I know, I know — gub’ment is bad, right? Well, gub’ment makes up the people and services that we depend on daily. It is our neighbors, friends and family. So removing 1/3 of the revenue out of the state budget doesn’t seem like such a hot idea. I’ve never believed that government is the answer. But I definitely believe starving the one we have isn’t either.
The post Marshall Ramsey: Meeting the Beast appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Family members of Emmett Till are calling on Mississippi officials to arrest the woman they say is the last living accomplice in Till’s lynching.
The Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, founded by Till’s family members, announced Friday at a press conference at the Mississippi State Capitol that they were delivering a petition with over 300,000 signatures to Mississippi officials, calling for Carolyn Bryant Donham to be charged.
Donham was the wife of Roy Bryant, one of Till’s two murderers. She and her husband owned a store together in Money, Miss. that Till and his cousins visited in August 1955, where she later testified that he allegedly grabbed her arm, put his hands on her waist, and made sexually suggestive comments.
In 2018, the investigation into Till’s death was reopened after a book by Timothy Tyson published that included a confession from Donham that her allegations at the time were false. In the book, Donham recanted that Till made advances on her, telling the author “that part is not true.” Donham later disputed this claim that she recanted her story, according to the Mississippi Center For Investigative Reporting. In December 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice closed the case without filing any additional charges because authorities found “insufficient evidence to prove that she ever told the professor that any part of her testimony was untrue.”
Family members said they met with the Department of Justice in Oxford earlier this week, but left disappointed as they feel other information still needs to be investigated.
“We want justice,” said Jaribu Hill, a civil rights attorney representing the family. “We want the original warrant that should have been served on her in 1955. We want that warrant to surface, and we want it served…We want the evidence that shows her culpability brought before a grand jury, and we want the state of Mississippi to take accountability, to be responsible, for all of the Emmett Tills.”
Posters next to the podium showed paintings of Till with career goals he was not able to fulfill, including peacekeeping, cooking, comedy, and playing baseball.
“It is frustrating that I have to keep screaming and hollering about the importance of getting closure, not only for the family of Emmett Till but for the whole nation,” said Keith Beauchamp, whose 2005 documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till helped reopen the case.
Shelton Chappell, whose mother was shot during the 1964 Jacksonville race riots, played the freedom song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” on his saxophone while other speakers sang along.
Deborah Watts, co-founder of the foundation, said that it was “invigorating” to see so many petition signatures, which reminds her that “we are not walking this road alone.”
“We made a promise to Mamie (Till) that we would persist, and that’s why we’re here today,” Watts said.
A “Justice for Emmett Till” rally will be held in Smith Park in Jackson on Saturday, March 12 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The post Emmett Till’s family wants Carolyn Bryant Donham brought to justice appeared first on Mississippi Today.
A few weeks after Courtney Darby gave birth to her daughter Deysha, she got a letter in the mail notifying her that she would soon lose her health insurance through Medicaid.
Deysha, born in December 2008, was Darby’s first baby, and she was still wondering when she would feel normal again. She wanted to ask her doctor about the back pain that lingered and the nagging worry that she was doing everything wrong.
But her job at a grocery store didn’t provide health insurance, so without Medicaid coverage, she was left to do her own research and hope for the best.
“It was too soon,” said Darby.
Earlier this year, about two months after her son R’Jay was born, Darby got a very different letter. It told her that Medicaid would continue to cover her healthcare, thanks to federal rules that extend health insurance coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result, Darby can make an appointment to see a doctor whenever she needs. She has been able to get medication and therapy to treat postpartum depression and anxiety.
But on Wednesday, leaders in the state House killed a bill that would have ensured new moms like Darby could get Medicaid coverage for a year postpartum even after the federal public health emergency ends. When that happens — likely later this year — many of the 60% of pregnant women in Mississippi who are covered by Medicaid will be forced to go without healthcare starting two months after giving birth.
Even some states that have not expanded Medicaid eligibility, like Georgia and Tennessee, have passed measures to let new moms keep their coverage for at least six months. Alabama is set to extend coverage to a year postpartum.
Just over 39,000 Mississippians are currently covered by Medicaid because they are pregnant or postpartum, according to the state Division of Medicaid. When the emergency declaration ends, communications officer Matt Westerfield said, states will begin reviewing current beneficiaries on a rolling basis.
People like Darby, who gave birth more than 60 days ago, will lose coverage unless they qualify in another category, such as disability. And people who give birth after the declaration ends are likely to get no more than 60 days of coverage postpartum.
After Senate Bill 2033 failed, Darby was stunned.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “I mean, it’s just mind blowing that you know — it’s like, have some compassion. Have some heart. At least try to show that you care.”
House Speaker Phillip Gunn cited his opposition to Medicaid expansion, though the bill would not have expanded eligibility for Medicaid. The Associated Press asked Gunn whether extending postpartum coverage saved lives.
“That has not been a part of the discussions that I’ve heard,” Gunn said.
To Darby, the consequences of the extension are intimately familiar, and the stakes are high: her life, and the lives of her children.
“That’s kind of a savior to me,” she said of Medicaid coverage. Now, she waits and wonders when it will run out.
During her pregnancy with R’Jay, Darby regularly drove 20 miles from her home in Heidelberg to the OB-GYN clinic at the Family Health Center in Laurel. Once a month, then twice, and then every week, she reported to a squat brick building near downtown. The waiting room was always crowded with pregnant women.
Family Health Center is a federally qualified health clinic (FQHC), which means it relies on federal grants and donations as well as reimbursement from Medicaid and Medicare to operate.
Dr. Rashad Ali, who has led the center since 2006, is proud to describe its mission: To provide quality healthcare for the underserved and the uninsured. Ali, an OB-GYN, delivers 200 to 250 babies a year, and one of those in 2021 was R’Jay. He estimates about 70% of the pregnant women he sees are enrolled in Medicaid.
The five counties served by Family Health Center are prime examples of the importance of FQHCs. Clarke, Jasper, Jones, Smith and Wayne Counties are rural and poor. About one in five adults lacks health insurance, a little higher than the state average.
Shelly Roark, a women’s health nurse practitioner at Family Health Center, said Medicaid coverage during pregnancy and after gives her patients a chance to get care for underlying health issues like chronic hypertension, kidney disease and diabetes, which can be exacerbated by pregnancy.
The state’s 2019 maternal mortality report, which reviewed all 136 maternal deaths during pregnancy and up to a year postpartum from 2013 to 2016, found that heart conditions and hypertensive disorders were the most common causes of death. The report also found that Black women are three times likelier than white women to die of a pregnancy-related cause.
In the weeks after a baby is born, new parents are focused on learning how to be responsible for another person’s every need.
“You’re not worried about yourself,” Roark said. “After that two months, you can start focusing more on yourself. That’s when we really need to provide the care.”
With extended Medicaid coverage during the pandemic, Roark can make sure that happens, referring new moms to specialists and connecting them with mental health practitioners.
Roark joined Family Health Center in March 2019. During her first year at the clinic, she saw what happened when women were dropped from Medicaid 60 days after pregnancy.
“Typically, they just don’t show up” to scheduled follow-up appointments, she said.
Because Mississippi hasn’t expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, many working parents who could be covered in other states aren’t covered here. In Louisiana, for example, a single parent with four kids qualifies as long as their income is below about $43,000. In Mississippi, that same parent only qualifies if their income is less than $8,100 annually. (And healthy single adults in Mississippi can’t get Medicaid at all.)
During pregnancy, the income rules are much looser: A woman with four kids qualifies as long as her monthly income is below about $5,400. That means many women with insurance through work get additional coverage through Medicaid that makes it possible for them to get better care.
Family Health Center has a sliding fee scale to try to keep services affordable, but any amount can be too much for families struggling to pay for diapers, food, and older kids’ needs.
Mississippi doesn’t have a paid family leave policy, so for many women, giving birth and taking a few weeks to recover and bond with their baby means losing income completely. By the time they are able to return to work, the bills are piling up.
“I’ve had to be that patient, where it’s like– ‘I can’t come, because I don’t have the money,’” Darby said.
She wants to keep her kids active in sports and school events, which also costs money. Sometimes, she tries to use Google to find “home remedies” to save herself a doctor’s bill.
“It’s trying to distinguish between, do you want to try to keep your child on track, help them succeed? Or (pay for) this one-time visit?”
When Darby brought R’Jay home from the hospital, she was overwhelmed. Without the nurses’ help, she felt like she had forgotten how to breastfeed. She worried about catching COVID-19 and bringing it back to her baby. She barely slept, concerned R’Jay would die of SIDS if she didn’t watch over him constantly.
Was he sleeping too much? Not enough? Was he getting enough milk? Was she doing this all wrong?
“It just got to the point where that deep depression slipped in,” she said. “I really didn’t want to get up and do nothing, but I had to. It was an everyday fight and battle for me: ‘You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up. Your children need you. R’Jay can’t do nothing for himself.’”
The feeling wasn’t like a light switch she could turn on and off. It came and went, no matter how much she tried to stop it. It was unlike anything she experienced after her older children were born, and it was hard to explain.
Her doctor prescribed medication and referred her to a therapist, who diagnosed her with severe anxiety and depression. They talk about trying to tackle one thing at a time.
Postpartum depression and other mental health issues are not a small part of Mississippi’s maternal health crisis. The maternal mortality review found that 11% of all pregnancy-related deaths in the state were caused by suicide or drug overdose. And 37% of all pregnancy-related deaths occurred more than six weeks after birth. Several studies have shown rates of postpartum anxiety and depression are rising during the COVID-19 pandemic, as new moms are more isolated and worry about their family’s safety.
Darby knew she needed help, and she’s grateful she can get it.
“I don’t want to keep it covered to the point that I’m so down and out that I can’t dig myself out of that hole,” she said. “I want to be the best parent that I can be for not only R’Jay, but also my other kids as well.”
Exactly how long Darby’s coverage will last is now unclear. She is taking time off from her job as a teacher to focus on parenting and her mental health, and she thought her Medicaid coverage would provide a measure of stability and consistent access to care.
The current declaration is set to expire in mid-April, but the federal government told states it would give them 60 days’ notice before any expiration. Since that notice hasn’t arrived, the declaration should be extended at least one more time, which could last until mid-July.
Depending on when the emergency declaration ends and how long Mississippi takes to reevaluate her eligibility, Darby could lose coverage in several months.
Her doctors at Family Health Center are worried, too. Ali is a former president of the Community Health Center Association of Mississippi, which backed efforts to extend postpartum coverage.
“It’s not at all uncommon for a woman to have health issues weeks or months after they’ve delivered,” he said. “And if they don’t have money to get treated, what are they supposed to do? On occasion, we find people who had problems in the pregnancy, but after the pregnancy is over, two months later that problem hasn’t gone away, but now they don’t have money or insurance.”
R’Jay, now nearly three months old, cries less than Darby’s other kids did when they were babies. He already likes to talk. Every night from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., he wakes up, as regular as clocking in to work, she jokes.
After dozing off in his baby carrier while Darby talked, he woke up with the hiccups. Darby held him against her chest.
“Hiccup means baby grows, they gonna get taller,” she said, looking at her son. She smiled. “I just always say that.”
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The 55,000 or so people in a Mississippi Senate district and 24,000 in a House district expect the lawmakers they send to Jackson to have a say in the policy and spending decisions the Legislature makes.
And largely they do, particularly as they gain seniority, committee assignments and chairmanships and learn the ropes of legislating.
But then, there are times when rank-and-file lawmakers need not even be there — they have about as much input as the furniture in the Capitol. Particularly, when there are standoffs and brinksmanship between the House and Senate leadership on major issues or spending, negotiations get pushed to deadlines or beyond.
Brinksmanship at the Capitol in the final weeks of a legislative session has been called a game of chicken, a game of who blinks first or even “let go of me or I’ll jump off this cliff.” What it often means is that most of the 174 lawmakers get the mushroom treatment during last-minute, back-room negotiations. Then the rank-and-file are force-fed the final deals at voting deadline by the leadership, often with little time to even read all the details before voting. The committee system goes out the window. Bills aren’t vetted. Mistakes get made. Democracy dies with deadline deals in the Mississippi statehouse.
Numerous lawmakers have complained over the last five years or so that they’re given the bum rush. A couple of times in the House, they’ve been asked to pass in committee bills that weren’t even written yet.
A standoff of epic proportions is brewing at the Capitol in the final weeks of the 2022 legislative session over House and Senate dueling income tax cut proposals. It is delaying, and could derail, one of the most important issues lawmakers have faced in a generation — how best to spend $1.8 billion in federal ARPA pandemic stimulus money.
READ MORE: 5 things to know about the Great Mississippi Tax Cut Battle of 2022
For that matter, it portends that whatever income tax or elimination deal is brokered would be last minute by detente, not deliberation and analysis. That’s probably not the best way to adopt a sea change in the state’s tax structure.
It could also hang up many other measures, and even setting the state’s roughly $7 billion budget for next year.
Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn has made it no secret that he considers his proposal to eliminate the state personal income tax, along with raising sales taxes, the most important measure of his political career. In recent weeks, he’s made clear he’s willing to let other measures and spending die if the Senate doesn’t acquiesce.
Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, has pushed a much more modest income tax cut and rebates for taxpayers. Senate leaders say making a sea change elimination of one-third of the state’s revenue during uncertain economic times isn’t prudent and could crash the state budget.
Hosemann, who held Senate hearings on ARPA spending over the summer and fall, has made it no secret he sees spending the stimulus funds in “transformational” way on game-changing infrastructure statewide is his top priority. His main proposal is providing state matching funds for the federal stimulus local governments have received, in order to build larger, more transformational water, sewerage and other infrastructure projects. Proponents of this say Mississippi — already behind most other states in planning for or spending the ARPA funds — is burning daylight and leaving local governments in limbo on planning for large projects.
Although in the past he’s criticized Gunn’s tax plan as a “tax swap” because of its increase in sales taxes, Gov. Tate Reeves this week praised Gunn’s threat of an ARPA standoff as “a smart move,” saying, “The taxpayers should be the first to benefit when we have this much money.” It’s possible that if lawmakers blow end of session deadlines with tax cuts, ARPA spending or setting a budget, Reeves would force them back into special session over the summer. That, too, would results in major decisions being made by a handful of leaders with abbreviated debate and vetting.
Regardless, with the 2022 session scheduled to end in about three weeks, with so much as yet unfinished business, legislative leaders will have to scramble to reach deals.
And the rank-and-file elected lawmakers will probably not have a lot of input on what those deals look like.
READ MORE: The Mississippi Republican income tax bet
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The House has offered a “compromise” $226 million teacher pay raise to the state Senate.
But Senate leaders said Thursday they weren’t in on any of the compromising, haven’t met with House leaders beyond casual conversation and haven’t vetted the House proposal. They were perplexed why House Speaker Philip Gunn held a press conference Thursday to announce the House offering instead of having House conferees, or negotiators, meet with Senate conferees first.
The new House offer would be a $226 million deal that would raise starting teacher pay to an average of $41,638, higher than both the southeastern starting average of $39,754 and the national average of $41,163. The offer by House leaders provides an average raise higher than either the House or Senate’s original proposals.
Many political observers suspect the House move on Thursday without working with the Senate is tied to the ongoing standoff between the House and Senate over dueling income tax cut proposals. Gunn has recently said he’s prepared to hold up other legislation if the Senate doesn’t agree to his proposal to eliminate the personal income tax and raise sales taxes. The standoff portends lawmakers ending their session without deals on major issues and having to come back in special session over the summer for more haggling.
But on Thursday Gunn said the House is willing to pass a teacher raise regardless of a tax cut agreement. But his comments left doubt whether the House is willing to entertain any Senate input on teacher pay.
“I am proud to stand here before you and announce the House position on our teacher pay plan,” Gunn said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. “… We believe this is a strong statement on our commitment, and a win for teachers and a win for students.”
Gunn said the House move is not take-it-or-leave-it and, “If they’ve got ways they think they can improve it, they can let us know.” But he also said, “We don’t see how there can be improvement,” and said he sees no reason the Senate shouldn’t just pass the House offering and send it on to the governor.
READ MORE: Senate reluctantly takes House bill to ensure passage of teacher pay raise
But a teacher raise was also a Senate priority — with senators working over the summer to draft a plan — and Senate leaders are still smarting over the House killing the Senate teacher pay bill without a vote for a second year in a row. The initial House and Senate plans were similar, both over $200 million, and either would have been the largest Mississippi teacher pay raise in recent history. Some conflict between the chambers on a teacher raise appears to be centered on pride of authorship, and differences over other issues such as tax cuts.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, issued only a brief statement late Thursday: “We look forward to meeting with the House and finalizing a historic teacher pay raise.”
While the new House offering appears to still be most similar to the House’s original plan, it does provide yearly “step” increases in pay and larger bumps every five years similar to the Senate proposal.
Typically, for major bills in conference, three negotiators from each chamber would meet to work out details and compromise, although sometimes for expediency on lesser issues or for negotiations later in the process the two chambers will send over signed conference reports.
“No,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory and one of the Senate teacher pay negotiators, when asked if there had been a conference meeting. “Why on earth would you call a press conference and go through all of this when there’s not been any meeting? The common sense of it is, when you’ve got an idea, and I’ve got an idea, you meet somewhere and see what you can work out.”
The new House proposal would provide a raise to all Mississippi teachers for the 2022-2023 school year, $4,850 on average, with 92% of all teachers seeing a raise of at least $4,000, House leaders said.
The measure would provide yearly step increases in pay of at least $400 a year, with larger increases of at least $1,000 every fifth year and a $2,500 raise for all teachers in their 25th year.
The bill would also provide a $2,000 raise for assistant teachers. And it would correct a legislative drafting error so nurses, counselors and other specialists who did not receive their national board certification supplements in the 2021-2022 year would receive them retroactively — a one-time payment of around $6,000 for most of these educators.
READ MORE: House vs. Senate: How do their teacher pay plans compare?
On March 1, the House killed the Senate pay raise proposal without a vote. The Senate reluctantly passed the House bill — after amending it to the Senate version — to keep a teacher raise alive. With Gunn threatening to hold up other legislation as leverage on his proposal to eliminate the income tax and raise sales taxes, Senate leaders and education advocates have feared the pay raise might die in the tax standoff, and criticized the House as using brinksmanship with teacher pay. But it appears both chambers are prepared to pass a teacher pay raise.
The original House plan would have increased starting teacher pay from $37,000 a year to $43,125. The Senate plan would have increased starting pay to $40,000, but also provided increases of $1,325 to $1,624 at five-year intervals as teachers gain more experience.
The original House plan would have been enacted in one year while the Senate proposal would be phased in over two years. The Senate’s plan included a year-two, $44 million across-the-board increase of $1,000 per teacher. Including the teacher assistants, the Senate plan would have cost about $230 million over two years compared to $220 million in one year for the initial House proposal.
House leaders, including Gunn criticized the Senate plan being spread over two years, saying this appeared to be a political calculation to provide part of the raise during an election year next year.
Hosemann, Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves have all promised “significant” teacher raises. Reeves proposed a smaller, $3,300 increase over two years.
House Education Chairman Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach, praised the House’s latest plan.
“We’re proud of this, and I believe holding out, going to conference on this, we will end up getting more money for teachers, and definitely more in the first year,” Bennett said.
Bennett also praised the work of Reps. Kent McCarty, Jansen Owen and Kevin Felsher, whom he said helped work on a pay raise plan for more than a year.
“Our goal with our bill was to target the problem we have with recruiting and retaining teachers, and this compromise does a good job, is a good step towards doing that,” Owen said.
Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, in a statement on Thursday said: “The conference committee has not met because of critical floor deadlines. The Senate conferees will take a look at the House report and run the numbers. We hope to be able to meet and finalize an agreement soon. As always I would just like to thank teachers for the hard work they are doing for our kids every day.”
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One of the biggest hurdles low-income single moms in Mississippi face when they apply for child care assistance is the requirement they sue their child’s father for child support first.
But on March 3, a group of governor-appointed early childhood administrators voted to recommend that Gov. Tate Reeves and his Department of Human Services remove this barrier from families.
Mississippi leaders often tout family-centered values, but working moms and advocates say the state’s child support requirement can cause animosity between parents as the state agency meddles in their financial arrangement.
“It’s like you’ve invited someone else into your home that creates a lot of extra conflict,” a single mother told Mississippi Today in its 2020 series on child support.
A single mom might have struck a deal with her child’s father that works for their family, but if she wants to access the federal child care voucher, she must turn her child support case over to the state to enforce. If the mom has ever received cash welfare, the state then seizes and withholds those child support dollars to pay itself back for the assistance it provided. (The vast majority of low-income custodial parents applying for public assistance are women, which is why this story refers to them as single mothers).
“They try to make the woman the policeman of their division by putting the father under child support. It’s not her job to do that. She did not create that rule,” said Theophilus King, owner of Christian Mission Learning Center in Jackson told Mississippi Today last year. “They’re trying to drive a greater wedge between the two people.”
On top of that, the welfare agency pays a contractor to operate this service, though privatization has proven in some cases to be less effective, according to a recent report by a legislative watchdog group.
Mississippi Department of Human Services has made strides recently to boost benefits to families in need and create a friendlier safety-net atmosphere in a state known for having some of the harshest public assistance policies in the nation. It convinced the Legislature to increase the monthly cash welfare amount by $90; it created a $100 “pass through” so that the state doesn’t intercept all child support money; and it sent out $1,000 supplements to welfare recipients in December.
But on the issue of the child support requirement, agency officials had remained mum. Until now.
Carol Burnett, founder of the Low-Income Child Care Initiative, has been advocating for the state to remove this rule for years with little reception from state leaders. She said she was surprised and thrilled when the State Early Childhood Advisory Council raised the topic and every member expressed support for doing away with the requirement, which only 13 states currently impose. At least nine states have removed this requirement since 2018, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Getting this barrier out of the way will help more single parent-headed families get child care, which means more single parents will be able to go to work. And going to work is something that we know he (Gov. Reeves) does care about,” Burnett said. “… It’s going to make it easier for a lot of parents that we’ve seen struggle.”
Mississippi has imposed the child support requirement in the child care program since 2004. The state enforces the same rule for food assistance, even though it is not required to by federal law.
Burnett and other advocates have criticized the department for failing to approve applications for the child care voucher in a timely manner. Some of the delay may be attributed to hiccups caused by the child support requirement. Every year, the program serves only a fraction of kids in low-income families.
MDHS received an additional $200 million for the program under the American Rescue Plan Act that it can use to serve more families, as long as they’re eligible.
Last year when Mississippi Today asked Chad Allgood, director of the Division of Early Childhood Care and Development at MDHS, if his agency would consider removing the requirement, he refused to engage on the topic, responding, “It’s agency policy. That’s the extent of what I can tell you.”
At the March 3 council meeting, which Allgood helped conduct, he said he and other child care administrators had been studying the child support rule and agreed it should be removed.
“We’ve had conversations with her (Holly Spivey, Gov. Reeves’ education policy adviser) about approaching the governor with this recommendation,” Allgood said. “We do feel that it would make a very powerful statement for SECAC to make this recommendation.”
The council voted unanimously. The governor’s office did not return several requests for comment about what he plans to do with the recent recommendation.
“I personally think that the Child Care Development Fund (child care voucher) offers some of the most potential for Mississippi of any government program,” said Andrea Sanders, Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, which oversees the state’s foster care program for children who have faced abuse and neglect. Sanders is also executive director of SECAC.
“I think that getting children in good, quality child care early, allowing their parents the ability to work without fear of where their children are, without having to leave them with a 13-year-old brother because they don’t have options. That’s how you start to stop the cycle of violence in households. So I’m certainly a big proponent of this move (to remove the child support requirement),” Sanders said.
The State Early Childhood Advisory Council, established in law during the reauthorization of Head Start in 2007, has a contentious history. Because it is housed under the governor’s office and is comprised of governor-appointees, the board is subject to political whims. The work of the council under former Gov. Phil Bryant, for example, has been wiped from the internet for the last two years and all but forgotten.
The council helps craft state plans for programs like the Child Care Development Fund, the federal block grant that funds the child care voucher program, which Mississippi calls the Child Care Payment Program. Under the previous administration, the council, chaired by a data scientist from Mississippi State University, created a new controversial child care center quality rating system and improvement plan that was never fully implemented. Through the plan, centers were supposed to partner the Mississippi Community College Board to train their workers.
Child care centers said the council members disregarded their suggestions for building a effective program. At that time, SECAC was working closely with the research canter data scientist Mimmo Parisi founded called NSPARC, which used to receive millions from state agencies under Bryant but has since fallen out of favor with political leadership.
Child care providers and advocates have long complained about a lack of communication with the council and state early childhood administrators.
Most recently, the Mississippi Department of Human Services awarded Mississippi State University Extension Service $5 million to develop a new early childhood curriculum for child care centers to use.
Child care centers and advocates remain skeptical about the direction of early childhood programs in the state, but they hope the council’s recent vote could signal earnest efforts to craft policy suggestions based on the actual needs of low-income working parents.
“I would support it and hope that this would be a beginning to communication between childcare, parents and the governor’s office,” said Deloris Suel, owner of Prep Company Tutorial School in Jackson. “This is more than we’ve gotten out of any governor since this was enacted, so this is a very good first step.”
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Students in Mississippi will soon have 24/7 access to free online tutoring services in English and math.
The Mississippi Department of Education signed a $10.7 million contract with Paper, an online tutoring company, to provide live help and writing feedback to 3rd-12th grade students across the state. 121 districts signed up for this opt-in program.
The program is paid for by the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, and will last through September 2024.
“Like many states across the country, we would like to use our (pandemic relief) funds to mitigate any learning loss that has taken place as a result of the pandemic,” Marla Davis, associate superintendent of academic education, said when presenting the service to the State Board of Education on Feb. 17.
According to Paper’s website, tutors are college students, PhD candidates, and teachers who can provide assistance in English, Spanish, French, or Mandarin.
There are no limits on the length of a tutoring session or the number of sessions a student can initiate. The state recommends tutoring sessions three times a week for 30 minutes, a model also known as “high-dosage tutoring,” but it is not a requirement.
Teachers and administrators will also be able to monitor student activity and progress on the platform, with the goal of helping inform instruction. Davis also said that professional development and technical support will be provided for classroom teachers to help them utilize the platform, which is expected to begin by the end of March.
“We’re honored to take this major step towards educational equity alongside the state of Mississippi,” said Philip Cutler, co-founder and CEO of Paper. “This initiative makes it clear that the state’s highest-ranking education leaders view tutoring as a vital academic resource, and we look forward to partnering with them to create a world-class educational system in the Magnolia State.”
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After 20 years of teaching special education, Alison Rausch has adopted a “one day at a time” attitude towards her job.
Rausch, who currently teaches fifth and sixth grade at the Wheeler Attendance Center in Prentiss County, has found the uncertainty of the pandemic exhausting. The unpredictable nature of students being out for quarantine leaves her regularly reteaching lessons and makes it difficult to plan.
There have also been an increased number of students referred to her department for testing for special education services, mostly related to depression and anxiety.
“I’ve always been a firm believer as a special education teacher — if you don’t provide resources for the mental health, for the behavioral health, for the social skills, then you’re not going to get the academic outcomes that you want,” Rausch said.
As the pandemic persists, Mississippi and the nation have seen increased anxiety and depression among children. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health in October 2021, which they said was a pandemic-induced escalation of prior trends. In Mississippi, 31,000 youth reported having a major depressive episode in 2019, of which nearly three-quarters said they did not receive treatment according to a new report from Mental Health America.
Carey Wright, state superintendent of education, said both her teacher and student advisory councils have been very vocal about the need for increased mental health services in response to increased depression and anxiety from the pandemic.
“To me, that is the part that breaks your heart,” Wright told Mississippi Today. “Statewide, we need to do a really good job of training our teachers and leaders on the signs and symptoms of children and adults that are struggling from mental health and social-emotional issues.”
READ MORE: ‘We got to get some help:’ Pandemic accelerates need for children’s mental health services
In the Jackson Public School district, a recent student death prompted district officials to remind the community about the mental health services available to students.
“There are people around you — your teachers, your counselors, your principals, your parents, your pastors, on and on — there are people around you who care about you and want to see you well, so please reach out to us,” Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Errick Greene said in a video message to the district community. “You are not alone, and we need you to know that.”
Jackson Public Schools contracts with Marion Counseling Services to provide onsite mental health specialists at each middle school and high school and uses Hinds Behavioral Health Services at the elementary level. District officials said both services have reported increased demand during the pandemic.
Amanda Thomas, executive director of climate and wellness in Jackson Public Schools, said when a teacher notices a student being withdrawn or making comments about hurting themselves or others, it is imperative not to take it lightly and to begin the referral process. Thomas explained that all staff members are trained on suicide prevention, but recent events have prompted them to do refresher trainings.
“It can be a little difficult when you are faced with it, even though you think you have those particular tools in your kit, to be able to pull them out and use them,” Thomas said.
The district is also beginning to implement a social-emotional learning curriculum, which focuses on self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.
The Pascagoula-Gautier School District began educating staff on these topics in the fall of 2019 as part of a push district officials call “whole-child learning.”
This work included trainings on common mental health disorders and how to accommodate them in the classroom. It also focused on the “zone of regulation” language that became the baseline curriculum for each school counselor to address mental health. The four zones – blue, red, yellow, and green – represent different emotions. These include, respectively, sadness/tiredness, anger, anxiety/frustration, and being happy/ready to learn.
Kristen Sims, who coordinates the program for the district, explained the zones in a video.
“The green zone is where we want to stay as much as we can, but sometimes you might enter one of those other zones … and it is completely normal to feel any of those things,” she said. “But we always want to do our best to get back to the green zone where we’re 100% ourselves.”
This semester, the initiative was extended to include physical cards that were distributed to each student and feature the four zones as well as coping skills and positive affirmations.
Sims said the cards were a jumping-off point for broader conversations about mental health among students, especially after they were first introduced in the classroom.
“For the next 10 minutes, the students all discussed their feelings, saying ‘Oh, I’m in the red zone when I’m taking a math test’ and joking like that, but then also sharing what coping skills work for them,” Sims said. “So the teacher then led almost a group therapy session.”
Jeana Delancey, a school counselor at Trent Lott Academy in the Pascagoula-Gautier School District, called the cards “a great reference point.”
“It’s refreshing to see students come to me with some knowledge already of how to communicate how they’re feeling,” Delancey said. “Like planting a seed and watching it grow.”
At the state level, advocates have been pushing for years for lawmakers to enshrine mental health standards into state law.
Sanford Johnson, director of TeachPlus Mississippi, has been working with teachers to advocate for legislation that would create minimum baselines for mental health care in schools.
“The teachers that went through (a mental health first aid training) have talked about just how helpful it was because they don’t have to have all the answers — it doesn’t train them how to diagnose, but you’re able to identify a student who may be dealing with a challenge,” Johnson said. “It teaches you how to communicate with that student in a trusting way, and then how to encourage that student to connect with resources.”
“There have been so many teachers that have talked about particular students where ‘We thought it was a discipline issue, now that I know this information I’m wondering if there was a mental health issue,’” Johnson continued.
The Mental Awareness Program for School Act, which would have created some of the programming Johnson was pushing for, passed the House earlier this session but died in a Senate committee.
The Mississippi Department of Education is also addressing this issue by using some of its federal pandemic relief funds for free telehealth and teletherapy services within schools.
The Oxford School District started its whole-child education push about two years ago. LaTonya Robinson, chief of student services in the Oxford School District, has tried to make this transition a collaborative process.
”(When the) pandemic happened and we immediately realized that we needed more eyes, more people on the ball so that we didn’t miss anybody,” Robinson said. “The pandemic gave us the exciting opportunity of finding out what the gaps were and then restructuring our systems of support so that those gaps no longer existed.”
Schools hold “at-risk” meetings at least once a month to review the status of each student receiving mental health services from the district. These meetings are attended by counselors, behavior specialists, intervention specialists, principals, any community partners, and the district’s retention coordinator.
The district has also worked to more effectively utilize school counselors, following a model from the American School Counselor Association.
“It takes them away from so much of the paperwork that counselors are traditionally known for and takes them back to the three attributes of attendance, academics, and behavior,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the district will bring on a clinical psychology intern from the University of Mississippi next school year, and plans to expand the conversation about mental health to also include parental involvement.
“Mental health is a community problem and not just a school problem,” she said. “… Talk more to your kids. …Talk to them about things that are going on in their day so that we can connect those dots. There’s never anything worse than being in a disciplinary hearing and having a parent hear something for the first time.”
The post ‘You are not alone, and we need you to know that’: What schools are doing to support students’ mental health appeared first on Mississippi Today.
