Jackson State University’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution Friday opposing legislation that seeks to ban the teaching of critical race theory in Mississippi.
The faculty senate at Mississippi’s largest historically Black university is the first to formally speak out against efforts by the Legislature to curtail discussion of racism in the state’s K-12 and college classrooms.
In the Jan. 27 resolution, the faculty senate writes that it “resolutely rejects any attempts by bodies external to the faculty to restrict or dictate university curriculum on any matter, including matters related to racial and social justice, and will stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority by the legislature or the Boards of Trustees.”
Earlier this month, every Black senator in Mississippi walked out of the chamber when the Senate passed SB 2113. The bill’s description states it will “prohibit” critical race theory, but the language in the legislation is more broad and includes that no public school or public college or university “shall make a distinction or classification of students based on account of race.”
The House has not yet taken up its bill, HB 437, which is more specific and would ban teaching fourteen “divisive concepts,” including that “racial equity and gender equity … should be given preference in education and advocacy over the concepts of racial equality and gender equality.”
These bills would impede faculty at Jackson State faculty from fulfilling the university’s mission of providing a quality education to students from diverse communities, the resolution states. Specifically, the resolution denounces the House bill’s definition of “divisive concepts,” which the faculty senate called “indeterminate, subjective, and chills the capacity of educators to explore a wide variety of topics based on subjective criteria that are inapposite from the goals of education and the development of essential critical thinking skills.”
“Educating about systemic barriers to realizing a multiracial democracy based on race or gender should be understood as central to the active and engaged pursuit of knowledge in the 21st century,” the resolution states.
The resolution calls on the administration at Jackson State to join the faculty senate in opposing anti-critical race theory legislation.
“In a nation that has for centuries struggled with issues of racial inequity and injustice, many students do not have adequate knowledge of BIPOC and LGBTQI history and the policies that contributed to inequities,” the resolution states. “Jackson State University has a responsibility and opportunity to help build equity and social justice.”
Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.
Chris McDaniel walks into Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s office with his family on Jan. 3, 2023, places his left hand on a family Bible, raises his right hand, and is sworn into the 118th Congress of the United States.
This scenario, though premature to consider, is not nearly as improbable as it may seem.
McDaniel, the far-right flamethrower who gained national notoriety while twice trying to win a U.S. Senate seat in recent years, could finally make it to Washington if he wanted it.
And, according to people close to McDaniel, he is considering it with about one month before the March 1 qualifying deadline.
“My polling numbers are stronger than they’ve ever been, so I’m keeping all of my options open at this time,” McDaniel told Mississippi Today on Monday.
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The race for Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District is wide open. There’s a 10-year incumbent in Congressman Steven Palazzo, but that incumbency may mean little considering he’s being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly misspending campaign funds.
As of this week, at least six other Republicans have announced their intentions of challenging Palazzo in the primary. This list includes some high-profile names like Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell, state Sen. Brice Wiggins and retired bank executive Clay Wagner.
The district itself is the most Republican in Mississippi, and it’s among the reddest in America. In 2020, former President Donald Trump won 68% of the vote in the 4th District. It features big population centers like the Gulf Coast, Hattiesburg, and up through the Free State of Jones — McDaniel’s home turf.
But it’s not just Jones County where McDaniel has always enjoyed his biggest support. He lays claim to the I-59 corridor, from his home county all the way down through Pearl River County.
Results from the two statewide campaigns McDaniel has run prove that he has a tight grasp on the 4th Congressional District.
In the 2018 special U.S. Senate election, he earned 54,000 votes in the 4th Congressional District alone. That special election featured four total candidates in a “jungle primary,” including incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the hand-picked Republican of the establishment, and well-known Democrat Mike Espy.
That same year, the last midterm primary, Palazzo earned just 30,000 votes — about 20,000 votes shy of McDaniel.
The 2014 Republican primary provides a more apples-to-apples vote comparison. That year, McDaniel was running for the U.S. Senate against longtime incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran, and Palazzo was running for his third term in the U.S. House.
In the Republican primary for the House in August 2014, Palazzo won handily with 54,286 votes. In the Senate runoff for precincts in the 4th Congressional District that same year, McDaniel earned 67,000 votes in a close loss to Cochran — about 13,000 more than Palazzo.
Though running in different races in both 2014 and 2018, McDaniel earned more votes in the 4th Congressional District than the district’s incumbent congressman.
There are some obvious caveats. First, most obviously, McDaniel and Palazzo weren’t running against each other.
And the political landscapes of 2014, with the nation closely scrutinizing the Senate primary, and 2018, when a first-term Republican president was trying to retain a House majority, could be seen as lightyears away from the realities of today. But not much has changed, at least politically and electorally, in Mississippi’s 4th.
And with so many candidates in the crowded primary, it seems likely that there will be a runoff if no single candidate can garner 50% of the vote. How might McDaniel’s chances look given that dynamic?
All that said, the first question is the most simple: Will McDaniel run?
On Jan. 6, McDaniel posted to his Facebook page a photo of himself speaking in a church: “Huge crowd tonight. Patriots are awakening. Change is coming!”
On Jan. 27, he wrote a similar post: “Speaking to conservatives from around the state. People are awake; change is coming!”
While a devout Chicago Cubs fan, McDaniel’s very favorite pastime seems to be stirring the pot on Facebook and making people wonder whether he’s running for higher office.
He enjoys the relatively humble lifestyle of a state senator. And being a congressman can be… well, miserable. With two-year terms, you’re constantly running for office, the weekend red-eyes between Washington and Mississippi wear you down, and it seemingly takes eons to rise in the ranks of Congress.
If he does run, it will certainly make for an interesting few weeks in Mississippi.
Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender get the lowdown on redistricting from Rep. Jim Beckett, who is handling the task in the Mississippi House. Beckett is putting together a consequential puzzle: redrawing the 122 House districts to match population shifts found in the 2020 Census.
In 1939, a movie theater was built in an outlying neighborhood of Jackson called Fondren. Originally called, The Pix, the theater closed and reopened in the 1960’s as Capri theater. In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with the trio who helped bring Capri back to life. Developers David Pharr, Jason Watkins and restauranteur Robert St. John talk about how the $13 million redevelopment of the long-dormant theater came about and how it is already helping the booming Fondren neighborhood. With a combination of movies, food and bowling, The Pearl Tiki, Highball Lanes, Capri and upcoming Ed’s Restaurant show how a dream can come to life, no matter what a global pandemic can throw at it.
Three days after the Mississippi Supreme Court’s landmark May ruling striking down both the initiative where voters approved medical marijuana and the entire ballot initiative process, House Speaker Philip Gunn urged Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special session.
Importantly, the Republican speaker wanted the special session specifically to reenact the initiative process. He said nothing about medical marijuana in the statement.
“We 100% believe in the right of the people to use the initiative process to express their views on public policy,” Gunn said on May 17, 2021. “If the Legislature does not act on an issue that the people of Mississippi want, then the people need a mechanism to change the law. I support the governor calling us into a special session to protect this important right of the people.”
Reeves, of course, did not call a special session. And it wasn’t until this past week, early in the regular session, that the Legislature passed a medical marijuana bill. It is now a governor’s signature away from being the law of the state.
Nearly one month into the session, legislators in one chamber or the other also have voted on teacher pay, critical race theory, vaccine mandates, equal pay and a host of other issues. But it has been nothing but the sound of crickets on reinstating the initiative to allow people to bypass the Legislature and gather signatures to place an issue on the ballot.
On the House side, Constitution Chair Fred Shanks, R-Brandon, says that is going to change. He said he has been working on a proposal to restore the initiative process. He intends to take up the proposal in his Constitution Committee during the coming week.
Over in the Senate, there seems to be less urgency. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, says he supports restoring the initiative process. He has referred legislation dealing with the reinstatement to both the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee and Constitution Committee.
It is not uncommon to double refer legislation, but it is more difficult to move bills through the legislative process when they start in two separate committees.
And Senate Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Chair John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, is playing his cards close to his vest in terms of reinstating the initiative.
“I think we need to do what is best for Mississippi,” Polk said when asked about the initiative. “I am studying the bills to see if they are doing what is best for Mississippi.”
While Polk is offering few, if any, details, it seems most legislative leaders, including Gunn and Hosemann, have concluded any new voter initiative should be used to amend or create state law — not the Mississippi Constitution, as was previously the case.
The process enacted in the early 1990s allowed initiative sponsors, if successful, to place their proposals in the Mississippi Constitution. The new proposal most likely will allow Mississippians to amend general law.
Legislative leaders say they support using the initiative for general law because it is much easier to change general law than the Constitution. Change the Mississippi Constitution requires both a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Legislature and majority approval by voters on a statewide ballot. Before the Supreme Court ruling, the Constitution also could be changed via the initiative by gathering the required number of signatures to place an issue on the ballot.
The proposal Shanks is expected to take up in the Constitution Committee would allow initiative sponsors to gather signatures (12% of the total from the last governor’s election) to place an issue on the ballot to change general law. But once approved by voters, the general law could not be changed by the Legislature for two years unless in an “emergency” situation by a two-third vote of both chambers of the Legislature. Normally it takes a simple legislative majority vote to change general law.
It is important to remember that if and when the Legislature does finally vote on reinstating the initiative, to pass it will require a two-third vote of both chambers and approval by the voters, presumably this November.
Until that finally happens, there will be healthy skepticism by some about whether legislators will restore the rights of citizens to place issues directly on the ballot.
The Mississippi Supreme Court ruling marked the first time in the modern political era that the judiciary in any state has struck down an entire initiative process, according to Caroline Avakian, director of strategic communications for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a national pro-initiative nonprofit.
Way back in 1920s, the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down a previous initiative process approved by state voters. After that action, the Legislature did not give that right back to voters until the early 1990s.
Supporters of the ballot initiative are hoping it doesn’t take 70 years this time to restore the process.
Hundreds of people gathered at the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum on Friday morning to share their opinions on potential changes the Mississippi Department of Education is making to the state’s social studies standards. The pushback was so strong that the department announced it was walking back much of the proposed changes.
Last month the State Board of Education began the process to revise Mississippi’s K-12 social studies standards and received passionate feedback on social media. The department periodically updates the standards following feedback from teachers, with the last revision occurring in 2018. MDE said teachers felt some standards needed more clarity while others had excessive examples, leading to the 2021 revisions.
At the beginning of the hearing, MDE officials said based on the feedback they had already received, they would not be removing the lists of examples from the standards, including lists of names, organizations, and legislation and court cases.
Marian Allen, executive director of the Laurel-Jones County Black History Museum, said she came prepared to make a lot of persuasive arguments, but “we’ve already clarified that the people’s names will not be stricken from the standards, so he has really saved me a lot of time.”
Mississippi Rising Coalition President Lea Campbell expresses concerns, and asks questions regarding inclusivity when proposed revisions were made to academic standards for social studies. Campbell, educators and other members of the community attended a Mississippi Dept. of Education public comment hearing concerning the proposed changes. The hearing was held at the Sparkmann Auditorium in Jackson, Friday, Jan. 28, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Angela Broussard said when she reviewed the standards, “it became clear that the basic tenets of family, our nation’s founding documents, our nation’s true history and the development of a healthy patriotism was selectively and calculatingly removed …The earliest days of our nation were framed upon the premise that people were taught to adhere to the word of God as a light to the path and a boundary to be governed by.”
The audience responded with loud applause after Broussard spoke.
Several speakers addressed their issues with critical race theory, including Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando, who is the author of a Senate bill that would prohibit teaching the subject. McLendon said his bill ensures that no child will be told they are “inherently superior or inferior” based on any demographic information.
Others spoke about the importance of ensuring specific instances of racial discrimination throughout Mississippi’s history are included in the standards for students to learn about and discuss.
Alexandria Drake, a U.S. history teacher at JPS-Tougaloo Early College High School, brought about ten of her students to observe the hearing. When asked what they thought, her students discussed some people straying from the standards in their comments, and the importance of respecting all religions in a public school setting.
“I have been really disgusted today because I have seen and heard so much hatred,” said Ivory Phillips, dean emeritus at Jackson State University, who has been teaching since 1963. “ I was hoping that we were coming more and more together.”
The proposed revisions were put out for public comment when the state Board of Education approved them last month, and anyone can submit their opinion on them. To submit in writing, mail to Jen Cornett at 359 N. West Street, Post Office Box 771, Jackson, MS 39205-0771, or email jcornett@mdek12.org. The deadline to submit is 5 p.m. on Feb. 4. Public comments will be presented to the board for discussion at the March 17 board meeting.
Mississippi’s eight public universities got hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to keep their doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly two years later, it’s hard to get a clear picture of what the universities did with those dollars, despite reporting requirements from the U.S. Department of Education agency tasked with overseeing the funds.
A review by Mississippi Today found several factors contribute to the patchwork transparency and accountability:
Quarterly reports tracking this spending, which are supposed to be maintained on a university’s website, are often not posted online.
Millions of dollars are recorded on the forms in vague categories, such as “campus safety” or “housing,” with no supporting notes describing what the money was actually used for.
Spending totals detailed by the universities do not match what is reported in the database maintained by the federal government, making it hard for students and faculty to determine the true amount spent by their university.
The stakes are high in accounting for these dollars in real time, because they were intended to help colleges, and the students they serve, to endure financial challenges due to the pandemic, said K.B. Melear, a professor of higher education finance at University of Mississippi.
“These monies are incredibly important for Mississippi institutions of higher education, especially now … as we move through the various challenges faced by the pandemic,” he said.
This uneven accounting is likely not unique to Mississippi. Last year, ProPublica explored how the federal government’s limited tracking has frustrated efforts by K-12 officials across the country to follow how their districts spent these COVID funds.
The U.S. Department of Educationdid not return Mississippi Today’s request for comment by press time.
The money in question comes from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, or HEERF, a dedicated pool of dollars in each of the federal government’s three pandemic stimulus packages.
For their part, Mississippi’s eight public universities received $508 million. The universities were required to put at least half of that into students’ pockets in the form of direct payments.
The remaining funds — around $250 million — could be used for “institutional expenses” due to COVID-19, a broad category that encompasses spending on personal protective equipment, dorm closures, or technology for virtual learning.
Every three months, the Office of Postsecondary Education, a U.S. Department of Education agency, requires colleges and universities to publish quarterly reports in the form of spreadsheets to account for their institutional spending. In theory, this provides a clear picture of how a university has spent its institutional dollars. The spreadsheets contain 16 categories the universities can use to classify their spending, such as “providing or subsidizing the costs of high speed internet to students or faculty to transition to an online environment.”
“The expenditure of funds has been keeping with both the letter and the spirit of the packages established by the federal government,” said Caron Blanton, director of communications for the Institutions of Higher Learning. “As new funding programs, distributing the funds often required Herculean efforts to create new forms, programming, processes, and communications efforts to get the funds in the hands of students as quickly as possible while ensuring full compliance with the federal guidelines.”
The universities are supposed to go into further detail about how they’re spending the money in certain categories, but many neglected to do so. For one category, labeled “other uses,” the form instructs universities to provide additional information. Of the $7.6 million allocated to “other uses,” the universities did not provide information for about $3.3 million, according to a Mississippi Today analysis.
In one another, the University of Southern Mississippi recorded spending $6.08 million on “replacing lost revenue” from non-tuition sources in a December 2021 report. That category can encompass anything from spending on a canceled theatrical performance to lost parking lot revenue. But nowhere in the report does USM say what, specifically, it spent that $6 million on.
It can be hard to get a clear picture even when the universities do describe their spending. In a September 2021 report, Mississippi State University said it put $3.8 million toward lost revenue. In the column meant for more detail, MSU simply put “Housing and university florist.”
Even though the quarterly spreadsheets are supposed to be easily accessible on a university’s website, that is often not the case in Mississippi — another barrier to transparency. Mississippi Today had to ask for quarterly reports that were not posted online from the following universities: Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi. As of this article’s publication, Mississippi Today is waiting on two reports from Alcorn and Jackson State.
These reporting requirements are lax in part because the federal government’s goal with these stimulus funds was to help students stay in college and help colleges keep their doors open, said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education finance at University of Tennessee.
“People were worried about colleges laying off employees or closing,” he said. “The main priority wasn’t necessarily tremendous oversight — it was to get the money out the door and have enough oversight that colleges aren’t ripping off taxpayers.”
To Kelchen’s point, it’s also hard to determine the total amount of HEERF funds spent by Mississippi universities.
The U.S. Department of Education maintains a database, called the “transparency portal,” of all education funds allocated by the three pandemic relief bills. The goal of the database is “to provide the public with transparent, searchable, and understandable data.”
According to the transparency portal, Mississippi universities have spent about $129 million in federal stimulus funds on institutional expenses as of Nov. 30, 2021.
The quarterly reports paint a different picture. Mississippi Today added up the spending reported in spreadsheets from all eight universities. According to Mississippi Today’s analysis, the universities collectively spent $198 million in institutional funds as of Dec. 31, 2021 — a $70 million gap.
The numbers don’t match for individual universities, either. A review of every quarterly report posted by Mississippi University for Women shows the school spent about $2.3 million in institutional funds as of Sept. 30, 2021. The U.S. Department of Education says MUW spent about $1.2 million as of Nov. 31, 2021.
Tyler Wheat, MUW’s communications director, told Mississippi Today that the quarterly reports are submitted to the department and the difference in numbers is primarily due to timing.
“Our quarterly reports on the website are correct,” he said. The U.S. Department of Education database “only shows the amount they have paid in reimbursement” which “are not requested until after the expenses have incurred.”
