OurTupelo

State Sen. David Jordan, the 86-year-old Democrat from Greenwood and veteran of the Civil Rights struggles, said legislation approved Wednesday by the Mississippi Senate on a straight party line vote could potentially remove “people who look like me” from the voter rolls.

Jordan, the son of sharecroppers who became a nationally known political activist in the 1960s, spoke emotionally from the Senate floor on Wednesday against the bill that Republican authors said was aimed at preventing voter fraud.

“Voter fraud is no major problem in Mississippi,” Jordan said. “I think people who look like me have paid a great price in Mississippi and across this nation to be full-fledged citizens. To bring a bill that could disenfranchise and create problems for people of color to vote and is aimed directly at people like me, people of color, is wrong. We don’t have to do this.”

Senators passed the bill on Wednesday by a vote of 36-16 straight down party lines, with Republicans voting yes and Democrats voting no. The bill now moves to the House for consideration.

The bill’s author Senate Elections Chairman Jeff Tate, R-Meridian, and Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, said the intent of the legislation is to prevent voter fraud by ensuring people who are not eligible voters are removed from the voter registration lists. They pointed out some counties across the state have more people registered to vote than the total population of the county. The voter rolls could include, for instance, people who died and people who moved away from the county and should no longer be on the voter rolls.

“This does not purge you from the voter rolls,” said Tate, a freshman senator and former county elections commissioner. “It allows a trigger for the county to contact those who go without voting.”

Under the bill, Tate estimated that about 250,000 Mississippians would receive a confirmation notice that would result in them being purged from the voter rolls if they did not vote within the next four years or respond to the notice. Others estimated that as many as 600,000 could receive the confirmation notice from county circuit clerks if the bill passed on Wednesday becomes law.

Jordan said the bill was trying to fix a problem that did not exist. During the emotional floor debate of more than 90 minutes on Wednesday, Tate said he was 100% sure voter fraud existed in the state, though he could give no concrete example. Election officials, including Hosemann when he was previously secretary of state, have never provided evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.

Jordan said the instances of voter fraud, if any, were small and not widespread enough to merit the risk of accidentally removing eligible voters from the voter rolls.

The debate comes in the midst of the recent federal election controversy and efforts on the national level by former President Donald Trump and many Republican officials, including several in Mississippi, to throw out the ballots of tens of thousands of primarily African American voters.

Mississippi, with its sordid, racist history of election intimidation and voter suppression, already has some of the strictest voting laws in the nation. The state is one of just 18 that requires voters to provide photo IDs at their polling places on the day they vote, and qualifying for mail-in voting requires one of three narrow excuses.

Mississippi also has the nation’s strictest early voting laws. In 2020, Mississippi was the only state in the nation that didn’t give all citizens the opportunity to vote early in-person or by mail. Mississippi is one of just five states that does not allow no-excuse voting by mail, but in those other four states, all voters were given the option to vote early during the pandemic.

READ MORE: “Practices aimed to suppress the vote”: Mississippi is the only state without early voting for all during pandemic.

Tate said there are safeguards in the bill to ensure people are not wrongly removed from voter rolls. People who do not vote over a two-year period would receive the confirmation notice from the county circuit clerk. Voters would then have four years to return the notice. Tate said it would take six to eight years for a person to be purged from the voter rolls.

“The right to vote contains the right to not vote,” said Sen. David Blount, a Democrat from Jackson who worked for years at Mississippi secretary of state’s office.

Under the bill, Blount said someone could receive a notice right after an election, and then six to eight years later opt to vote, knowing they had registered and not realizing for various reasons they had been mailed the confirmation notice, resulting in their ultimate removal from the rolls.

Blount unsuccessfully offered a replacement proposal that could result in people ultimately being removed from the rolls, but only after their names were published to give those who should not be removed time to come forward and verify that they are a registered voter.

Ohio publicly published the names of more than 200,000 people it was removing from the rolls under similar circumstances, and it was found that 40,000 of the people had recently voted and were mistakenly placed on the list, Blount said.

If the Senate bill becomes law and similar mistakes occur in Mississippi, Blount said people who had registered and had the right to vote could be denied that vote.

The post Senate passes ‘voter fraud’ bill that some say could disenfranchise Black Mississippians appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In the inaugural episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor at Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Nic Lott. Lott is a public servant who was the first African-American student body president elected at the University of Mississippi. Lott defeated five other candidates in the history-making event for the state’s oldest university.

He has previously worked under Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and U.S. Congressman J.C. Watts and has interned in The White House during President George W. Bush’s first year in office. During the 2003 Mississippi gubernatorial campaign, Lott was director of youth outreach for GOP nominee Haley Barbour. Following Barbour’s victory, Lott joined Barbour’s administration as senior advisor for communications and public safety issues for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He also served as an administrator for the Office of Justice Programs under the Department of Public Safety.

Lott is currently a consultant and vows to find ways to continue to improve Mississippi.

Season One: Episode One.

The post Mississippi Stories: Nic Lott appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Three years ago, Kaitlyn Barton taught high school English in the Mississippi Delta, a rural, low income area with a high percentage of non-certified teachers. The Flowood native said she felt undervalued, a result of low pay coupled with limited opportunities to grow. In 2019, she moved to Texas seeking more.

“We expect teachers to wear every hat, but we don’t pay them well or respect them as professionals,” Barton told Mississippi Today. “The level of respect and pay go hand-in-hand. In our capitalist society, we put our money where our value is. And based on how we pay teachers, it’s very obvious that we do not value teachers.” 

Barton, who was forced to work a second job as a waitress while teaching in Clarksdale, no longer struggles to make ends meet. She brings in more than $60,000 a year — about $23,000 more than her Mississippi teaching salary — in her new position as the dean of instruction at YES Prep Public Schools in Houston.

Two years ago, Mississippi Today interviewed Barton and other teachers for an in-depth series that highlighted the state’s critical teacher shortage. As we continue to cover the shortage — perpetuated by little action from state leaders — we followed up with those same teachers this month to ask what they are up to and whether they were still in the profession.

Vernita Burnett, a former English teacher in Clarksdale, brought in about $44,000 a year when she was teaching. Burnett also had side hustles writing papers and doing hair. Jason Jossell, band director and Mississippi history teacher in Quitman County School District, earns slightly more than teachers with his same level of experience because he’s on a coaching pay scale. 

Year after year, Mississippi teachers like Barton leave the state for better pay and opportunities to grow in their profession — two of the many reasons a shortage exists. Mississippi has faced an ongoing battle with the teacher shortage crisis since the inception of the Critical Shortage Act of 1998. The coronavirus pandemic has only heightened the issue. 

The Mississippi Legislature is considering a $1,000 teacher pay raise this year to help bring Mississippi teachers up from the lowest paid in the nation. That bill passed out of the Senate earlier along with a similar bill in the House, but the legislation still needs to make it through the legislative process before it is signed into law by the governor.

Teachers received a $1,500 pay raise in 2019, but educators and advocates expressed disappointment in the fractional salary increase. Legislators proposed another pay raise for teachers in 2020, but that bill died when COVID-19 derailed the 2020 legislative session. 

READ MORE: Pay for new, mid-career teachers in Mississippi ‘extremely low’ compared to other Southern states

When a Mississippi Today reporter asked if there was an increase in the teacher shortage across the state, Carey Wright, superintendent of Mississippi schools, said it “has not been reported” to her in a September 2020 interview. She also said she did not know if the teacher shortage was greater this year than in previous years.

“What I can say is that I think people expected a lot more teachers to retire last year at the end of the year and that did not happen,” Wright said. “I do know that a lot of districts gave teachers a choice of being an in-person teacher versus a virtual teacher. And I think that may have alleviated some fears of teachers about being in the building.”

The Mississippi Department of Education said this month that the department surveys for teacher vacancy information, but individual school districts aren’t required to send it in. This means MDE does not track the number of vacancies for individual districts or for the entire state.

Education experts for years have reiterated that having a firmer grasp on these metrics is necessary to eradicate any teacher shortage. Still, department officials and lawmakers have not made any substantive effort to better define the problem.

Jossell, the band director and Mississippi history teacher in the Delta who Mississippi Today interviewed in 2019, said last month that not much has changed for him during the past few years. This includes how important he thinks teacher pay is in terms of the teacher shortage. He lives near the Arkansas and Tennessee border and said that he could easily cross state lines and make $15,000 more a year. 

So why doesn’t he?

“I didn’t do it (get into education) for the pay. I did it because I’ve always been passionate about this,” Jossell said. He said he’s building a legacy by working in the same position at the same school that his father did. 

But that doesn’t take away the need to pay Mississippi educators competitive wages, he said. 

“Until we really talk about teacher pay and the lack of (good pay), there’s going to be a teacher shortage in Mississippi,” Jossell said. “We don’t pay teachers enough at all. The simple fact that we’re just now talking about teacher pay legislation, it really shows how far back we are compared to other states.”

And aside from pay, there is also something less tangible that Jossell says educators have historically not gotten from state leadership. 

“Teachers deserve more respect,” he said, adding that even though they’ve been essential workers during the pandemic, they haven’t been treated that way. 

“I’m not comparing our work load to a nurse at all, but sometimes I feel like we’re not respected like a nurse. Remember, we’re the ones that are cultivating the next nurses and doctors,” Jossell said. 

Barton shared the same sentiments as Jossell, stating that lawmakers should not “run on a platform of supporting our teachers” if they aren’t willing to “put their money where their mouth is.” Currently, there are two teachers from Mississippi in her school building. The appeal of being a teacher in Texas is that teachers are paid their worth, she added.

“I don’t have a second job in Houston… I’m also admitting that I have a leadership position. I believe even the starting salary for first-year teachers in our districts is at least $50,000,” Barton said. “In Mississippi, I would have to work for 10 years before I think I would have even broken forty (thousand).”

The 2020-21 salary schedule for public school teachers in Mississippi shows it will take a bachelor’s level teacher a minimum of 27 years to reach a $50,000 salary. For teachers with a master’s degree, that time frame is 20 years and 14 years for teachers with doctoral degrees.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is the pay disparity between district office officials, administrators, and teachers, Barton said.

“You shouldn’t have to leave the classroom to make enough money. We should want good teachers to stay in the classroom,” Barton said. “The reality is if you want to make more money in education, you have to leave the classroom.”

Burnett, the former English teacher who is still in her hometown of Clarksdale, is now an academic coach. Though she earns $6,000 more than she did being a classroom teacher, the extra money didn’t make a “big difference” in her decision to stay, she said. 

Burnett is finishing up her doctoral program in education leadership, but even then, she won’t make as much as someone with her years of experience and degree level in a comparable state. In neighboring Alabama, the minimum salary for a teacher with a doctoral degree and nine years or less experience makes a little more than $62,000. For Burnett to earn $62,000 in Mississippi, she would need to teach for more than 25 years, according to the state’s salary scale.

It’s not pay that keeps Burnett in the field of education. It’s having the skills and knowledge to be “more effective” by helping teachers to help students in her hometown, she added.

“In the areas where we live, there’s not a big difference in money,” Burnett said. “(Being an academic coach) was more so of a better opportunity and having the chance to take the things I’ve learned or the things I went to school for to help other people.”

The post ‘It’s very obvious that we do not value teachers’: Why educators say there’s a critical teacher shortage appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A lawsuit pending in the high court. More litigation possible. The agency tasked with running it doesn’t want to. An “alternative” program proposed late in the game.

Mississippi’s fledgling medical marijuana program — overwhelmingly enshrined in the state constitution by voters in November — is an uncertain mess at the moment, even as the clock ticks for it to start.

After years of inaction by the Legislature despite growing grassroots, bipartisan support, nearly 74% of voters in November approved Initiative 65. It’s a constitutional amendment mandating and specifying a state medical marijuana program.

The measure, which opponents still claim was drafted to favor the marijuana industry and is just short of legalized recreational use, puts the Mississippi State Department of Health in charge of the program, with no oversight by elected officials. It also prevents standard taxation of the marijuana, and any fees collected by the health department can only be used to run and expand the marijuana program, not go into state taxpayer coffers. The measure allows little regulation by local governments, no limits on the number of dispensaries and otherwise leaves many specifics… unspecified.

Lawmakers, in the eleventh hour before last year’s vote, unsuccessfully tried to have voters adopt an “alternative” measure that would have allowed more state government oversight and taxation. Voters rejected this.

READ MORE: Mississippi voters overwhelmingly approve medical marijuana program.

But the adopted constitutional amendment now faces litigation, set to be heard in April by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler brought the challenge, arguing the state’s initiative process is flawed and the measure was improperly before voters.

The Health Department — struggling for years with underfunding, understaffing and now a pandemic — and Mississippi and American medical associations have joined in, urging the court to overturn the initiative. The state Board of Health had opposed the medical marijuana initiative, and while the board and department claim to be earnestly working to stand up a program as required by the constitution, at least for now, they would appear to be very reluctant partners.

The voter-approved initiative requires the health department to begin issuing dispensary licenses and patient ID cards by Aug. 15. But some state leaders have said the deadlines will be hard to meet and it could be much later before Mississippi patients could receive medical marijuana.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are trying another Hail Mary.

Senate Bill 2765 would create an alternative or “parallel” medical marijuana program to the one voters put in the constitution. Its author, Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, said it’s a bill he started working on in 2018 in hopes the Legislature would have adopted a program — before voters took matters directly in hand.

Blackwell said the bill is needed largely because the state Supreme Court could overturn Initiative 65. Then the state would still have a medical marijuana program, as voters clearly want.

But if the court upholds the constitutional amendment, Blackwell said, “They would co-exist.” The state would have two medical marijuana programs.

Supporters of Blackwell’s proposal hope that should that happen, the medical marijuana industry would view the state law program as more stable and less likely to face further legal challenges — favored by legislators and the bureaucracy and local governments.

The new proposal, which faces a Thursday deadline for a first floor vote in the Senate, would tax medical marijuana. It would be subject to an excise of 4% at cultivation and a retail sales tax of 10% when patients purchase it.

Under Initiative 65, the health department could only charge an assessment up to the state’s 7% sales tax rate on final sale of marijuana, fees up to $50 for identification cards, and “reasonable” fees for dispensaries.

Under the new proposal, money collected by the state, which Blackwell said is estimated at $32 million for the first year then “hundreds of millions” a year subsequently, would go to education. The first 25% would go to the state’s early learning collaboratives program. The next 25% would to to the Mississippi Department of Education’s dual enrollment program, and the remainder to college and university scholarships of up to $6,000 each.

The measure would have the Department of Agriculture handling most regulations, Blackwell said, and would be closely monitored “from seed to sale.” It would allow local governments more regulatory and zoning control over dispensaries.

The measure also would have hefty licensing fees: $100,000 for growers and $20,000 for dispensaries. Dispensaries would have to show proof of assets or provide a surety bond of $250,000, and growers would have to do likewise for amounts set by the Department of Agriculture.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, said he’s concerned the new proposal includes too many “anti-competitive” measures that would prohibit Mississippi small business owners from participating. Blackwell said the law requires 60% Mississippi ownership of companies, but McDaniel said large marijuana corporations could easily find ways around that proviso.

McDaniel said he also questions the 10% sales tax on medical marijuana, when the state doesn’t tax prescription drugs.

Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, questioned how any businesses or patients — should both programs be approved — would opt for the higher-taxed, more regulated state law program.

Blackwell, in pitching his bill in committee, told colleagues he has problems with Initiative 65, and believes it unconstitutional — protecting a particular product or industry in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

“That horse has left the barn, Senator Blackwell,” Blount said. “… I wish we had done this last year.”

Blackwell responded, “2018 would have been a good year to have done it.”

The post Mississippi’s medical marijuana mess appeared first on Mississippi Today.

After suffering years of budget cuts, the Mississippi State Department of Health has worked overtime and done well during the pandemic.

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Little Engine appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lottery revenue earmarked for maintenance on state highways would be diverted to local road and bridge needs under legislation pending in the Mississippi Senate.

The legislation would undo one of the primary commitments made by the Legislature in a 2018 special session designed to address a deteriorating state transportation system.

During that special session, lawmakers adopted the state lottery and decided the first $80 million in annual lottery revenue would be earmarked for the Mississippi Department of Transportation. At the time, a Mississippi Economic Council study concluded the Department of Transportation needed an additional $300 million annually for state highway maintenance, repairs and construction projects.

The legislation would divert any lottery revenue in excess of $80 million to public education.

Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons said the legislation pending in the Senate, if passed, “removes from MDOT $80 million in critically important funding and the first new, sustainable revenue source for our state-owned highways since 1987.”

“Without question, this would have a marked negative impact on our mission to deliver an efficient and reliable state transportation system,” Simmons said.

Simmons, a Democrat, was serving in the Senate as Transportation Committee chair when the 2018 special session was held.

In that special session, lawmakers made various other changes to the state’s taxing structure to ensure additional funds for infrastructure needs.

Perhaps the most significant change besides the lottery was a diversion of 35% of the revenue from the state’s use tax (a 7% tax on retail items purchased out of state, such as via the internet) to local governments. When the diversion is fully phased in, it is estimated it will create $120 million annually for city and county transportation needs.

In addition, the Legislature in the 2018 special session created the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund, with $250 million in revenue from the sale of bonds. The three-member Transportation Commission, with advice from a special board created by Legislature, awarded $213 million for local projects and $37 million for projects on the state system. There were about $1 billion in requested projects made of the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund.

Legislation authored by Sen. Melanie Sojourner, R-Natchez, would divert the annual lottery revenue from the Department of Transportation to provide additional funds for the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund. Sojourner said the local governments need the additional funds more than the state agency.

“The last national audit of state highways shows that Mississippi state funded highways actually rank eighth in the nation,” Sojourner said. “However, when you look at locally funded roads and bridges, we have some of the worst in the nation. The only way to truly address this is by designating a steady stream of reoccurring funds to these local infrastructure project.

“The lottery fund is new money just created by our state a few years ago and is a great source of revenue to help us address this critical need in cities and counties across our state.”

She said it also is a way to generate the revenue for the cities and counties without raising any other taxes.

While praising the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund, Scott Waller, chief executive officer of the Mississippi Economy Council, said the lottery revenue does not need to be diverted from the state highway system.

“I thought the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund was a tremendous success,” said Waller, who served on the board that advised the Transportation Commission on the awarding of the projects. “The accountability put in place with the commission (advisory board) helped everybody understand the plan and where the money was going.

“… However, I do not think the diversion from the Department of Transportation is the best approach.”

Waller said the MEC study found that the needs for the state system were about three times those for local roads and bridges.

Simmons and others point out that before the August 2018 special session, the Department of Transportation had not received a new source of revenue since 1987, when the 18.4-cent-per gallon motor fuel tax was enacted. Revenue from the motor fuel tax has been static at best in recent years thanks in large part to increased fuel efficiency in vehicles at the same time the costs of supplies for road maintenance and construction, such as the cost of asphalt, have increased by an estimated 400%.

According to data from the Department of Transportation, the $80 million in lottery revenue was used in fiscal year 2020 to pave 280 miles of state highways that had not received maintenance in 30 years. During the next seven years, it is estimated that 2,000 miles will be paved with the lottery revenue in primarily rural areas of the state that do not qualify for federal funding.

During the 2018 special session, revenue from casino sports betting and from a new tax on hybrid cars also were earmarked for the Department of Transportation. In fiscal year 2020, those funds generated less than $5 million combined.

The post Should lottery revenue be spent on state roads? Senate bill would send money to local governments. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia and one of the Legislature’s most powerful members, talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Bobby Harrison about key issues facing the 2021 Legislature. Lamar, like Gov. Tate Reeves, supports phasing out the state’s income tax but says it cannot be done without finding other sources of revenue.

Listen now.

The post Rep. Trey Lamar, a key House leader, talks taxes, alcohol and Medicaid appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In 2018, Jennifer Rogers warned a task force of lawmakers and college presidents that state financial aid had reached a “tipping point.” The number of students qualifying for financial aid had shot up, but funding hadn’t kept pace. The state’s three main financial aid programs were at risk of running at a deficit. If the Legislature didn’t act soon, students could start to see their aid cut, Rogers said. 

Heeding the advice of Rogers, who is the director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid (OFSA), the task force in early 2019 proposed four solutions to Mississippi’s financial aid woes. 

Its most ambitious recommendation was to eliminate two of the state’s primary grants — the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant (MTAG) and the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant (MESG) — and expand the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students (HELP) program. Not only would this proposal help the state afford its financial aid programs, but it would ensure money got to the students who need it most. 

Two years later, the Legislature has yet to act on a single recommendation from the task force — and it has funded the state financial aid programs at a deficit for the second year in a row, according to statistics released this month in the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid’s annual report. 

“We’ve tipped over,” Rogers told Mississippi Today.

The report also shows that Mississippi continues to disproportionately subsidize college for white students from wealthier families at the expense of working class students of color.

Of the 26,322 students who received a portion of the $45.5 million the state meted out in financial aid last year, more than two-thirds were white. Only 19.7% of all recipients were from the most poverty-stricken families in the state, those that make less than $30,000 per year, while the largest percentage were from homes that make $48,000 or more. This is disproportionate to Mississippi’s demographics.

Essentially, Mississippi is spending almost half of its strained financial aid budget on programs that disproportionately benefit students who are likely to go to college regardless of whether or not they receive state support.

“We’re excluding the highest need students,” said Ann Hendrick, the director of Get2College, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of students attending college statewide. 

Not only have these programs become more expensive since they were enacted in the late 1990s, Hendrick and other advocates for college access say the grants are no longer achieving the goals the state set out to meet when it created them. 

For example, MESG, the state’s primary merit-based grant, aims to keep the best and brightest students in-state for college. But a study from Mississippi State University research center NSPARC commissioned in 2018 found that MESG did not increase in-state enrollment of high-achieving students. Mississippi awarded $7.4 million in MESG grants last year. 

MTAG, the state’s largest program in terms of recipients, was created to support students who do not qualify for need-based federal aid. The idea was to help students from middle-class families who don’t qualify for the Pell Grant but would still struggle to pay for the cost of college. But the Legislature hasn’t increased the amount MTAG awards — between $500 and $1,000 per semester, depending on a student’s academic year — since the program was created in 1995.

When the Legislature created MTAG, “it really made sense,” Rogers said. “The federal Pell Grant program was helping the low-income students and did nothing for the middle-income, working-class parents who wanted to send their kids to college but really couldn’t afford to do so and were getting help from nowhere.” 

That year, MTAG covered 41% of tuition for juniors and seniors at the state’s eight public universities. As the cost of college has increased, the program covered just 12% of tuition last year. 

MTAG, while “still helpful for the middle,” Rogers said, “no longer has the (purchasing) power that it once did.” 

Because the goal was to help students who don’t qualify for Pell Grants, MTAG also excludes low-income students that receive the full Pell Grant. 

“I will be honest. While everybody appreciates every aid they get … I have never heard anybody say without that $500 I could’ve never gone to college,” Hendrick said.

HELP, the state’s only need-based grant, covers the full cost of tuition and fees for students attending public colleges and universities. It is the state’s fastest growing program: 4,411 students were awarded aid last year, nearly double the number of recipients in 2016. 

But only about half the students who apply for HELP actually get it. Part of the reason so many applicants are denied is that, in order to qualify, students must come from families that make no more than $39,500.

“If you make $39,600, you get nothing” from HELP, Rogers said. 

This is because the Legislature set the income limit for HELP at $39,500 in 1999. In 2014, they raised that income limit to $42,500, but the Legislature has never funded the program at a level that would allow OFSA to cover full tuition for families at that income range.

Hendrick said the HELP grant is the most useful one for families.

“The game changing one is the HELP grant. I’ve seen people do dances, tears — it is a game changer because Pell can’t pay for tuition at (one of the state’s public universities). The only way a low-income student who got 20 on the ACT is gonna go to a four-year college or university is they get the HELP grant.” 

For years, OFSA has repeatedly warned in its annual reports to the Legislature that Mississippi’s financial aid programs are growing at a financially unsustainable rate. The Legislature, the office warned, has two options to fix the funding gap: Invest more money in the state’s existing financial aid programs or redesign the state aid offerings to more wisely spend its dollars. 

The 2018 task force to study financial aid recommended the state redesign its programs to prioritize working class students by phasing out MESG and MTAG and creating one grant solely based on need. Significantly, the committee also suggested creating a pilot program to smooth the funding cliff for HELP, so that families making more than $39,500 could still receive need-based aid. 

But the Legislature never did this. Instead, Hendrick says it seems like legislators have mainly attempted to limit who can qualify for financial aid. She pointed to Senate Bill 2547, a bill introduced this session by Sen. Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, that would raise ACT scores to 17 for MTAG, 30 for MESG, and 20 from a single test administered to be eligible for HELP. 

Currently, students must score a 15 on the ACT to get MTAG, a 29 for MESG and a superscore (highest cumulative score) of 20 for HELP. Raising the qualifying ACT scores is problematic, Hendricks said, because the current data shows it can have the effect of excluding students of color, who often don’t have access to the same ACT preparation programs as affluent, majority white districts. Because ACT scores highly correlate with income, MESG is one of the most racially disparate financial aid programs in the state, while HELP is the most racially equitable program. 

In a Senate Universities and Colleges Committee meeting last week discussing SB 2547, Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson proposed an amendment to the bill that would eliminate MTAG, limit MESG recipients to students from families making 200% or less of the median household income in the state, and raise the income limit for HELP by $10,000. 

“What we ought to be about is what’s best for the state,” he added. “And what’s best for the state is to have more people go to college, complete college and graduate from college… We can’t just wait and wait and wait and keep doing what we’ve been doing, have deficits every year, and give money to families of students who are perfectly capable of paying tuition.”

The amendment failed, but the bill ultimately passed out of committee and will come before the full Senate by Feb. 11 if lawmakers intend to move it forward in the legislative process.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Postsecondary Education Financial Assistance Board, which oversees OFSA, has started a series of strategic planning meetings to push the Legislature to act. 

Hendrick said she would encourage the Legislature to look at “who benefits the most rather than just making changes across the board that would change financial aid for all students.” 

“Are we giving the right amount of money to the right students in order to make college accessible and affordable?” Hendrick added. “Are we really looking at it to see who benefits the most?”

Editor’s note: Get2College is a program of the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a Mississippi Today donor.

The post ‘We’re excluding the highest need students’: Most recipients of financial aid in Mississippi are from wealthier families appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hattiesburg’s old high school gymnasium, long since abandoned, burned down in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Thankfully, the memories live on. And we will get to those.

The gym, completed in 1937, was home to the Hattiesburg High Tigers for nearly 50 years. The gym never really had a name. Some folks called it Hawkins Gymnasium, because Hawkins Junior High was across the street. Mostly, we just called it “the old high school gym,” no capital letters necessary. It was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, one of thousands across the U.S. and one of hundreds across Mississippi. Thank you, FDR.

It was both quirky and creaky, that old gym was. It always seemed to me that it might house ghosts. The court was 104 feet long, 12 feet longer than regulation courts. It had humps in the floor. It had dead spots, too, where the ball wouldn’t bounce the way it was supposed to.

“As home court advantages go, it was the best,” said Purvis Short, who led Hattiesburg High to the 1974 state championship, and would go on to score more than 14,000 points in the NBA. “I have literally hundreds of memories of that place, and all of them are good. That’s rare, isn’t it?”

The old gym is where Coach Johnny Hurtt taught Purvis Short how to shoot high-arching jump shots by guarding him in shooting drills with a broomstick. It is where Hurtt often employed a full-court press to run opponents into submission.

“We knew where all those dead spots were and we made sure the other team had to dribble on them,” Short said. “Can’t tell you how many times we stole the ball like that. Plus the court was so long. The visiting teams weren’t used to that. Man, they were huffing and puffing.”

Purvis followed two years behind his older brother, Eugene, who led the Tigers to the 1972 state championship. Both Purvis and Eugene would go on to play in some of the most famous arenas in the country: Boston Garden, Madison Square Garden and the Forum in L.A., among them.

“The Boston Garden really reminded me of our old high school gym,” Purvis Short said. “There were some dead spots in the floor, but mostly it was the baskets — best shooting baskets in the world. Our goals in Hattiesburg and the ones at the (Boston) Garden were the sweetest shooting goals. They were soft, forgiving. Great backgrounds too.”

And both gone now.

The old Hattiesburg gym was the site of so many classic Gulfport-Hattiesburg games, back when Bert Jenkins coached Gulfport and Sam Hollingsworth and then Johnny Hurtt coached the Hattiesburg Tigers. For my money, Jenkins remains the greatest high school coach — maybe coach at any level — in Mississippi history. Hollingsworth and Hurtt should make anyone’s top 10. In 1970, my senior year in high school, Gulfport went 45-1, and, yes, the one came in our old gym where the great Buddy Davenport — and maybe the ghosts — led the Tigers past the Commodores 47-39.

My single greatest memory of that fine, old gym did not involve the Short brothers, Hattiesburg or Gulfport. No, this was in February of 1966, when I was a 13-year-old gym rat who had heard all the seemingly tall tales of a basketball phenom down in Hancock County named Wendell Ladner.

Ladner-led Hancock was to play West Lauderdale and the great Randy Hodges, a tall shooting guard, in the South State championship in our gym, which had a capacity of maybe 2,000.

That night it seemed all of south Mississippi — and most every college recruiter in the country — wanted to be in that gym. Every available inch of seating was taken. Fans stood at either end and in all the doorways. If you needed restroom relief, you were out of luck. Fire marshals had their hands full. Hundreds were turned away.

Most of Hancock County got in before the marshals locked the doors. They all wore red, and they all went absolutely berserk when Wondrous Wendell led his team onto the court. Ladner went straight for the bucket at the far end of the court and slammed the ball through with a windmill dunk that brought such thunderous applause that old gym seemed to shake. Ladner continued his dunk show throughout layup drills. After his last dunk, he stood, grinning, beneath the basket and hoisted his teammates, one by one, so they could dunk their last time through the layup line.

And then Ladner scored 39 points and pulled down 27 rebounds to lead Hancock past Hodges and West Lauderdale in one of the great one-man shows you can imagine. At one point, Ladner kept jumping up and down and bouncing the ball off the backboard, almost like playing volleyball with himself, before finally tipping the ball through the hoop. “Aw, Coach, I didn’t think you’d mind me having some fun,” he told his coach, Roland Ladner, when scolded at the next timeout.

You should have been there. I am so glad I was. I hate the old gym that never had — nor needed — a name is gone. I am glad the memories remain.

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