Inside an at-risk voter’s journey to ensure safe voting conditions in her Delta town

Jackie Lucas is a lifelong voter who had concerns about voting in her small Mound Bayou precinct during the pandemic. When she tried to work with elected officials to change it, she encountered systemic dysfunction at every level.

By Kelsey Davis Betz | Oct. 15, 2020

MOUND BAYOU — Jackie Lucas has never missed a vote. The state of Mississippi has never made it so difficult for her to do so. That is, until the pandemic hit.

Lucas, a Black senior citizen with diabetes, did not feel safe voting in her small, enclosed voting place at Mound Bayou’s city hall. Her town is known for its civic engagement; it’s not unusual for folks to sit shoulder-to-shoulder while waiting to cast a vote.

According to precinct voter population estimates based on the 2010 census, Mound Bayou’s voting precinct serves 1,965 people, which is about 70% higher than the state’s average precinct.

“We just don’t have space there to do any kind of distancing,” Lucas said.

She also didn’t feel confident that the president wouldn’t try to undermine her absentee vote.

The most logical solution she saw was to work with her elected officials to move the voting location from the small city hall to the spacious high school gym less than half a mile away.

She eventually prevailed, but not without jumping through multiple hoops and first hearing from every elected official she asked that there was nothing they could do.

About 64 days before the election, Lucas reached out to Shelia Perry, her county election commissioner, to discuss changing Mound Bayou’s voting location, but said she never heard back. Lucas then heard from the Mound Bayou mayor that Perry had reached out and said nothing could be done.

Indeed, Perry told Mississippi Today that she reached out to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office for guidance, but says she was told that voting locations must be changed 90 days before an election.

In all, Lucas sought help from her mayor, election commissioner, the board attorney for the election commissioners and her state representative.

While some of them genuinely tried to help her come up with safer, alternative voting solutions, none of them knew that there was actually no law binding polling places to be changed by a certain amount of time before an election.

Even Gov. Tate Reeves, when asked for clarity about what the process was to change a voting location, did not know the answer.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m not an expert on election law,” Reeves said. “If it is 90 days, and this was a major issue in a county, we’ve had the coronavirus here in the county for a while now. We knew that elections were coming up in November.”

This was something Lucas heard while trying to get her voting location changed — not just that she was out of luck, but that she should have thought of this sooner.

“I asked Mrs. Lucas why we didn’t look at this before 90 days, and she was just very candid in saying she just didn’t think about it before recently,” said state Rep. Abe Hudson, D-Shelby. “And I totally understand, but I’m glad she brought the conversation up.”

Hudson did try to help come up with solutions to mitigate virus spread on Election Day, like securing tents and fans so the election could be moved outside. He also sent grant opportunities to Delta-based circuit clerks to help cover the cost of that.

“I will be honest, I give (Lucas) all the credit in the world for bringing it up,” Hudson said.

Voting rights advocate and law student Teresa Jones said it’s the responsibility of elected officials to ensure safe voting on behalf of their constituents.

“The responsibility shouldn’t lie upon the constituent to make sure she’s able to vote. The polling location for her, not being actually safe — that’s a necessity that should have been planned for at the state level and at the county level,” Jones said.

Jones continued: “Obviously, it seems like this is something that’s very important to her and she’s going out of her way to make it so that she is able to do it and do it safely. There’s no telling how many other people maybe are feeling the exact same way, and they don’t know to call their elections commissioner. They don’t know to call their state (representative) because a lot of times the average voter don’t even know who those people are.”

Born and raised in Mound Bayou, Lucas grew up watching her mother work on elections and serve as an alderman for 20 years. She remembers the KKK’s violent threats against the first Black Bolivar County supervisor voted into office, and how he fled for safety to Mound Bayou. And there were the stories she was brought up on about what her grandfather went through to vote as a Black Mississippian during the Jim Crow era.

“My grandfather used to speak about when the white people in Bolivar County didn’t want the Black people to vote, (the Black people) would have to wait in long lines,” Lucas said. “They (the white people) would give them water and food contaminated with a laxative and they’d all have to leave the polls. The trickery of voter suppression, it lives on. It’s just different ways to try to keep Black people from voting.”

She could have voted absentee or voted early because of her age or found times during Election Day that were likely to be less crowded. The issue reached beyond just her, though. With the coronavirus disproportionately killing Black people, she has now lost track of the number of people she knows who died from it.

In Bolivar County, where she lives, COVID-19 has infected 1,993 people — and 61% of them were Black. So forcing people to vote in a space that the CDC said would lend itself to virus transmission felt like another instance where Black people must risk their lives to vote and white leaders don’t care, she said.

“I know the current president is not going to look at this and say, ‘Oh yes, they need to have a bigger space (to vote).’ But the people of Mound Bayou should be able to vote and they ought to be safe voting,” she said.

And, of course, not casting a vote was never an option for her.

“You can’t protest and say, ‘I’m not going to vote, I’m not going there to risk my life.’ That’s what is desired,” Lucas said.

Ultimately, it was determined that either miscommunication, misunderstanding or misinformation transpired between the Mississippi secretary of state’s office and Perry.

“I am not sure who the election commissioner from Bolivar County spoke with, but there is no hard deadline to change a polling place,” said Kendra James, assistant secretary of state for communications and publications, in an email to Mississippi Today. “Again, we recommend making all polling place changes no later than 60 days before the election so there is sufficient time to notify the affected voters, but there is not a hard deadline.”

James also said that the secretary of state’s office had asked the counties to reach out to their polling locations to make sure they were still available for Election Day and suitable for voting under current conditions.

“If the county cannot use the polling place or has a location better suitable for current conditions, such as a facility that allows more social distancing or a facility that allows one door for entry and exit, the county was encouraged to change the location,” James said. “Through our (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) CARES Grant funding, we have also offered to reimburse counties for purchasing/renting reasonably priced tents for open-air voting and one table per precinct to allow for voting outside.”

Still, there has been confusion at every level of government about this, and state leadership has not elected to make voting during a pandemic easier for anyone.

Mississippi, which already had some of the most restrictive early voting laws in the nation, did less than most other states to make it easier to vote early in person or by mail to avoid crowded precincts on Election Day and to avoid possible exposure to the coronavirus.

Even before the pandemic, most states allowed no-excuse early voting.

But in Mississippi, only those who will be away from their homes on Election Day, the elderly and disabled are allowed to vote early. In the 2020 session, the Legislature did add a provision to allow those who are in a physician-imposed quarantine because of the coronavirus and those who are caretakers of those impacted by the coronavirus to vote early. But that provision has been interpreted narrowly by the state Supreme Court.

Exactly 30 days before the Nov. 3 election, Lucas got word that the county would work with her to change her polling place. As it turns out, county supervisors (and only county supervisors) have the authority to change a voting location any time before the election, as long as it’s due to an emergency.

During an Oct. 3 Bolivar County Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Olanda Morton, who represents Mound Bayou, asked the board attorney to help get the location changed. The same attorney who represents the board of supervisors also represents the election commission board.

“I just would like to move ahead and get with the board (of elections in Bolivar County) and see what can be done,” Morton said.

Now that Lucas knows the polling location in Mound Bayou will be changed and voting can be done more safely, she’s turned her attention to making sure as many people as possible get out to vote.

“I am just elated,” she said. “We won’t have to endure that.”

Bobby Harrison and Alex Rozier contributed to this report.

The post Inside an at-risk Mississippi Delta voter’s journey to ensure safe voting conditions appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

The Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

One legislative vacancy remains to be filled after four runoff special elections for House and Senate seats were completed Tuesday.

Six legislative vacancies, caused by resignations, have occurred this year — an unusually high number in the first year of a new four-year term, and only one year after all 174 legislative posts were up for election.

In Tuesday’s runoff election:

• Senate District 15: Businessman Bart Williamson defeated Mississippi State University professor Joyce Meek Yates in a seat left open by the resignation of Gary Jackson. The district consists of portions of Choctaw, Oktibbeha and Webster counties.
• Senate District 30: Attorney Jason Barrett defeated banker Bill Sones in a district that consists of portions of four counties but is centered around Brookhaven in southwest Mississippi. Barrett will replace Sally Doty, who resigned from the seat after being appointed as executive director of the Public Utilities staff by Gov. Tate Reeves. Besides Lincoln County, the district also consists of portions of Copiah, Lawrence, and Walthall counties.
• House District 37: Former Lowndes County School Superintendent Lynn Wright upended business owner David Chism, who is the cousin of Gary Chism, who held the post until his resignation earlier this year. The district consist of portions of Clay, Oktibbeha and Lowndes counties.
• House District 66: De’Keither Stamps, a member of the Jackson City Council, upended former school teacher Robert C. “Bob” Lee Jr. in the Hinds County district. Stamps will replace Jarvis Dortch, who stepped down to become director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this year Sanderson Farms executive Robin Robinson won a special election in District 88 to replace Ramona Blackledge. The district consists of portions of Jones and Jasper counties.

On Nov. 3, Matthew Conely, David Wayne Morgan and Joseph “Bubba” Tubb will be on the ballot for the District 87 post in Forrest and Lamar counties. That post became vacant when Billy Andrews stepped down early this summer.

If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the special election, a runoff will be held between the top two vote-getters.

In January, when the new session begins, the two presiding officers, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in the Senate, will have to juggle committee assignments because of the resignations and election of new members. The plum committee post will be Senate Judiciary A, left vacant by Doty’s resignation.

Candidates run without party labels in legislative special elections. But thus far it is not likely that the results will change the partisan makeup of the House and the Senate. All of the resignations were Republican, with the exception of Dortch. Stamps is expected to serve as a Democrat, replacing Dortch. And the other winning candidates this week are expected to serve as Republicans.

The post Four new lawmakers elected Tuesday, and one legislative vacancy remains appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mike Espy said incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is disrespecting Mississippians by offering few open-to-the-public appearances.

Democratic challenger Mike Espy said incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is hiding from and disrespecting Mississippians by refusing to debate him and running a low-profile campaign with few open-to-the-public appearances.

“She’s doing the same thing the rest of the country often does — ignoring Mississippi,” Espy said in a Wednesday press conference before he hits the campaign trail for the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election. “… She’s running a lazy campaign, taking voters for granted. You don’t do that in Mississippi.”

Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. On social media, she posted: “You have a choice this election, so I encourage you to dig into both of our records…” with a link to one of her campaign ads.

Espy said: “If you can’t come stand before the public or answer questions from the media, then you don’t deserve this seat … Unlike Sen. Hyde-Smith, when you call on me I will respond. When you ask me a question, I will answer it. I’m not going to run away from you … Cindy Hyde-Smith has not held one town-hall meeting in two years.”

READ MORE: “The last thing I’m worried about”: Sen. Hyde-Smith walks back willingness to debate Espy.

Espy said health care is the most important issue of the race, and he said Hyde-Smith should stand before voters and answer questions about her platform. He said she supports repeal of the federal Affordable Care Act “with no plan to replace it in the middle of a pandemic.” Espy also said Hyde-Smith “voted five times to undermine protections for pre-existing conditions.”

Hyde-Smith, in a rematch with Espy for a seat that most prognosticators consider safely Republican in one of the reddest states in the country, has done little public campaigning and has declined invitations to debate. The Mississippi race is one of few Senate contests across the country where candidates are not debating.

READ MORE: Most U.S. senators running in 2020 have agreed to debate. Cindy Hyde-Smith has not.

Espy criticized Hyde-Smith for comments she made recently on how it was good for voters that Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris were debating to give the public their opinions and to show how they respond under pressure.

Many politicos have surmised that Hyde-Smith — prone to gaffes on the public campaign trail — believes she has a substantial lead in the race, can ride President Donald Trump’s coattails with Mississippi voters, and is otherwise laying low and trying not to give Espy’s campaign any platform.

Espy has accepted two debate requests, from WJTV and from WLBT, and on Wednesday said he is still willing to debate in the final weeks of the campaign.

Hyde-Smith had recently indicated she would like to debate Espy, if her schedule would allow it. But in comments to WJTV last week, Hyde-Smith said: “We have 27 days left. The last thing I’m worried about is a debate. With such stark differences, why would so much emphasis be put on a debate? … I don’t think a lot of minds would be changed.”

On Wednesday, Espy said: “That’s why you debate someone, if there are stark differences.”

The post ‘She’s ignoring Mississippi’: Mike Espy rips Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith for low-profile Senate campaign appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The new normal: How Mississippi students are adjusting to a virtual school year

By Aallyah Wright | Oct. 14, 2020

CLARKSDALE — On an early August morning, Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School teacher Hannah Fisher looked directly into her computer camera and asked her first graders to hold up their pencils. Every student who raised their pencil finished their assignment: spelling two and four letter words.

In a normal setting, Fisher would be in her classroom teaching students. Now, as a global pandemic has upended schooling and the way people teach, she’s fixated on students in small squares on Zoom. Some students were visible on their screens. A few others only displayed their names. 

A few minutes later, Fisher reminded students to move on to write their words. In the midst of that, she stopped to address a student’s behavior.

“Sit up,” she said to the student. “Remember we’re not (lying) on the carpet. We’re writing right now. …I’m going to turn off your video and it’ll come on in 30 seconds. OK? I’m gonna get you to fix it in that time.”

Fisher’s first graders are not alone in struggling to stay engaged, communicate and navigate online platforms. Additionally, connectivity and internet access is a hindrance to getting kids online. The Mississippi Department of Education is currently rolling out a plan to deliver nearly 400,000 devices to students. Districts are supposed to receive them no later than Nov. 20. The department said 12 districts are receiving their devices this week, though many are still waiting. 

Students and parents say they fear the negative impact the delay will have on student learning.

READ MORE: Mississippi is getting devices to every child. That’s just the first step.

“(Schools) want to make sure that kids are safe, accounted for, (and) engaged in their learning,” said Brennan Parton, policy and advocacy director at Data Quality Campaign. “They’re really having to rethink and reimagine and get creative about how we do that during this unprecedented time … the stakes are higher.”

Nearly three months ago, the state department required local school districts to submit their reopening plans detailing how they will resume — whether virtual, in-person or a mixture of the two. 

The Clarksdale Municipal School District settled on virtual learning for the first half of the semester. This changed when school officials learned many students did not have internet access or devices. So for the first two weeks of school, students received instructional packets. Currently, 21% of the student population uses instructional packets only and 57% is virtual only, according to data from the Clarksdale Municipal district.

Students said the instructional packets cause confusion and leave them unmotivated because they don’t provide the opportunity for teacher-student interaction the way a traditional classroom set up does. 

“I’ve never taken human anatomy so I don’t know what I’m doing, meaning more than likely if I don’t find the answers online, I will fail doing the packets,” Marchellos Scott, Jr., a Clarksdale High School senior, said. “The teachers said they’re just holding on, doing what they’re being told and everything keeps changing so they are confused as well.”

Scott is enrolled in virtual only but is required to complete instructional packets for certain classes, he said. He said he thinks his grades will suffer because he is not learning as much.

For other students, online learning halts much needed support services.

Griffin Threatt, an eighth grader at Clinton Junior High School, said he missed the face-to-face interaction with his teachers. Griffin is on a hybrid schedule, but a traditional classroom environment keeps him “more focused while I’m learning,” he said.

His mother, Amanda Threatt, praised his growth over the past year, but worries he won’t be able to keep up. She added he hasn’t received as much support as a student with special needs.

“I went ahead and got him a math tutor because he’s in Algebra this year just to keep him on task,” she said. “(One of his teachers) said it’s really hard to help the kids with IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) because we really don’t have the support right now… He feels like he’s learning but not at the rate he’s used to.”

Some parents said virtual learning created opportunities to spend quality time they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Before the pandemic, Jackson native Brittany Watson Cain worked eight-hour days. She arrived at home around 10:00 p.m. every night, so she rarely saw her four children. When schools closed in March, so did the doors at her job. She started working from home.

“By the time you get home, you’re exhausted, they’re tired, so it wasn’t always the best scenario,” Watson Cain said. “It’s harder for some people because they don’t have that. They really don’t have childcare, you know? So I do understand.”

District officials said technology allows students to explore and use applications on their own even though it poses some challenges. Clarksdale Collegiate students had devices before the pandemic, but now students have devices at home. This means students don’t have in-person teacher support to assist with devices. Despite this, students are still able to navigate programs — like first graders submitting Google Forms, said Amanda Johnson, executive director of Clarksdale Collegiate.

“We’ve been pushed to think about how we use technology and just teaching our kids and getting them engaged,” Johnson said. “It’s allowing technology to help us solve problems and help us support our kids more. There’s no reason why that should go away.” 

Parton, the Data Quality Campgain director, says state education agencies and lawmakers should be forward-thinking about understanding how the pandemic has disrupted students’ learning progress. This magnifies learning inequities even more for students who need more support and resources. 

“Even as they’re trying to meet students’ acute needs — internet access, laptops, engagement in class — states also need to be planful about the kinds of things that they’re going to need to do not only now, but the rest of the school year,” Parton said. “There’s going to be a lot of academic slide for students – more than you normally lose over the course of the summer.”

Carey Wright, state superintendent of Mississippi public schools, encourages teachers to accelerate learning as a way to address learning loss, or academic slide. For example, if a student is in fifth grade, the teacher should teach fifth grade standards.

“Our standards are designed in a way that they build on each other and also spiral,” she told Mississippi Today. “If you keep drilling and killing on some of these skills, kids are never going to get it. Start with grade-level standards and accelerate their learning. That approach is one that has been validated by others in the field.”

Remote learning is a learning curve for educators and families, but consistent communication and proper resources can alleviate concerns and access barriers for students.

“Until everyone gets on the same page, it’s only going to get worse,” Scott, the Clarksdale student, said. “It’s definitely gonna be hard on students, but I think we should still put together plans in case something like this happens again.”

The post How Mississippi students are adjusting to a virtual school year appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Othia McMillian fills out her ballot at the Hinds County Courthouse on Oct. 13, 2020.

While Mississippi’s early voting laws are the most restrictive in the nation this year, it appears those eligible to vote absentee in the 2020 election may be doing so in record numbers.

As of Sunday, more than three weeks before Election Day and the deadline to vote absentee, 58,796 Mississippians had cast absentee ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office, and 91,474 absentee ballots had been requested. In the 2016 presidential election, a total of 102,915 Mississippians voted absentee.

Circuit clerks in several highly populated counties told Mississippi Today that absentee voting appeared higher than ever in 2020, a year featuring a presidential election and the closely contested U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy. 

Typically, high absentee voting numbers portend high in-person voter turnout on election day.

“It’s extremely heavy,” Harrison County Circuit Clerk Connie Ladner said of early voters in the most populous county on the Gulf Coast. “We started on Sept. 21 with a line of people, and it hasn’t stopped since. I’ve been through a lot of presidential elections, and I’ve never seen an absentee turnout like this.”

Ladner said that as of Tuesday, her county had received 8,398 absentee votes, compared to 5,379 total for the 45-day absentee voting period in the 2016 presidential election.

Voters have also stood in long lines outside the circuit clerk’s office in Hinds County, the most populous county in the state and a Democratic stronghold.

Hinds County Circuit Clerk Zach Wallace told Mississippi Today about 5,000 residents there had already voted absentee. In the 2016 presidential election, Hinds County received 5,309 absentee votes.

Early voting has been among the hottest political issues of 2020 as many voters express safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mississippi is the only state in the nation that doesn’t provide all registered voters a way to vote early without having to risk COVID-19 exposure at the polls, according to a report by the Democracy Initiative.

READ MORE: “Practices aimed to suppress the vote”: Mississippi is the only state without early voting for all during pandemic.

To make accommodations for the pandemic, Mississippi lawmakers expanded early voting earlier this year only to those who are in a physician-ordered quarantine or are the caretaker for someone in quarantine. Lawsuits have been filed to try to expand the early voting opportunities in Mississippi, but they have had not been successful thus far.

Even before the pandemic, Mississippi had some of the most restrictive early voting laws in the nation. Only people who are going to be away from their home area on Election Day, those over the age of 65 and people with disabilities are allowed to vote absentee, either in person or by mail.

Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

“We’re getting our votes in early and getting it done,” said Irish Simmons, with her brother Tyrone Mayes, at the Hinds County Courthouse on Oct. 13, 2020.

State law, however, does not mandate that people wanting to vote early because they are going to be away from their home on Election Day provide proof of their travel plans.

“I tell them if they have an ID, they can vote,” said Union County Circuit Clerk Phyllis Stanford.

“We tell them they have to comply for absentee voting with a valid reason,” said Ladner, the Harrison County circuit clerk. “We refer them to the county website, where we list the reasons, and they call us back and tell us their reason.”

Ladner said voters are basically on the honor system for supplying a reason, but “they’re signing the application under penalty of perjury.”

State law does prevent circuit clerks from sending a mail-in ballot to someone because they say they will be away from home on Election Day. Typically, the circuit clerk would tell that person to drop by their office before Election Day and vote.

Mail-in ballots are reserved for people who are residents and registered voters of the state who are in college away from home, might be working or living for whatever reason for a period of time out of state. In that situation, both the ballot and the ballot application would have to be notarized. 

People with a temporary or permanent disability and their caretakers in some instances can receive a mail-in ballot. People over age 65 can also request a mail-in ballot or vote early in person. There are other, smaller categories of early voters, such as people whose jobs would prevent them from voting on Election Day, and U.S. House and Senate members and their staffs.

READ MORE: Legislative leaders, once again, say they will not expand early voting during pandemic.

Ladner said she believes interest in the election, more than the COVID-19 pandemic, is driving the absentee turnout this year.

“I think some may have to do with (the pandemic), but I just think it’s this election, from what we’ve seen and listening to the people coming in,” Ladner said. “We have people who it’s their first time to vote, coming in to vote absentee … With the over 65 crowd, yes, that would be because of COVID-19, but we have a lot of students, lot of people that work out of town, and a great turnout from military.”

Ladner said that of the 8,398 Harrison County absentee ballots so far, 5,749 have been cast in person, and the rest are mail-in. She said her office is sending out about 200-300 mail in ballots a day. Mail in ballots must be postmarked by election day on Nov. 3 to be counted.

Ladner said that recently, a man came in and voted absentee on his 102nd birthday.

In Union County in Northeast Mississippi, 484 people had voted absentee as of Tuesday compared to about 500 for the entire early voting period in 2016.

Sparsely populated Quitman County in the Mississippi Delta may be one of the few counties not experiencing a rush of early voters.

“Compared to other (presidential election years), it’s been a crawl,” Quitman County Circuit Clerk Brenda A. Wiggs said. “We have less than 200 right now – probably around 175 – and we usually get around 900.

“They were telling us to expect more than ever this year – we were figuring around 1,300, but there’s no way we’ll do that at this pace,” Wiggs continued. “I have no idea as to why, other than there aren’t any local elections, and you don’t have the ballot shoppers going around or calling people.”

Wiggs said she’s not aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is having any impact on absentee voting, but noted, “a lot of the people that normally come in (and absentee vote) are not coming in yet.”

Wiggs said most absentee voters do so in person at the clerk’s office because of the difficulty of getting a mail-in ballot notarized.

Wiggs said she provides absentee ballots to anyone who “has a legitimate, lawful reason,” although she said it’s hard to verify whether a reason is true.

“Of course, they can lie to me – believe me, they lie like a dog all the time — but we’ve not had many come in that I questioned at all. Ones that have come in have had legitimate reasons.”

Wiggs said one man requested a ballot because of COVID-19, and she told him that was not a valid excuse unless a doctor had diagnosed him with it. But she said the man was over 65, “so he had a legitimate reason anyway.”

The post Mississippi poised to break absentee voting record in 2020 election appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Gov. Tate Reeves announced two new appointments to the State Board of Education on Tuesday. 

Reeves is appointing Angela Bass, the executive director of an education organization, of Jackson and Glen East, a superintendent, of Gulfport to fill two vacant spots on the nine-member board. 

“Mississippi’s children deserve our steadfast commitment to improving education. We must continue to improve outcomes for these students without fear of upsetting the status quo,” said Reeves in a press release. “I am confident that Angela and Glen will serve with honor and represent the interest of parents, teachers, and — most importantly — students. Their achievement has to be our top priority.”

Mississippi First

Angela Bass

Bass is a former Teach for America corps member who studied education policy and management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She later became a teacher in both the Tunica and Desoto County school districts and an administrator at the KIPP Memphis Collegiate High School.

She currently serves as the executive director of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, which works with organizations and stakeholders to improve education and development of Mississippi children under 8-years-old.

“I am honored to serve the students, families, educators, and children of Mississippi. I am a leader of an early education advocacy organization, a public school parent, and a former educator,” said Bass. “I am excited to bring my perspectives to the board, all while listening to constituents and representing their interests well. I believe that our state’s future depends on the strength of our education system, and I am prepared to do the hard work to ensure its continued improvement.”

Glen East

East is superintendent of Gulfport School District, which contains 10 schools and around 5,800 students. It is an A-rated district.

He said he is looking forward to working with the board members.

“We will be working hard to do what’s best for all children in the state of Mississippi,” he said.

Jason Dean, chairman of the state board, said Bass and East’s experience and knowledge will be assets to the board. 

“Her (Bass’) impressive background in public policy, particularly as it relates to early childhood education, will be a welcome addition to the Board’s work,” said Dean. 

Dean said he has known East and describes him as “forward thinking” in his educational leadership.

“He has dedicated his professional life to improving educational outcomes and, from what I can tell, he is very much forward leaning when it comes to connecting the educational expectations of parents, students and the community,” said Dean. “We will be well served with his counsel on the State Board of Education.”

Reeves’ previous appointment to the board last came while he was lieutenant governor and was rejected by the Senate. In a controversial move, Reeves appointed former state senator Nancy Collins in his last days as lieutenant governor but waited until January after winning the gubernatorial election to announce the appointment.  

The nine-member board is appointed by state officials. The governor appoints five positions: one school administrator, one teacher, and one individual from the state’s North, Central, South Supreme Court districts, respectively. The lieutenant governor and speaker each get two at-large representatives, meaning they have no residential or occupational requirements on who to choose. The board appoints the state superintendent, who serves as the board secretary, and two student representatives who also serve on the board as non-voting members. Members serve nine-year terms. 

Bass is being appointed to the Central Supreme Court position while East will serve in the administrator role. 

There are currently several vacancies on the board, including the speaker’s at-large appointment (formerly Sean Suggs) and the lieutenant governor’s at-large appointment (formerly Collins). The teacher representative, appointed by the governor, is also vacant.

“The Lieutenant Governor continues to seek recommendations from public education stakeholders, and is in the process of considering candidates now,” said Leah Rupp Smith, deputy chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

The term of John Kelly, who fills the Southern Supreme Court District spot, expired in July, though he has continued to serve on the board. 

The post Reeves appoints two new members to State Board of Education appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Richard Williams, the 74-year-old Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer who remains the only coach ever to take a Mississippi team to the NCAA men’s Final Four, will coach again.

Williams has taken the job as special assistant to the head coach at Southern Miss, where he will work for Jay Ladner, who considers Williams a mentor.

“What an incredible addition this is for Southern Miss basketball,” Ladner said Tuesday morning, when he confirmed the hire. “Coach (Williams) is one of the best tactical basketball minds we’ve had in Mississippi or anywhere else. I couldn’t be more excited for our program. Coach’s passion is basketball and he still has a lot to offer. We just got better.”

“Coach’s duties will be multiple,” Ladner said. “He will help across the board. Obviously, he will help us from a tactical standpoint, but he will also help in analyzing what we do and in game planning for opponents.”

Rick Cleveland

Williams apparently will receive no state compensation in his new position, one that he turned down a year ago because he had committed to another year as the color analyst on the Mississippi State basketball radio network. Williams excelled in that capacity for the past six seasons.

Said Ladner, “The timing just wasn’t right last year.”

It was this time.

“I enjoyed the radio work, and you know my love for Mississippi State University,” Williams said. “I have so much respect for Neil Price (State’s radio play-by-play broadcaster) and have really enjoyed working with him and learning from him. But I just have missed really being involved with a team. I’ve missed coaching. I’m really looking forward to working with Jay again. My plan in all this is to do whatever Jay wants me to do.”

Williams said he already has observed three Southern Miss practices. “Jay’s got a lot of new players,” he said. “What I was most impressed with was how attentive those guys were to what their coaches were teaching and how hard they worked. It was fun for me, as a coach, to watch that.”

Williams said he will start his new job “at 11 a.m. Wednesday. Can’t wait.”

Ladner and Williams go way back. In 1992, Ladner was a young pharmaceutical salesman and a recent premed graduate of USM who was making good money but hating his job. He wanted to coach basketball. Jay Larry Ladner, Jay Ladner’s dad and a former coach himself, knew how hard a life many coaches live and wanted his son to stay the course. He enlisted Williams’ help.

The older Ladner set up a meeting between Williams and his son and made his intent clear. The father wanted Williams to talk his son out of coaching. Said Williams, “After about an hour of listening to Jay, I called his daddy back. I told him, ‘Coach, I got news for you. That boys of yours is going to coach basketball. Nobody is going to talk him out of it. That’s just all there is to it.’”

Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America

Jay Ladner believes Southern Miss got better with the hiring of Richard Williams.

Soon thereafter, Ladner was hired as head basketball coach at Saint Stanislaus College (actually a high school) in Bay Saint Louis. In 1998, after departing Mississippi State, Williams and his wife moved to Bay Saint Louis and Williams began to attend Ladner’s practices and games there. Pretty soon, he was on the bench as a volunteer coach.

Said Ladner, “I learned so much basketball from Coach. In my opinion, he’s as good as there is at the tactical part of basketball.”

Williams began his coaching career as a volunteer coach of a seventh grade basketball team in Natchez, where he taught math. He advanced from junior high to high school, to junior college, to college volunteer assistant coach, to college head coach, to taking the Mississippi State Bulldogs to the 1996 Final Four.

In 1986, Williams took over a struggling State program that had finished 8-22 overall and 3-15 in the SEC the year before. Four years later, State won 20 games, finished 13-5 in the SEC and won the Western Division. Six years after that, State beat No. 1-ranked Kentucky in the finals of the SEC Tournament, then upset both UConn and Cincinnati en route to the Final Four.

Since leaving State, Williams has coached in professional basketball leagues, at Pearl High School and as an assistant coach at Arkansas State, Louisiana Tech and UAB in varying capacities.

He and Ladner have remained close all along, as Ladner moved around also — from Saint Stanislaus, to Oak Grove, to Jones Junior College, to Southeastern Louisiana and now USM.

When Ladner’s Jones team won the national junior college championship in 2014, he deflected much of the credit to Williams. For his part, Ladner dedicated that championship to people he called his three mentors: his father, Williams and M.K. Turk, for whom Ladner played at Southern Miss.

Said Williams at the time Ladner was hired at Southern Miss in April of 2019: “I’ll tell you what I know about the situation. I know how badly Jay wanted that job. I know how good a coach he is, and I know Southern Miss could not have hired a coach who will be as passionate about that job as he will be. That’s his school and that’s his dream job. It’s the same as it was for me at State. Nobody is going to out-work Jay, and he’s not looking to go anywhere else.”

The obvious question: Why would Williams, at 74, return to college coaching, which has become more and more a young man’s game.

An educated guess: Williams and his wife, Diann, have no children, no grandchildren. Williams doesn’t golf. He doesn’t fish. He still eats, drinks and sleeps basketball.

Six years ago, upon his induction into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, Williams told me: “I never got into coaching to make money or coach at some high level. My love is teaching basketball. That’s what I like to do.”

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