The 55,000 or so people in a Mississippi Senate district and 24,000 in a House district expect the lawmakers they send to Jackson to have a say in the policy and spending decisions the Legislature makes.
And largely they do, particularly as they gain seniority, committee assignments and chairmanships and learn the ropes of legislating.
But then, there are times when rank-and-file lawmakers need not even be there — they have about as much input as the furniture in the Capitol. Particularly, when there are standoffs and brinksmanship between the House and Senate leadership on major issues or spending, negotiations get pushed to deadlines or beyond.
Brinksmanship at the Capitol in the final weeks of a legislative session has been called a game of chicken, a game of who blinks first or even “let go of me or I’ll jump off this cliff.” What it often means is that most of the 174 lawmakers get the mushroom treatment during last-minute, back-room negotiations. Then the rank-and-file are force-fed the final deals at voting deadline by the leadership, often with little time to even read all the details before voting. The committee system goes out the window. Bills aren’t vetted. Mistakes get made. Democracy dies with deadline deals in the Mississippi statehouse.
A standoff of epic proportions is brewing at the Capitol in the final weeks of the 2022 legislative session over House and Senate dueling income tax cut proposals. It is delaying, and could derail, one of the most important issues lawmakers have faced in a generation — how best to spend $1.8 billion in federal ARPA pandemic stimulus money.
For that matter, it portends that whatever income tax or elimination deal is brokered would be last minute by detente, not deliberation and analysis. That’s probably not the best way to adopt a sea change in the state’s tax structure.
It could also hang up many other measures, and even setting the state’s roughly $7 billion budget for next year.
Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn has made it no secret that he considers his proposal to eliminate the state personal income tax, along with raising sales taxes, the most important measure of his political career. In recent weeks, he’s made clear he’s willing to let other measures and spending die if the Senate doesn’t acquiesce.
Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, has pushed a much more modest income tax cut and rebates for taxpayers. Senate leaders say making a sea change elimination of one-third of the state’s revenue during uncertain economic times isn’t prudent and could crash the state budget.
Hosemann, who held Senate hearings on ARPA spending over the summer and fall, has made it no secret he sees spending the stimulus funds in “transformational” way on game-changing infrastructure statewide is his top priority. His main proposal is providing state matching funds for the federal stimulus local governments have received, in order to build larger, more transformational water, sewerage and other infrastructure projects. Proponents of this say Mississippi — already behind most other states in planning for or spending the ARPA funds — is burning daylight and leaving local governments in limbo on planning for large projects.
Although in the past he’s criticized Gunn’s tax plan as a “tax swap” because of its increase in sales taxes, Gov. Tate Reeves this week praised Gunn’s threat of an ARPA standoff as “a smart move,” saying, “The taxpayers should be the first to benefit when we have this much money.” It’s possible that if lawmakers blow end of session deadlines with tax cuts, ARPA spending or setting a budget, Reeves would force them back into special session over the summer. That, too, would results in major decisions being made by a handful of leaders with abbreviated debate and vetting.
Regardless, with the 2022 session scheduled to end in about three weeks, with so much as yet unfinished business, legislative leaders will have to scramble to reach deals.
And the rank-and-file elected lawmakers will probably not have a lot of input on what those deals look like.
The House has offered a “compromise” $226 million teacher pay raise to the state Senate.
But Senate leaders said Thursday they weren’t in on any of the compromising, haven’t met with House leaders beyond casual conversation and haven’t vetted the House proposal. They were perplexed why House Speaker Philip Gunn held a press conference Thursday to announce the House offering instead of having House conferees, or negotiators, meet with Senate conferees first.
The new House offer would be a $226 million deal that would raise starting teacher pay to an average of $41,638, higher than both the southeastern starting average of $39,754 and the national average of $41,163. The offer by House leaders provides an average raise higher than either the House or Senate’s original proposals.
Many political observers suspect the House move on Thursday without working with the Senate is tied to the ongoing standoff between the House and Senate over dueling income tax cut proposals. Gunn has recently said he’s prepared to hold up other legislation if the Senate doesn’t agree to his proposal to eliminate the personal income tax and raise sales taxes. The standoff portends lawmakers ending their session without deals on major issues and having to come back in special session over the summer for more haggling.
But on Thursday Gunn said the House is willing to pass a teacher raise regardless of a tax cut agreement. But his comments left doubt whether the House is willing to entertain any Senate input on teacher pay.
“I am proud to stand here before you and announce the House position on our teacher pay plan,” Gunn said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. “… We believe this is a strong statement on our commitment, and a win for teachers and a win for students.”
Gunn said the House move is not take-it-or-leave-it and, “If they’ve got ways they think they can improve it, they can let us know.” But he also said, “We don’t see how there can be improvement,” and said he sees no reason the Senate shouldn’t just pass the House offering and send it on to the governor.
But a teacher raise was also a Senate priority — with senators working over the summer to draft a plan — and Senate leaders are still smarting over the House killing the Senate teacher pay bill without a vote for a second year in a row. The initial House and Senate plans were similar, both over $200 million, and either would have been the largest Mississippi teacher pay raise in recent history. Some conflict between the chambers on a teacher raise appears to be centered on pride of authorship, and differences over other issues such as tax cuts.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, issued only a brief statement late Thursday: “We look forward to meeting with the House and finalizing a historic teacher pay raise.”
While the new House offering appears to still be most similar to the House’s original plan, it does provide yearly “step” increases in pay and larger bumps every five years similar to the Senate proposal.
Typically, for major bills in conference, three negotiators from each chamber would meet to work out details and compromise, although sometimes for expediency on lesser issues or for negotiations later in the process the two chambers will send over signed conference reports.
“No,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory and one of the Senate teacher pay negotiators, when asked if there had been a conference meeting. “Why on earth would you call a press conference and go through all of this when there’s not been any meeting? The common sense of it is, when you’ve got an idea, and I’ve got an idea, you meet somewhere and see what you can work out.”
The new House proposal would provide a raise to all Mississippi teachers for the 2022-2023 school year, $4,850 on average, with 92% of all teachers seeing a raise of at least $4,000, House leaders said.
The measure would provide yearly step increases in pay of at least $400 a year, with larger increases of at least $1,000 every fifth year and a $2,500 raise for all teachers in their 25th year.
The bill would also provide a $2,000 raise for assistant teachers. And it would correct a legislative drafting error so nurses, counselors and other specialists who did not receive their national board certification supplements in the 2021-2022 year would receive them retroactively — a one-time payment of around $6,000 for most of these educators.
On March 1, the House killed the Senate pay raise proposal without a vote. The Senate reluctantly passed the House bill — after amending it to the Senate version — to keep a teacher raise alive. With Gunn threatening to hold up other legislation as leverage on his proposal to eliminate the income tax and raise sales taxes, Senate leaders and education advocates have feared the pay raise might die in the tax standoff, and criticized the House as using brinksmanship with teacher pay. But it appears both chambers are prepared to pass a teacher pay raise.
The original House plan would have increased starting teacher pay from $37,000 a year to $43,125. The Senate plan would have increased starting pay to $40,000, but also provided increases of $1,325 to $1,624 at five-year intervals as teachers gain more experience.
The original House plan would have been enacted in one year while the Senate proposal would be phased in over two years. The Senate’s plan included a year-two, $44 million across-the-board increase of $1,000 per teacher. Including the teacher assistants, the Senate plan would have cost about $230 million over two years compared to $220 million in one year for the initial House proposal.
House leaders, including Gunn criticized the Senate plan being spread over two years, saying this appeared to be a political calculation to provide part of the raise during an election year next year.
Hosemann, Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves have all promised “significant” teacher raises. Reeves proposed a smaller, $3,300 increase over two years.
House Education Chairman Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach, praised the House’s latest plan.
“We’re proud of this, and I believe holding out, going to conference on this, we will end up getting more money for teachers, and definitely more in the first year,” Bennett said.
Bennett also praised the work of Reps. Kent McCarty, Jansen Owen and Kevin Felsher, whom he said helped work on a pay raise plan for more than a year.
“Our goal with our bill was to target the problem we have with recruiting and retaining teachers, and this compromise does a good job, is a good step towards doing that,” Owen said.
Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, in a statement on Thursday said: “The conference committee has not met because of critical floor deadlines. The Senate conferees will take a look at the House report and run the numbers. We hope to be able to meet and finalize an agreement soon. As always I would just like to thank teachers for the hard work they are doing for our kids every day.”
One of the biggest hurdles low-income single moms in Mississippi face when they apply for child care assistance is the requirement they sue their child’s father for child support first.
But on March 3, a group of governor-appointed early childhood administrators voted to recommend that Gov. Tate Reeves and his Department of Human Services remove this barrier from families.
Mississippi leaders often tout family-centered values, but working moms and advocates say the state’s child support requirement can cause animosity between parents as the state agency meddles in their financial arrangement.
A single mom might have struck a deal with her child’s father that works for their family, but if she wants to access the federal child care voucher, she must turn her child support case over to the state to enforce. If the mom has ever received cash welfare, the state then seizes and withholds those child support dollars to pay itself back for the assistance it provided. (The vast majority of low-income custodial parents applying for public assistance are women, which is why this story refers to them as single mothers).
“They try to make the woman the policeman of their division by putting the father under child support. It’s not her job to do that. She did not create that rule,” said Theophilus King, owner of Christian Mission Learning Center in Jackson told Mississippi Today last year. “They’re trying to drive a greater wedge between the two people.”
On top of that, the welfare agency pays a contractor to operate this service, though privatization has proven in some cases to be less effective, according to a recent report by a legislative watchdog group.
Mississippi Department of Human Services has made strides recently to boost benefits to families in need and create a friendlier safety-net atmosphere in a state known for having some of the harshest public assistance policies in the nation. It convinced the Legislature to increase the monthly cash welfare amount by $90; it created a $100 “pass through” so that the state doesn’t intercept all child support money; and it sent out $1,000 supplements to welfare recipients in December.
But on the issue of the child support requirement, agency officials had remained mum. Until now.
Carol Burnett, founder of the Low-Income Child Care Initiative, has been advocating for the state to remove this rule for years with little reception from state leaders. She said she was surprised and thrilled when the State Early Childhood Advisory Council raised the topic and every member expressed support for doing away with the requirement, which only 13 states currently impose. At least nine states have removed this requirement since 2018, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Getting this barrier out of the way will help more single parent-headed families get child care, which means more single parents will be able to go to work. And going to work is something that we know he (Gov. Reeves) does care about,” Burnett said. “… It’s going to make it easier for a lot of parents that we’ve seen struggle.”
Mississippi has imposed the child support requirement in the child care program since 2004. The state enforces the same rule for food assistance, even though it is not required to by federal law.
Burnett and other advocates have criticized the department for failing to approve applications for the child care voucher in a timely manner. Some of the delay may be attributed to hiccups caused by the child support requirement. Every year, the program serves only a fraction of kids in low-income families.
MDHS received an additional $200 million for the program under the American Rescue Plan Act that it can use to serve more families, as long as they’re eligible.
Last year when Mississippi Today asked Chad Allgood, director of the Division of Early Childhood Care and Development at MDHS, if his agency would consider removing the requirement, he refused to engage on the topic, responding, “It’s agency policy. That’s the extent of what I can tell you.”
At the March 3 council meeting, which Allgood helped conduct, he said he and other child care administrators had been studying the child support rule and agreed it should be removed.
“We’ve had conversations with her (Holly Spivey, Gov. Reeves’ education policy adviser) about approaching the governor with this recommendation,” Allgood said. “We do feel that it would make a very powerful statement for SECAC to make this recommendation.”
The council voted unanimously. The governor’s office did not return several requests for comment about what he plans to do with the recent recommendation.
“I personally think that the Child Care Development Fund (child care voucher) offers some of the most potential for Mississippi of any government program,” said Andrea Sanders, Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, which oversees the state’s foster care program for children who have faced abuse and neglect. Sanders is also executive director of SECAC.
“I think that getting children in good, quality child care early, allowing their parents the ability to work without fear of where their children are, without having to leave them with a 13-year-old brother because they don’t have options. That’s how you start to stop the cycle of violence in households. So I’m certainly a big proponent of this move (to remove the child support requirement),” Sanders said.
The State Early Childhood Advisory Council, established in law during the reauthorization of Head Start in 2007, has a contentious history. Because it is housed under the governor’s office and is comprised of governor-appointees, the board is subject to political whims. The work of the council under former Gov. Phil Bryant, for example, has been wiped from the internet for the last two years and all but forgotten.
The council helps craft state plans for programs like the Child Care Development Fund, the federal block grant that funds the child care voucher program, which Mississippi calls the Child Care Payment Program. Under the previous administration, the council, chaired by a data scientist from Mississippi State University, created a new controversial child care center quality rating system and improvement plan that was never fully implemented. Through the plan, centers were supposed to partner the Mississippi Community College Board to train their workers.
Child care centers said the council members disregarded their suggestions for building a effective program. At that time, SECAC was working closely with the research canter data scientist Mimmo Parisi founded called NSPARC, which used to receive millions from state agencies under Bryant but has since fallen out of favor with political leadership.
Child care providers and advocates have long complained about a lack of communication with the council and state early childhood administrators.
Most recently, the Mississippi Department of Human Services awarded Mississippi State University Extension Service $5 million to develop a new early childhood curriculum for child care centers to use.
Child care centers and advocates remain skeptical about the direction of early childhood programs in the state, but they hope the council’s recent vote could signal earnest efforts to craft policy suggestions based on the actual needs of low-income working parents.
“I would support it and hope that this would be a beginning to communication between childcare, parents and the governor’s office,” said Deloris Suel, owner of Prep Company Tutorial School in Jackson. “This is more than we’ve gotten out of any governor since this was enacted, so this is a very good first step.”
The program is paid for by the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, and will last through September 2024.
“Like many states across the country, we would like to use our (pandemic relief) funds to mitigate any learning loss that has taken place as a result of the pandemic,” Marla Davis, associate superintendent of academic education, said when presenting the service to the State Board of Education on Feb. 17.
According to Paper’s website, tutors are college students, PhD candidates, and teachers who can provide assistance in English, Spanish, French, or Mandarin.
There are no limits on the length of a tutoring session or the number of sessions a student can initiate. The state recommends tutoring sessions three times a week for 30 minutes, a model also known as “high-dosage tutoring,” but it is not a requirement.
Teachers and administrators will also be able to monitor student activity and progress on the platform, with the goal of helping inform instruction. Davis also said that professional development and technical support will be provided for classroom teachers to help them utilize the platform, which is expected to begin by the end of March.
“We’re honored to take this major step towards educational equity alongside the state of Mississippi,” said Philip Cutler, co-founder and CEO of Paper. “This initiative makes it clear that the state’s highest-ranking education leaders view tutoring as a vital academic resource, and we look forward to partnering with them to create a world-class educational system in the Magnolia State.”
After 20 years of teaching special education, Alison Rausch has adopted a “one day at a time” attitude towards her job.
Rausch, who currently teaches fifth and sixth grade at the Wheeler Attendance Center in Prentiss County, has found the uncertainty of the pandemic exhausting. The unpredictable nature of students being out for quarantine leaves her regularly reteaching lessons and makes it difficult to plan.
There have also been an increased number of students referred to her department for testing for special education services, mostly related to depression and anxiety.
“I’ve always been a firm believer as a special education teacher — if you don’t provide resources for the mental health, for the behavioral health, for the social skills, then you’re not going to get the academic outcomes that you want,” Rausch said.
As the pandemic persists, Mississippi and the nation have seen increased anxiety and depression among children. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health in October 2021, which they said was a pandemic-induced escalation of prior trends. In Mississippi, 31,000 youth reported having a major depressive episode in 2019, of which nearly three-quarters said they did not receive treatment according to a new report from Mental Health America.
Carey Wright, state superintendent of education, said both her teacher and student advisory councils have been very vocal about the need for increased mental health services in response to increased depression and anxiety from the pandemic.
“To me, that is the part that breaks your heart,” Wright told Mississippi Today. “Statewide, we need to do a really good job of training our teachers and leaders on the signs and symptoms of children and adults that are struggling from mental health and social-emotional issues.”
In the Jackson Public School district, a recent student death prompted district officials to remind the community about the mental health services available to students.
“There are people around you — your teachers, your counselors, your principals, your parents, your pastors, on and on — there are people around you who care about you and want to see you well, so please reach out to us,” Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Errick Greene said in a video message to the district community. “You are not alone, and we need you to know that.”
Jackson Public Schools contracts with Marion Counseling Services to provide onsite mental health specialists at each middle school and high school and uses Hinds Behavioral Health Services at the elementary level. District officials said both services have reported increased demand during the pandemic.
Amanda Thomas, executive director of climate and wellness in Jackson Public Schools, said when a teacher notices a student being withdrawn or making comments about hurting themselves or others, it is imperative not to take it lightly and to begin the referral process. Thomas explained that all staff members are trained on suicide prevention, but recent events have prompted them to do refresher trainings.
“It can be a little difficult when you are faced with it, even though you think you have those particular tools in your kit, to be able to pull them out and use them,” Thomas said.
The district is also beginning to implement a social-emotional learning curriculum, which focuses on self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.
The Pascagoula-Gautier School District began educating staff on these topics in the fall of 2019 as part of a push district officials call “whole-child learning.”
This work included trainings on common mental health disorders and how to accommodate them in the classroom. It also focused on the “zone of regulation” language that became the baseline curriculum for each school counselor to address mental health. The four zones – blue, red, yellow, and green – represent different emotions. These include, respectively, sadness/tiredness, anger, anxiety/frustration, and being happy/ready to learn.
Cards such as this one assists students on how to cope with various emotions they experience during their school day at Trent Lott Academy, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Kristen Sims, who coordinates the program for the district, explained the zones in a video.
“The green zone is where we want to stay as much as we can, but sometimes you might enter one of those other zones … and it is completely normal to feel any of those things,” she said. “But we always want to do our best to get back to the green zone where we’re 100% ourselves.”
This semester, the initiative was extended to include physical cards that were distributed to each student and feature the four zones as well as coping skills and positive affirmations.
Sims said the cards were a jumping-off point for broader conversations about mental health among students, especially after they were first introduced in the classroom.
“For the next 10 minutes, the students all discussed their feelings, saying ‘Oh, I’m in the red zone when I’m taking a math test’ and joking like that, but then also sharing what coping skills work for them,” Sims said. “So the teacher then led almost a group therapy session.”
Jeana Delancey, a school counselor at Trent Lott Academy in the Pascagoula-Gautier School District, called the cards “a great reference point.”
“It’s refreshing to see students come to me with some knowledge already of how to communicate how they’re feeling,” Delancey said. “Like planting a seed and watching it grow.”
Jeana Delancey, a counselor at Trent Lott Academy, sits with support animal Zeke, in the quiet room at the Pascagoula school, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Jeana Delancey, a counselor at Trent Lott Academy, in the quiet room at the Pascagoula school, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Encouranging words are one example of the positive support for students in the quiet room at Trent Lott Academy in Pascagoula, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Jeana Delancey, a counselor at Trent Lott Academy, sits with a student and support animal Zeke, in the quiet room at the Pascagoula school, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Jeana Delancy, a Counselor at Trent Lott Academy in Pascagoula, explains how the school provides coping tools for students, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Coping strategies, such as this billboard, are provided for students throughout Trent Lott Academy in Pascagoula, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Coping tools, such as this billboard, are provided for students throughout Trent Lott Academy in Pascagoula, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Kristen Sims, Whole Child Coordinator at Trent Lott Academy in Pascagoula, explains how the school provides coping tools for students, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Jeana Delancey, a counselor at Trent Lott Academy, sits with a student and support animal Zeke, in a quiet room at the Pascagoula school, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
A sign informing students that the quiet room is a safe place at Trent Lott Academy in Pascagoula, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
At the state level, advocates have been pushing for years for lawmakers to enshrine mental health standards into state law.
Sanford Johnson, director of TeachPlus Mississippi, has been working with teachers to advocate for legislation that would create minimum baselines for mental health care in schools.
“The teachers that went through (a mental health first aid training) have talked about just how helpful it was because they don’t have to have all the answers — it doesn’t train them how to diagnose, but you’re able to identify a student who may be dealing with a challenge,” Johnson said. “It teaches you how to communicate with that student in a trusting way, and then how to encourage that student to connect with resources.”
“There have been so many teachers that have talked about particular students where ‘We thought it was a discipline issue, now that I know this information I’m wondering if there was a mental health issue,’” Johnson continued.
The Mental Awareness Program for School Act, which would have created some of the programming Johnson was pushing for, passed the House earlier this session but died in a Senate committee.
The Mississippi Department of Education is also addressing this issue by using some of its federal pandemic relief funds for free telehealth and teletherapy services within schools.
The Oxford School District started its whole-child education push about two years ago. LaTonya Robinson, chief of student services in the Oxford School District, has tried to make this transition a collaborative process.
”(When the) pandemic happened and we immediately realized that we needed more eyes, more people on the ball so that we didn’t miss anybody,” Robinson said. “The pandemic gave us the exciting opportunity of finding out what the gaps were and then restructuring our systems of support so that those gaps no longer existed.”
Schools hold “at-risk” meetings at least once a month to review the status of each student receiving mental health services from the district. These meetings are attended by counselors, behavior specialists, intervention specialists, principals, any community partners, and the district’s retention coordinator.
The district has also worked to more effectively utilize school counselors, following a model from the American School Counselor Association.
“It takes them away from so much of the paperwork that counselors are traditionally known for and takes them back to the three attributes of attendance, academics, and behavior,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the district will bring on a clinical psychology intern from the University of Mississippi next school year, and plans to expand the conversation about mental health to also include parental involvement.
“Mental health is a community problem and not just a school problem,” she said. “… Talk more to your kids. …Talk to them about things that are going on in their day so that we can connect those dots. There’s never anything worse than being in a disciplinary hearing and having a parent hear something for the first time.”
The Senate after much debate — and efforts to make the measure stronger — passed a House bill to prohibit private companies and Mississippi governments from requiring COVID-19 vaccination of employees over their “sincerely held religious objections.”
But the Senate added a change to the bill to ensure more debate and scrutiny before it could be sent to the governor and signed into law. This was out of fear that the measure could jeopardize federal funding for state universities.
The Senate passed House Bill 1509 on a 36-15, party line vote with Republicans voting in favor. The bill, authored by Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, passed the House in a mostly party line vote in January.
“The Senate passed a strong, conservative bill which protects employees and children attending school in Mississippi from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” said Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. “I personally support a broader bill providing a religious exemption for vaccine requirements for schools and will support that provision when it is properly before the Senate.”
Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, offered an amendment to provide such a broad exemption from any vaccine requirements, not just COVID-19. But a point of order was raised that the original bill applied only to COVID-19 and his amendment was too expansive. Hosemann ruled it was too expansive an amendment. McDaniel took the unusual step of appealing Hosemann’s ruling to the full Senate, which voted 34-16 to uphold Hosemann’s ruling.
“This may not seem like a civil rights issue, but it is a civil rights issue — the right of people to control what goes into their body,” McDaniel said.
A group of supporters of the vaccine mandate ban packed the Senate gallery, and had to be warned twice by Hosemann to stop cheering when lawmakers made anti-vaccine mandate statements.
Sen. Chad McMahan, R-Tupelo, offered an unsuccessful amendment to allow a medical-condition exemption to any vaccine mandate. Although his amendment failed, he was assured that is already in state law.
“We’re here today because the federal government overstepped its authority to tell people they have to take an experimental vaccine,” McMahan said.
Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, told his colleagues he represents “ground zero” for vaccine mandates, with Ingalls Shipbuilding in his district. The shipyard enacted a vaccine mandate, but later suspended it as 20% of its 11,500 employees faced termination for not being vaccinated.
“Those employees shouldn’t be put in the position at all,” Wiggins said.
But Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, questioned whether the bill could jeopardize community health.
“So the rights of the individual trump the rights of society?” Horhn said, drawing a loud cheer from supporters of the bill in the gallery. “Their rights are going to trump the safety of a whole city, whole community or the whole state? By pushing individual rights, we could be putting a lot of people at risk.”
“That’s a risk we’re willing to take for protecting individual rights,” said Sen. Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville.
But DeBar successfully added a “reverse repealer” amendment to the measure to provide more time to scrutinize the bill and make sure it doesn’t “jeopardize federal funds for IHL.” This means the House and Senate would have to vote on the measure again before it could be signed into law.
The bill is a response to a battle raging since last year between those opposed to various COVID-19 vaccine mandates issued by President Joe Biden. Some of those mandates have been upheld by the federal courts while others have not.
Besides exempting employees of private businesses from the vaccine mandate, it also would prohibit state and local governmental entities from forcing a vaccine mandate on their employees and would prohibit those entities from withholding services from people who have chosen not to be vaccinated.
The bill would also apply to the National Guard. The U.S. Department of Defense has mandated a vaccine mandate for members of the National Guard. That issue is in the federal courts.
Mississippi moms could soon lose access to healthcare at a critical period after giving birth after a measure that would extend their Medicaid coverage died in the state House of Representatives.
The Republican-led effort to prolong new mothers’ Medicaid coverage for a year passed overwhelmingly in the state Senate last month. Lawmakers who supported the bill and health advocates noted the state’s high rate of maternal and infant mortality as one reason the extension is needed.
The House let the measure die without a vote on Wednesday, likely meaning that the 60% of pregnant women in Mississippi who are on Medicaid will lose their health insurance just two months after giving birth—a period when they are still at substantial risk of fatal complications from pregnancy.
House Speaker Philip Gunn, a staunch opponent of Medicaid expansion, told Mississippi Today that he viewed the bill in that light.
“I think there were different views on whether this expands Medicaid,” Gunn said. “I have been very clear that I oppose Medicaid expansion, and that I believe we should be working to get people off Medicaid as opposed to adding more people to it.”
But the measure would not have added anyone to Medicaid in Mississippi. It would simply have allowed pregnant women, who already qualify for Medicaid, to get healthcare for 10 additional months.
Requests for comment from Rep. Joey Hood, chairman of the House Medicaid Committee, were not returned. He told the Associated Press legislators would revisit the issue next session.
Sponsor Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, framed the legislation as a way of protecting children in the state with the country’s highest infant mortality rate.
“All I’m saying is we’re protecting (children) in the womb,” Blackwell said during debate over the bill earlier this year. “Let’s protect them out of the womb for up to a year.”
Blackwell also noted that Mississippi is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and uphold its law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks. He described his legislation as pro-life. On Wednesday afternoon, he told Mississippi Today he was disappointed that the measure had died for the second year in a row.
“While infants are still covered under Medicaid, mothers lose coverage after 60 days,” he wrote in a statement. “All this bill would’ve done was continue that coverage for a total of 12 months.”
Gunn, who is also adamantly anti-abortion, when asked about Senate Republicans pitching the measure as pro-life, deflected and referred again to Medicaid expansion.
“Our position on expansion is clear,” Gunn said.
Maternal and children’s health advocates and physicians in Mississippi had been optimistic that the bill would pass, ensuring moms covered by Medicaid would be able to access vital health care during the first year of their baby’s life.
On Wednesday, they were frustrated and angry.
“I feel as if they are playing politics with women’s lives,” said Cassandra Welchlin, co-convener and state lead of Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable. The organization had lobbied for SB 2033 and Welchlin thought it had the votes to pass.
“A failure that will deny mothers the health care they need,” one of the bill’s co-authors Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, wrote on Twitter.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government required Medicaid coverage for pregnant women and other beneficiaries to last as long as the public health emergency. But that declaration, last extended in January, could end as early as April 16.
A 2019 health department report on maternal mortality in the state found that nearly 40% of all pregnancy-related deaths in Mississippi from 2013 to 2016 occurred more than six weeks postpartum. Heart conditions and hypertensive disorders were the two most common causes of death. Black women in Mississippi are three times likelier than white women to die of pregnancy-related complications.
Dr. Anita Henderson, President of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said pediatricians, obstetricians and family practice doctors would continue advocating for postpartum Medicaid extension.
“Extending coverage to 12 months would help save lives by providing mothers access to much-needed healthcare services, including treatment of postpartum depression, asthma, diabetes and other medical conditions that put mothers and their babies at risk,” she wrote in a statement to Mississippi Today.
Some legislators also questioned Gunn’s handling of the bill.
“He’s one man,” said Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, a member of the House Medicaid Committee. “Why does he not let the process work?”
That point stood for Medicaid expansion in general, Scott added.
“He should not have one-man veto power when you’ve got poll after poll out there that 60%-plus people say they want to expand Medicaid.”
Mississippi is one of 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. But many of these states, almost all in the South, have passed laws to ensure Medicaid coverage lasts for at least six months after birth. Florida, Georgia and Tennessee did so in 2021.
On Wednesday, Welchlin said she was thinking about the Black and brown Mississippians she has met in the course of advocating for women’s healthcare access. Many of them are working moms who don’t get healthcare through their jobs and can’t afford to buy it on their own. And she was thinking especially about the Black women in Mississippi who have died of pregnancy-related complications at disproportionately high rates.
“They’re gone, and then their children are left with family members,” she said.
For much of the last two decades, Von Gordon has encouraged Mississippians to talk about race. As a student at the University of Mississippi, he helped organize the first Statewide Student Summit on Race. Gordon, 42, is now the executive director of the Alluvial Collective, formerly the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. The nonprofit aims to create stronger communities in Mississippi through educational events, like hosting seminars, assisting in oral histories, and mentoring high school students.
This session, discussion of race and racism in Mississippi in K-12 school and university classrooms are coming under threat. Last week, the House passed Senate Bill 2113, which seeks to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. Now, Gov. Tate Reeves is poised to sign the legislation, and educators across the state are anxiously waiting to see how it will impact their ability to teach about race and racism in Mississippi.
The day after the House passed SB 2113 last week, Mississippi Today spoke with Gordon for “Mississippi in the Know,” a series of free breakfast conversations with policy experts.In this interview, which has been edited and condensed for length, Gordon talked about school desegregation in Mississippi and how that inspired Derrick Bell’s writings on critical race theory.
Molly Minta: Derrick Bell is one of the founders of critical race theory, and he worked as a lawyer for the NAACP legal defense (fund), and he actually litigated a school desegregation case in Leake County. His experiences working on that case were really formative for the academic work he later did to develop critical race theory. I would love it if you could talk to us a little bit about his experiences.
Von Gordon: There’s a definition that I’m really fond of. Lee Anne Belldescribes it in a book about teaching for social justice, and she writes: “Critical race theory analyzes and challenges mainstream narratives in law, history, and popular culture that uphold the status quo.” And a big part of how they do that is through counter storytelling.
I think it’s really important that Dr. Bell spent a lot of time here, and it was informative in how he thought about this theory. So he is already in Mississippi doing some work in the early 1960s. There’s an opportunity to help with the desegregation of Leake County schools.
One of the interesting things is, there was a Rosenwald School already there that was of deep value to the community. It had served the community well, even in the context of gross underfunding and, frankly, gross segregation. So there was a need that the Black people in particular in that community had to have an equitable education experience. The Legislature could have fixed that, but it did not.
There were people (in Leake County) who were concerned that by desegregating the schools, they might lose this really valuable asset that they had poured themselves into and that had produced a lot of opportunity for their children — and actually (a lot of opportunity) for them.
Now, one of the things I’ve learned about these communities — Harmony is one of them — is that they are really strong and resilient communities. We know in other parts of the country, strong communities like that got destroyed, whether you’re talking about Tulsa or Rosewood or others. The context really matters in that way. (Bell) recognizes that the law is really critical to desegregation, to unleashing the potential of being a citizen in the United States.
When we think about what critical race theory seeks to do, it seeks to have a full examination of the impact of race in our society. And I think it’s been fun, and in some ways funny, to watch this conversation happen nationally, in part because in many ways it is detached both from the real impact of systemic racism, but also what it looks like in the communities where we live and work.
MM: Another tenant of critical race theory (is) this idea of “interests converging.” Could you talk to us a little bit about that, how we can understand that idea in Mississippi?
VG: Dr. Bell is one of the scholars who has written most about this. He talks specifically about some of the civil rights gains and how they were really made possible, not because there was this great awakening in the country that Black people or Native people needed their rights or they deserve their rights. That was a part of it, but it was also that it benefited white America too.
For folks who are curious about the civil rights struggle of the sixties — when the president got involved most actively (in Birmingham), it was when the State Department and diplomats started to send back how what they were seeing on TV played across the globe.As the Cold War is emerging, we cannot project out equality and the dignity and respect of every human being, and here we have German shepherds biting our community’s babies.
The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act — based on Dr. Bell’s work — had as much to do with what benefited the whole as it did just the need to extend these rights, basically to live out our Constitution. I think that’s an important thing for us to consider.
I’ve always been fascinated by debates about affirmative action. When I was in college and since, one of the things that I’ve always heard about affirmative action policies was that the biggest beneficiary of those policies were white women. And most of the data bears that out. But the burden of affirmative action and the stigma around it is typically born by Black people.
I think we have to ask ourselves … Are we doing things for the right reason? Or doing things in the interest of equity and justice? Or are we doing them also because it’s in our self interest?
There’s a windfall of infrastructure dollars, right, coming into the state. One of the things we know about infrastructure is, historically, where what got placed had an impact on the people living there. Most of the negative impact, particularly in our urban centers, are … born out by the black and brown people in those countries.
So are we thinking intentionally at our Department of Transportation about how this amount of infrastructure dollars are going to be spent? How are we thinking about equity, or are we only looking for where our interests converge?
MM: When I was interviewing students in Mississippi’s only law school class on critical race theory, they were talking to me about how, on the one hand, the idea of interest convergence can seem a little like Machiavellian almost. It’s not these pure ideas of equality and justice that are leading to these social changes, but the economic or material realities of, how does this change benefit people who have power in society? There’s that more cynical interpretation, but there’s also a way of thinking about it where it can actually provide a roadmap for how to create change in society.
VG: My friend and colleague now at the Alluvial Collective, Chauncey Spears, often talks about how we prepare ourselves and young people to be better citizens. One of the important things I think we have to do is let go of some fear so we can really do a deep and honest examination of who we are and how we show up in the world, and the institutions we’re part of and the systems that we encourage.
Think about where the fear is coming from, cause we’re seeing this with the whole CRT debate. It’s rooted in the fears around what young people are learning and what that might tell them about who we are — or make them question about who we are.
I’ve worked with amazing young people for a long time. I’ve been in spaces where we’ve talked about the death of Emmett Till, and the white students in the room have shared all of the emotions of guilt and shame and assume blame and a lot of other things, almost all of which are unhealthy when it comes to how we move forward. And I’ve had the experience of, Black kids, particularly Black males, 14 or 15, wondering about their own value.
Critical race theory is just one of many different ways that we need to examine the impact of oppression in our society. It is one thing to think about where we want to go and how we get there. It’s another thing to do an examination about how we have destroyed human potential for generations.
Von Gordon
A really good friend of mine said this about white kids learning about slavery and feeling some kind of way – that parents should applaud their white child who comes home and is upset about slavery as white person, because it’s evidence that their child has a moral compass. When we think about the value of a moral compass for budding citizens, that’s a really important thing. And for a black child to learn that they do have value. What happened to Emmett Till is not something anyone deserved for any reason.
The complexities of how our young people are raised to explore our history, but also kind of draw from that (history) lessons for how they need to show up as citizens should really be at the heart of this, not our fears.
MM: What you’re saying connects to what you talked about at the beginning of our conversation about an important aspect of critical race theory being counter-storytelling. … I’m wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit more about other examples of counter storytelling in Mississippi?
VG: I’ll tell you, I remember talking to … my middle daughter. She was talking about Lewis and Clark and the expedition. She was so proud of what she learned. Her older sister asked her, ‘so tell me about the other people in that story? What do you know about them?’
There were Native people there, right? They’re just the backdrop. Not only is that disrespectful, it’s a really bad way for us to learn our history. If we polled our middle school students and asked them if the original people in Mississippi, if any of them are still in Mississippi? They would probably say no, they died a long, long time ago. But Chief (Cyrus) Ben is a steward of an incredible history and community that most of our young people don’t even know exists.
In our work, first of all, we don’t go anywhere we’re not invited. When we get there, one of the first things we do is put people in circles, because circles are one of the oldest forms of community.
We recognize that at the fundamental level, where people are living their lives, they need to have a couple of things happen. They need to be able to see each other fully. They need to be able to hear each other fully. And the one thing everybody in the circle is an expert in, is their stories.
It’s intimidating when you show up in a space, and you know there are people in there with expertise, and you don’t feel you have an expertise. But when you show up and all you have to do is tell your authentic stories, who you are and where you come from and what shaped you? And that’s all everybody else has a license to do? Then you get to know each other in a unique and different way.
MM: When people are sharing their personal stories, what kind of questions do their community members tend to ask them?
VG: One of the first things I always hear is shock. Like, ‘oh my god, I didn’t know that about you.’ Or, ‘I had the same experience.’
Let me come back to the desegregation of schools in Mississippi. … When the schools in Mississippi were desegregated, that was an incredibly traumatic experience for everybody. Now, critical race theory will challenge you to examine who got the jobs at the newly integrated schools and who had to go find another line of work. But it was a deeply traumatic experience for everyone. And not many people have had the opportunity to tell those stories or share them with folks who might’ve been on the other side of that trauma.
The assumption might be if you’re a white kid at Murrah that it was hard on you, cause you went home for Christmas and you come back and bam, bam, bam. Your world is turned upside down. You might think the brown kids who were going to your school benefited. All you can think about is the benefit that they were supposed to get from it — not recognizing that, perhaps for the first time in their lives, they’re looking at a teacher wondering if that teacher has their best interest at heart, wondering if that teacher sees their humanity?
Imagine the position at that point in time that a Black family who was already living on the margins, imagine how the power they felt — or did not feel — sending their kid into a newly integrated school, where they didn’t feel like anybody in that administration answered to them?
Like that happened all over our state. Several people have said this to me over the years, particularly in Tupelo. They have this thing they call the Tupelo way. And one of the things they pride themselves in is the approach they took to desegregating their schools. Some real-meaning people brought the community together and said. ‘we’re going to make sure our public schools are our institutions.’
There can be a healthy debate about how they actually did that, or whether that’s really, really true. But you look at how those communities sit in Mississippi now, how they are thriving? There’s a direct correlation between the sense of leadership around doing as little harm as possible compared to other communities which embraced a different way of educating their young people.
MM: I have just one last question … is there an aspect of the whole discourse and dialogue around critical race theory … that I haven’t asked or something you want to point out that you feel like people miss?
VG: Critical race theory is just one of many different ways that we need to examine the impact of oppression in our society. It is one thing to think about where we want to go and how we get there. It’s another thing to do an examination about how we have destroyed human potential for generations.
I can’t think of anybody I know who would read a book from beginning to end, from cover to cover, about critical race theory that would not come away with a sense of conviction about being better, about our need as society to be better.
We often say that previous generations did not know. One of the things that Dr. Kendi lays out really well in (Stamped from the Beginning) is, people knew, and we got the history that we have. People knew. We’re going to have to do better ourselves.
In really personal ways, this exploration of who we are matters, and CRT is one among many, many others that we absolutely need to employ. Don’t be intimidated by the jargon. Don’t be intimidated by what the talking head on TV said about it. Get in there for yourself. That’s my story, I’m sticking to it.
