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Before Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann finished his post-legislative session press conference on April 1, education advocates and politicos rapidly fired off texts to one another and to reporters, opining about an assertion he made.

“This year education had its best year since, probably since William Winter,” Hosemann said early in the press conference.

Hosemann was harkening back to the 1982 session, when former Gov. William Winter ushered one of the state’s most transformative legislative education packages. It increased teacher pay, established public kindergarten and compulsory school attendance, and created a statewide testing program for performance-based accreditation of public schools.

The change Winter led in 1982 demonstrated a shift in thinking about public education. It signaled to the nation that Mississippi cared to think critically and act boldly about its future. This year, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to magnify wide educational disparities and years of legislative under-funding of public education, lawmakers failed to match the transformative action of Winter.

READ MORE: State employees, higher ed employees to receive pay raises as lawmakers finalize budget

Lawmakers this year spent about $100 million more on education than last year. Half of that amount went to a modest $1,000-per-year pay raise for teachers. They also doubled funds for the state’s early childhood programs and increased the teacher classroom supply fund by $8 million, to $20 million.

Additionally, lawmakers learned that the latest federal stimulus package will send a whopping $1.6 billion to K-12 education in Mississippi — part of what Hosemann was highlighting when he referenced Winter’s legacy — though schools, not lawmakers, will control how those funds are spent.. Other legislative leaders seemed to share Hosemann’s feelings about the 2021 session.

“It’s just a real good year for education as far as money going into it,” House Education Committee Chairman Richard Bennett told fellow lawmakers on the floor of the House.

Leah Smith, Hosemann’s education policy director, pointed to the teacher pay raise, doubling support for the pre-kindergarten programs, increasing money for math and early learning coaches, increasing teacher supply money and the creation of a new teacher loan repayment program as successes from the 2021 session.

“The lieutenant governor believes investing in the human mind is the best way to move Mississippi forward, and has consistently advocated for providing teachers and schools with the resources they need to be successful,” Smith said.

While the 2021 legislative accomplishments and funding realities were commendable, according to every education advocate who spoke with Mississippi Today this week, they were not transformative relative to 1982 and other sessions since.

Winter’s policies in 1982 proved that Mississippi prioritized public education, and the nation took notice. This year, lawmakers offered a modest pay raise that doesn’t move Mississippi out of last place for average teacher pay in the region, allocated lottery funds to public education based on existing state law, and passed a student loan forgiveness program that arguably wouldn’t be necessary if teachers were paid more in the first place.

Before the passage of Winter’s reform, Mississippi was still reeling from integration and the subsequent creation of segregation academies. It was the only state in the nation with no public kindergarten, and it was also the second-most illiterate state in the nation, according to Ellen Meacham’s Mississippi Encyclopedia entry.

If Winter’s Education Reform Act ushered in a new commitment by the state to public education, it could be argued that commitment continued in the 1990s and early 2000s. What legislation has been most impactful in terms of improving education might be open for debate, but based on any criteria, Mississippi schools would be much worse off today if not for proposals enacted in the 1990s and early 2000s.

During that period — considered by many a golden age in terms of education legislation — funding was dramatically increased, teachers were placed on the state health insurance plan, classrooms were air conditioned and a new funding formula was enacted to ensure a level of equity in funding for Mississippi schools.

From 1992-1996, then-Sen. Ronnie Musgrove and Rep. Billy McCoy chaired their respective chambers’ education committees. While the two headstrong and ambitious politicians often butted heads, they shared a common belief that transformative education legislation was needed to help the state progress. Together, they passed proposals that are often taken for granted as part of the state’s current education fabric.

Those proposals were kicked off in the first year of a new four-year term in 1992, when the Legislature’s education committees teamed up with the revenue committees to pass a 1-cent sales tax increase for education. The education enhancement legislation now generates about $400 million each year for education.

Unthinkable in today’s no-new-tax environment, the sales tax increase was passed during an election year. Legislators, who had just won election in 1991, were forced to run again in 1992 as a result of federal litigation over redistricting issues. Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice, who vetoed the 1-cent sales tax increase, pledged to campaign against legislators who voted to override his veto of the tax hike. Despite that threat, the veto was overridden. Only one key legislator lost reelection later that year: Senate Finance Chair Rick Lambert of Hattiesburg. But his defeat was attributed to personal issues more so than to his role in passing the sales tax increase.

With the new money coming in, the Legislature later put teachers, who had no health insurance program, on the state employee health insurance plan and mandated the air-conditioning of classrooms. Before then, teachers most likely had no health insurance unless they were married and on their spouses’ plans.

And people who have attended school in classes without air-conditioners in hot Mississippi summers might argue that no more impactful legislation has been passed.

But other programs enacted in the 1990s included a $5,000-a-year salary supplement for National Board Certified teachers and money for teachers to purchase classroom supplies. The teacher supply program was part of the 1-cent sales tax increase legislation.

In 1997, the Legislature passed the watershed Mississippi Adequate Education Program — again over a governor’s veto. The legislation ensured that property-poor school districts received more state funding per student than did more affluent districts, based on a formula. The legislation is credited with ensuring Mississippi did not lose an equity funding lawsuit as many surrounding states had.

And in 2000, during Musgrove’s tenure as governor, the Legislature passed a teacher pay plan phased in over six years costing the state $338 million, or $516 million in today’s dollars. No pay raise since then has come close to that total.

When fully phased in, teachers were projected to have received a 30% pay raise. The average teacher salary when the pay raise was passed — $31,913 — was increased to about $41,000 when fully enacted, according to reports at the time.

Thinking back on the 2021 legislative session, the Mississippi Association of Educators, the state’s teachers union, said while there were some successes, there were failures as well.

“While we certainly saw several successes … we also saw a number of bills that would’ve demonstrated lawmakers’ understanding of the importance of a whole-child approach die on the calendar or not make it out of committee,” said Erica Jones, the president of the association.

One example, she said, was a bill dealing with incorporating trauma-informed practices and awareness into schools with the goal of ensuring every student is well-known by at least one adult in the school setting.

“After watching educators struggle to meet the needs of students and their families over the past year, it has never been more clear that addressing issues like trauma and providing wraparound services is critically needed in Mississippi,” Jones said. “The pandemic didn’t create new issues in public education; it simply exposed, highlighted, and exacerbated the preexisting challenges students and educators face every day in our schools. If lawmakers haven’t been spurred to action now, when will they be?”

Nancy Loome, executive director of the public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign, said 2021 was a strong session for public schools — one that sets the Legislature up to go further in future years.

“The bump in funding for teacher pay and important programs like pre-K will serve students well and positions us for some critical next steps, like closing the gap between what Mississippi invests in public schools per student and what our neighbors like Arkansas spend,” Loome said.

The Legislature has consistently underfunded the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the state’s education funding formula passed in that 1997 session, every year since 2008. This year, MAEP funding was about $271 million below full funding.

Kelly Riley, executive director of Mississippi Professional Educators, had a similar take and pointed to necessary policy improvements for the future.

“While the $1,000 pay raise is not enough to make Mississippi competitive with surrounding states, it is a step in the right direction,” Riley said. “We are encouraged by the Senate’s commitment to developing a long-range plan this summer for increasing Mississippi’s average teacher salary to the southeastern average. We hope the House will partner in the development of this plan.”

Nearly 40 years after Winter’s historic education reform, Mississippi’s average teacher salary is $45,105, compared to the southeastern average of $53,340, according to 2018-2019 data. The national average is $62,304.

The 2021 Mississippi legislative session saw increases in teacher pay and education funding. But whether it equals or bests other education-focused sessions of recent decades is questionable.

The post How public education fared during the 2021 legislative session appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Resurrection appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Primary elections for municipal offices — mayor, city council, and board of aldermen — were held across Mississippi on April 6. 

Some races were decided by the primary, as all candidates for that office were from the same political party. Those races where no candidate received more than 50% of the vote will now advance to a runoff election with the top two candidates. Primary runoff elections will be held on April 27.

The general election for all municipal races will be held on June 8. 

Mississippi Today has compiled links that show unofficial election results from around the state. These have been organized by region for convenience. Click on the hyperlinks below to visit the news organizations’ websites for election results.

North Mississippi (links include results for the following cities: Hernando, Horn Lake, Tupelo, Starkville, Columbus, West Point, Amory, Baldwyn, Booneville, Brooksville, Ecru, Eupora, Farmington, Fulton, Houston, Louisville, Macon, Nettleton, New Albany, Okolona, Oxford, Pontotoc, Ripley, Shannon, Southaven, Verona, Water Valley, Winona)

• WTVA election results hub

• The Daily Journal election coverage

• DeSoto Times-Tribune election coverage: (1) (2) (3)

Central and South Mississippi (links include results for cities in the following counties: Attala, Hinds, Holmes, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, Rankin, Simpson, Walthall, Warren)

• WLBT election results hub

• Clarion Ledger election coverage (1) (2)

• The Vicksburg Post election coverage

Mississippi Gulf Coast (links include results for the following cities: Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, Pass Christian, D’lberville, Ocean Springs, Moss Point, Pascagoula, Gautier, Bay St. Louis, Picayune, Poplarville)

• WLOX election results hub 

• Sun Herald election coverage

The post Election results: Who won 2021 Mississippi municipal primaries appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with the dean of Mississippi sports writers, Rick (The Governor) Cleveland.

Cleveland, a native of Hattiesburg and resident of Jackson, has been Mississippi Today’s sports columnist since 2016. A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi with a bachelor’s in journalism, Rick has worked for the Monroe (La.) News Star World, Jackson Daily News and Clarion Ledger.

He was sports editor of Hattiesburg American and executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. His work as a syndicated columnist and celebrated sports writer has appeared in numerous magazines, periodicals and newspapers. Rick has been recognized 13 times as Mississippi Sports Writer of the Year and is recipient of multiple awards and honors for his reporting and writing.

The post Mississippi Stories: Rick Cleveland appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Educators assessed Mary Harbin Hinds, who has a rare chromosome disorder resulting in academic delays, as a nonreader when she entered New Summit School in third grade. 

Halfway through the year at the Jackson private school, “she was reading poems on her own with words as large as ‘wonderment,’” her mom, Jodi Kimbrell Hinds, recalled. By the end of her first year, the girl — now a ninth grader at the school — was reading on grade level.

“It was life changing,” the mom of two said. “Mary Harbin is just a mystery. She can do great at some things and some things she can’t. New Summit just plugged into that immediately and figured out what works for her.”

Parents of New Summit students — nine of whom spoke with Mississippi Today — rave about their children’s educational successes and emotional growth, the result of opportunities that the state’s public school system typically cannot provide. 

But behind the scenes, school owners and operators Nancy New and her son Zach New were allegedly lying about the teachers they employed and the students they served, defrauding the state out of more than $2 million in public school dollars. The recent federal indictment, to which they’ve pleaded not guilty, came more than a year after the two were arrested on separate state charges alleging they also embezzled more than $4 million in welfare dollars through their nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.

Now, several parents of students with special needs — who found a safe haven at New Summit in Jackson — are caught in the fray, uncertain about whether the school will remain open and if the 185 students will continue to have access to the specialized instruction they’ve come to cherish.

They dread the possibility of returning their children back to the public school system with the other 65,000 students with disabilities, according to public records, who are served by Mississippi’s special education services mandated under federal law. 

Nancy New founded the school in 1997 to offer smaller classes and more individualized instruction to Mississippi schoolchildren. Her for-profit company and school district called New Learning Resources eventually encompassed six private schools, including an online diploma program. New Summit School began rapidly growing in recent years, and though it is not specifically a special education school, it had earned a reputation of catering to nontraditional students.

“If it fails, you’re going to have 200 kids with special needs that need placement tomorrow and I just don’t know how that’s going to happen,” said Josie Alston, mother of 14-year-old Will, who has autism. “We don’t know where we could send Will that we haven’t already tried.”

Spectrum Academy, an offshoot of New Summit, already closed in late 2020, displacing about 30 children with autism, a parent of the academy told Mississippi Today. The closure was never publicized.

Roy Balentine, who took over as interim executive director of New Learning Resources shortly after the 2020 arrests, told Mississippi Today when reached on his cell phone in late March that there are no plans to close the schools. He would not answer any other questions about the company’s future. Because of the ongoing criminal case, school staff have remained extremely mum; no teachers were willing to interview with Mississippi Today. 

The secretary of state’s office website lists the status of New Learning Resources, Inc. as “intent to dissolve: tax,” which an office employee said indicated an issue with the company’s taxes.

After state agents arrested the News in 2020 within the separate Mississippi Department of Human Services scandal, the state welfare agency froze funding to the New nonprofit. Parents feared that the schools might struggle to pay their teachers if something similar happened to New Summit. They also wondered if they would get their money back for prepaid tuition or registration fees. The best they can hope for, they say, is another organization buying the school and maintaining operations.

On Mar. 26, about a week after the most recent arrests, the Mississippi Department of Education sent voucher payments totaling $122,000 to New Learning Resources, according to state expenditure records. The department had also made a payment of $42,418 on Mar. 15, the day before the News’ indictment, for “dyslexia funding.”

Many of the parents who enrolled their kids in New Summit Schools, nine of whom spoke to Mississippi Today, have parallel stories. Their kids are different, they say, maybe due to a disability, developmental delays or social issues. In their eyes, their children were drowning in public schools.

The parents say they fought through poor communication and apathetic attitudes of public school faculty. Meetings about their Individualized Education Program (IEP) — a specialized education plan granted to students with disabilities under federal anti-discrimination law — were frequently confrontational. School officials told parents they couldn’t diagnose dyslexia.

“I’m like, wait a minute,” Alston said. “You tell me you have several reading specialists on staff in this school alone, but in the whole Madison County there is no one that can assess him and say if he has dyslexia, when it’s very clear that he has it?”

Will receives dyslexia therapy every day at New Summit. When Will started at the school as a 9-year-old, he couldn’t count to 20. Now he has his multiplication tables mastered.

Like many families at the school, the Alstons receive the Education Scholarship Account, sometimes called the school choice voucher, from the department of education. It pays $5,600 toward Will’s roughly $10,000 tuition.

Some parents received trustworthy recommendations to try New Summit; others took a leap of faith in desperation. 

“What really drove my decision was the numbers,” parent Melody Norris said, citing a graduation rate she believed was as low as 15% for students with special needs at her local district, Rankin County School District. She also cited funding cuts at the district, resulting in his school alone losing two resource teachers. (Rankin County School District had a 22% graduation rate for students with disabilities in 2012, the year Norris chose to move her son, but like most districts, Rankin has drastically improved that rate to 62% in 2021).

Norris never checked New Summit’s graduation rate — a stat that’s not published like it is for the public schools. 

Her son DJ, who has autism, graduated with a high school diploma and the honor of co-valedictorian in 2020. He’s now participating in a program called Project SEARCH, which helps place students with disabilities in training and full time employment.

At the specialty private school, the numbers don’t seem to matter to parents. Because when the families arrived, they found significantly smaller class sizes — a max of twelve students per teacher — tailored instructional style and extremely dedicated and caring teachers. They didn’t need to see standardized metrics; they could visualize the difference in their child’s self confidence and enthusiasm for learning.

“I always referred to New Summit as this cocoon,” Norris said. “This place, this magical place that was one block off of Lakeland Drive that most people never even knew existed. But it was unlike any other school in the state.”

Scott Herrod’s 7-year-old son Tory, who has dyslexia, never used to try to read the words he’d encounter throughout his day. Going to school was a drag. And even though he couldn’t read or write, the public school kept graduating Troy from kindergarten to first to second grade with straight A’s.

Beginning at New Summit School, Herrod said, “it was almost like turning a switch on.” Now Troy is reading road signs from his car seat and asking his parents to take him to get new books during his freetime.

“I actually don’t know where we would actually go to get him what he needs right now,” Herrod said.

LauraBeth Johnston says if New Summit were to close, her son Frasier would survive in the public school, where he used to receive just 20-30 minutes of special instruction for autism each day.

But New Summit provided more than an educational opportunity. Before attending New Summit, Johnston said, Fraiser would come home from school crying, saying he “wished he was regular.”

“He didn’t understand why he wasn’t regular like the other kids in his class,” the mom of three said. After moving to New Summit in second grade, Johnston said, “I can’t describe how much happier he was.”

After Nancy and Zach New were originally arrested in February of 2020 on charges related to their nonprofit, district officials said that New Summit would remain open — business as usual, parents told Mississippi Today. 

Federal agents arrested the News on Mar. 18 on the charges related to the school district and released them on a $10,000 bond after they pleaded not guilty. 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 her roughly $250,000 home in northeast Jackson.

The families have received radio silence ever since, leaving them in limbo, wondering if and when their children might lose their school.

Reached April 1 at the school, Kyle Nobles, headmaster for New Summit School K-12, said only Balentine could speak on behalf of the school or district. Balentine, a former principal at Pearl High School and employee of New’s nonprofit, did not respond to Mississippi Today’s follow up phone calls or texts. 

Families say the allegations, even if true, don’t erase the life changing impact New Summit had on their children.

“I will go to my grave thankful that Nancy New started this school over 20 years ago,” Hinds said. “Whatever else may have transpired, as far as the school itself and the employees in place teaching our children, or at least mine, that job was done correctly, because these kids have thrived.”

The post Parents of special needs students worry about New Summit School’s future after owner’s arrest appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As Mississippi’s rollout of COVID-19 vaccines began to ramp up in early 2021, a troubling truth was revealed about the shots being put into people’s arms across the state: Black Mississippians weren’t getting their fair share. 

Two months after the first doses were administered in the state, Black Mississippians had received just 19% of the total vaccines given, despite making up 38% of the state’s population. After bearing the brunt of cases and deaths early in the pandemic, Black Mississippians were being shorted on the road to recovery.

A few months later, the picture is quite different. Mississippi is much closer to vaccine parity, with 31% of total shots going to Black residents. For the past four weeks, Black Mississippians’ share of the doses administered has been equal to or higher than their share of the population. 

The Blackest state in the nation is now doing a better job vaccinating its Black residents than 42 other states. And five of the states reporting a higher share of vaccinated Black residents have a total Black population between 1-3% and started vaccinating their residents weeks before Mississippi. 

The efforts responsible for this progress towards vaccine equity have come overwhelmingly from the community level. They’ve come from Black doctors, faith leaders and organizers, who have gone to the Mississippi State Department of Health with solutions that were taken seriously and implemented. Solutions like increasing vaccine distribution to private physicians in areas densely populated by people of color that health officials say are responsible for the significant uptick in Black Mississippians getting vaccinated.

“I have to give (community partners) the credit in large measure because they understood the value it was for their communities,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. “They stepped up and they got vaccinated, they did it publicly and they spoke about it. And they let us know what we need to do as far as making vaccines available within their communities.”

For months, health officials have emphasized trust and access as the two main hurdles to achieving parity when talking about the racial disparity in vaccine distribution. Black community leaders advocating for the vaccine, whether from behind the pulpit or a stethoscope, quickly found that the trust issue wasn’t all it was hyped up to be.

“I am convinced, as are many of the faith leaders, that we have moved beyond that attitude of hesitancy to a problem of access, no question about it,” said Jerry Young, Pastor of New Hope Baptist Church and president of the National Baptist Convention. 

Pastor Young took part in an MSDH event in February that broadcast Black pastors from around the state taking their first doses. Young says that he and other faith leaders have seen a significant decrease in vaccine hesitancy in their congregations because of their advocacy.

Black churches have served a massive role in getting shots to where people are. Some large hospitals, like St. Dominic in Jackson, have partnered with people to bring vaccination events to their churches, giving 200-300 shots at a time. 

“It’s about leadership, and in our community it’s extremely important for those of us who have that kind of trust to lead by example,” Young said. “That’s from pastors working together from the Gulf Coast all the way up to Southaven.”

A sharp decline in vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans is reflected in polling data. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll from December, nearly two-thirds of Black respondents were hesitant about taking the vaccine. But when the same poll was conducted in March, that number had been cut in half. Recent polls also show that vaccine hesitancy is much more widespread among white Republicans and evangelicals. 

After seeing a great response from Black patients to community vaccine education efforts, physicians like Dr. Andrea Phillips, who runs a small Jackson practice, set out to confront the outsized role vaccine hesitancy had in the conversation about racial disparities in the vaccine rollout. 

“We were disturbed by the narrative that the sole reason for this was hesitancy in the African American community. We knew that that was a part of it, but we were addressing that and very aggressively,” Phillips said. 

Phillips and others started asking MSDH to increase the allotments going to community health centers and small, family practices. Since the beginning of March, more of the state’s weekly dose allotment have gone to private providers than MSDH’s drive-thru vaccination sites. Health officials have acknowledged that the state’s drive-thru sites, while great for vaccinating a lot of people quickly, are not as effective as those local partners at vaccinating Black Mississippians.

“What I think the government was not realizing is that there’s a whole section of insured Black people that just go to their doctors,” Phillips said. 

Even though physicians like Phillips signed up to be vaccine providers, they found themselves waiting weeks on end for a small number of shots. 

“I was like, ‘I think we’re getting pushed to the background because I only want 100 or 200 shots at a time. And these other guys can take 600 or 700 at a time because they’re big places,’” Phillips said. 

Phillips had received a handful of doses to fully vaccinate legacy physicians. Luckily, she had an extra dose during the second round and was able to bring in one of her patients, an 85-year-old woman who lives less than a mile from Phillip’s practice. She was in the first group eligible for vaccination, but she wanted her shot to come from Phillips.

“I introduced her to Dr. Dobbs and I said, ‘These are the people in west Jackson that are still not getting their vaccines because providers like me aren’t getting them,” Philips said.

A week later, Dobbs sent Phillips 100 doses.

That was more than she needed for her patients, so she made the rest available to anyone eligible who wanted one. Then MSDH sent another 100 doses. Phillips, who had been administering all the shots herself, knew she couldn’t do it all alone. So she organized two weekend vaccination events where volunteers from the Magnolia Hill Foundation turned her practice into its own drive-thru site. Philips also had help administering the shots from five registered nurses from the Eliza Pillars Nurses Association, the state’s first Black nurse association.

“It was just amazing to me how many people said they didn’t really have access, it was just easier for them to get it here than Smith Wills (Jackson’s drive-thru site),” Phillips said. 

Now Phillips is tired and thinking about taking two weeks off. She’ll administer the last of her doses this weekend at the church of one of the nurses who helped with her drive-thru. She doesn’t know how many more vaccination events she will personally do, but she feels good about where we are. 

“Mississippi, while we’ve come a long way, there’s still a problem,” Phillips said. “If the distribution we’re seeing right now continues, I think that we will ultimately see real vaccination parity.”

READ MORE: “We’re failing minority communities”: Why Black Mississippians are receiving fewer COVID-19 vaccines than white Mississippians

The post How Black community leaders put Mississippi on the path to vaccine equity appeared first on Mississippi Today.

After years of partisan fear and loathing and failed attempts in the Legislature, health care and racial justice advocates want Mississippi voters to force the issue and expand Medicaid at the ballot box.

A nonprofit incorporated by the president of the Mississippi Hospital Association and others has filed preliminary paperwork to start ballot Initiative 76, which would put Medicaid expansion in the state constitution, draw down billions of dollars in federal funds and provide health care to potentially hundreds of thousands of working, low-income, uninsured Mississippians.

Mississippi is one of just 12 states that has refused to expand Medicaid, leaving hundreds of thousands of citizens without the ability to afford health care coverage and rejecting at least $1 billion per year in federal funds.

“Hospitals and our working poor across the state of Mississippi cannot keep waiting,” MHA President Tim Moore told Mississippi Today on Monday. “There’s all the federal money we are leaving in D.C., our taxpayer dollars that we need to bring back to help our citizens. We do that with everything else, accept federal help, but for some reason not with this.

“It’s time to let the Mississippi voters decide.”

The planning stages of the ballot initiative signals a broad coalition may be on board with the effort. Corey Wiggins, the executive director of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, has worked closely with Moore and others on launching the initiative.

“Medicaid expansion, which would provide healthcare to over 200,000 Mississippians and bring over a billion dollars in federal funds home to our state, is an issue we’ve encouraged legislators to pass for years,” Wiggins told Mississippi Today.

Moore, Hattiesburg pediatrician Dr. John Gaudet and public health executive and advocate Nakeitra Burse incorporated the Healthcare for Mississippi nonprofit and filed the initial paperwork to try to put the issue before voters. On March 31, the Mississippi secretary of state published an initial ballot title and summary in the Clarion Ledger public notice section. Now, those involved would have to collect about 106,000 signatures of registered voters to put the issue before voters, likely in the 2022 midterm elections.

Moore said the Mississippi Hospital Association will vote on Friday whether to join in the initiative push — very likely given the association’s long-running advocacy of expansion to help save financially ailing hospitals across the state and help the uninsured working poor in the poorest state in the nation. Moore said he hopes numerous other groups that have supported expansion will promptly get on board with the initiative drive.

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.

Current Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has remained steadfastly opposed to expanding Medicaid, as has Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn. Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has said he’s open to discussion on the issue — including last week as the legislature ended its annual session — but expansion has been a nonstarter despite vigorous lobbying efforts by MHA and others.

Just last week, Gunn reiterated his opposition.

“I am not open to Medicaid expansion,” Gunn said. “We cannot afford it, and there are numerous other reasons … Taxpayers cannot afford it.”

Reeves’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

“Hospitals have tried to work very closely with the state leadership since 2013,” Moore said. “And we have just not been able to move things in that direction. At some point in time you just have to make a decision to move along another avenue.”

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. Moore said he believes Medicaid expansion is likewise popular with Mississippi voters.

“If you look at just outside, public polling, you’ve seen numbers approaching 60% just with likely Republican voters,” Moore said.

Moore said the ballot initiative language, if successful, will likely be broad approval of expansion, not a long, detailed directive like medical marijuana, which brought some criticism that it tied state leaders hands in creating an effective, regulated program.

“Health care shouldn’t be in the constitution,” Moore said. “Neither should medical marijuana. That’s not what it’s for. It should have been taken up and dealt with in the Mississippi Legislature. But they did not do that. They didn’t handle it, and so you have to take the next step and put it before voters.”

After Healthcare for Mississippi filed its initial paperwork for the initiative, the state attorney general’s office drafted an initial title and ballot summary for Initiative 76. The group can challenge the wording of the title, which it is doing, Moore and Wiggins said.

The AG’s title draft says “Should Mississippi amend its constitution to require expansion of Medicaid eligibility for people between the ages of 18 and 65?” Moore said this is misleading, and “has no mention of low incomes or working poor.”

Mississippi is one of 12 states that has not expanded Medicaid to provide health coverage for people making up to 133% of the federal poverty level, or about $17,600 a year for an individual. Estimates vary from about 170,000 to 400,000 on how many Mississippians would qualify, with GOP leaders claiming the larger number.

The state would pay 10% of the cost — estimates range from about $75 million to more than $150 million a year — and the feds would cover the rest, estimated at $1 billion a year. The Mississippi Hospital Association has pitched a plan to lawmakers that the state share could be paid by taxes on hospitals and fees paid by the new Medicaid enrollees.

But the American Rescue Plan recently passed by Congress would provide further incentives for states that expand Medicaid, dropping the state’s share of the cost further.

“For a number of years, the federal government has been offering us a $1 million a day to take care of sick people,” Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, chair of Senate Public Health recently said. “Now they are offering $1 million a day to take that other $1 million a day. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Mississippi hospitals are footing the bill for uninsured Mississippians, including about $600 million in uncompensated care in 2019, with costs steadily rising. Advocates of Medicaid expansion say it would not only help save Mississippi’s rural hospitals — many of which have either gone under or teeter on the brink of bankruptcy — but create thousands of jobs and help the state’s economy.

“It’s encouraging to see the conversations around improved access to healthcare in Mississippi,” said Dan Jones, vice chancellor and dean emeritus at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “Under current conditions, many hardworking Mississippians in jobs without health insurance coverage could gain access to health care only afforded through health insurance coverage. And this can be accomplished in a way to gain substantial economic benefit for our state.”

While supportive of any effort to expand health care in Mississippi, Jones said he believes the best way forward is through lobbying lawmakers, not the ballot initiative process.

“While I appreciate the effort by some to proceed with a ballot initiative regarding Medicaid reform, in my opinion, working directly with our legislative leaders and members is the ideal way to accomplish the goal of increased healthcare access,” he said. “Our legislature changed our state flag when many thought it an impossible political process. I’m confident the same spirit of moving Mississippi and Mississippians forward can result in improved health care access.”

READ MORE: Mississippi missed out on $7 billion when it did not expand Medicaid. Will that figure jump to $20 billion?

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Map showing each county’s vaccination progress:

A breakdown of doses administered by race:

Doses administered by age:

Follow all of our COVID-19 vaccine coverage here.

The post Data: Vaccination progress in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

It’s Monday morning, more than 36 hours after the finish of Gonzaga’s remarkable NCAA Tournament victory over UCLA, and I still can’t quit thinking about it — about the absolute beauty of it. I am talking about the level of play, the competitiveness, the drama — all of it.

And, it is also just a few hours before 31-0 Gonzaga will take on 27-2 Baylor in one of the most intriguing Final Four championship games in memory. My take: College basketball doesn’t get any better than this.

And that seems to be the consensus of all the sports writers who have written about it, and all the TV and radio talking heads who have waxed on about it — especially about Gonzaga’s epic overtime victory over UCLA. So, I wondered if coaches felt the same. I wondered if, from a technical standpoint, coaches were as impressed as the rest of us. 

The answer: Yes, they are. Specifically, I talked to Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis Jr. and Mississippi State coach Ben Howland, two coaches who have experienced memorable NCAA Tournament moments themselves. Five years ago, Davis’ Middle Tennessee State team, a 15-seed, pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NCAA history, knocking off 2-seed Michigan State. Howland has coached four different schools into the NCAA Tournament and guided three of his UCLA teams into the Final Four. They qualify as experts.

“Just unbelievable basketball,” Davis said Monday morning. “Without a doubt one of the best games I have ever seen. I’m talking about how hard both teams played, how well-coached they were and how many big baskets they made, time after time after time.”

Howland, who was traveling, caught only the last few minutes of regulation and overtime of Gonzaga’s semifinal victory. “If the rest of it was like what I saw, I can only imagine,” Howland said. “From what I’ve read and what everybody is saying, it must have been. It was just an incredible finish. I could not believe that ending.”

Gonzaga freshman guard Jalen Suggs banked in a running 40-footer at the buzzer to give the Zags a 93-90 victory. Suggs’ shot was the biggest of a game of big shot after big shot. What made all the buckets seem so special was that both teams also played so well defensively. How many times in college basketball do we see a 93-90 game when both teams play excellent defense? Not many.

And how many times do you see a matchup where the tables are turned as much as they were for UCLA and Gonzaga. “You had UCLA which has won so many championships and been to so many Final Fours coming in as the 11-seed,” Davis said. “You had Gonzaga, which had been to the Final Four only once and had never won the championship, as the big favorite. From that standpoint, it was interesting even before the game.”

He’s right. The hunter had turned into the hunted and vice-versa. Both had no trouble adjusting to the role.

Keep in mind, UCLA, which lost its last four regular season games, was one of the last four teams to even get into the tournament. The Bruins had to win a play-in game to get into the round of 64. Davis’s Ole Miss team was one of the last four out.

“That just goes to show the parity in college basketball,” Davis said.

Davis made another point: “Could you believe how classy (Gonzaga coach Mark) Few was at the end of the game? The natural reaction is to run out there on the floor and celebrate with your players. Mark just turned about and looked at Mick (UCLA coach Cronin). You could tell he felt for him. He’s been there himself. To me that was so classy. Both those guys are as good a guy as they are coaches.”

Both Davis and Howland discussed how Saturday’s games might affect tonight’s. While Gonzaga’s victory had to take both a physical and emotional toll, Baylor won comfortably over Houston in the other semifinal.

Said Davis, “I think it’s more emotional than physical. When you play a game like that, it just takes a mental toll on you. It’s hard to explain how much it affects you emotionally. It’s hard to turn around and get ready with just one day in between.”

Howland agreed, but added, “There’s one way I think it helps Gonzaga. They really hadn’t played a close game all year. They got taken to the limit Saturday night. That’s got to help them.”

So, coaches, who do you like tonight?

“I think it will be close all the way,” Davis said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a lot like the UCLA-Gonzaga game because both these teams are too good, too well-coached to let the other run away with it. Gonzaga is such a great team, but for some reason, my gut says Baylor.”

Howland: “I’ve liked Gonzaga all season long, but Baylor, the way they are playing right now, it’s just hard to go against them. I lean toward Baylor.”

As for me, I still like Gonzaga, and I can’t wait.

The post Does college hoops get any better? How could it? Ben Howland, Kermit Davis agree. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eleven years, four kids, two degrees.

That’s how long Keronique Davis of Robinsonville has been taking classes at Coahoma Community College, how many children she has and the number of degrees she’ll be graduating with in May.

“I’ve had so many jobs — I can’t even count on my fingers how many jobs I’ve had to leave because I didn’t have a babysitter, or I had a babysitter but something happened,” she said, describing how her daughter began having seizures at four months old. 

But she kept coming back to school, and she now works in customer support for Verizon.

She said she was able to juggle it all with the help of the Child Care Payment Program, part of the federal Child Care Development Block Grant. The program defrays the cost of private child care tuition for families that earn 85% of the state median income and meet certain work requirements. Families who receive the voucher pay a co-payment based on income.

According to current data, 98% of those served by the program are single parents.

But until now, many more people qualify for the program in Mississippi than there have been funds to cover. But the two latest federal COVID-19 stimulus packages include a big boost for the program and will result in nearly $330 million flowing to Mississippi to give more families access to assistance.

Carol Burnett, executive director of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative, said this will increase the availability of certificates for eligible families in the state. 

Once the money flows in and gets used, the result is going to be “a lot more moms are going to be able to go to work,” said Burnett. 

“There has been a need for this funding even before the pandemic,” she continued, though the pandemic has “really worsened that situation.” 

Child care providers have closed and lost significant amounts of revenue after having to reduce their capacity to abide by social distancing guidelines, purchase more cleaning equipment and hire additional staff. The stimulus package also included a portion of funding going directly to child care centers to offset the negative impact.

“The need is so great. The benefit of getting help paying the costs of child care is humongous for a single mom,” said Burnett. “It makes a huge difference to her.”

It made a difference for Davis, who said it was a challenge juggling work, school and her children. Her current job allows her to work from home, but dealing with customers on the phone with four children in the background was impossible.

“Now that the day care is back up and running, I can send them to day care and be able to work, then get them when I get off at 5 o’clock,” she said.

The program covers care during the day for young children, in addition to after school and summer care for school-age students up to 12 years old. It also allows parents to choose their providers so they can select one with the hours and services they need.

And the funds are particularly impactful in Mississippi, the state with both the highest child poverty rate and a high percentage of women who work in low-wage jobs. Twenty-two percent of women work in low-paid jobs, according to the National Women’s Law Center, which categorizes low-paid jobs by looking at the 40 lowest paying jobs as defined by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The funds must be obligated by 2023 at the latest and spent by 2024.  

Parents eligible for the program can apply for assistance at this link.

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