Mississippi Today is pleased to announce that Bethany Atkinson has joined the Mississippi Today Audience Team.
Bethany Atkinson
Atkinson, a native of Madison, will serve as Mississippi Today’s community manager. She will work to help build and cultivate a diverse community of Mississippi Today readers by designing community-driven content and products across all Mississippi Today platforms with an emphasis on membership, community engagement and branding.
Atkinson served as an engagement intern at Mississippi Today in 2019 and has since worked on contract providing design through resources, such as reader guides, marketing materials, infographics and merchandise to help strengthen our brand and reach.
In her new role, Atkinson will also manage and grow our membership program.
“Bethany brings a unique perspective and dynamic set of skills that will allow us to further our mission of reaching and engaging with more Mississippians,” said Mississippi Today Audience Development Director Lauchlin Fields. “She will work closely with everyone in our organization as we work collaboratively to grow our community of readers and strengthen our reader revenue program.”
Atkinson is a 2019 graduate of the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media, where she graduated with a degree in integrated marketing communications. She has worked as a communications intern for the Mississippi Arts Commission and most recently was the administrative coordinator for Hospice Ministries.
As community manager, she will use her designs to bring new readers to our journalism, build a community of loyal readers and enhance our member community.
“Reaching and engaging with the diverse audience of Mississippi Today ensures that all Mississippians will receive free, accurate and nonpartisan news,” Atkinson said. “The Audience Team is vital in connecting our reporting to the people of the state and helping their voices be heard.”
Mississippi Today is pleased to be awarded with a $25,000 matching challenge grant from the Maddox Foundation for donations made during NewsMatch 2021. The Maddox Foundation announced this week that they will match all donations dollar-for-dollar made to Mississippi Today during its year-end NewsMatch campaign, up to $25,000.
“A nonpartisan news source is absolutely vital in today’s world,” said Maddox Foundation CEO Robin Hurdle. “It encourages public dialog leading to true civic engagement which is the backbone of healthy communities. We are pleased to continue to support Mississippi Today as they provide this powerful resource for free to the public.”
Maddox Foundation was founded by Dan Maddox in 1968. He and his wife, Margaret Maddox, had a commitment to young people, a love of nature and a vision for making their corner of the world a better place. They chose Robin Hurdle to continue their legacy, which lives on through the current work of the foundation.
Maddox Foundation, located in Hernando, has made many signature investment grants into youth development. These investments include renovating and supporting the Margaret Maddox Family YMCA; putting an internet-connected computer in every public classroom in Mississippi; creating innovative places for children to learn and play; establishing the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi; and funding the Education Director position and the MTV exhibit at the Grammy Museum Mississippi.
“We are grateful to the Maddox Foundation for this generous challenge grant that doubles the impact of donations made by our reader members,” said Mary Margaret White, Mississippi Today CEO. “Nonprofit news puts the power where it belongs, with the people, and this matching grant from the Maddox Foundation catalyzes donations of all sizes that are made to Mississippi Today, the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom.”
Mississippi Today was founded in 2016 to keep close tabs on the state legislature and regulatory agencies where decisions are being made that affect many aspects of daily life for Mississippians: health care policy, school funding, economic development and social justice.
State Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley has renewed the call for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether AT&T really provided broadband service to over 133,000 locations in Mississippi with federal money it received.
Presley has written new Biden administration FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, asking the FCC for a “complete compliance audit of AT&T Mississippi” on whether it met its obligations for more than $280 million in federal Connect America funds for broadband expansion.
Last year, all three elected state PSC commissioners wrote a similar letter to the FCC asking for an audit and claiming a PSC investigation “found concrete, specific examples that show AT&T Mississippi has reported location addresses … as being served when, in fact, the addresses are without service.”
Presley in his latest letter said, “They have submitted false data for years, and I am convinced that you will act appropriately to send a message that there is ‘a new sheriff in town.’” He also told Rosenworcel, who served on the FCC during the Obama administration, “on a personal note, I am thankful for your friendship.”
An AT&T corporate spokesperson in a written statement denied the claims.
“We have invested billions of dollars, building out our wired and wireless networks across Mississippi, and we are proud of the work we have done as a company to keep communities connected and help fuel Mississippi’s economy,” the statement said. “We are also proud of the work we have done through federal and state programs that help expand critical connectivity in underserved and unserved areas, including the FCC’s Connect America Fund Phase II program. We have worked closely with the FCC and USAC on this program and any suggestion that we filed false data is patently incorrect.”
The issue comes as Mississippi has received hundreds of millions of federal dollars in recent years to expand broadband internet access and federal funds continue to flow. Large cable and telecom companies such as AT&T are sparring with rural electric cooperatives for the funding, particularly $162 million the state is expected to receive for broadband as part of the American Rescue Plan Act.
With Presley leading the movement, the state Legislature in 2019 passed a law allowing electric cooperatives to provide internet service — an effort to expand broadband access in a poor, rural state where an estimated 40% of the state lacked access. The effort has been likened to providing electricity to rural Mississippi in the 1930s. Proponents said large cable and telecom companies were failing to expand service into rural areas because it wasn’t profitable enough.
Presley recently said: “If there is any idea circulating that somehow companies like AT&T can gobble up this $162 million intended for cooperatives and non-profits, I think that idea will be dead on arrival at Treasury based on their own guidance. Cooperatives and nonprofits who put people above profits are who these funds are designated for and that’s who should get them under any plan sent in by the governor. To try and please the AT&Ts of the world with these funds will only delay broadband expansion. I would fight that tooth, nail and claw.”
But cable and telecom providers say they have spent millions in private funds expanding internet service in Mississippi, and that they shouldn’t be cut out of government funding for expansion.
Superintendents, the chief administrative leaders of Mississippi’s 138 traditional public school districts, have in recent months been left to drive bus routes, serve food in school cafeterias, teach classes in place of teachers and substitutes, and conduct contact tracing missions to identify children who’ve been exposed to COVID-19.
And in what have undoubtedly been their worst moments, they’ve lost school staff and students to the virus.
Those in the education business say more superintendents are leaving before their contracts are up or are retiring early.
“More superintendents are saying this has become so difficult and overwhelming that now they’ve reached retirement, they’re probably going to speed up the process and get out now rather than later,” said Jim Keith, a school board attorney for more than 20 Mississippi school districts. “It’s impossible to deal with all the issues — COVID, the accountability model, parents, student behavior. And it’s not just limited to the superintendents.”
While some have personal reasons or had already planned to retire, others say it all became too much – even to the point of causing health problems.
“It’s been a heck of two school years for everybody in the school business,” said Philip Burchfield, executive director of the Mississippi Association of School Superintendents (MASS). “Currently it seems that more superintendents are choosing to leave or retire during the school year than in years past.”
Just this week, the South Pike School District Superintendent Donna Scott announced she will resign at the end of the school year. And in September, Ken Byars of Amory School District abruptly left his post. He told the Enterprise Journal he was taking a job in consulting. Sue Townsend of Rankin County School District is retiring at the end of December, though she told Mississippi Today she is leaving because of a family member’s health issues.
In the 2021-22 school year, 17 superintendents retired, according to Burchfield. Burchfield said thus far, he is aware of another eight who plan to retire this school year.
These numbers do not include superintendents who resigned, which MASS does not track. The Mississippi Department of Education tracks turnover from year to year, but that data also includes superintendents who move from one district to another.
Twenty-seven superintendents left their positions from last school year and this school year, and 31 left between the 2019-20 — when COVID-19 arrived — and 2020-21 school years. The numbers for the two transition years before that were 21 and 25, respectively.
Officials at the Department of Education declined to comment on this story.
For Adam Pugh, the former superintendent of Lafayette County School District, the stress at work led to health problems. And the death of teacher and coach Nacoma James, who passed away from COVID-19 in September of 2020, was a particularly personal tragedy.
Whenever Pugh looked at James, he still saw the boy he coached and taught in 1990.
“He was a kid when I coached him in 7th grade, and the kid that I coached died,” he said of James. “I couldn’t protect” him.
Pugh, who originally planned to retire after his 10th grade daughter graduated high school, said that feeling haunted him — the weight of not being able to keep his people safe.
And as a longtime educator of 31 years — 10 years as superintendent in Lafayette County — he remembered how discouraging it was when new superintendents would call to ask him for advice on how to handle issues.
“There were new guys calling some of us veterans (superintendents) saying, ‘What do we do here?’ and I would have to tell them, ‘I don’t know,’” he said of the questions that arose during the pandemic.
Warren Woodrow, who retired as superintendent of West Jasper School District at the end of last year, echoed Pugh. The district lost an employee who was both a bus driver and custodian, and there were the constant peripheral losses of students’ parents and grandparents.
“It hit everybody from so many different ways that we just weren’t prepared for,” Woodrow said.
Woodrow said he primarily left for his current job heading up an organization in Hattiesburg that provides continuing education opportunities for educators in about 30 school districts.
But he doesn’t mince words about how the pandemic and its accompanying challenges made a new job more appealing.
“I’m going to put this plainly. I got in this business to be an educator, and walking around classrooms with a tape measure trying to decide who was six feet away from who” is a far cry from that, he said.
On top of the addition of public health overseer and contact tracer to his job description, there was a lot of work that went into planning for the federal funding school districts have received over the past almost two years.
“While they were extremely helpful and appreciated, they added a tremendous amount of work which was extremely stressful and time consuming for both me and my staff,” said Woodrow, who has been working in schools for 36 years.
Similar to many other superintendents and school board members across the state and country, Woodrow also became the target of parents’ frustrations and, occasionally, their ire. He recalled incidents of parents being angry that their children had to quarantine, or weren’t able to participate in extracurricular activities because they were learning virtually.
Cory Uselton, the current superintendent of DeSoto County School District, the state’s largest school district, told Mississippi Today there are certainly more challenges this school year than before, including finding bus drivers, custodians and substitute teachers.
When he spoke to Mississippi Today in September, he had recently spent half a day substitute teaching. A few days before he spent several hours serving food in the cafeteria. Principals are now taking on cleaning responsibilities, he said.
He and the school board, along with other school officials around the state, are doing what they can to offset worker shortages. The school board recently raised pay for substitute teachers.
“Here’s what I see as the biggest problem. You’ve got a restaurant out there that was paying $9 an hour and is now paying $13 an hour. They can raise the price of their menu items to make up that difference. We can’t do that,” said Uselton. “That’s going to be a challenge we’re going to face.”
And as schools round out the fall semester, school officials are also facing another massive challenge: addressing the learning loss many students experienced due to the disruptions caused by COVID-19.
Woodrow admits he saw that looming challenge, and he wasn’t sure he was up to the task.
“It’s going to be a long-term issue,” Woodrow said. “… We have kids who started school (before COVID-19) a grade level or two behind, and who got even further behind. It would be very difficult to bridge that learning gap from all the time they missed.”
State revenue collections, apparently fueled by consumer spending, continue to grow at a historic or near historic pace.
State tax collections for the first five months of the current fiscal year are $215.1 million or 8.5% above the amount collected during the same period last year, according to the November revenue report recently released by the staff of the Legislative Budget Committee.
Revenue growth this year has been fueled primarily by the sales tax, which is a 7% levy on most retail purchases. The sales tax revenue for the year is up $195 million or 23.7%. The sales tax levied on internet purchases or other out-of-state purchases, known as the use tax, is up $11.6 million or 6.9%.
The sales tax collections indicate strong consumer spending. Also factored into the increase in the sales tax is the fact that inflation has risen, meaning people are paying more for retail items, resulting in an increase in the sales tax paid on the purchases.
Revenue from the sales tax and use tax account for about 45% of total state revenue.
Personal income tax collections (the state’s second largest source of revenue accounting for about one-third of total collections) is up a more modest 1.2% or $11 million.
Total tax collections through November are $2.76 billion.
The strong collections for the current fiscal year come on the heels of growth of 15.9% or $934.5 million for the previous fiscal year, which ended on June 30.
Not only are collections strong for the year but also for the month of November. The state collected $531.9 million in November 2021 compared to $477 million in November 2020.
While collections are strong overall, there are a few categories of revenue that are down year over year:
The corporate income tax — down 9.9% or $19.8 million.
The tax on insurance premiums — down less than $1 million or .77%.
The tax on tobacco, alcohol and beer — down 4.4% or $5.3 million after a surge in alcohol purchases last year early in the pandemic.
On the other hand, casino tax collections are up $15 million or 28%.
The strong tax collections have resulted in a state surplus that is likely close to be $2 billion as the Legislature meets in January to consider such items as a significant teacher pay raise and the possible elimination of the income tax.
Greenville Christian’s D.J. Smith might decide to go the junior college route.
Catching up on several columns written over the last few weeks…
Remember Greenville Christian, the small Delta private school that stamped itself as one of the state’s best — if not the best — high school football teams in the state this season? The Saints finished the season 12-1 and easily won the MAIS Class 3A state championship, defeating Canton Academy 46-6 in the championship game.
“There were times it all seemed like a dream,” says Saints coach Jon Reed McLendon. “This was a special group and a special season.”
Special?
Rick Cleveland
McLendon says 20 of his 22 seniors have been offered scholarships at either the junior college or college level.
“Any other year I would think we’d have four or five that would sign with Power-5 schools,” McLendon said. “With the transfer portal and the glut caused by COVID, there are just not as many scholarships to go around. That’s true everywhere. There’s a lot of guys who normally would be signing with big schools that are going to go the junior college route.”
Believe it or not, that could include Saints quarterback D.J. Smith, the Mississippi Gatorade Player of they Year Award, throwing for 37 touchdowns and running for 14 more. Smith, a full academic qualifier, has DI offers from Arkansas State and Louisiana-Monroe and has received interest from Nebraska and Indiana, but might decide to spend a year at the JUCO level, McLendon said.
Greenville Christian wide receiver Chris Bell, the best high school player these eyes saw this season, has offers from Louisville and Maryland and interest from Ole Miss and Mississippi State but remains uncommitted. He was once committed to Southern Miss. As I have written, the gifted Bell looks like a carbon copy of former Ole Miss receiver A.J. Brown, the current Tennessee Titans star.
Remember Collins Hill, the nationally ranked high school team that handed Greenville Christian its only defeat, 37-22, back on Sept. 3? Turns out that was the closest game Collins Hill, ranked No. 3 in this week’s USA Today national high school poll, has played.
Collins Hill, 14-0, has won its games by an average of 33 points, and plays Milton for the Georgia Class 7A state championship Saturday night.
“We knew they were mighty good when we played them,” McLendon said. “What they’ve done is no surprise to us. It’s nice to know that nobody else has played them as well as we did.”
Greenville Christian will have only one starter returning on offense, four on defense. You’ve heard of rebuilding seasons? “We’ll be starting over,” McLendon said, “especially on offense.”
•••
Remember Sam Burns, the former LSU golfer who won the Sanderson Farms Championship back in October? Burns has continued his remarkable play throughout the fall with three more Top 10 finishes. He was third last week at the Hero World Challenge in Albany, Ga., and currently ranks third on the PGA Tour money list with nearly $2 million in earnings in the new season. Pretty soon, he will be making SEC football coach money.
Burns’ scoring average through 16 rounds is 67.3. That’s insane.
Mississippian Hayden Buckley, who finished in a tie for fourth at the Sanderson, currently ranks 42nd on the PGA Tour money list with $498,000 in earnings this season.
As for the future of the Sanderson Farms Championship, it’s still on hold. That will be decided by the new ownership at Sanderson Farms when the sale receives approval from Sanderson Farms stockholders, perhaps by the end of the year.
•••
Remember back in late October when Southern Miss announced it was switching to the Sun Belt Conference?
At the time, the actual move was supposed to take place for the 2023 school year. Now there have been reports that the move could be made as early as the 2022 football season.Those reports could be premature.
“I would say it’s a possibility but there’s nothing to announce,” Southern Miss athletic director Jeremy McLain said Thursday. “There’s still a lot that would have to happen for that to take place.”
It’s maybe the third or fourth time this year. He isn’t sure.
Brooks, 79, wakes up every day before 6 a.m. to boil two pots of rain water just to make sure the dishes he put through the dishwasher the night before are sanitized. Gallons of distilled water purchased by his family members are used to make coffee and tea.
At his Grand Avenue home in Jackson, Miss., James Brooks and his wife, Jean, boil their dishes in captured rainwater every morning after putting them through the dishwasher, which uses water from the city. Brooks said he doesn’t trust the water that comes through his taps, which is sometimes discolored, and hasn’t used it for decades. Credit: Photo courtesy of James Brooks
At his home in Jackson, Miss., James Brooks and his wife, Jean, boil their dishes in captured rainwater every morning after putting them through the dishwasher, which uses water from the city.
“This is a lot of work and it turns into a way of life,” Brooks said.
November’s citywide water outage was the latest iteration of more than 50 years of failures to properly maintain the city’s water and sewer systems.
“Our water system is in a constant state of emergency because of the systems we have,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a Nov. 18 press conference.
This time, it was a bad batch of chemicals. In May, there was an electrical fire. In February, winter storms crippled the water and sewer systems for a month. And those are just the problems in getting water to come out of the tap.
Since that year, two-thirds of all water samples taken in Jackson have contained at least a trace amount of lead, according to records reviewed by the Clarion Ledger.
Many residents, including elected officials, say they cannot remember the last time they had a sip of Jackson’s tap water.
Lumumba declined an interview request for this story and to answer a list of questions about the city’s water systems, including questions about how to restore residents’ trust in the tap water.
Monday, during his weekly press conference, Lumumba said he and his family, which includes his wife and two young children, do drink the tap water.
“The challenges with our water system by and large have not been a matter of quality as it has been a matter of distribution,” Lumumba said.
“Under the comprehensive equipment repair plan, 40 tasks have now come due,” the spokesperson said. The “EPA and the state are working with the city on the tasks they are required to take to ensure completion.”
Six years after EPA violations, lead still present in Jackson’s water
Trouble paying attention in class. Lower IQs. Poor behavior.
Long-term lead exposure can cause myriad issues in children, with younger kids especially susceptible to lead poisoning, said Kristine Willette, professor of pharmacology and environmental toxicology at the University of Mississippi.
Data from the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Mississippi Urban Research Center at Jackson State University found Hinds County has the highest rate of childhood lead poisoning in the state.
Since 2015, 90 of the 1,352 water samples collected have exceeded the lead limit, according to a Clarion Ledger review of Jackson water testing records.
No amount of lead is safe for children under the age of 6 and pregnant or nursing people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Federal agencies have different standards for acceptable lead levels in drinking water. Bottled water, which is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, is supposed to have less than 5 parts per billion of lead.
SipSafe Director Jason Barrett predicts the EPA will eventually lower the acceptable amount of lead in the water to be more in line with the FDA, and to encourage water systems to address the issue.
If Jackson’s water was held to the FDA standard, 142 more samples would be in violation of lead limits.
While the amount of lead in the water is decreasing, it remains present. Through the first half of 2021, about two-thirds of the 160 samples tested contained at least a trace amount of lead, though only three exceeded the EPA limit.
When water is improperly treated, or corrosive, it can cause lead from old pipes or plumbing fixtures to leach into what comes out of the tap.
The EPA has worked with Jackson to implement proper corrosion control methods, and the agency expects Jackson’s water to be in compliance sometime in 2022, an agency spokesperson said.
A class-action lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of 600 children alleges Jackson knowingly exposed the population to lead, stunting development and causing learning disabilities.
“I have always loved this city, but Jackson officials have shown little respect for my family and children living here,” Amanda Williams, mother of one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement about the case. “How could the people we elected to help us do so much harm to us instead? And how could it have gone on so long?”
‘Nobody has confidence in it’
Legacy cities with aging infrastructure are a product of decades of white flight and disinvestment rooted in racism, said Manuel Teodoro, professor of public affairs at the La Follette School at University of Wisconsin-Madison. The effect is amplified when city leaders opt to defer maintenance or a public utility is poorly managed, he said.
The Jackson water and sewer utility serves an area of 150 square miles — bigger than the city of Philadelphia, despite Jackson only having a tenth of the population. At least 112 miles of city pipes are more than a century old, according to research from Jackson State Professor Jae-Young Ko.
Decades of population loss — Jackson has lost a fifth of its residents in the last 40 years — means the city collects less water revenue than the system was built for.
The shrunken customer base, coupled with 2013’s ill-advised water billing contract and years of not collecting water fees from residents, has left Jackson unable to afford the needed fixes.
Despite acknowledging the need for a vibrant capital city, Mississippi’s white Republican leadership has been disinclined to help fund the repairs for anything outside the capitol area in the majority Black, Democratic city.
Jackson’s residents are caught in the middle. People who have lived in the city for generations are scared of what comes out of their tap and skeptical help will ever come.
“I couldn’t tell you,” U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said of the last time he drank Jackson’s tap water. “Nobody has confidence in it, but you want it to work.”
Millions in funding. A handful of plans. Little to show.
The lack of improvements isn’t due to poor planning. Variations of master infrastructure plans dating back to 1997 sit in the city’s engineering offices. None have been fully completed.
Charles Williams Jr., Jackson’s city engineer, speaks to media during United States Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan’s tour stop at the O.B. Curtis Water Plant in Ridgeland, Miss., Monday, Nov. 15, 2021.
“I have an office full of plans,” said Charles Williams, Jackson’s chief city engineer. “One thing that has been lacking is the implementation (of those plans) as it relates to resources.”
City officials estimate it could cost up to $2 billion to bring the city’s water and sewer systems into EPA compliance. The city collects about $60 million a year in water and sewer billing, about 3% of what it would take to fix the problems. Even if the city fixes its beleaguered billing system — the city has missed out on $83 million in water revenue since 2014 — the money won’t be enough.
Mississippi is sitting on billions of dollars of federal aid.
The recently passed $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure package is sending $459 million to the Magnolia State for water and sewer upgrades specifically. The state received $1.8 billion in American Rescue Plan Act funds, which are largely intended to be spent on infrastructure improvements.
The Mississippi State Department of Health also secured an $825,000 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation grant aimed at implementing new corrosion control methods in the city’s water system in June. Another $27 million in emergency funding was provided by the state through the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Program at the EPA’s insistence and was signed off on in November.
“To have a successful Mississippi, we need a successful capital city,” Gov. Tate Reeves said during a news conference outlining his 2022-23 budget proposal.
State officials, however, haven’t gone out of their way to help Jackson. In March, as city residents had gone weeks without water, Reeves balked at the idea of issuing emergency funding to the city, instead chastising city officials.
“I do think it’s really important that the city of Jackson start collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money,” he said at the time.
Jackson has the second largest percentage of Black residents of any city in the nation. Jackson’s Black state legislators say their white Republican counterparts’ failure to aid the capital city is racist.
“The reason they don’t want to do it is because the city is predominantly Black,” State Rep. Alyce Clarke said. “We don’t want to talk about race issues. I don’t like to talk about race issues. But it is a problem.”
A problem hard for state leadership to ignore. Residents left waiting.
Despite the challenges, there is hope that Jackson will receive some of the needed funds to begin solving its problems. Democrats and Republicans have pointed to the available federal funds as a way to complete transformative infrastructure projects with generational impact.
Reeves, in his 2022-23 budget press conference, indicated the state would be willing to fund Jackson’s projects if the city spends some of its own American Rescue Plan Act funds on them.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, left, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency Administration. Credit: Eric Shelton/Clarion Ledger
Jackson’s mayor is cautiously optimistic the state will help, and that Reeves’ and other Republican’s words aren’t hollow. The continued media spotlight on Jackson’s ongoing water crisis should make it hard for state leadership to ignore, Lumumba said at the November press conference.
“If that does not take place then I think that that’s a question for our residents, for Mississippians to lift up and ask why we are still dealing with these inequities,” Lumumba said.
Even if enough money is provided through state and federal resources, Williams said the work would take 10 to 15 years to complete. All the while, Jackson’s residents, who have heard fixes are coming before, will be left waiting.
The lack of progress means people like James Brooks, who can hardly remember a time the water was drinkable, will continue living without something they need.
“When we are in need, that’s what government is for — to take care of people in need,” Brooks said in March, when the water hadn’t flowed for weeks.
