Gov. Tate Reeves said on Sunday that he is against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, adding he believes “in individual liberties and freedoms and people can make decisions on what’s best for them.”
But when pressed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, Reeves said that while he believes in the right to control one’s body, other factors have to be taken into account when it comes to women and abortion.
“What I would submit to you, Chuck, is they absolutely ignore the fact that in getting an abortion is an actual killing of an innocent unborn child that is in that womb,” Reeves told NBC’s Chuck Todd on the national television show.
On Wednesday of this week, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case which many prognosticators believe could overturn Roe v. Wade, the nation’s long-standing legal precedent that guarantees a woman’s right to abortion.
The case centers around a Mississippi law, passed in 2018, that would make abortions after 15 weeks illegal. That law has been stayed by lower courts as it has gone through the federal appeals process.
Reeves, the first-term governor, has drawn criticism for his handling of the pandemic response in Mississippi, including his unwillingness to firmly state that Mississippians should get vaccinated — even as other Southern Republican governors have gone to great lengths to do so.
Some have equated recent rhetoric over vaccination mandates with debate on the legality of abortion, which was the focus of Reeves’ interview Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
“The difference between vaccine mandates and abortions is vaccines allow you to protect yourself. Abortions actually go in and kill other American babies,” Reeves said.
Todd, the “Meet the Press” host, countered that vaccines were “about protecting a larger community,” not just protecting one’s self.
“You could certainly argue that, Chuck,” Reeves said. “… The fact is that during this very horrible and challenging time since I was sworn into office in January of 2020, Chuck, we’ve had 800,000 American lives lost because of COVID. And my heart aches for every single one of those individuals that have died because of COVID.”
Reeves continued: “But since Roe was enacted, 62 million American babies have been aborted, and therefore have been killed. And that’s why I think it’s very important that people like myself and others across this country stand up for those unborn children, because they don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves.”
Mississippi Department of Transportation Director Brad White joins Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast to discuss the $3.3 billion earmarked for Mississippi highway work in the recently passed federal infrastructure bill. White says the money will help, but will still be tightly controlled by federal highway officials. He notes the state has a more than $4 billion list of needed projects.
The state House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation in 2008 to restore voting rights to all Mississippians convicted of felonies, except for those convicted of murder or rape.
The 2008 legislation later died in the Senate, where Phil Bryant presided as lieutenant governor. Current House Speaker Philip Gunn, then a sophomore legislator from Clinton, was among the few House members to vote against the 2008 bill.
Since 2008 there has not been any serious efforts by legislators to move Mississippi more toward the nation’s mainstream, where in more than 40 states voting rights for those convicted of felonies are restored automatically at some point after their sentence is completed.
In the upcoming 2022 session, House Judiciary B Chairman Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth, has vowed to try to make the process of restoring voting rights for Mississippians with felony convictions “more consistent and fairer.”
What that effort looks like remains to be seen. Bain has stressed that at this point he is not trying to completely scrap Mississippi’s archaic felony voting ban.
The surest way to make whatever changes Bain decides to try to make would be to amend the 1890 Constitution to revise the language that disenfranchises people convicted of certain felonies.
“Obviously we can try to amend the Constitution, but that is a high burden,” said Bain, who held a legislative hearing in October on the issue.
Changes to the state Constitution require approval by two-thirds of the members of each chamber of the Legislature and voter approval.
The current language in the Constitution says to restore voting rights, approval is needed from two-thirds of the elected membership of both chambers of the Legislature. Voting rights also have been restored through gubernatorial pardons and by judicial expungements, though the process is burdensome and not allowed for all convicted of felonies.
The Legislature normally approves individual bills to restore voting rights one person at a time. Normally less than five people have their rights restored each year. In the 2021 session, the rights of just two people were restored.
But there seemed to be a consensus at Bain’s October hearing that rights could be restored to large swaths of people in one piece of legislation instead of restoring rights one person and one bill at a time.
Some said they believe the Legislature has the constitutional authority to restore rights to just those already convicted.
But Paloma Wu, a deputy director with the Mississippi Center for Justice, said she believes the Constitution is not clear on the issue and said legislators could restore voting rights for people convicted in the future and allow the courts to interpret the issue should a lawsuit be filed challenging the law.
Most all agreed, though, that to restore the rights to a large group of people would take two-thirds approval from members of both chambers just as it does to restore rights to an individual convicted of a felony. That process could prove difficult in a Legislature where in recent years, many members of the Republican majority have been reluctant to restore voting rights.
In a perfect world, Bain has said he believes it should be another entity, such as the judiciary, and not the Legislature that restores voting rights. It is not clear whether giving that authority to the courts could be done without a constitutional amendment.
There is no public polling on whether voters would support removing the lifetime ban on voting if the Legislature offered such a proposal to the electorate. In Florida, voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative removing the ban.
One of the problems with the current process in Mississippi, Bain has said, is that a person faces a lifetime ban on voting for a felony bad check writing conviction, for instance, but could vote while in prison if convicted of child pornography or of being a major drug dealer.
The current system of disenfranchisement for those convicted of certain felonies has its roots in the state’s Jim Crow-era.
In the 1890s, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote the disfranchisement of people of specific felonies was placed in the Constitution “to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race” by targeting “the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.” The crimes selected by lawmakers to go into the Constitution were thought by the white political leaders as more likely to be committed by African Americans.
That provision is currently being challenged on constitutional grounds in the federal courts with two cases pending before the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Attorneys have argued that the provision’s intent is the same as the poll tax, the literacy test and other Jim Crow-era provisions that sought to prevent African Americans from voting.
Another sure way to change the state’s felony suffrage ban is for the courts to strike it down.
An extensive report from the Commonwealth Fund has found deep-seated racial health disparities in all 50 states — with many more pronounced in Mississippi than anywhere else in the nation.
Across 24 measures graded in a Health Equity Scorecard, Mississippi ranked near the bottom or last when measuring health outcomes, health care access and health care quality for both its Black and white populations. Only one state, Oklahoma, had a lower overall health care rating for its Black population.
The number of deaths in Mississippi from potentially preventable diseases, like diabetes, that are given effective and timely health care are much higher than the national average for both racial groups. However, in nearly all categories where disparities were measured, they were more pronounced for Mississippi’s Black population.
For example, Mississippi’s health system scores in the 8th percentile for Black residents, but much higher for white residents, in the 38th percentile. Compared to 38 states with large Black populations, Mississippi’s health system ranks 37th overall.
Mississippi also performed poorly for insured and uninsured patients, showing that there are issues in health care delivery for those who have access on paper. There is one specific policy issue, however, that is partly responsible for the sheer breadth of the disparities in the state’s health care system: Medicaid expansion.
“Improving people’s health care requires people to have health insurance coverage, and you’re not going to see a narrowing of disparities in states like Mississippi unless you provide health insurance coverage for everyone in the state,” said Sarah Collins, vice president for health care coverage and access at Commonwealth. “We’ve seen in other states that the disparities narrow in coverage once they expand Medicaid. So this would be a critical first step for Mississippi. It’s not the last step, but would be a critical first one.”
Mississippi is one of 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Doing so would allow thousands of low-income Mississippians eligible for tax credits through the ACA marketplace. Without these tax credits, the few plans that are available on the state’s marketplace are too expensive for those that fall in this “coverage gap.”
The state’s top elected officials, most notably Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, oppose Medicaid expansion, and have long maintained that the state cannot afford the costs.
If Medicaid were expanded, the federal government would cover 90% of the health care costs related to expansion, while Mississippi would have to cover the remaining 10%. In September, one of Mississippi’s top economists released a study showing that the 10% state match would be more than covered by health care-related savings to the state and new tax revenue generated.
That three-week stretch of June 2020 — when Mississippi lawmakers worked to change the 127-year-old state flag, the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem — was insane. There’s really no other way to put it.
For those of us who got to watch those historic days unfold up close, perhaps the most memorable moment was when dozens of coaches from Mississippi’s eight public universities gathered at the Capitol for a joint press conference to drive a final nail in the old flag’s coffin.
All my professional life I have wondered what it would take for all the universities in Mississippi to agree on any matter under the sun. Just once.
And now I know: It’s the state flag of Mississippi — specifically, the need to get rid of the current flag.
Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
There was so much that we knew and heard at the time that we couldn’t report. We had to make several judgment calls a day about what information was most newsworthy at the moment.
One story that we had to lose in the fray: The first meeting of Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin and Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach in their new jobs came at the state Capitol, where they would serve as lobbyists together.
As you might expect, things got weird.
Mississippi schools typically don’t get to hire big national names as their head football coaches. Ole Miss and Mississippi State both did it after the 2019 season.
Fans across the state eagerly awaited what Kiffin and Leach would bring to their respective schools — both possessed offensive masterminds, both had a knack for stealing national headlines with their witty banter off the field.
Most figured the first time they’d meet as Mississippi coaches was Thanksgiving 2020 on the field in Oxford for the annual, bitter rivalry. Not so.
The fact that lawmakers were on the verge of changing the state flag in June 2020 was nothing short of miraculous. As protests over racial inequality raged across the state and nation following the murder of George Floyd, Mississippi lawmakers had earnestly worked for a couple weeks in early June to whip the votes to change the flag.
For decades, earnest efforts at the Capitol to change the flag — led by Black lawmakers — had been ignored by powerful white lawmakers, who enjoyed large majorities in both the House and Senate. There was virtually no broad political will among most white lawmakers, even in the summer of 2020, to change the flag.
Further complicating things in June 2020: Leaders needed to secure more votes than normal because deadlines to pass general bills had long passed.
Starting on June 8, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers — including Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn — had been unsuccessfully trying to whip enough votes to change the flag. Outside the building, pressure from Black organizers and activists, major corporations and other prominent groups like the Southeastern Conference and Mississippi Baptist Convention had reached its peak.
The clock was ticking as leaders had just a few days before the scheduled end of the legislative session.
Gunn, knowing the window of opportunity was closing, called University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney Bennett on June 23. All eight public universities had long stopped flying the state flag for moral reasons — a point of tension among some Republicans in the House and Senate in recent years.
So Bennett, at Gunn’s request, got all eight presidents to a meeting in the speaker’s office the very next morning on June 24 — an incredible feat considering it can be difficult to get all eight presidents in the same room even for their scheduled monthly college board meetings.
As the presidents sat in Gunn’s office that day, an idea was floated.
“Sports had already played a pretty big role in moving some lawmakers (to change the flag),” Gunn said. “It’s Mississippi. You know how sports are here. What more powerful way to convince people about this than sports?”
The presidents all agreed.
“From a press standpoint, the best thing we could come up with was to get the coaches involved,” said Rep. Trey Lamar, one of the speaker’s top lieutenants who was in the meeting with the university presidents. “So we told (the presidents) that and they all agreed, and they left that meeting with the understanding that we are leaving here, and we are calling our coaches and we are going to put it together. Within hours, you know, word had gotten back to us what was going to happen the next day. They were all coming back.”
The next day, on June 25, dozens of coaches from the state’s eight public universities would come to the Capitol to publicly lobby to change the flag.
Kiffin, the new Ole Miss coach, was in California on June 24 when he got a call from his boss Keith Carter, the university’s athletics director. They were sending a plane, and he’d need to be on it that night.
The new Ole Miss coach, who hadn’t spent much time in Mississippi since COVID-19 cancelled spring practice in 2020, landed in Jackson on June 25 around 3 a.m. and checked into a hotel near the Jackson-Evers International Airport.
A pretty robust morning of lobbying was planned for June 25. Dozens of coaches from the public universities would do two main things: Meet individually with lawmakers who were still privately saying they would not vote to change the flag, and collectively hold a press conference that would be broadcast across the state and nation to lobby to change the flag.
The thinking was that any legislative holdouts would cave to the pressure of sports figures who were privately and publicly asking them to make the change.
But early that morning, there was a problem. The Ole Miss athletics department group flying down that morning from Oxford was delayed, and Kiffin, who had gotten about three hours of sleep after arriving to town, had nothing to wear except the hoodie, T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops he arrived in.
That attire doesn’t quite meet the Capitol dress code, particularly when Kiffin would draw perhaps the most camera time of any coach there.
So Sidney Allen Jr., a Butler Snow lobbyist and Ole Miss alumnus, scrambled to solve Kiffin’s clothing dilemma. Allen called his friend Luke Abney, who owns The Rogue, a fine men’s clothing store in Jackson’s Highland Village. Abney told Allen he would open the store early on June 25 to get a suit quickly tailored as best they could.
Abney’s staff opened his store early, and Kiffin got there around 8:30 a.m. and stripped down to be fitted for a suit.
Mississippi football coach Lane Kiffin stands with other public universities coaches and athletic staffs in calling for a change of the Mississippi state flag, Thursday, June 25, 2020 at the Capitol in Jackson. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
That light blue suit and tan shoes Kiffin wore in front of all those cameras? He bought them minutes before getting to the Capitol that day.
“After we got him all dressed up, he left his other clothes here — the T-shirt, shorts, hoodie, visor, everything,” Abney said. “He told us he’d be back to pick it all up. He came back after he did his thing at the Capitol, he took pictures with everybody here, talked with us for about 30 minutes. He couldn’t have been nicer. It was fun as an Ole Miss guy to get to meet him, but it was really cool that he was in town to be a leader in changing the flag. It was a proud moment.”
Inside the Capitol on June 25, the coaches were not only doing the press conference, which the world saw; they were meeting with lawmakers behind closed doors.
Staffers for Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann ordered a nice breakfast spread for their expected visitors. The coaches in Hosemann’s office that morning would be treated with a true Southern delicacy: chicken biscuits from Chick-Fil-A.
Mike Leach, the Mississippi State coach, is apparently a fan.
When Leach, who flew to Jackson for the day from his home in Florida, made his way into Hosemann’s office, he didn’t immediately shake hands or greet anyone. Instead, he walked around to everyone who had a biscuit, grabbed them off their plates and stuffed them into his pockets.
Everyone in the office looked at each other in amazement, and Leach greeted Hosemann after a few seconds and began telling the staff some funny stories.
Mississippi basketball coach, Kermit Davis, center, joins other athletic staff from the state’s public universities calling for a change in the Mississippi state flag, during a joint news conference at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, June 25,2020. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
The coaches’ day at the Capitol was an incredible success.
Ole Miss men’s basketball coach Kermit Davis, Jr,, and Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Nikki McCray-Penson delivered eloquent speeches in the Capitol rotunda that centered on one single message: “Change the Mississippi flag. Now. Let’s move ahead.”
Just behind the podium stood Kiffin, in his brand new suit, and Leach, with pockets filled with biscuit crumbs. Jackson television station WAPT captured the hilarious moment when Leach, seeing Kiffin for the first time, pulled Kiffin’s mask off his face and popped it.
That mask that Kiffin wore? It was a Mississippi National Guard Association mask. Allen, the lobbyist, had to go get it from Senate Pro Tem Dean Kirby’s office because — you guessed it — Kiffin didn’t have one when he landed from California.
The suit, the biscuits and the mask fun aside, Kiffin and Leach scrambling to get to Jackson that day proved to be a critical moment in Mississippi history.
Two non-native Mississippi head coaches, men who would recruit and compete against each other, who are expected to hate each other, came together to make a difference for the state.
“This is very important to (the student-athletes),” Kiffin said at the Capitol that day. “Anything we can do to help support them, and I think it has a lot to do with the future of the state programs. You’re going to deal with kids leaving the state or not wanting to come because of this… It’s important for the rivalry for people to see us (Kiffin and Leach) coming together for one united cause. That’s very important.”
“The purpose of a state flag is to unify the state. Right now, this flag doesn’t do that,” Leach said that day. “To me, it’s really quite simple. Why do you have a state flag? To unify all the people in the state. If your flag doesn’t do that, change it. Does your flag bring business to the state or keep business out? If it doesn’t bring it in, change it. Does it draw athletes and people to the state, or not? If it doesn’t, change it. It’s as simple as that. On that very practical level, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened a long time ago.”
Three days later, lawmakers cast the final vote to change the state flag. Many people deserve credit for that final outcome, but the coaches coming to the Capitol that day certainly moved the needle with several lawmakers who had previously resisted making that vote.
Kiffin and Leach, two Mississippi outsiders, played an unexpectedly large role in that.
If only Jackson State had hired Deion Sanders just a couple months earlier so he could’ve gotten in on the fun.
Brandon High School coach and former Mississippi State receiver Sam Williams joins the Cleveland boys to talk about his Bulldogs’ bruising run in the MHSAA Playoffs and what it’s like to prepare to play in an Egg Bowl.
In the year after a State Auditor’s investigation forced Mississippi’s former welfare director to retire due to massive alleged misspending and theft, the state spent the lowest amount welfare dollars in the program’s history.
The effect was that fewer dollars flew out the door unchecked, but also that fewer people in the poorest state in the nation received the aid during a particularly difficult year.
Prior to three years ago, low-income child advocacy groups had reamed the state for not using all of its federal welfare funding; in turn, the welfare agency started shelling out cash. In 2020, as the scandal unfolded, the agency accumulated an “unobligated” balance of nearly $50 million, back up to where it was when the agency was catching so much flack for leaving funds unspent.
From October 2019 to September 2020, half of which was during a global pandemic and economic recession, the state spent $77 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grant funds compared to $135 million just two years earlier.
New federal data shows the state in 2020 spent less than 5%, about $3.7 million, on direct cash assistance to poor families, what people generally think of when they hear “welfare.” Nationally, that number is 22%. This low spending on direct assistance is typical for Mississippi’s program. However, a recent legislative increase to the cash assistance benefit amount should result in a uptick in this spending in 2021. The data reflecting this year won’t be released until 2022.
The departure in expenditures for 2020 follows three years of allegedly reckless spending, where millions of welfare dollars went to celebrity athletes, rents on buildings that sat empty, Christian rock concerts, legislative lobbying, luxury rehab stints and more. Following the arrest of former agency director John Davis, retired WWE wrestler Brett DiBiase, nonprofit founder Nancy New, her son Zach New, and two other employees, the agency promised to clean up the program and institute tighter controls on its subgrantees.
The $77 million spent in 2020 includes around $18 million that Mississippi spends in state dollars every year for college scholarships, many of which go to students from middle class families, that it records as welfare spending for the purpose of meeting its federal match. It also includes almost $8.5 million in federal aid the state spends on administration and $22 million that the state transfers to Child Protection Services to supplement the budget of the state’s foster care system.
This means less than a third of welfare spending in 2020 went to dedicated services for families in poverty: cash assistance ($3.7 million), work supports like transportation ($5.7 million) and Fatherhood and Two-Parent Family Formation and Maintenance Programs ($15.4 million).
The state did not transfer any funds in 2020 to the Child Care Development Fund, which provides child care vouchers to working families and, due to funding shortfalls, serves only a fraction of children in need each year. In some past years, the state has transferred the maximum of 30% of its TANF grant to child care.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families released the new data in October.
Mississippi receives $86 million through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant each year to assist very poor residents or prevent families from falling into poverty. The state must provide a state match of around $22 million. In 2020, Mississippi spent just 64% of its federal funding.
Every year, the state issues a portion of its funding as TANF subgrants to private organizations, such as local planning and development districts, the Boys & Girls Club, or international humanitarian organization Save the Children, to offer services to families, such as workforce development, parenting classes or after school programs. The new federal data suggests the department primarily codes these expenditures under the “fatherhood” category. For more than 20 years, the state has called some of these TANF subgrants, which went to many small organizations across the state, “Families First grants.”
Prior to Davis’ administration, the state had not been spending all of its grant funds each year, leaving millions unspent despite great need across the state. Advocates for affordable child care for low-income families frequently lambasted the state for failing to spend down its welfare dollars in ways that best serve the state’s struggling residents. By 2016, the state had accumulated $47 million in unspent welfare dollars.
The state recognized it had money to blow.
The department opened itself up to trouble in 2017 when it chose to subgrant with just two nonprofits to run the statewide “Families First for Mississippi,” and it began sending up-front, multi-million payments to the private organizations. The agency selected Nancy New’s nonprofit without a competitive bid process to run the program in the southern half of the state. She called her organization a “flow-through” in an interview with Mississippi Today in 2018, and said most of the money was going to its “partners,” but the money did not flow to many legitimate organizations, audit reports revealed.
Instead, millions went to her own private businesses and the pet projects of political allies and celebrities, auditors found. That year, the state spent $135 million. The initiative ceased once auditors uncovered the scandal.
By the end of fiscal year 2020, the state’s unspent balance of welfare dollars was back up to $47 million, where it was before the Families First debacle.
Federal spending data for government programs typically publishes at least a year after the fact. As for 2021, Mississippi Today requested every TANF subgrant agreement the agency has signed in the last year, which may be viewed here.
Taylor Defense Products in Louisville has won a $261.7 million competitive bid contract to build cranes for the U.S. Army.
The contract work is expected to extend through November of 2024 to produce commercial cranes modified for military use, said U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, who announced the contract award on Tuesday.
Taylor Defense is part of Mississippi based The Taylor Group, which owns several manufacturing companies. The company dates back to 1927 with the creation of Taylor Machine Works in Louisville. Taylor employs about 1,200 employees and has annual sales of $550 million. The Taylor Group is one of the largest heavy lift manufacturers in the United States.
Taylor Defense in May was awarded a $1.27 million contract to develop a modernized rough terrain container handler for the Army and in June 2019 was selected by the Marine Corps for an $84 million, 10-year contract to repair and maintain all-terrain cranes.
In a statement, Hyde-Smith said: “I commend Taylor on its successful bid, which will benefit our national defense and our state’s economy.”
When Brandon Elementary School Principal Vallerie Lacey’s son was in the third grade, something happened that changed her as both a parent and an educator.
That change would play a huge role in why Brandon Elementary was recognized as a national Blue Ribbon school for closing the achievement gap between groups of children who historically underperform their peers.
The U.S. Department of Education’s National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes extraordinary schools in two separate categories: overall academic excellence and progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups. This year, 325 schools received the honor nationwide. Brandon Elementary School in Rankin County School District, along with Woolmarket Elementary School in Harrison County School District, received the distinction for having the highest rates of closing achievement gaps among their students over a three-year period.
East Hancock Elementary School in Hancock County School District and Della Davidson Elementary School in the Oxford School District were recognized for their students’ overall academic performance.
The achievement gap is calculated by comparing the proficiency levels of certain reference groups (students who are white, do not have disabilities, are not economically disadvantaged and speak English as their first language) on state tests with other groups, including English learners, students with disabilities, and African-American and Hispanic students.
What this school has done is no small feat — statewide, the gaps between all but one of these subgroups have widened over time. At Brandon Elementary School, the proficiency gap between economically disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers decreased in both English Language Arts and mathematics from 2017 compared to 2019. The gap also decreased in both subjects between students with disabilities and those without disabilities, in addition to Black students compared to white students.
There was around a 30% gap in proficiency in both mathematics and English Language Arts between Black and white students in 2019. There are also similarly wide gaps between economically disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers in both math and English, in addition to students with disabilities and those without.
These gaps only widened in the spring of 2021 as a result of the pandemic.
Vallerie Lacey is the principal at Brandon Elementary School. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Lacey attributes these gaps closing at Brandon Elementary as a direct outcome of her vision and mission: inclusion. In education lingo that refers mostly to students with disabilities, but she and the staff at Brandon apply it to everything.
When Lacey was an assistant principal at Florence Elementary, her son also attended school there.
“When he was in third grade, a team of educators came and sat me down and told me my baby was autistic,” she remembered. “It was the first time I’d ever heard it, and it completely changed my life in that moment as an educator and as a parent.”
He was given a special education ruling and received an individualized education plan (IEP), or a written document that includes annual goals, special services, any needed testing modifications and how the student’s progress will be measured, among other items. He was routinely removed from his general classrooms to receive services from a special education teacher.
Until one of his teachers came to Lacey with a concern.
“She said, ‘When he gets pulled out of the classroom, he’s missing instruction. I need him not to be pulled out of my classroom,’” Lacey recalled. She went to his special education teacher and they made some adjustments to his plan.
“That was the only year of my son’s whole academic career that he was not minimal on state achievement tests … all because there was a teacher caring enough about my kid to say, ‘Don’t let him be pulled out of the room,’” she said. “It changed my whole mindset.”
Since then, Lacey has emphasized inclusion in every sense of the word. It’s what she was determined to instill in the culture when she came to Brandon Elementary in 2018.
Whenever someone has an idea for a club or an event, her first question is always the same: Is it inclusive or exclusive?
The term “inclusion” even applies to the way the teachers teach. Special education teachers work alongside other teachers in the classroom, similar to co-teaching. The teachers say students don’t view them as general and special education teachers, and they will often alternate teaching lessons to the whole class.
Brandon Elementary School teacher Larenda Franklin helps students with the day’s lesson, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Brandon Elementary School teacher Larenda Franklin with her fourth grade students, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Brandon Elementary School teacher Jeremy Cooper and students head to recess, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Brandon Elementary School teacher Jeremy Cooper helps Garrick Walker, 10, with a reading lesson, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Brandon Elementary School teacher Jeremy Cooper helps a student with a reading lesson, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“It’s really easy when you have a student who comes in with an IEP … to look at that label and say ‘Oh, they’re not going to be able to do what everybody else can do,’” said Jeremy Cooper, a fifth grade special education inclusion teacher. “Whereas we start with trying to get them to do what everybody else is doing first. We hold them up to a standard of rigor and of excellence because we want just as much for them as we want for our other students.”
She and the other teachers also make a concerted effort to know every individual child — both academically and personally.
Despite the fact there are around 800 students who attend the school, she and a team of teachers, guidance counselors and an interventionist meet monthly to discuss every individual student in depth. If the student is not growing, Lacey and other teachers say, the conclusion is not that the student can’t. The conclusion is they need to try something different to help the child grow.
And they know more about the students than just their academics.
“I can tell you what kind of car people drive because I stand outside every morning and wave goodbye every afternoon. If I don’t do anything else, I’m intentional about saying good morning and goodbye every single day, rain, snow, sleet or shine,” she said. “I do it because you can tell a lot about how a child comes in, how they get out of the car, their body language.”
Susan Dill is a teacher at Brandon Elementary School. Dill expresses a dedication to each students needs, Friday, October 22, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Susie Dill, an interventionist for the school who helps identify students who may need special services, echoed Lacey. She said teachers make an effort to know everything they can about each student who walks in the doors.
And recognizing the importance for students to have teachers they can relate to outside of academics, Lacey prioritizes diversity when recruiting and hiring teachers.
Students who may be struggling with issues at home often have weekly check-ins with teachers to whom they can relate. It’s part of a larger school and district-wide initiative to focus on the social and emotional aspects of a student’s well-being, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when students’ lives have been disrupted, they or their caregivers have gotten sick or, even died.
“As a result of COVID-19, we have had to take an even deeper look at students’ social and emotional health … We are more intentional than ever with incorporating social and emotional health into our target zone,” said Lacey, who mentioned the school, along with the district, is reading Jimmy Casas’ “Culturize,” a book about instilling values such as kindness, honesty and compassion in students while challenging them academically.
“While we are still very committed to continuing our charge in closing achievement gaps … we are more intentional than ever with incorporating social and emotional health into our target zone,” said Lacey.
