Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove used to say the most important item addressed each legislative session is the budget because it establishes the priorities of the state.
For decades, that priority in terms of where the most state funds are spent has been public education. While arguments can be made that Mississippi could be spending a modest amount more of existing funds on education than say on public safety or other entities, the real issue is not the share of state revenue spent on public education, but that Mississippi’s limited tax base does not cover all the needs of the state.
During the 2021 session, legislators found themselves in an enviable and somewhat unusual situation in that by Mississippi standards the state coffers were flush — well, relatively flush.
Based on that situation, legislators passed a state-support or general fund budget that totaled $6.56 billion or $249.6 (almost 4%) above the amount budgeted the previous year.
“The main highlight would be the budget …,” House Speaker Philip Gunn said when talking about the recently completed 2021 session. “Obviously, revenue continues to be good. This allows us to fund all state agencies. It actually has allowed us to restore the cuts made last year.”
Last year, in the midst of COVID-19 and fearing what the pandemic would mean for the state economy, legislators cut most state budgets. The overall cut was $125 million or almost 2%. But the impact on the state economy and especially on revenue collections has not been as negative as once feared.
While there have been recent downticks in the state economy in terms of job losses, most economist believe that the outlook for the coming year is bright. Revenue collections through February are 9.5% or $338 million above the amount collected through the same period last year.
Gunn cited “good conservative, budgeting practices” over time for what he described as the budget highlight achieved during the 2021 session.
Truth be known, legislators might have had a little help in reaching that budget highlight, and it came via government spending, not conservative policies.
Economists cite the multiple federal stimulus packages passed to address the pandemic for fueling the Mississippi economy and revenue collections. After all, the average Mississippian has received at least $3,200 in direct payments from the federal government. And thanks to enhanced federal unemployment payments, many Mississippi workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic most likely were making more money than when employed in the state with the second-lowest per capita income.
“We attribute much of this (economic) performance to the federal transfers,” economist Corey Miller of the University Research Center wrote back in September, even before the latest two rounds of stimulus were passed by Congress.
It should be noted that legislators did use a significant portion of that additional revenue to invest in that priority of education. According to figures compiled by the staff of the Legislative Budget Committee, funding for kindergarten through 12th grade education was increased almost $72 million or about 2.8%. When lottery revenue is added, the total additional funding for public education will be about $102 million.
In addition, funding for the eight public universities was increased $47.6 million, or 7%, and funding for the 15 community colleges was increased $16.7 million, or 7.9%.
Nearly every agency garnered additional funding when compared to the amount they received last year. Modest pay raises of about $1,000 a year were provided to teachers. Enough funds were appropriated to provide pay raises of 3% to most state employees and 1% for community college and public university faculty and staff. It should be pointed out not all state employees and university staff will receive those raises.
Importantly, the Legislature provided the funds to cover the increase in costs in the state health insurance plans to ensure the premiums paid by state employees and teachers would not go up. If the Legislature had not covered the increased costs, state employees and teachers would have had to, resulting in a reduction in their take home pay.
Another one of the big-ticket items in the state budget — Medicaid — was essentially funded at the same level as last year, about $900 million. The level funding was made possible, in large part, because the federal government, through the COVID-19 relief packages, is picking up more of the costs for the states’ Medicaid programs — another example where the work of Mississippi legislators was made easier by the largess of the federal government.
Despite all that, when the dust clears, Mississippi still will be near the bottom in funding of teacher, state employee, university faculty pay and in many other areas.
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson has drawn criticism and national attention this week for comments made on WLOX-TV that the automatic voter registration provision of the federal For The People Act would lead to “woke” and “uninformed” college students voting.
“Think about all these woke college university students now who would automatically be registered to vote, whether they wanted to or not,” Watson said during an appearance on News This Week on the Coast television station. “Again, if they didn’t know to opt out, they would be automatically registered to vote. And then they receive this mail-in ballot that they didn’t even know was coming because they didn’t know they registered to vote. You have an uninformed citizen who may not be prepared and ready to vote, automatically it’s forced on them. Hey, go and make a choice and our country’s going to pay for those choices.”
The bill Watson decried during the interview was passed by the House mostly along party lines last month and now faces unified Republican opposition in the Senate. If passed, the bill would represent the largest expansion of federal election rules in decades.
The passing of the bill represents the largest effort by Democrats to push back against Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country pushing legislation that restricts ballot access. The moves at the state level have been criticized by Democrats as blatant power grabs by Republicans using false claims of rampant election fraud in the 2020 presidential election as cover.
If the bill were to become law, states would be required to automatically register eligible voters. These potential voters would not be forced to cast a ballot, as Watson stated. Among other sweeping changes to how elections are conducted, the bill would also expand early voting for federal elections and make it harder to purge people from voter rolls.
Watson supported a bill proposed during the 2021 Legislative Session that would have started the process of purging a voter from Mississippi voter rolls after they failed to cast a ballot for two consecutive election cycles. The legislation passed in the Senate on a party-line vote in February, but was later killed by the House Elections Committee.
During the WLOX interview, Watson joined the chorus of Republican elected officials in characterizing the For The People Act as an unprecedented overreach of the federal government into how states manage their elections. He also acknowledged it as an existential threat to his party, saying “I don’t know if a Republican could win another national election” if the bill were to pass.
Watson’s decrying of certain eligible populations casting a ballot is reminiscent of a comment made by Cindy Hyde-Smith after a campaign event in 2018 where she supported making voting “a little more difficult” for certain “liberal folks.”
“And then they remind me that there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don’t want to vote,” Hyde-Smith said to supporters. “Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. So I think that’s a great idea.”
Watson’s comment has been criticized by voting rights groups and activists.
“We should be empowering students who take an interest in learning about our political processes and are putting in the effort to make it better and more equitable for everyone,” the civic engagement organization Mississippi Votes said in a statement. “It does all Mississippians a disservice to discount the intelligence of our young people.”
The Mississippi Hospital Association’s board of governors on Friday voted to join in the drive to put Medicaid expansion — Initiative 76 — before voters in 2022.
“We will start by May 1 collecting signatures,” said MHA president Tim Ford.
Mississippi is one of 12 states that has refused to expand Medicaid via the Affordable Care Act, with the state’s GOP political leadership rejecting at least $1 billion a year in federal funds that would provide health coverage for hundreds of thousands of working poor people in the poorest state in the country. Health advocates and hospitals have lobbied lawmakers and governors for years to no avail and now will push to let voters decide.
Moore and others created the Healthcare for Mississippi nonprofit and recently filed the initial paperwork to try to put the issue before voters. Now, those involved would have to collect about 106,000 signatures of registered voters to put the issue on the 2022 midterm ballot in Mississippi.
MHA represents 115 facilities, including about 100 acute-care hospitals in Mississippi that employ nearly 60,000 people. Moore said he expects numerous other groups that have championed Medicaid expansion to sign on and help with the initiative drive.
“I’ll be on the phone starting Monday morning,” Moore said. “It’s going to take a lot of folks — from the business community to all the health care community — a lot of effort.”
Many health advocates have pushed for Mississippi to expand Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act and draw down billions in federal dollars to a state already heavily reliant on federal spending. The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has highlighted health care disparities in the state, which is home to one of the highest percentages of uninsured residents in the nation. Congress further incentivized Mississippi to expand Medicaid in its latest stimulus package, upping the federal match to the 12 states that have resisted expansion.
But state GOP leaders, starting with former Gov. Phil Bryant, have opposed the move, saying they don’t want to help expand “Obamacare” and that they don’t trust the federal government to keep footing the bill, eventually leaving state taxpayers on the hook.
Meanwhile, hospitals — especially smaller rural ones — say they are awash in red ink from providing millions of dollars of care each year to uninsured and unhealthy people in Mississippi. The cost of uncompensated care for Mississippi hospitals was about $600 million in 2019. Some hospitals in recent years have gone under, while others teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.
Gov. Tate Reeves this week reiterated his opposition to Medicaid expansion upon news of the ballot initiative push. He noted the initiative “is a long way from getting on the ballot, much less approved.”
Mississippi voters last election took matters in hand on another long-running health care issue, overwhelmingly approving a medical marijuana program by enshrining it in the state constitution.
This photo of Willie Mitchell (left) is displayed along with Boo Ferriss in the baseball room at the Mississippi Sport Hall of Fame Museum.
Ole Miss and Mississippi State baseball teams will enter the weekend ranked in the top five in the nation in various polls. Southern Miss is in the top 25 of RPI ratings. Jackson State is undefeated in the SWAC. Delta State remains a Division II power.
Many assume this college baseball excellence is a relatively modern Mississippi phenomenon and that college baseball has become a point of state pride only in recent decades.
Such an assumption is dead wrong. Today’s story is about a Mississippian who pitched at Mississippi A&M, now Mississippi State, 112 years ago, long before metal bats, before luxury suites and before any pitch was known as a split-fingered fastball or a circle change. This was seven decades before Raffy and Will slugged for State, before Donnie and Archie went into the hole to throw out runners for Ole Miss. This was more than six decades before Ray Guy overpowered hitters for Southern Miss and Oil Can Boyd dazzled hitters for Jackson State. This was even three decades before the great Boo Ferriss became the first fully scholarshipped college baseball player in Mississippi.
Rick Cleveland
This was even a few years before Casey Stengel, the New York Yankees’ “ol’ perfessor,” actually coached the Ole Miss baseball team. (That was in 1914. As Casey, himself would have told you: “You could look it up.”)
This is Willie Mitchell’s story and of all the wonderful history chronicled in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, this is one of my favorite chapters. Mitchell made his way to Starkville in 1906 from the tiny Panola County town of Pleasant Grove (near Sardis). Willie apparently was an outstanding student, entering the college at age 16. By the time he was 19 and a senior, he had become something of a left-handed legend. Boo and Oil Can, future Boston Red Sox stars, would have nothing on Willie.
One spring weekend in 1909,the A&M baseball team took the train to Baton Rouge to face LSU in a doubleheader. Mitchell took the mound in the second game and pitched what must remain the most perfect game in the history of perfect games.
Mitchell struck out 26 of 27 LSU batters and retired the 27th on a ground ball to second base. You read right: Only one LSU batter hit a fair ball.
If you are wondering how Mitchell did it, the line forms behind the guy typing these words. One hundred and twelve years later, we have only hints. The Revielle, State’s yearbook, tells us Willie’s favorite pitch was “one that has a very sharp downward break, which is called the ‘Willie Ball’ for the simple reason that no batter has been able to connect with it.”
Was it a spitball, legal in those days? Was it a split-fingered fastball, before they knew there was such a thing? We will never know.
Now those Bulldogs – actually they were called Aggies then – were good. They would finish the 1909 season with a 22-4 record, which even today’s Bulldogs can appreciate. Willie Mitchell was better than good. He had a 6-1 record with 97 strikeouts in just 56 innings. Remember, he was only 19.
Willie Mitchell
Naturally, professional scouts were intrigued. The Cleveland Indians – they were called the Naps then – won the prize and signed Willie. He started his pro career with San Antonio in the Texas League. Just a couple months after striking out 26 LSU hitters in one game, Willie struck out 20 Galveston Sand Crabs in a Texas League game. By September of 1909, still 19, he was in the Big Leagues.
One of his first games was against the Washington Senators and the legendary Walter “Big Train” Johnson, he of a record 417 Major League victories and one of the first five men inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Big Train got one of his 417 that day, but it took him 12 innings in a head-to-head battle with a 19-year old rookie. The Senators eked out a 2-1 victory.
WIllie Mitchell turned 20 three months later.
He went on to pitch 11 Major League seasons, most of those with bad baseball teams. He averaged 12 victories a year with an outstanding earned run average of 2.88. His best year was 1914 when he was 14-8 with a miniscule 1.98 earned run average. That season, he became the first Major League pitcher to strike out Babe Ruth. We can only assume he used the Willie Ball. Ruth, a pitcher then, won a 4-3 pitchers’ duel. A couple years later, Willie beat the Babe 1-0.
Of Mitchell, none other than Shoeless Joe Jackson said this: “Willie Mitchell is the hardest pitcher in the league for me to hit. He has a ball that looks like a balloon and the only thing I’ve ever been able to do is to get it on the handle and break all my bats. I’ve given up trying to hit him. The cost of bats adds up.”
Mitchell’s career was interrupted – and shortened – by injuries suffered in a Germany mustard gas attack in France during World War I. He tried to pitch, without much success, after the war.
He returned to Mississippi where he lived in Greenville and worked for many years for Standard Oil. He died in 1973 at the age of 83 near his childhood home in Sardis. Thankfully, the legend of Mitchell and his Willie Ball lives on.
When 64-year-old Carl Plessala first moved to Mississippi seven years ago, he wanted to start a new life.
He stumbled upon a pamphlet that advertised classes at a community college. The idea intrigued him, but there was one problem: He was among the thousands of Mississippi adults who couldn’t read or write.
Plessala grew up in Louisiana, and he didn’t take school seriously. He called himself “a class clown,” which he said was a way to mask his low confidence in reading and writing skills. He entered the workforce and never learned to read or write.
“I thought I didn’t need much education because school was boring and riding tractors was fun until I got older,” he said. “Then, I realized riding tractors was a whole lotta work.”
So after he moved to Mississippi, he enrolled in a program at Hope Adult Learning in Harrison County and was matched with a tutor there. After three years in the program, Plessala’s initial 3rd or 4th grade reading level rose to a 10th grade level.
Today, Plessala says that learning how to read made him “feel like somebody,” and he plans to share his story with churches and other organizations.
There are many similar stories in Mississippi, where 16% of the adult population lacked proficient reading and writing skills in 2003, according to the National Center for Education for Statistics. That year is the last time conclusive data on the state’s literacy rate was collected, though more recent studies and interviews with experts across the state indicate not much has changed. By all measures, Mississippi’s adult literacy rate is among the lowest in America.
Advocates who spoke with Mississippi Today say several factors perpetuate the state’s adult literacy problem, including generational poverty, incarceration rates, trauma and lack of funding for educational programs.
“We’ve kind of put adult education on the back-burner because early childhood education has taken the forefront,” said Beth John, a Hope Adult Learning tutor who currently works with Plessala. “So while those little babies are starting to read, we shouldn’t forget about the population of adults who can’t read.”
Mississippi Today spoke with several advocates and educators working to curb adult illiteracy in the state. Here’s what they had to say.
Donna Daulton, the executive director of Hope Adult Learning in Harrison County who also worked with Plessala, provided a snapshot of a typical literacy rate amongst adult learners who enter the program.
“Most of the students that come to us are functioning at a (low-grade) level,” Daulton said. “Even though I had a little bit of training in adult literacy and years of experience which set me up well to teaching, I still didn’t understand the role dyslexia, poor oral language skills, poverty, and being an adult who couldn’t read impacted our learners nor did I have the tools to address these issues.”
One prevailing issue Daulton shared through common narratives like “Mama couldn’t read” or “Mama had a baby, and I had to drop out of school” conveyed the parabolic nature of poverty and inadequate access to education and their firm grip on Mississippi.
Mississippi’s poverty rate is 19.6%, the highest in the nation. This illustrates the lack of access to education where less than a third of the state’s adult population holds a bachelor’s degree.
With generational poverty continuing to cycle, adult learners who are not a part of adult learning programs engage less with their community and experience difficulty in acquiring jobs, maintaining personal well-being and stability.
Understanding the impact of low literacy among adults, Daulton provides an even more intimate portrayal of low literacy’s effect on the day-to-day experiences in an adult learner’s life.
“Mississippi does not seem to recognize that there are adults who struggle with basic reading skills,” Daulton said. “That there are people who can’t read road signs, prescription labels, forms such as medical, employment, or instructional workplace documents, notices from their child’s school or even their mail.”
Adult education tutor Beth John guides student Carl Plessala in learning to spell numbers, as well as how they are structured when using hyphens to separate two-worded numbers. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Another factor at play, according to advocates, is the state’s sky-high incarceration rate. Mississippi has the second highest imprisonment rate in the country, and many formerly incarcerated people experience difficulty finding employment.
Familiar with prison educational services and its need for improvement, Larry Perry has worked at New Way, a six-month program based in Hinds County designed to give incarcerated people soft-skills training in work ethics, communication skills, reading and writing skills. Perry says complex factors of generational poverty, dysfunctional homes, and embarrassment that is intricately connected to adult literacy.
““You’re not just dealing with adult literacy, so you have to focus on all of the other factors tied to adult literacy as well,” Perry said. “They (adult learners) want to do better, but at the same time they lack the opportunity. They enter entry-level jobs that won’t lead down a path of success.”
Perry attested to initial success with New Way, but he acknowledges funding challenges and that the program is “always one step away from being closed.”
Despite the challenges of limited funding as a non-profit organization, Perry says the presence of programs like New Way is vital to combat adult literacy’s reach among Mississippi’s adult population.
“I believe in humanity because somebody has to do something to help these people,” Perry said.
Cindy Heimbach, the volunteer state literacy missions coordinator at the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board’s Litearcy Missions Ministry, provides reading strategies to English Speaking Learners (ESL) and loves to help people.
“I felt like teaching adults to read was what I was called to do,” Heimbach said.
The Mississippi Baptist Convention Board’s Literacy Missions Ministry provides a unique approach to adult literacy, providing training to church volunteers in three core areas: teaching English to non-native speakers, adult reading and writing, and tutoring children and youth.
In an interview with Mississippi Today, Heimbach described the daily limitations adult learners face in their lives, from not being able to run a business to an inability to read prescription labels. But Heimbach also highlighted another aspect of adult literacy that is not mentioned extensively: low literacy among middle class adults.
“People don’t wear it on their sleeves that they can’t read or that they have low literacy levels,” Heimbach said after telling a story where she encountered a middle-aged man who could not read even though he was a well-known pillar of his community.
Even though Heimbach may view poverty’s correlation to adult literacy differently than her peers in adult education, she does agree more involvement could improve adult literacy.
“I would love to see churches get more involved and help people in the community,” she said.
Sandy Crist, assistant executive director of workforce, career, and technical adult education at the Mississippi Community College Board, believes that more awareness about adult literacy is needed in the state.
“One of the hardest things we have is getting our message across to people, so that they know what options they have,” Crist said. “People don’t read newspapers a whole lot anymore, and we’re not on TV, so it’s very hard to reach that audience that needs us most.”
Seven years ago, adult education officially became part of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which provides federal loans for adult education.
The Office of Adult Education at the Mississippi Community College Board receives approximately $9.5 million a year from the state and federal government to provide classes, training, and other services that support adult education.
Modeling other states’ approach to adult education, Crist explained that the GED, the HiSET, and TASC exams function like subject-matter assessments in which there are core subject areas like reading & writing, math, social studies, language arts, etc.; however, the Competency-Based High School Equivalency Option developed for students who need extra assistance in order to pass exams like HiSET and others.
“This is not the easy way out, but it’s ideal for students who just can’t get that one last exam,” said Beth Little, the state director of adult education and high school equivalency at MCCB.
The MCCB uses data that pertains to adult literacy and co-partnered with other organizations to create the MIBEST program, which is focused on providing economic mobility in the workforce for Mississippians who did not complete a traditional high school degree or are in low-wage jobs.
“The plan for adult ed was great because it recognized that we’re serving the same clients,” Crist said. “The same clients receiving SNAP benefits or Medicaid benefits depending on their level of income and poverty or other conditions and issues. We’re all serving the same students, but we weren’t all on the same page with communicating, and some of those services were being duplicated.”
Further unpacking adult literacy’s complexity, Crist also explained that the Office of Adult Education assists adult learners with other needs like paying light bills, providing transportation to classes, and providing support and education for drug addiction — factors that tend to inhibit an adult learner’s educational success.
Little also acknowledged that Mississippi has a cycle of poverty and incarceration that her programs aim to break, but Crist also described a recurring issue with adult learners that is not so visible: trauma.
“A lot of our kids have experienced trauma, and that’s one thing we’ve done differently in the past year is training our instructors on recognizing trauma like mental health issues with our students because they come with more than just the lack of a diploma. They come with so many other barriers,” Crist said.
Brandon Presley, Northern District representative, Public Service Commission Credit: Kendra Ablaza/Mississippi Today
The state Public Service Commission this week has awarded $268 million to local electric cooperatives across the state to hook up more than 102,000 homes and businesses to broadband internet.
Mississippi’s expansion of internet services, fueled by $570 million in federal money with more on the way, promises to be as life-altering for rural Mississippi as electricity was in the 1930s, PSC Northern District Commissioner Brandon Presley said.
Mississippi has ranked near the bottom — as low as 49th in some studies — among states for access to broadband internet services, with about 40% of the state lacking access.
“I will not stop on this mission until the last house at the end of the most rural road is connected,” said Presley, who has championed expansion of broadband to rural areas before lawmakers in Jackson and Washington. “… Our state is expanding connections at an unprecedented pace. I have a co-op here in the Tupelo area making about 50 connections a day — that’s more than anywhere else in the country … I assure you Mississippi has the pedal to the metal with broadband right now.”
The funding awarded this week is part of $495 million the state is receiving from the federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund — the second-largest earmark behind California. Last year, Mississippi lawmakers routed $75 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to broadband expansion, and the state expects to receive another $166 million for broadband and other infrastructure from the recently passed federal American Rescue Act. Beyond that, Presley said, money from the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure spending plan would likely go to rural broadband expansion as well.
Presley on Monday kicked off signing ceremonies for the funding awards to electric co-ops on Robins Field in Tupelo, where President Franklin Roosevelt once announced Tupelo as the first Tennessee Valley Authority city in the push to bring electricity to rural America.
The Legislature in 2019 adopted a measure to allow local co-operatives to provide internet services. This year, lawmakers passed a measure to allow existing and future unused fiber optic lines, or “dark fiber” owned by Entergy and Mississippi Power Co. to be used for broadband expansion. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said this will add thousands of miles of cable for broadband expansion, which he called a “giant step” for Mississippi.
Presley said the internet service expansion funded by the money awarded this week to 13 electric co-operatives should be completed within three years, with much of the work, and connections, done far sooner. Some co-operatives “are already halfway there, without having received a dime yet” and at least a couple will complete their expansion by the end of this year.
“We know that while these funds will help a lot of people, we still have tens of thousands of homes to get to, and areas that may have some connection, but are really underserved,” Presley said.
The New Summit School in Jackson, formerly run by Nancy New and her son Zach New. Both were arrested in 2020 on charges they allegedly stole $4 million in Mississippi welfare dollars and in 2021 on charges they defrauded the state’s education department. They have pleaded not guilty and await trial. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Nancy New, owner of New Learning Resources and New Summit School, exits the federal courthouse in Jackson on Mar. 18, 2021. New was released on bond after pleading not guilty to sixteen counts. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Nancy New and her son Zach, owners of several for-profit and nonprofit organizations, were well on their way to building an education empire in Mississippi.
Their private schools, called New Summit, had been gaining acclaim, especially for catering to nontraditional students and those with disabilities — the only type students the state can pay private schools to educate.
“School choice” — the concept of allowing tax dollars to follow a student to a private school — was becoming a rallying cry in the Republican-dominated state Legislature.
Lawmakers were shorting public schools hundreds of millions of dollars annually according to state law, including for special education. And apparent holes in oversight at the Mississippi Department of Education were going ignored or unnoticed.
This was the landscape in 2016 when Nancy and Zach New allegedly began defrauding the state out of millions of public school dollars.
The former Families First State Street office sits empty, much of the furnishings still intact from a year ago, on Mar. 18, 2021. The office, which was supposed to assist needy families, shut down shortly after the owner, Nancy New, of the nonprofit that ran it, Mississippi Community Education Center, was arrested on embezzlement charges. A Mississippi Department of Human Services spokesperson said the agency is planning to renovate and utilize the space for early childhood development programs in the future.
Federal authorities are now accusing the News of scamming the Mississippi Department of Education and the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the funding formula that is supposed to determine how many state dollars public school districts will receive for each student.
Specifically, the questioned funding comes from a niche program to educate children in state licensed facilities, such as hospitals and psychiatric treatment centers. For over a decade, the News have claimed to serve hundreds of these students each year.
The alleged fraud is reminiscent of previous charges the News still face: In 2020, they were arrested on state charges alleging they embezzled Mississippi Department of Human Services block grant funds, which their nonprofit had received to run social programs for poor adults. The lax federal guidelines around welfare spending made it easy for the New nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, to get its hands on those free-flowing dollars.
But there aren’t many ways for private schools to secure MAEP dollars, since the funding is typically tied to a public school student.
So, according to the indictments, the News got creative.
The most well-publicized avenue for private schools to capture public school dollars is through Educational Scholarship Accounts, which the Legislature created in 2015 for special-needs students who are not getting enough attention or support from their public schools — possibly as a result of the state’s underfunding of special education in public schools.
“The privatization groups exploited that concern,” said Nancy Loome, director of the Parents Campaign, a pro-public education advocacy nonprofit. “They used children with special needs as a means to get a foot in the door.”
New Learning Resources has received $3.1 million in voucher payments from the department over the last several years, through hundreds of periodic tuition reimbursements ranging from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars, Mississippi Today found in public expenditure reports.
But these aren’t the funds the News allegedly bilked.
Federal authorities are accusing the News of defrauding an older, lesser-known program called “504 teacher units,” a U.S. Attorney’s Office representative confirmed to Mississippi Today.
And their involvement in the program — by far their private company’s largest state funding stream — dates back much further than the time period examined in the federal indictment. New Learning Resources has received roughly $20 million in these funds since 2007.
The 504 program is supposed to supply a private teacher for a child after a doctor or psychologist determines the student requires placement in a hospital or licensed psychiatric facility. The state then uses MAEP funds to reimburse the private facility or school that hires the teacher.
“To me, just having some psychologist or doctor, especially if they work for a facility, say a child needs to be somewhere without any protections in place and the facility will then get money really opens the door to children getting exploited,” said Joy Hogge, executive director of Families as Allies and longtime advocate for families and children with disabilities, developmental delays or behavior disorders.
Compared to the other entities receiving these funds since 2016, when the alleged scheme began, the New Summit schools stick out like a sore thumb. All the other recipients are hospitals or residential psychiatric treatment facilities or their affiliated in-house schools.
The New private schools also received the vast majority of the funding — 61% to as much as 74% each year — for a total of $7.7 million over five years.
Between 2016 and 2020, New Summit School in Jackson and North New Summit School in Greenwood each reported hiring between 10.5 and 16 teachers for the program per year, according to the public records. State education department officials told Mississippi Today each teacher is supposed to serve 10 to 14 students.
That translates to the two tiny private schools purportedly serving between 215 and 434 students — a number that’s more than half or possibly even larger than their total enrollment — with conditions so acute they require placement in a hospital or psychiatric treatment facility and also do not have disabilities.
The two campuses serve a total of 327 students today.
The number of these special teachers New Summit reported hiring is also significantly more than any other facility. University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital with the state’s only dedicated children’s hospital and in-house school, had just four.
The Mississippi Department of Education acknowledged in a statement to Mississippi Today that the approval process for this program contained holes.
David Baria, former Democratic representative from Bay St. Louis, spoke out against legislation that aimed to move public school dollars to private schools during his time in the Legislature. He is pictured on the floor of the House at the Capitol in Jackson Friday, August 24, 2018, speaking about a bill to create a state lottery. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
“MDE should have been on watch and should have been able to catch this. It sounds like they should have anyway,” said former Rep. David Baria, D-Bay St. Louis.
But in so many ways, it was state leaders and lawmakers who had given this practice their blessing.
“Lot of red flags were raised along the way with respect to this whole process of taking public school dollars and taking that money to private schools, private entities with little to no accountability to the Mississippi Legislature,” Baria said. “We tried to raise as many warnings as we could about the fact that this process was ripe for graft and corruption.”
Prosecutors allege Nancy and Zach New submitted reimbursement claims that were fraudulent in several ways. According to the indictments, the News claimed they employed teachers who no longer worked at New Summit or never worked at the school. They identified some employees as teachers when they were not. They claimed teachers had higher experience and certification level than they did.
The News also allegedly claimed they were serving students who no longer attended New Summit or had never attended the school.
Loome said: “What has been reported is really blatant. I mean, we’re not talking about a little bookkeeping error. We are talking about very intentional fraud.”
Officials publicly accused the News of fraudulently obtaining more than $2 million since 2017. Federal prosecutors discussed $5.5 million worth of wire transfers in the indictment, but it’s not clear exactly how much they are alleging was fraudulently obtained.
Prosecutors haven’t outlined where all the money went, but they accused Nancy New of using at least some of the public school dollars to purchase a $250,000 home in northeast Jackson.
The school appears to qualify as a “state licensed facility” because New Learning Resources became certified by the Mississippi Department of Mental Health for day treatment — sometimes referred to as partial hospitalization.
The student must not qualify for special education under federal law and therefore lack an Individual Education Program plan or IEP.
Only kids with IEPs can secure private school vouchers in Mississippi, hence New Summit seekingout other funding possibilities for children who may need some help but don’t qualify for special education.
Public school advocates worry that the broader school choice movement aims to exploit the voucher program, potentially neglecting students who need the specialized attention the most.
“Private schools are not going to be just clamoring to bring in children like mine,” said Florance Bass, mother of a public school student with Down syndrome.
Instead, Bass believes current efforts to privatize education targets “these kids who are a little bit easier to deal with versus those that require a whole lot of services.”
Private schools have no obligation to accept every child who applies. Anecdotally, one parent Mississippi Today spoke with was turned away from New Summit because her child’s disability presented as behavioral issues.
Ironically, New Summit claimed the majority of its student population were students with acute behavioral disorders and not learning disabilities, according to their 504 submissions to MDE.
Department of Mental Health spokesperson Adam Moore described the duties of certified day treatment facilities: “Day Treatment services promote successful community living through activities like social skills training, and may also include skills training in areas like anger management, problem solving, or conflict resolution.”
None of the other entities receiving 504 funds are day centers. They are either inpatient healthcare or psychiatric residential facilities or affiliated with one.
The other facilities receiving 504 teacher unit funds include:
Canopy Children’s Solutions’ psychiatric residential facility called CARES Center in Jackson
CARES Center in Gulfport
Parkwood Behavioral Health Systems and affiliated Park Academy
Merit Health Gulf Oaks
Diamond Grove School of Diamond Grove Behavioral Health Center
Crossroads Residential Treatment Facility at Brentwood Behavioral Healthcare
Oceans Behavioral Hospital
There is another program called the Educable Child Program, which is similarly designed to provide funding to private schools to educate children in health department-licensed care facilities. New Learning Resources has received a small amount — $13,340 — through this program over the years. North New Summit School received $133,428 in these funds from 2006 to 2013 under the name of a separate private company called Alternative Youth Services, according to public records from the education department.
The state can also provide education funding to private schools for dyslexia scholarships or through direct legislative appropriations. Lawmakers have allocated a total of $3 million to New Learning Resources and affiliated Mississippi Autism Center starting in 2013, but records show the education department actually paid these “flow through grants” to the New-owned nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.
The News have also used at least $400,000 in welfare dollars the state awarded to their nonprofit to lobby the Legislature for public education funds, Mississippi Today first reported.
The 504 funding came from the education department to New Learning Resources in big chunks. The largest was a nearly $1 million lump sum.
The large payments are reminiscent of the Mississippi Department of Human Services welfare grants that Mississippi Community Education Center received and the News allegedly abused.
In the case of the welfare scandal, multi-million dollar upfront payments, shoddy accounting and nearly nonexistent accountability created ample opportunity for the alleged embezzlement of more than $4 million. The state agency had required the nonprofit to provide very little justification or proof of what it was accomplishing with the funds.
Agents arrested DHS’ former director, John Davis, along with the News, the nonprofit’s accountant and two others in this alleged scheme. One defendant pleaded guilty; the accountant tried to plead guilty but a judge rejected the deal. The remaining four are still pleading not guilty.
While the state auditor alleged a widespread conspiracy at the welfare agency, federal prosecutors allege the News falsified records in order to scam the education department.
The education department told Mississippi Today in a written statement that the entities receiving 504 funding must maintain documentation showing student eligibility, including medical records showing a physician or psychologists determination that the student needs services from a state licensed facility.
State policy requires the entities to submit “an assurance” to the education department that it possesses these documents, but doesn’t require they actually submit the records. Private schools generally have little obligation to report their operational practices or outcomes to anyone.
“They are allowed to operate in secret and receive public funds at the same time,” Loome said.
The state agency did not answer questions about how New Summit was able to secure so much 504 funding or why their claims for so many teachers did not raise red flags, citing the ongoing criminal case. Prosecutors have not accused any state employees of participating in the scheme.
“MDE acknowledges there were gaps in the approval process for this program,” the department said in a statement. “… Under new leadership in the MDE Office of Special Education, MDE instituted additional accountability measures in the 2020-21 school year that includes requiring the entities to submit the eligibility documentation for every student the teacher units serve … Further revisions are being made for 2021-22, and applicants will receive the new protocols in May.”
