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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Vicksburg Warren School District employees prepare to make food deliveries to students in the school district Wednesday, March 18, 2020.

Mississippi teachers are planning a rally at the state Capitol Friday to urge state leaders not to reopen schools for the upcoming school year as the state’s coronavirus statistics continue to worsen.

A Facebook group called “Mississippi Teachers Unite” is organizing the event, and organizers list two demands:

• That the Mississippi Department of Education postpone reopening schools until Sept. 1 to ensure safe environments for students and teachers. The department must also make sure schools can meet current CDC safety guidelines and not allow schools to conduct in-person classes until those needs are met.
• Fully fund schools so that districts and teachers do not have to purchase their own personal protective equipment to return to work

The group identifies itself as “a non-affiliated grassroots group of Mississippi teachers, school staff, and supportive community members who are concerned for the safety of our students, ourselves and our communities in returning to school.”

“All of us want to be back with our kids is the biggest thing,” said Max Vanlandingham, a teacher involved in planning the event. “Parents want their children to be in school, kids want to be in school, teachers want to be in school, but it’s not safe at this point.”

He emphasized Friday’s 11 a.m. rally is not a strike, but a group of teachers voicing their concerns about returning to the classroom as the number of new cases and deaths continues to rise in Mississippi. Teachers cannot legally strike in Mississippi or they will be fired from their jobs and banned from teaching in the state thereafter.

The event comes on the heels of dire warnings from public officials. Last week the state’s top health officials pleaded for people to take the virus seriously as hospitals and ICUs are running out of beds and having to turn away patients. Rolling averages for patients in an ICU have increased for 16 consecutive days, and the number of patients on ventilators have increased for the past nine days.

“It makes no sense to rush back into a model that we deemed unsafe four months ago,” said Don Turner, a Mississippian who has organized the Mississippi chapter of Safe Return to Campus, a group advocating that schools do not return to campus until counties show no new cases for 14 days. “There’s this kind of laissez-faire attitude taken and no clear directive from leaders.”

Gov. Tate Reeves last week said he was still “100 percent committed” to districts starting school this fall in a “safe, responsible way.” When the pandemic became serious in the spring, Reeves closed school buildings and districts had to pivot to remote learning. As schools across the state are preparing to open up for the new school year, the state Department of Education has given them three options to choose from: in-person, traditional schooling, virtual learning, or some hybrid of the two.

Each school district has to make a decision and post it to its website by July 31. Many have already done so, making tough decisions about how and when students will report back to the classroom if at all, how lunches will be served and bus transportation will work.

However, as the number of cases in the state continued to reach an all-time high last week, Reeves announced a mask ordinance for 13 counties based on criteria of having seen 200 new cases within the last 14 days or an average of 500 cases per 100,000 residents over that time. This throws a wrench in plans for districts in those counties, which now have to figure out how to operate and comply with the mandate which limits social gatherings to 10 people indoors and 20 outdoors.

Take our survey: How should schools in Mississippi reopen in the fall?

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Despite the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears the state collected enough revenue, primarily from tax collections, to have ended the last fiscal year on June 30 with a surplus.

According to a report recently released by the staff of the Legislative Budget Committee, the state ended the fiscal year with “an estimated excess of $55.9 million,” though, that number could be adjusted in the coming two-month closeout period. But the surplus means that Gov. Tate Reeves and/or the Legislature will not be forced to dip into the state’s reserves funds to ensure a balanced budget for the just-completed fiscal year.

The state has a healthy Working Cash Stabilization Fund or rainy day fund of about $680 million.

After a dramatic drop in tax collections for April, it appeared likely that the rainy day fund would be needed to balance the budget. But in the final two months of the fiscal year, collections rebounded despite the pandemic, according to the report released by the Legislative Budget Committee staff.

Total revenue collections for the fiscal year were $5.82 billion while total appropriations were $5.76 billon.

Still, for only the fifth time since 1970, the state collected less revenue during the past fiscal year than it did in the preceding fiscal year. The state collected $151 million or 2.5 percent less during the recently completed fiscal year.

State economist Darrin Webb

Surprisingly, the state’s largest source of revenue, the 7 percent sales tax on most retail items, was up $18.1 million or .85 percent. State Economist Darrin Webb said the state’s sales tax collections might have been buoyed by the fact that Mississippi imposes its full sales tax on groceries and collects the nation’s largest state-imposed sales tax on food items. While some retailers have struggled during the pandemic, it does not appear that grocery sales have declined and might have increased.

Many point out the tax on food is a regressive tax that places a larger burden on the poor. But Webb said during the coronavirus pandemic the tax has been a boost for the state’s revenue collections.

“What the sales tax does, it stabilizes your revenue source,” Webb said recently. “And again, I am just a cold-hearted economist. I just look at the data and I look at forecasting. If you eliminate the food tax, that increases the amount of instability in your revenue source.”

Webb surmised during the pandemic the grocery tax has particularly helped smaller towns because people who normally might travel to a larger municipality to purchase groceries were more likely to do so locally.

“It has been the lifeblood for many small local communities…I think it has helped small communities tremendously and has helped the overall revenue stream of the state as well,” Webb said.

The state’s second largest source of revenue, the personal income tax, was down $78.5 million or 4.1 percent. But that number might be misleading because the state Department of Revenue extended the period to file taxes and pay tax liability from April 15 in the past fiscal year to July 15 in the current fiscal year. That could result in revenue collections for July being much higher than normal.

The 7 percent use tax, which is imposed internet sales, was up 4.1 percent or $13.5 million and the tax on liquor was up $7.3 million or 9 percent. Most other sources of revenue were down for the year.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann during the legislative session at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, May 28, 2020.

When COVID-19 kicked into full force, state Rep. Trey Lamar said the aches “felt like somebody took a nine-iron to my back.”

Lamar is among dozens of Mississippi legislators and staff infected in a coronavirus outbreak at the state Capitol as lawmakers ended, for now, their 2020 legislative session. Many lawmakers by the end of the session on July 1 were eschewing face masks and social distancing, and the Capitol at times was packed with people as lawmakers voted to retire the state flag with its divisive Confederate emblem.

With unfinished business, including dealing with the governor’s veto of the state public education budget, the legislative outbreak has state government in limbo. The Capitol is shut down, and health officials warn lawmakers shouldn’t gather again for at least a couple of weeks.

Both Speaker of the House Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, have tested positive. A spokesperson for the Republican speaker, who announced his test results on July 5, said earlier this week that Gunn is “doing great.” He is slated to give online interviews later this week in his capacity as the chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization that promotes conservative ideas and legislation.

A spokesperson for Hosemann said: “There has been little change (in his condition), and the lieutenant governor remains in quarantine and working from home.” Hosemann confirmed his positive test on July 7.

The state health officer on Tuesday said 41 people — staff and legislators — have tested positive so far, including 30 legislators. Dobbs said there have been two hospitalizations associated with the Capitol outbreak.

Lamar said he’s heard even higher numbers of potential cases.

Lamar, the 39-year-old House Ways and Means chairman from Senatobia, was succinct in how he felt starting the evening of July 4, when he first fell ill.

“It sucks,” Lamar said on Tuesday. “It’s definitely nothing to take lightly.

“On the night of July 4, I started feeling bad, and had two to three days of flu-like symptoms – aches, fever, chills … then I started having a dry cough, where I couldn’t catch my breath … I lost my sense of smell and taste.”

Lamar said he began feeling better starting Sunday afternoon, and by Tuesday was definitely on the mend. He said he wasn’t hospitalized – although he knows of at least one lawmaker who has been – and none of his family has come down with it.

“They put me in a guest bedroom and locked me in isolation,” Lamar said.

As lawmakers and legislative staff recover, additional work looms. The Legislature left Jackson without passing a budget for the Department of Marine Resources because of a power struggle over spending federal Gulf Restoration funds. And the governor vetoed the bulk of the state’s public education budget after lawmakers failed to specifically fund a bonus system for top performing teachers he supports.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday said the executive branch has been able to fund both agencies in the meantime. He said the situation is “fluid,” and he is reluctant to call lawmakers back into special session to deal with the issues until the health threat is minimized.

“Public health must trump everything else,” Reeves said. “… Is it an ideal situation? No. Is it perfect? No. Should the Legislature have left without finishing these things? No. I am confident that working together we can find a solution.”

Reeves added: “I am not going to put them in harm’s way.”

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