant had with retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre and the owner of Prevacus, the company that received $2.15 million in allegedly stolen welfare funds from the state. Favre and Prevacus owner Jake Vanlandingham offered Bryant stock in the company in for exchange the help he gave them during his time in office. Bryant agreed in text messages to accept the offer two days after he left office — but the arrests by the state auditor, a Bryant appointee and former campaign manager, derailed the arrangement.

None of these men have been accused of wrongdoing related to the deal.

“What was most striking about the Mississippi Today article is the fact that the governor knew or should have known” that the company was receiving funding from the state, Johnson told Mississippi Today. “And it appears from firsthand accounts from his emails and text messages that he was steering decisions as it relates to TANF funds, which obviously raises a lot of questions and should require a federal investigation into his involvement.”

“If, in fact, that was the case,” Johnson added, “he and others should be held accountable for their involvement.”

Much more has yet to be revealed about the widespread misspending of at least $77 million in federal public assistance funds.

“The audit report noted that its findings and all related information had been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice,” Johnson wrote in his letter. “However, nearly two years later, despite the overwhelming documentary evidence of fraud, forgery, and abuse in this matter, DOJ has not yet launched a criminal investigation.”

At the time of the 2020 arrests, State Auditor Shad White said his office had turned over all information to federal investigators. White justified his office making the initial arrests — including the former Bryant-appointed welfare director John Davis and nonprofit founder Nancy New — in order to quickly stop the flow of funds from the welfare agency to the contractors who were allegedly misspending the money.

Then-U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst in Jackson said the local FBI and his office were not aware of the welfare agency investigation until the arrests, but that “we stand ready to put the substantial experience and expertise of our offices and the entire U.S. Department of Justice to work to help our colleagues bring fraudsters to justice and stamp out public corruption,” the Clarion Ledger reported.

“Not only is it imperative that DOJ take prompt and aggressive action to protect the Mississippi residents who were and continue to be harmed by the wrongful actions of state officials,” Johnson wrote, “failure to investigate may lead to the impression that DOJ is continuing the previous administration’s pattern of looking the other way when laws are broken by white state officials, especially when the wrongdoing disproportionately
harms minorities.”

READ MORE: Mississippi Today investigation exposes new evidence of Phil Bryant’s role in welfare scandal

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More than 6 million African Americans in the South migrated north seeking better opportunities and a better way of life between 1916-1970. Those millions populated cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

That exodus was called “The Great Migration.”

An homage to that pilgrimage north opened this week at the Mississippi Museum of Art, where 12 artists from across the nation with ties to Mississippi will have their newly commissioned works showcased in the exhibit, “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration.”

The exhibit features work by acclaimed Black artists, including Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems. The works explore “profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States from historical and personal perspectives,” museum officials explained.

The museum hosted an April 8 weekend opening that featured discussions from most of the artists. The weekend guests included Ford Foundation president and author Darren Walker, who spoke to attendees about the lasting legacies of the Great Migration, and ABC anchor and Mississippi native Robin Roberts.

The exhibit will be open at the museum in downtown Jackson until Sept. 11, 2022.

Here are some photos from the exhibit’s opening weekend.

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The Legislature appropriated $11 million dollars for faculty pay raises at Mississippi’s community college system but some say it is not enough to ensure their salaries stay competitive with K-12 after the historic teacher pay raise. 

Mississippi’s 15 community colleges have long struggled to retain the best and brightest faculty due in part to a lack of state funding. A 2007 law mandates that community colleges receive mid-level funding, or half the per-student amount the Legislature appropriates to K-12 and the regional universities, but that has never happened. 

Now some are saying the historic pay raise for K-12 teachers, coupled with the comparably modest sum lawmakers appropriated for community college instructors, means many faculty could be making more money if they switched to teaching K-12. 

“I want to make it really clear, I’m pleased for the K-12 instructors,” said Thomas Huebner, Meridian Community College president. “But it will absolutely impact our ability to attract and retain instructors at the community college level.” 

The likelihood a community college instructor will make more in K-12 will vary, and there is a lack of data to show how that could play out in aggregate. The Mississippi Department of Education has not calculated how the pay raise will affect average teacher salaries. It also can be tricky to make a direct comparison between K-12 and community college instructors because they work varying contract lengths and teach different subject areas.

For instance, if Brandi Pickett, a wellness instructor at Meridian Community College, went back to K-12, the historic teacher pay raise means she could make about $14,000 more due to her years of experience and status as a National Board Certified Teacher. 

Pickett stays in her current position, with a base salary of $49,500 a year, because she went to community college and loves teaching students who remind her of herself. But she knows many community college faculty, especially those teaching general education courses like history or science, could be enticed to leave for K-12. 

“Why is it (my salary) not comparable to K-12?” Pickett said. “Why aren’t people trying … to give an incentive to keep those great teachers and not have them move? Where I’m from, people can go to Alabama, right across the state line, and be able to teach.” 

In March, the Legislature passed a $246 million K-12 teacher pay raise, the largest in state history. The average teacher in Mississippi made $46,862 during the 2020-21 school year, but that will increase with the pay raise. The average full-time community college instructor made $50,465 last year, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. 

The presidents of Mississippi’s 15 community colleges initially asked the Legislature to appropriate $11 million for salaries, enough for a 3%-across-the-board raise for the system’s nearly 6,000 employees. But they increased that request to $25 million in January due to the rate of inflation and the historic amount that K-12 teachers were likely to get, said Kell Smith, the Mississippi Community College Board’s interim executive director. 

The Legislature stuck to the first request. 

Mississippi’s community colleges already struggle to retain faculty, especially those in career-technical education who can make significantly more working in the trade than teaching it. Huebner said MCC recently lost an instructor in the electric lineman program because the college could not match the salary offered by out-of-state industry. He described the process of trying to find a replacement as “unbelievable.” 

“There have been situations where we went nine months trying to find a welding instructor, because our pay scale was so far under what industry was trying to pay those folks,” he said. 

Without sufficient state funding, community colleges are hamstrung in their ability to raise faculty salaries on their own. Some colleges have pushed for higher property taxes to fill the budget gap or raised tuition, Huebner said. But the latter option makes it more difficult for community colleges to fulfill their charge: “Offering a working class option, or entry, into the higher ed system,” said Chris Stevenson, a history instructor at Itawamba Community College. 

Stevenson says he and his wife like to joke that they “took a vow of poverty” when they decided to become teachers. 

“It is a labor of love more than a labor of salary,” he said.

In 2007, the Legislature attempted to address these budget woes by passing the Mid-Level Funding Act, which was intended “to provide adequate funding for Mississippi’s community and junior colleges.” That would be accomplished by funding the community colleges at a level more than K-12 schools but less than regional colleges. After lawmakers passed the bill, the plan was to phase-in mid-level funding over a three year period.   

Then the Great Recession hit. The Legislature has never funded the community colleges at a mid-level amount, Smith said. And the community colleges have stopped asking for it. MCCB now tailors its budget priorities to funding formula increases, workforce programs, and salary raises. 

“Honestly, we never had much success with” mid-level funding, Smith said. “It seemed like it became such a large ask.”  

According to MCCB, the Legislature would have needed to appropriate an additional $159 million to the community college system to meet mid-level funding this session. That includes the extra $64 million needed to bring community college instructor salaries to a mid-point between K-12 teachers and university faculty. 

“It does make us feel less important,” said Jennifer Smith, a librarian at Hinds Community College. “We’re teachers too, and we feel like we’re just not valued by the state. We train people to go into the workforce, and so what we do is develop our state. But our state is not rewarding us for helping the state.” 

After Smith finishes cataloging books, she goes to her second job making truffles at a bakery. She said that many of her coworkers work extra jobs, like teaching additional classes at nearby universities, taking on custodial work, tutoring students, or running Instacart or Doordash deliveries. 

Without these jobs, Smith said, “we can’t really afford to live.” 

Last year, the Legislature allocated enough funds for a 1%-across-the-board raise for community college employees. In Pickett’s nine years of teaching at MCC, she said it was the first time she’d seen lawmakers give community college employees an across-the-board raise. 

Pickett, who is the president of the Mississippi Association of Community College Faculty, an advocacy group, said she appreciates the money lawmakers have given for raises. She hopes that one day lawmakers will show they’re “ready to invest.” 

“We have one of the best (community college) systems in the nation,” she said. “What would happen if we’re no longer here, to the workforce? To that big gap of students that need the community colleges?” 

The post ‘We’re teachers too’: Community college faculty feel shortchanged by legislative raises appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A major economic development organization that represents the 19 Mississippi Delta counties on Monday called for lawmakers to expand Medicaid. 

The Delta Council, long a powerful lobby that has the ear of top Republican leaders, is among the state’s first major, non-health care related organizations to recommend Medicaid expansion. Major medical groups in the state like the Mississippi Hospital Association have supported expansion for years.

The resolution was passed unanimously by Delta Council’s health and education committee. There are around 150 council members on the committee, though not all of them were in attendance.

“While Medicaid expansion is not a complete panacea for individuals, the community’s economy, health care providers, and employers, it is a critical first step that will benefit all of them in the short and long term,” the resolution reads. 

Today, the Delta Council Health & Education Committee, chaired by Dr. Cass Pennington, unanimously approved a resolution supporting Medicaid Expansion. Wade Litton of Greenwood lead a special subcommittee reviewing the issue, and brought it before full committee for approval. pic.twitter.com/5WYENqFx8z

— Delta Strong (@MSDeltaStrong) April 11, 2022

The resolution was presented to the committee after a special subcommittee studied different options for helping struggling health care facilities in the Delta.

“After we talked to the experts and people in the industry, it became obvious that the best way to do that is to expand Medicaid,” said Wade Litton, chairman of Delta Council’s Economic Development Committee and the leader of the subcommittee. 

Mississippi is one of just 12 states not to expand Medicaid despite an increased federal matching rate under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that would provide the state with an extra $600 million per year. 

Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, two of Mississippi’s top elected officials, fiercely oppose Medicaid expansion. Reeves derisively calls it “Obamacare expansion” and has promised to never support it. Both Reeves and Gunn maintain that the state cannot afford it, despite years of legitimate research and economic studies that indicate otherwise.

At least eight expansion bills were filed during the 2022 legislative session, but none were debated or considered before dying in committee. 

If state leaders were to expand Medicaid, at least 225,000 Mississippians would qualify for health care coverage.

READ MORE: ‘It makes it hard to work’: The real cost of not expanding Medicaid in Mississippi

The Delta Council resolution repeatedly refers to the findings of a report from State Economist Corey Miller that showed expanding Medicaid would pay for itself and offer a litany of economic benefits.

According to the report, Medicaid expansion would: 

• Reduce the uncompensated care costs incurred by hospitals statewide. While these costs hurt each hospital’s bottom line, they have devastated small, rural hospitals Mississippi, particularly in the Delta.
• Create nearly 11,300 jobs a year between 2022 to 2027. Most of these jobs would be added in the health care and social assistance sector.
• Increase the state’s gross domestic product by between $719 million and $783 million each year.
• Increase the state’s population by about 3,300 to 11,500 new residents per year between 2022 and 2027. Mississippi was one of just three states in the U.S. to lose population between 2010 to 2020.

Expanding Medicaid would also help decrease the costs incurred by small businesses across the state in paying health insurance premiums for their employees, according to Litton. High amounts of uncompensated care contribute to hospitals raising the price of care, which then leads insurers to raise premiums. 

The result is a negative feedback loop that ultimately harms those paying for insurance, Litton said. 

Litton also said that Mississippi taxpayers are already helping pay for Medicaid expansion through their federal income taxes, but aren’t seeing any of the benefits from it. 

Medicaid currently covers around 780,000 Mississippians. Those include the disabled, poor pregnant women, poor children and a segment of the elderly population. Medicaid expansion would provide coverage to those making up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or $17,774 annually for an individual.

Tom Gresham, a member of the health and education committee who has previously served as chairman and president of Delta Council, said the passing of the resolution supporting Medicaid expansion shows that the leadership of the business and agriculture communities in the Delta understand the health care needs in their communities. 

“You have to have a healthy workforce and quality medical care for communities to thrive and to grow,” Gresham said.

More people left the Mississippi Delta between 2010 and 2020 than any other area of the state. Gresham said that the much-needed economic boon Medicaid expansion would provide the Delta would help encourage people to stay. 

Getting people insured would also improve access to health screenings and preventative care, resulting in huge savings for individuals, health systems and taxpayers, Gresham said. 

“If we keep somebody from having a stroke, think of the money we save versus if they have a stroke and they have to get on disability,” Gresham said. “That’s how we keep people in the workforce.”

READ MORE: Medicaid expansion would boost economy significantly more than legislative income tax cut, studies show

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Southern Miss lost its top two starting pitchers and the Golden Eagles’ top arm out of the bullpen after reaching an NCAA Regional championship game at Oxford last season.

Walker Powell and Hunter Stanley, the two starters, and Ryan Och, the reliever, all play professional baseball now. Among them, they provided 24 victories against only six defeats and an earned run average of just over two runs per game. They struck out roughly five times as many batters as they walked. They were dominant was what they were.

So, how in the world do you you rebuild all that? 

In the Golden Eagles case, they just reloaded.

Southern Miss, currently ranked as high as No. 11 in the country, has replaced those guys. And guess what: This season’s Eagle pitching staff has produced numbers far better than last year’s. Last year, Southern Miss had a team earned run average of 3.74 and opponents hit .236 against them. This season, Eagle pitchers have a team ERA of 2.86, nearly a run lower, and opponents hit just .222.

READ MORE: Christopher (Oz) Ostrander: This guy knows his stuff

In fact, Southern Miss pitching ranks in the top five of nearly every NCAA statistical category. Little wonder the Golden Eagles enter a three-game series at Florida International (FIU) Thursday night with 24-8 record and the nation’s ninth best RPI. All that has been achieved against a schedule that currently ranks 23rd most difficult in the nation.

The one constant in all this pitching success: pitching coach Christian Ostrander, known in college baseball circles as Oz, as in the Wizard of. Ostrander carries the additional title of associate head coach this season as a reward for the job he has done.  If he is not the best in the country at what he does, he certainly belongs in the conversation. Ostrander, a Delta State grad, has been successful wherever he has worked, including stints at Delta State, Jones Junior College and Louisiana Tech.

Says Scott Berry, Ostrander’s boss: “No doubt, Coach Oz is one of the best pitching coaches in our game today. He has a unique ability to connect with his pitchers through trust which enables their willingness to listen and develop accordingly. Many of our pitchers have taken their game to another level through his teaching both from the mental and physical sides of the game.”

Ostander’s philosophy of successful collegiate pitching can best be summed up in two words: “Throw strikes.”

No, Coach Oz is not alone in that regard but he surely seems to get his pitchers to buy into that philosophy better than 99% of the rest. Southern Miss ranks No. 2 in the nation in strikeout-to-walks ratio behind Tennessee. Golden Eagle pitching has struck out (353) nearly five times as many batters as they have walked (75). As a result, the Eagles rank third in the nation in earned run average. A deep bullpen has contributed mightily.

“I tell our guys, ‘Don’t give the hitters too much credit,’” Ostrander says. “Make them earn their way on. I tell them to watch batting practice and see how many outs hitters make against BP pitching. Don’t give them any gifts. Make them earn it.”

Southern Miss pitchers do. Look at the weekend starters: Tanner Hall has stuck out 68 batters and walked six in 49.2 innings. Hunter Riggins has fanned 41 and walked nine in 48 innings. Hurston Waldrep has struck out 63 and walked 13 in 42 innings. Waldrep, who has been the third starter in the rotation, has been most impressive of all, allowing only 25 hits and posting an ERA of 1.97. Opponents hit a measly .170 against him.

It helps to throw an explosive fastball with command in the 95-97 mph range, which Waldrep does. 

“He’s power-power,” Ostrander said. “He’s got a four-pitch mix with that fastball, a slider, a curve and a split change that when he throws it right is a big league pitch. He works at it. He is strong as an ox. I call him Thor.”

Waldrep, recruited to Hattiesburg out of Thomasville, Ga., has seemingly come out of nowhere after pitching only 16 innings all season in 2021 as a freshman.

Ostrander believes he has more pitchers who might surprise, as Waldrep has, later on.

“We’re deep, I believe that,” Ostrander said. “We’ve got some guys down the line who are just waiting for an opportunity. There’s only so many innings available and when your starters go deep, as ours have, it’s hard to get everybody the work they probably deserve.”

All that depth should bode well at tournament time. Southern Miss – and Ole Miss – fans well remember the 2021 Oxford Regional when the Golden Eagles slugged their way to the championship game but then ran short of pitching in the finale, losing 12-9 to the Rebels in a slugfest that featured 12 home runs, seven by the Eagles.

With the depth of the current staff, the Eagles should be better able to handle playing five games in four days, as an NCAA Regional often requires.

As this is written, the Eagles are 32 games into a 55-game regular season schedule. Much of the best competition is behind them. With much baseball yet to be played, Southern Miss looks like an NCAA host currently. The Eagles surely pitch not only like an NCAA host but also like a team that could wind up a top eight seed.

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Debbie Ellis knew something wasn’t right.

It was the spring of 2018 and day care providers like herself, who run centers that serve children in poverty, were in turmoil.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services hadn’t approved a single new child care voucher for a low-income working parent in five years.

And yet, the welfare agency had just bestowed a “financial windfall” on a north Mississippi nonprofit that had previously pulled in a modest annual revenue of around $1.5 million.

The new funding for the Family Resource Center of North Mississippi – which the state never publicly announced but would eventually total about $45 million – was enough for the nonprofit to open 15 new centers and increase its staff from 30 to 260 to run a program called “Families First for Mississippi.”

Ellis only knew about the nonprofit’s new cash infusion because the Daily Journal in Tupelo published an article about its recent expansion. She didn’t know where their money was coming from, but she had a hunch MDHS might be diverting funds from the Child Care Development Fund, which is supposed to supply the child care vouchers that centers like hers had stopped receiving.

The general public wouldn’t learn until two years later how much of that nonprofit’s operation was an alleged coverup for a still unresolved welfare scandal that occurred during then-Gov. Phil Bryant’s administration.

Family Resource Center is officially on the hook to repay the state $15 million, what the auditor says it misspent plus interest, though no one from the nonprofit has been accused of a crime. The founder of another nonprofit that helped run the Families First program, Nancy New, has pleaded not guilty to multiple embezzlement, bribery and racketeering charges and is potentially facing hundreds of years in prison. 

Most of the misspent money came from a federal block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), commonly known as “welfare”, but the Families First program also received some child care funds, according to a state audit.

Ellis still believes the newspaper article, which raised her suspicions, came about because an employee at the Family Resource Center, “who did not know there was anything wrong and did not know what not to say, just spilled the beans.”

Ellis’ instinct told her that this money, which was intended to help the state’s most vulnerable residents, was instead being shoveled into a program that lacked transparency and evidence of actually uplifting people in poverty.

“I knew then, this is entirely too much money for a subgrantee and there’s something to this story. There has to be. This is a lot of money,” Ellis recently told Mississippi Today. “The girl even reported that they were building new facilities, new facilities for Families First, one for every two counties. Now, there are eighty-something counties in Mississippi. That’s at least 40 facilities. And you know full well that grant money can not be used to build personal wealth. And yet these facilities were titled to Nancy New. It was absolutely stunning.”

But Ellis had an idea for how she would use this newfound knowledge. She took to her blog.

“Approximately one-half of all children who were being served (by the Child Care Development Fund) have been eliminated due to new, draconian eligibility requirements and new, additional hurdles in the redetermination process,” Ellis wrote on the website she runs on behalf of a consortium of child care providers in the Delta. “… Delusions of grandeur, bullying, inefficiency and state issued psychobabble rule the day.”

Agency leaders had recently acknowledged that MDHS programs were likely to suffer because of budget shortfalls. “Not so for Family Resource Center!” Ellis wrote in a sarcastic tone. “Wow! We are happy for them.”

Similar to TANF, the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) is a federal block grant. States can use the development fund to provide child care certificates to low-income parents so they can go to work or to improve the quality at day care centers. 

Ellis, who opened The Learning Tree in Greenwood in 1986, relies on the voucher program to stay in business, because without it, many of the families she serves cannot afford to put their kids in child care. The department reported a voucher waitlist of more than 21,000 children in 2017. As Mississippi stopped issuing new vouchers, the state’s workforce participation rate hit a historic low of 55%.

“For those who would criticize the working poor, for those who would criticize those receiving public assistance, they need to understand these were working parents,” Ellis told Mississippi Today. “They were not at home sitting on their laurels. They were working. And because they lost their funding, they could no longer work. Now there’s a double standard in there somewhere, isn’t there?” 

The day Ellis posted on her blog about the “financial windfall” of Families First, both the welfare director John Davis, who also is awaiting trial for his alleged role within the welfare fraud scheme, and Bryant’s early childhood education czar Laurie Smith reached out to the rebellious child care provider. They wanted to know what it would take for her to stop writing about them.

“Do you have time for a lunch meeting anytime soon?” Smith texted Ellis on March 12, 2018.

Ellis said she “knew from the immediate reaction from both John’s office and Laurie, that I had hit on something with the Families First post.”

Smith was the director of the governor-appointed State Early Childhood Advisory Council. A member of the council had sent Ellis’ blog post to Smith, asking for an explanation. “None of this is true,” Smith responded.

“They knew more would be coming,” Ellis said, referring to her blog. “I couldn’t put all of the pieces together, but I had enough information to know something was very, very sinister and wrong.”

Less than two week later, Ellis met with Smith, Davis and his deputy Dana Kidd, head of the economic assistance division, at Wellington’s Buffet inside the Hilton hotel on the north edge of Jackson.

“Honestly I never got past salad. Because I had a lot of things to say,” Ellis said.

“My posts had continued to say, ‘No new enrollment. No new certificates for new enrollment.’ And so they knew that my end game was to have that funding released,” she continued. “And we were also beginning to call for forensic audits for the CCDF from 2014 to 2018. That still has not been done … Where did that money go for five years? We still don’t know.”

At lunch, Ellis said, Smith was very quiet and Davis was friendly as always.

“He asked what he could do for me to help alleviate my concern for the Child Care Development Fund,” Ellis said. “And I said, ‘You can do for me as you must do for every low-income child care provider in the state of Mississippi: release this funding today. We don’t have a lot of time.’”

They asked Ellis how long she would give them to start issuing the vouchers before she would continue blogging. Ellis said two weeks. They missed the first deadline, but three weeks after that, the department began making their way down the wait list and working parents started receiving notification they had been approved for the benefit.

“I just knew we had to have new enrollment in order for the industry to survive. And we’re still recovering from that. The only salvation for the child care industry, as a whole, as a result of their shenanigans — the nicest thing to ever happen to us was a deadly pandemic,” Ellis said. “Because of the relief funding and the stabilization grants. With that kind of funding we can do the things that need to be done for child care.”

Today, low-income parents still face barriers getting the child care certificate, but Ellis said the agency isn’t systematically blocking enrollment anymore.

“There are good and honest people at DECCD (Division of Early Childhood Care and Development) today,” Ellis said. “But one thing the pandemic told us was that the policies are still punitive.”

This is a supplement to Part 4 of Mississippi Today’s series “The Backchannel,” which examines former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in the running of his welfare department, which perpetuated what officials have called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history.

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Mississippi’s year-old workforce office, Accelerate Mississippi, has given an $1.4 million grant to a pair of community colleges grow their utility lineworker program. 

The grant will fund Meridian Community College and East Central Community College’s efforts to double the number of lineworkers they train and help fill jobs needed by Mississippi Power and the East Mississippi Electric Power Association. The colleges, which are about 30 miles apart, serve six rural counties: Lauderdale, Leake, Neshoba, Newton, Scott and Winston. 

“This is a quality program to train, equip and deploy utility lineworkers throughout their region,” said Accelerate Mississippi executive director Ryan Miller. “They provide an incredible service. In our minds, they’re first responders.”

Accelerate Mississippi oversees tens of millions of dollars, including a $25 million pot collected via an unemployment insurance tax on businesses called workforce enhancement training – or “WET” – funds.

Last year, the office awarded nearly $1 million to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to fund a diesel technician program, another field with high demands for workers. 

Mississippi Power and the East Mississippi Electric Power Association had expressed a demand to the colleges already for skilled workers, especially for underground linemen, to install broadband cables as the state works to extend internet access to rural areas. 

The colleges wrote in their application to the workforce office that a number of jobs had been lost in “one of the nation’s most economically distressed regions” because of layoffs and business closures. They identified advanced manufacturing, health care, and energy work as having the most potential employment opportunities for their part of the state. 

But there is a gap between the region’s demand for certain jobs and the skills of their population. 

“This was two community college colleges combining forces to apply for WET funds,” said Miller. “It’s exactly what we hope to see: let’s coordinate on resources to meet and address a need that is out there.” 

The colleges expect to train up to 48 new utility workers over each 16-week session. Trainees can find jobs with wages between $21.75 and $31.56 an hour, according to data from the state employment security office.

Students will leave the program with the skills needed to perform electrical work both high on poles and underground. 

The bulk of the funding is going to pay for the equipment – from a bucket truck to a mini excavator – needed to train more students.

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