They took welfare money to turn ugly produce into meals, but fed no one
Nonprofit founder Nancy New handed restaurateur Jeff Good a check for $200,000 and then ghosted.
The idea was for their organizations to partner to create a food recovery and reclamation center. They would take food that groceries and restaurants didn’t want — what people picture as a bruised apple or an ugly carrot — and turn it into ready-to-eat meals for the hungry.
In late 2018 when they conceived the concept, one of Good’s businesses Soul City Hospitality was already leasing and investing in an empty, 16,000-square foot warehouse with that kind of project in mind.
And New, who held a multi-million dollar state contract to spend federal welfare dollars with virtually no accountability, had the cash.
New is now awaiting trial within what officials have called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history and Good has nothing to show for the deal.
A recent independent audit of the Mississippi Department of Human Services labeled the $200,000 welfare payment to Soul City Hospitality as waste and abuse. It’s a sliver of the $12.4 million in such spending they identified. Officials have made no criminal allegations surrounding the Soul City deal.
Good, owner of three Jackson restaurants, told the accounting firm that after New handed him the check in February of 2019 to cover a one-year lease, “not a hammer was lifted.” His team received no more communication from New’s nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center. The nonprofit did not provide paperwork needed for permitting, Good said. New did not place staff in the warehouse. Nothing happened during the lease period.
The building wasn’t in operation then and hasn’t been since.
Good was aware that New and John Davis, then-director for the Mississippi Department of Human Services, had discussed funding the project, an email shows. The department administers several federal grants. But Good told the forensic accountant that he didn’t know the money Soul City received had come from a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — the one known as welfare.
“The energy sap was incredible,” Good said of the fallout. “Just imagine the punch in the gut.”
The nonprofit’s inaction and eventual demise was just one setback in a years-long saga involving different iterations of the same food innovation idea.
Good formed Soul City Hospitality LLC in 2014 alongside David Watkins Jr. — son of the Jackson developer who restored the King Edward hotel and was a controversial player in the failed deal to revitalize Farish Street.
Their goal was to create better pathways for Mississippi farmers to get their products into the commercial marketplace.
On his LinkedIn page, Watkins says he’s served as the Local Food Systems Developer for Soul City Hospitality since 2012. Over nine years, the page says, he’s developed and overseen Soul City’s local food initiatives, but those amount to mostly plans: Plans to open a “food & health innovation center”; plans for a “food hub, a processor, a food incubator, and some ‘locally grown’ retail”; and plans for what they called the “Up in Farms Food Hub.”
“The initial cold storage renovation in the warehouse is almost complete, and Up in Farms will soon launch a small pilot. Stay tuned!” his bio reads.
Watkins previously worked as a digital media analyst for global policy think-tank RAND Corporation headquartered in Santa Monica. When Watkins came back from California to his hometown, Good said he started asking questions.
Watkins couldn’t understand the paradox of Mississippi’s food systems: Why businesses like Good’s restaurant, located in an agriculture state, didn’t sell more local food. Why a state known for having some of the richest soil also has some of the most hunger and worst nutrition.
It’s true that farming is Mississippi’s largest industry, employing 17% of the state’s workforce when you count its indirect jobs. But don’t mistake that for a large quantity of human food.
The crops growing in Mississippi farmland are mostly cotton and food for cattle — soybeans and corn.
The few local farmers who grow produce in Mississippi lack distribution and transportation channels, as well as the quality assurance and liability policies retailers need to feel confident in their purchases.
But Good and his partners wanted to see if they could solve the puzzle, he said, “to really try to make a change to the economics of the state.” His business secured a $3,000-a-month lease on the warehouse at the old farmer’s market on Woodrow Wilson in Jackson, property owned by University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The food hub project received a $100,000 grant from the USDA and a $315,000 construction grant from the Delta Regional Authority. Then-Gov. Phil Bryant announced the Delta Regional Authority grant, part of the States’ Economic Development Assistance Program, at a 2015 press event outside the warehouse.
Good and his partners also took out almost $700,000 in private debt to renovate the coolers, offices and production space, and in 2017, they opened the Up in Farms Food Hub.
The produce company, which Good said staffed about 20 people, lasted one season.
It failed.
You name the problem, Good said, they encountered it. Farmers couldn’t reap the supply they thought they could, either due to the weather or not having enough farmhands. A lack of cold storage meant food went rotten. They faced worm infestations.
Down the supply chain, Good’s team struggled to sell the produce to local grocery stores or restaurants, in part because of the inconsistency. Retailers generally want to rely on a slate of products, and Up in Farms couldn’t deliver.
“So what we learned is there’s a reason nobody does it. Because it’s really hard,” Good said.
The group shut down the operation and closed the facility in 2017, but they maintained the $489-a-month lease with UMMC (who had agreed to reduce the initial lease amount after the construction improvements).
Enter Nancy New.
The Up in Farms Food Hub “had not worked well,” the latest audit report states, “and, in the fall of 2018, MCEC had approached them with the desire to rent the warehouse space and collaborate to achieve the objective of MCEC.”
Mississippi Community Education Center had recently started receiving tens of millions of welfare dollars from Mississippi Department of Human Services to run a state-sanctioned program called Families First for Mississippi.
Under the leadership of then-Gov. Phil Bryant and his appointed welfare director Davis, multiple state agencies began sending people in need — the homeless, those applying for food stamps or seeking a job — to Families First.
But past employees told Mississippi Today that nonprofit leaders never provided the support, or in many cases the funding, necessary for the programs to succeed. Millions of their grant dollars flowed instead to pie in the sky projects run by the famous or politically connected, Mississippi Today’s reporting has revealed.
To begin the new food project, New and Watkins signed a $16,620-a-month sublease — 34 times what Soul City was paying for the lease with UMMC.
The parties agreed the funds would be used to pay off the debt Soul City already incurred in construction and to make additional upgrades to the facility, Good told Mississippi Today. Soul City would act as a facilitator. New’s nonprofit was supposed to supply a project leader. The partners also envisioned using the space for a small-business incubator, workforce training programs and nutrition education.
Watkins declined to speak with Mississippi Today for this story, saying Good would speak for the group.
The team’s project pitch listed dozens of other state agencies and organizations as partners, with their own planned roles once the project got off the ground: The Mississippi Department of Human Services Division of Workforce Development, USDA, Valley Foods, Unified Brands, UMMC Sanderson Department of Obesity Metabolic Diseases and Nutrition, UMMC Grant Writing Department, Community Foundation of MS, the Mississippi Department of Corrections, the Mississippi Development Authority, Hinds Community College, Refill Café, Mississippi Department of Ag & Commerce, Central Mississippi Planning and Development District, Mississippi State University, Up in Farms Food Hub, Southern Artisan Training Institute, Southern Christian Services (PALS), We Will Go Ministries, Midtown Partners Prosperity Center, WIN Job Center, Barksdale Reading Institute, Voice of Calvary, Hope Credit Union, New Way, Mississippi Center for Excellence, Springboard to Opportunities, Stewpot Community Services, Boys & Girls Club of Central MS, Hinds Behavioral Health Center, Methodist Children’s Homes, Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center, Hinds County Human Resource Agency and others.
Auditors said that they found no emails from Davis about the Soul City project, but an email between the other private partners says there was a “meeting with John Davis at MDHS,” where “Nancy and John tossed around some funding ideas” for the project. The only state agency employee copied on this email was Mississippi Development Authority’s Joe Donovan, whom Good said has long helped him connect with business opportunities. Donovan used a personal email to talk about this deal. He did not return a call to Mississippi Today on Thursday evening.
Soul City Hospitality also represented that the state had approved the project for $1,000,000 in state bonds, which it would not have to repay, that could be drawn down for additional construction on the building.
Instead of making monthly payments on the farmer’s market property, New paid for a years-long sublease upfront.
“According to the interview conducted of the Soul City representative, Jeff Good, he was surprised when after the contract was signed, he was handed the check for $200,000,” the audit reads.
A memorandum of understanding drafted two months before the beginning of the lease shows the original plan was for Families First to make a lump sum payment of $523,000 that would pay off Good’s company’s debt.
“For Soul City, the financial arrangement would provide us with the debt relief we so desperately need: the promissory note holders paid back, and the bank debt covered via the sublease,” Good wrote.
Good said he didn’t remember this initial pitch, but that by the time an actual agreement between Soul City and New’s nonprofit was signed, it was the month-t0-month sublease discussed in the audit.
The audit says that even though the New nonprofit never took possession of the warehouse, Soul City did not return the lease payment because the business incurred costs as a result of the the deal: it’s monthly lease with UMMC, the debt service for previous improvements, and things like insurance, utilities and pest control.
The cash-up-front deal resembled a similar large lease payment Mississippi Community Education Center made with welfare money when New signed a $5 million sublease with the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation for the university’s athletic facilities.
The welfare money went to pay for the new volleyball stadium on campus — a project pushed by former NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who himself received $1.1 million from the nonprofit’s welfare grant and whose daughter played volleyball at the USM. (Favre promised to repay the money in 2020 but he has yet to return $600,000).
New justified the $5 million deal by stating in the lease, approved by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, that her nonprofit would use the facilities to conduct programming to “benefit the area’s underserved population.” Even though the lease didn’t serve the poor, and was unallowable under federal welfare rules according to the forensic auditors, it was not included in the report as “waste, fraud or abuse.” They similarly did not address the payment to Favre.
Documents show Families First used the the property it leased at USM one time for a 2018 “Healthy Teens Rally,” one of the governor’s initiatives, and otherwise abandoned the concept.
The food hub lease also resembles a six-year, $9,500-a-month lease New signed on a horse ranch owned by the Marcus Dupree Foundation, which purported to provide “equestrian activities for underprivileged children,” Mississippi Today first reported. The recent audit also failed to address this purchase. The property appeared to be the private residence of Dupree, a former football player, and there’s no record of New’s nonprofit providing services there.
Likewise, shortly after signing the Soul City lease, New pulled away from the project to focus on opening a new Families First resource center inside the old renovated-hotel-turned-government-office on State Street (after director Davis had moved his executive office to a fancier building in the heart of downtown).
The resource center at the new office purported to address hunger. It conducted canned food drives, raised money to buy Turkeys for veterans around Thanksgiving, and housed a physical food pantry containing mostly canned green beans and corn.
The morning before Nancy New’s arrest, then-Families First operation coordinator Will Lamkin explained a hypothetical situation to Mississippi Today. Let’s say a visitor to the center was panicking because the gas company threatened to cut off their service over a $40 past due bill.
“Well, I can’t give them $40,” Lamkin said. “But I can give them $40 worth of food.”
In the same center, New’s staff created a mock farmer’s market, next to a fake bank and a second-hand clothes closet set up to look like a store.
Multiple former employees told Mississippi Today that Families First based its programming — such as these interactive displays mimicking life for the so-called productive citizen — off principles and beliefs about what people in poverty need, not scientific research or evidenced-based models.
Up in Farms, an offshoot of the Soul City Hospitality parent company, helped stock Families First’s mini market with fresh, plump produce for the September 2019 ribbon cutting, which provided ample photo ops. But the food bins mostly sat empty after that.
Up in Farms still has some presence in the food-justice space. Last year, it received a $75,000 donation from Dole Packaged Foods reportedly to run its Farm-to-Table Training Center and provide 1,000 meals to those in need. It has partnered to host mini farmer’s markets at the local Boys & Girls Club.
The Up In Farms website is currently down and it hasn’t posted to Facebook since 2018.
WAPT reported in June that Good’s restaurant company, Mangia Bene, was partnering with Dole and the Boys & Girls Club of Central Mississippi, who also gets welfare grants directly from the state, “to launch the Up In Farms Food Hub.”
The report said, “the goal of this proposed Woodrow Wilson location is to gather all the locally grown foods and produce and distribute it to people in need.”
Editor’s note: Managing editor Kayleigh Skinner’s husband Terry Sullivan was a staffer for the Up in Farms project before Mississippi Community Education Center’s involvement. Skinner took no role in the reporting, editing or publishing of this article.
Several members of Mississippi Today’s board of directors founded or hold leadership positions in some of the organizations listed as potential partners in the Up in Farms/MCEC partnership.
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Schools, state slowly spending federal COVID-19 money
Since the pandemic began, Mississippi has received a windfall of cash from the federal government for K-12 education, though millions remain to be spent.
The state received $46.9 million in federal stimulus funds for education in January of this year, $31.3 million of which was for independent and private schools in the state. The Mississippi Department of Education distributed that money, called Emergency Assistance to Non-Public Schools, to 51 schools.
The remaining $15.5 million, from the second round of the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund, will be spent at Gov. Tate Reeves’ discretion. Despite an impending deadline of January 2022, it has yet to be distributed.
"The Governor is reviewing the final projects, and we'll be excited to announce them once they've been finalized," said Bailey Martin, Reeves' press secretary.
The GEER funds are just one pot of federal money public education in the state received over the course of the pandemic.
Since March 2020, Mississippi has received around $2.5 billion in Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to address the impact of COVID-19 on schools. The money came in three streams.
At least 90% of that total goes directly to school districts, and the remainder, a total of around $237 million, went to the Mississippi Department of Education. The department has spent $2 million so far, mostly on technology efforts, according to spokeswoman Jean Cook.
The rest will be spent on health screenings for students, teachers and staff; addressing learning loss or providing additional supports to close learning gaps; mental health support; among other purposes. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education, recently requested and was granted emergency procurement status for about $89 million of the funds to more quickly enter into contracts by federally imposed deadlines.
The department advertised it is dedicating $3 million to provide educational technology, mental health services and supports, sanitization, summer learning and afterschool programs among other services to districts with pre-K classrooms.
READ MORE: Mississippi launches telehealth, teletherapy pilot in schools as ‘a way to keep kids learning’
Schools spent the first round of ESSER funds to aid cleaning and sanitation, upgrading HVAC equipment, hiring school nurses, offering after-school and extended school year programs and a myriad of other efforts to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on students.
The Mississippi Department of Education is still reviewing school districts’ applications for the second and third rounds of funding, according to Cook. Districts have spent a total of about $41 million of the $652 million they received from the second stream of ESSER funding, which came from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 (CRRSAA) passed in December 2020, said Cook.
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Medical marijuana rallies planned across state. No word from Gov. Reeves on session
As lawmakers and many voters wait to see when Gov. Tate Reeves will call a special legislative session on legalizing medical marijuana, a group is planning six rallies across the state on Saturday to urge him to do so pronto.
The “We Are the 74” Facebook group, with nearly 15,000 members, has rallies planned for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday in Biloxi, Hattiesburg, Hernando, Jackson, Pascagoula and Tupelo calling for a “Special Session Now!” according to their page. The group was formed after voters in November passed a medical marijuana program through a ballot initiative, but then the state Supreme Court shot it down on a constitutional technicality. The 74 refers to 74% of voters that chose the Initiative 65 medical marijuana program over an alternative placed on the ballot by lawmakers.
Many in the group, according to their posts, have become angry that Reeves hasn’t called a special session yet, and their hashtags and memes include “#TimesUpTate” along with others that cannot be printed here. Medical marijuana proponents also frequently hammer Reeves on his social media posts about other issues. Reeves has only said he would likely call a session soon.
House and Senate negotiators dickered most of the summer on a plan to replace the medical marijuana program the high court shot down. Reeves had said that if lawmakers could reach an agreement, he would call them into special session to pass it.
READ MORE: Agriculture commissioner bashes medical marijuana bill, says he won’t participate
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn informed Reeves on Sept. 24 that an agreement on a draft bill had been reached and they believe they have the votes to pass it. But Reeves has not said when he might call a session. During a press conference on Sept. 29, Reeves said he expected he would call lawmakers into session “sooner rather than later,” but would not speculate a date or whether he’ll also let legislators tackle pandemic pay for nurses or other COVID-19 measures Gunn and Hosemann are proposing. He said at the time there were still details to work out on the marijuana measure.
Many in the We Are the 74 group and other advocates of medical marijuana have also voiced displeasure with particulars of the Legislature’s draft proposal. It includes both a sales tax and excise tax on medical marijuana, limits on the amount of the drug that can be dispensed and on THC levels that some criticize.
READ MORE: Analysis: Time for lawmakers, governor to fish or cut bait on medical marijuana
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Need a game? Greenville Christian needs willing football opponents
Tiny Greenville Christian has defeated the defending Class 6A Mississippi football champion Oak Grove Warriors. They have blown out traditional private school powerhouses Madison Ridgeland Academy, Jackson Prep and Jackson Academy.
The Saints, the all-Black team playing in Mississippi’s traditionally white private school league, are the No. 1 ranked high school football team in the Magnolia State and deserve that ranking.
READ MORE: This all-Black team in Mississippi’s private academy league is making history
But here’s the flip side to all this success: Now, nobody wants to play them.
This week, Rossville (Tenn.) Christian School became the third opponent this season to cancel a game with Greenville Christian. Saints coach Jon Reed McLendon received the news Tuesday and immediately used social media to search for a replacement game.
There have been no takers. Earlier this year, both Hillcrest Academy and North Point Christian of Southaven backed out of games with Greenville Christian.
McLendon said Rossville Christian’s reason for not playing was “they were concerned with player safety. They’ve had some injuries and thought it was in the best interest of their kids not to play.”
After the earlier cancellations, McLendon reached out on social media to search for a game on Sept. 16 when the Saints had an open date. Then-undefeated Oak Grove, which has played in the State Class 6A championship game the past two years, answered with an invitation to play in Oak Grove. Greenville Christian won a 48-41 thriller at Oak Grove.
READ MORE: Greenville Christian knocks off reigning 6A champs Oak Grove
Since then, Oak Grove has defeated perennial 6A powerhouses Warren Central (37-20) and Petal (48-14). Meanwhile, Greenville Christian has slammed Riverside (44-0) and Jackson Academy (30-9) to raise its record to 7-1. The Saints’ only loss was at Collins Hill (Georgia) 37-22 in a game that was much closer than the score indicates. Unbeaten Collins Hill is ranked in the national top 10 and has outscored its other six opponents 209-10.
“Obviously, our kids are disappointed,” McLendon said. “They want to play. Heck, we need to play. Here we are in October and we have only had one home game.”
McLendon says he understands the concerns of the teams that have cancelled games. “We’ve been down that path before, where we had some injuries and only 13 or 14 healthy players,” McLendon said “I know how that feels. We haven’t always been like this.”
In fact, Greenville Christian’s roster numbered in the teens last in August of 2020 before several Delta high schools cancelled the football season due to COVID-19. Several of the Saints’ key players transferred to Greenville Christian and have remained there. The roster now numbers 36 players and the Saints have shown they can compete and win against much larger schools.
They might have a chance to do that again.
Greenville Christian is in discussions with St. John’s College High School of Washington, D.C., about playing a game Friday, Oct. 15 in D.C. Both St. John’s, a Catholic school powerhouse, and Greenville Christian have open dates. St. John’s, 5-0 and ranked No. 23 in the USA Today’s national poll, has outscored opponents 167-13.
“They want to play and, like I say, we need to play a game,” McLendon said.
The devil is in the details.
The nation’s capital is a 16-hour bus ride away. The trip is expensive. McLendon said St. John’s has offered a $10,000 guarantee to Greenville Christian but that won’t cover the team’s expenses.
“You’re talking about getting 50 people including coaches, managers and everybody, on a bus charter with a couple nights in a motel or hotel and then meals,” McLendon said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to make it work. It would be a great experience for our kids.”
Count Jackson Academy coach Lance Pogue, the national coach of the year in 2010 when he was at South Panola, among those hoping the Saints get to play the game at D.C.
“I have so much respect for those players and those coaches,” Pogue said. “They have a lot of talented guys and they play the game the right way. Those coaches do a terrific job.”
As it is, Greenville Christian has only one game regular season game remaining on Oct. 22, a home game against Delta Streets of Greenwood.
Said McLendon, “They have assured us they are going to play, so that is at least one more game and a home game we will get to play.”
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State appeals judge’s ruling to reform mental health system
The state of Mississippi appealed a federal judge’s ruling that would shape the future of the state’s mental health system to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday.
The state’s appeal is the latest development in a more than decade-long battle between the federal government and the state of Mississippi. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a letter to the state saying Mississippi was not doing enough to provide mental health services outside of institutional settings. After five years of the state doing little to offer more community-based services, the DOJ sued in 2016, and District Judge Carlton Reeves later ruled that the state was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Reeves told the state on Sept. 7 that it had four months to develop a plan to prevent the unnecessary institutionalization of people experiencing mental illness in state hospitals, and submit that plan to the DOJ. Lawyers for the state then asked for the deadline to be postponed because of its plan to appeal the ruling.
The state not only opposes having to develop the plan ordered by Reeves, but also specific services and accountability measures required by the order.
One order the state opposes is a requirement to implement peer support services at community mental health centers across the state’s 15 mental health regions by the end of the 2022 fiscal year.
The state also opposes a requirement to fund an additional 250 CHOICE housing vouchers for the 2022 fiscal year, another 250 during the 2023 fiscal year and then sustain that level of funding going forward. The CHOICE housing voucher program provides rental assistance for Mississippians with severe mental illness.
The Mississippi Legislature increased funding for CHOICE by $400,000 in 2021, but as the state’s record of distributing pandemic-related rental assistance shows, just because funding is appropriated for a worthy cause doesn’t mean it will get to the people who need it. Mississippi’s CHOICE program has never spent the full amount appropriated by the Legislature.
The state also opposes a requirement that the Mississippi Department of Mental Health conduct clinical reviews with 100 to 200 patients per year “to assure that services are working as intended to address the needs of people with serious mental illness.”
Joy Hogge, executive director of the mental health advocacy organization Families as Allies, doesn’t buy the lawyers’ argument that these requirements would cause “irreparable injuries” to the state.
“I think the only explanation (for the state’s appeal) is that they don’t want to be accountable,” Hogge said. “What they have really objected to all along is anybody having any input or oversight. They don’t want our mental health system to be accountable to anything outside itself.”
Reeves’ order also requires the state to begin collecting a vast amount of data on the people interacting with the state’s mental health system. This includes tracking who is receiving core services at community mental health centers, calls to mobile crisis teams, and state hospital stays that last longer than 180 days, among others.
This data collection would give the state Department of Mental Health a more complete picture of which services are working and which aren’t. The department develops a “strategic plan” every four years that includes statewide goals and benchmarks for improving services. However, these “living documents” never include quantifiable measurements for identifying if these desired outcomes are achieved.
“I don’t know where the evidence is that the people who most need the services are getting them. Do we know if those services are helping them live in the community and reach the goals that they want to reach? We don’t know that because they aren’t collecting that data,” Hogge said.
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Following the New Summit scandal, these grandparents took the Hattiesburg school into their own hands
At first, school staff at Kimmi Farrell’s kindergarten thought she might be autistic.
Later, one of her teachers said ADHD. By the end of the first grade, teachers were saying that she needed to be held back because she couldn’t read. It was then her family took her to get tested and found out she had dyslexia.
She was enrolled in South New Summit School in Hattiesburg to receive dyslexia therapy and instruction specialized for students with learning disabilities.
“She found her place. This child who was beaten down by the public school system because of her inability to keep up with others — she blossomed,” said Wendy Farrell, Kimmi’s grandmother.
Along with the specialized resources that the school provided, Farrell said that being in community with other students who are struggling with similar issues helped Kimmi believe she could succeed.
“They were all the same. Not that they all had the same diagnosis, but they had all been through the wringer,” she said.
The school, founded in 2015 as The Institute for Diverse Education (commonly referred to as TIDE school), was sold to Nancy New’s private for-profit company, New Learning Resources, in 2018. A grand jury indicted Nancy New and her son Zach New in February 2020, alleging they embezzled federal welfare dollars through their separate nonprofit. The charges resulted in financial ruin at their four schools, rendering them at times unable to make payroll.
A subsequent federal indictment in March of 2021 assured the schools’ collapse: authorities charged the News with filing fraudulent claims with the Mississippi Department of Education to pay the salaries of teachers, including teachers at South New Summit.
The charges left many parents at New Learning Resources schools stunned because they knew their students would struggle to receive the specialized education anywhere else.
Steven and Wendy Farrell, Kimmi’s grandparents, were among those concerned and felt compelled to save the school because of the positive change they saw in their granddaughter. They took over in February of 2021, renaming the academy Innova Prep.
“We didn’t want to let this school go by the wayside because we didn’t think (Kimmi) was ready to go back to public school,” Steven Farrell said. “We decided to take it on and fund it until we could get it working…and then hopefully pass it on to a younger generation.”
Before the News, Christie Brady founded TIDE school to serve students like her son, who had been diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD and anxiety. She had been homeschooling him for a few years, but they felt it wasn’t the best situation.
“A best situation didn’t really exist for him, so we set out to create it,” Brady said.
Two special purpose schools already existed in the Hattiesburg area, the DuBard School for Language Disorders and the 3-D School, but both only serve elementary students. Brady, who had worked as a professor of psychology at a community college, originally founded her school to serve the middle and high school aged students of the same population. The school later expanded to serve elementary students who had learning disabilities or disorders that did not fit into the specified missions of Dubard and 3-D.
“I think those other two programs being here really helped the development of the school because the community is already so supportive of these special purpose situations, so it was not a novel idea for there to be a school for middle or high school for students with learning challenges,” Brady said.
Special purpose schools like TIDE can be very expensive to run because of the individualized attention they provide to students, a challenge that was exacerbated by TIDE’s commitment to serving students regardless of their financial status. When New Learning Resources approached Brady about buying the school, it seemed like a great solution to their financial difficulties since the News had a seemingly successful track record running other schools like theirs.
The Farrells first learned of financial difficulties at the school in the fall of 2020, meeting with Nancy New and Roy Balentine, executive director of New Learning Resources. When New began talking in January about closing the school, the Farrells decided to take over immediately.
They started a new nonprofit school, but are still waiting on their 501c3 status to be approved. After finishing out the 2020-2021 school year, they moved the school to a newly renovated campus. Steven said they have already invested over half a million dollars into the school and expect to spend another $300,000 this year.
“We’re learning by the seat of our pants,” Steven, the chief medical officer of Forrest General Hospital, said. “We’ve got good educators and administrators with us, but those of us who are on the board haven’t worked in schools before so we’re learning something new.”
Fifty-six students currently attend Innova Prep, with the goal of gradually bringing that number up to 100 over the next two years. Steven said that at 100 students, the school will have enough tuition funds to be self-sustaining. They are currently enrolling new students year-round.
Attempts were also made to save New Summit School in Jackson and North New Summit in Greenwood. A group of parents attempted to save New Summit School in Jackson through a corporate custodianship, but that effort was not successful. According to court filings in July, Gary Herring, the court-appointed custodian, had not been able to secure any financial backers to keep the school open, but had been counseled by the News’ attorneys not to expressly say that it would not be open.
Herring told Mississippi Today that they are in the process of closing the custodianship. North New Summit in Greenwood has reopened as Leflore Christian School, also turning into a non-profit.
Parents like Sasha Barnes are extremely grateful for the specialized services that these types of schools provide. Both of her kids attend Innova Prep, starting last year while it was still South New Summit.
“They were very into knowing who Mason and Erin were, what problems they had at their other schools, and what they could do to help them when they came to South New Summit,” Barnes said.
Barnes felt that the school did a good job of compartmentalizing and keeping the things consistent for the students and parents. She was not aware that there had been issues at the school until the meeting when she found out the Farrells would be taking over, but said she almost appreciated this because it kept her from panicking.
A school automatically loses its accreditation status for at least one year if it changes ownership, according to Mississippi Department of Education regulations. For students like Mason and Erin, this means that they can no longer receive the dyslexia scholarships that they are eligible for, since those scholarships must be used at an accredited special purpose school.
In order to offset this burden, the Farrells chose to personally cover the portion of tuition — more than $5,000 of the $9,300 it costs to attend Innova Prep annually — that would have been paid for by the scholarship, leaving the parents of eligible students with only the remaining tuition balance. This option is open to all currently enrolled students with dyslexia scholarships and any dyslexic prospective students.
“We have no doubt we will be accredited in 12 months. In the meantime, we just need the kids,” Steven Farrell said.
Barnes said she was very grateful the Farrells made it possible for her kids to, in effect, still receive the dyslexia scholarships, particularly because of the positive growth she has seen in her children since transferring.
“We’ve gone from teachers thinking Erin couldn’t talk to her being the class clown and Mason crying because he couldn’t do his schoolwork to receiving the golden owl award. It’s a major difference,” she said.
Barnes also said that the open communication style of the teachers of Innova Prep is a welcome change of pace from her son’s previous experiences.
“If there’s anything he’s struggling with, I know I could contact any teacher here… and they’re on it, telling me why he got that grade and what can be done to help,” Barnes said.
That open communication style has been part of the culture since the school’s founding, a culture that Sharon Ladner has worked to develop. As principal and executive director of Innova Prep, Ladner is in her fifth year at the school. With nearly 40 years of experience as a teacher and administrator, Ladner champions the specialized teaching styles that the school uses.
Ladner offered up the image of a Venn diagram, with one circle being traditional students and the other being special education students, explaining that the area in the middle is larger than people realize.
“Many students that we have, because of size and opportunities in larger schools, those students get lost. Because of our size and the way that we provide instruction, we are able to help students in the middle of that Venn diagram have more of an opportunity for a diploma than they might have had at a public or private school of a larger size.”
Ladner said they do not give away any diplomas or skip any requirements, they just present the information in a different manner. She believes that for their students, it’s never a question of cognitive ability, but of environment and presentation.
“We have the ability to pick the best staff that we possibly can,” Ladner said. “These are people who really love this type of learner, and are willing to go above and beyond to make those lessons come alive.”
Ladner said she is a public school advocate, but she also understands the realities of large schools and the challenges they face — some students just need more time and attention, which larger schools can’t always provide. She does not see Innova Prep as being in competition with any other schools, but rather working to fill in gaps.
“Everyone has their niche, and this is ours,” Ladner said.
Gabby Holm has been a student in a special purpose school since fourth grade for speech and language processing disorders and high functioning autism. When she was about to age out of the Dubard School, her mother, Lenora, considered placing her back in the public school system, but they ultimately found her a home at TIDE school.
Lenora Holm explained that she believes the population of students that the school serves are some of the most vulnerable in the state, because they have the ability to be independent and productive citizens, but if ignored, are going to become dependent on the state. Because of this, she felt it was particularly essential for the state to provide more scholarships, and more control over those scholarships, for the education of students like her daughter.
“I understand the struggle of having a child with different learning styles,” Lenora Holm said. “That struggle is real, and if I had to, on top of that, see something that I knew would be best for my child but just know that there was no way I could bridge that gap financially, that would be devastating to me as a parent.”
Lenora Holm is one of the parents who has seen the school through each iteration of its leadership. She felt that there was a lack of involvement and care during its time as South New Summit, but clarified she wasn’t referring to the teachers. In her eyes, all of the benefits that were supposed to come from joining New Learning Resources just never transpired.
“We’ve had more energy, enthusiasm, and hope again in these past six months than we had for years, and seen more progress,” Holm said.
Steven and Wendy Farrell undoubtedly bring the energy. Steven had a lot of ideas for the future, including a scholarship program to send low-income students to any special purpose school in the area and improving protocols and lowering the cost barrier to dyslexia testing in public schools. But for the moment, they’re focused on keeping the doors of the school open.
“Sometimes you find a second purpose in life,” Farrell said. “Our mindset is ‘What can we do to contribute to everyone living their most independent life?’”
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Fact check: Medicaid chief missed nuances while disputing experts who made economic case for expansion
Drew Snyder, the executive director of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, said that based on a study conducted by University Research Center economists, most of the people who would gain health care coverage if Mississippi expands Medicaid already have coverage.
Referring to the study conducted by State Economist Corey Miller and Senior Economist Sondra Collins, Snyder recently said, “What really jumped out to me was that 65% (of the people who would be covered under Medicaid expansion) already had some form of insurance… What it looked to be was this was primarily not providing individuals with a new affordable coverage, but shifting insurance coverage for people already covered.”
The report, as Snyder correctly pointed out, does conclude that a significant majority of the people who would sign up for Medicaid expansion if the state provided it already have health care coverage. Gov. Tate Reeves and others have argued that enacting Medicaid expansion would allow people to drop private coverage they are at least partially paying for and enroll in a program — Medicaid expansion — paid by the federal and state governments. But the study pointed out nuances.
The study estimates that 233,489 people would be added to the Medicaid rolls if the state expands Medicaid as is allowed under federal law.
Of those 233,489:
- 82,204 would be people who currently have no insurance.
- 11,623 would be people with employer-based coverage.
- 28,910 would be people with private insurance through the federal Healthcare Exchange where they currently receive federal subsides to help pay for the coverage.
- 110,752 would be people currently covered by the state Medicaid program.
But Snyder did not mention the fact that if the state had Medicaid expansion like 38 other states and the District of Columbia, those 110,752 could be diverted from the current Medicaid program, where the state must pay a greater share of the match than the state would if the people were covered through Medicaid expansion.
Put simply, under Medicaid expansion, the state would be paying less for the health care for those 100,000-plus.
Mississippi has the best matching rate for its traditional Medicaid program with the federal government paying 84.5% of the costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the federal matching rate for those covered through Medicaid expansion is 90%.
READ MORE: State economist refutes politicians’ claim that Mississippi cannot afford Medicaid expansion
There are currently about 780,000 people covered by Medicaid in Mississippi. Those people include the disabled, poor pregnant women, poor children and a segment of the elderly population. Most healthy adults who are not pregnant cannot garner coverage through the current program except for in certain caregivers of those on the Medicaid program living in extreme poverty.
Under Medicaid expansion, coverage is provided to those making up to 138% of the federal poverty level or $17,774 annually for an individual.
The study estimated that the total state population that would be eligible to enroll in any potential Medicaid expansion is 330,000, though a significant number of that group would not enroll in the Medicaid expansion program.
Reeves, who opposes Medicaid expansion, and others have argued that more people would sign up for Medicaid expansion than projected in many studies. During his successful 2019 gubernatorial campaign, he also said that in neighboring Louisiana when that state began Medicaid expansion, many people with insurance through other means dropped that coverage and enrolled in Medicaid expansion.
The study by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning University Research Center surmises that Medicaid expansion would produce an average of 11,000 jobs per year between 2022 and 2027 and provide an additional $44 million per year for the state general fund.
The positive results, the study concludes, are the result of several factors, including the economic boost from the infusion of the federal money into the state, the savings from moving certain groups from the traditional Medicaid program to the expansion program and from other incentives provided by the federal government to expand Medicaid.
Snyder questioned the validity of the study.
“We recognize these are big decisions,” Snyder recently told legislative leaders of the possibility of expanding Medicaid. “…This is not a free or add-on to the state. It will cost money. The question now comes is this the money we want to spend.”
After making his comments, Snyder conceded he is not an economist.
Snyder first was appointed as executive director of the Medicaid Division by former Gov. Phil Bryant and re-appointed by Reeves. Both Reeves and Bryant have been adamant opponents of Medicaid expansion.
READ MORE: Mississippi chamber of commerce mulling Medicaid expansion
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