More than 80% of Mississippi’s K-12 school districts require masks or face coverings to be worn on campus. However, that still leaves 78,324 students under no mask requirement, including two of the biggest school districts in the state — Harrison County School District with 13,666 students and DeSoto County School District with 34,067, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education’s website.
View a visualization of Mississippi’s K-12 student population divided by how many are or are not subject to a mask requirement in their district:
Students under a mask requirement
364,303
Students NOT under a mask requirement
78,324
In addition to Desoto County and Harrison County school districts, the other 13 mask-optional districts include:
• Baldwyn School District (753) • Enterprise School District (924) • Itawamba County School District (3,378) • Lee County School District (6,389) • Lincoln County School District (2,733) • Monroe County School District (2,095) • Nettleton School District (1,170) • North Tippah School District (1,259) • Petal School District (4,106) • Senatobia Municipal School District (1,676) • Stone County School District (2,334) • Tate County School District (2,097) • Walthall County School District (1,677)
As lawmakers haggle over a medical marijuana program to replace one passed by voters but shot down by the Mississippi Supreme Court, state Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson says because marijuana is still federally illegal, he doesn’t want to help oversee any program.
“All of us elected officials took an oath of office to ‘faithfully support the Constitution of the United States … and obey the laws thereof,’” Gipson wrote in a letter to Attorney General Lynn Fitch copied to lawmakers. “… please explain how this office or the Department (of Agriculture) could legally license the growing and/or processing of a marijuana crop in violation of federal law.”
Lawmakers proposed legislation this year, and are considering measures now, that would have Gipson’s agency license and regulate marijuana growers and processors. Initiative 65, passed by voters in November, would have had the state Health Department oversee the entire program, although it could have brought other agencies in to help. The state Board of Health had opposed the Health Department being put in charge of the program, and opposed Initiative 65 as well.
Gipson, in a Supertalk radio interview on Friday, said he does not see how his office could participate in a program that is still federally illegal. He said he already has a legal challenge drafted if lawmakers approve such a measure.
Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, who’s leading Senate negotiations on a medical marijuana program, on Friday said he had not spoken with Gipson, but noted that many of the 38 states with medical marijuana programs have their agriculture agencies providing oversight.
In his letter to the attorney general, Gipson said: “If the Mississippi Legislature were to enact and the governor were to sign into state law a medical marijuana program, how would it be legal under the federal act to truck, ship, deliver, manufacture, distribute or dispense any part of the cannabis seed or plant as a Schedule 1 substance into the state of Mississippi?”
While marijuana remains federally illegal, federal authorities have looked the other way as many states have legalized medical or recreational use. Congress has failed to act on the issue. This has caused problems with banking and finances for the industry and with interstate commerce.
So many students and teachers are contracting COVID-19 in the Lincoln County School District in the first weeks of fall classes that leaders transitioned two of their school systems to a hybrid schedule.
But the district remains one of just 15 in the state where mask-wearing is optional. Lincoln County Superintendent David Martin, in an interview, said he doesn’t believe masks are effective, so he “left the decision up to parents.”
Mississippi Today spoke with two teachers in the district — one of whom recently contracted COVID-19 and both of whom wished to remain anonymous for fear of professional retaliation. Their perspectives provide insight into what’s occurring inside mask-optional districts as more than 30,000 students across Mississippi are quarantined less than a month into the school year.
And their stories show how children and staff are not being kept safe in Lincoln County, where just 28% of residents are fully vaccinated.
“The system that Lincoln County schools have in place is broken,” one teacher said. “They are putting teachers, staff members and students at risk. And they are overworking the underpaid nurses on staff.”
Lincoln County is not the only school district in the state still not requiring masks in its schools. A Mississippi Today analysis shows it is joined by 14 other districts, including two of the state’s largest: DeSoto and Harrison counties. Several of those have already transitioned to virtual learning and hybrid schedules due to outbreaks, according to the districts’ websites.
Many districts began the school year without a mask requirement but quickly pivoted as cases and quarantines surged. Numerous studies show the effectiveness of mask-wearing in close quarters like classrooms, and countless medical experts, including the state’s major medical organizations, insist that mask-wearing in schools decreases the chances of COVID-19 transmission. New guidelines from the Mississippi Department of Health state close contacts in the school setting do not have to quarantine if both they and the infected person were wearing masks at the time of exposure.
Dr. Anita Henderson, the president of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians, said not only do masks work, they help kids stay in school.
“Last year during the school year, most Mississippi schools were able to teach kids in-person because of universal masking within the school setting,” Henderson said. “This year, however, when school started with masks optional, we quickly saw the widespread transmission among children.”
The Lincoln County School District began the year without safety measures such as spacing in the cafeteria and in the carpool line and sanitizing desks between classes, one of the teachers said.
The teacher also recently tested positive for COVID-19, which she believes she got at school. She said she was not told to quarantine despite being exposed.
Martin, however, said the district is taking safety measures.
“We are following procedures and protocols for spacing, cleaning and quarantine,” Martin told Mississippi Today.
To add insult to injury, the teacher said she is burning through her own vacation and sick time because the Lincoln County school board elected not to offer employees additional COVID-19 related leave.
“It just feels like you’re being kicked while you’re down,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’ve been put in danger, and then I’ll be further punished because I’m going to lose all my sick and personal days, and more than likely my family members are going to get sick, then I’ll be off (work) even longer taking care of them.”
At the time the teacher spoke to Mississippi Today, her child had already begun showing symptoms but was unable to get tested because of a lack of testing availability in the area.
Gov. Tate Reeves earlier this month extended the state’s emergency order through Sept. 15. One of the effects of that decision was that it allowed school boards to continue offering employees paid COVID-19 leave. That way, if teachers or staff members test positive, they do not use up all of their personal leave and potentially have their pay docked.
Tim Cunningham, the Lincoln County school board president, declined to answer questions when reached by Mississippi Today. Martin, the superintendent, said he believes teachers are not receiving COVID leave due to a “financial decision” because the district does not have a large budget.
“We’ve got a smaller budget, we don’t have the tax base” that some other districts have, Martin said.
Some districts are using federal funding to offset the cost of administrative leave for employees. Lincoln County schools received $4.7 million in the most recent round of funding from the American Rescue Plan. In earlier iterations of federal COVID-19 relief funding, the district received roughly another $2.6 million.
DeSoto County School District, the largest district in the state and one of the 10 districts that still does not require masks, approved an additional eight days of paid leave for employees who test positive for COVID-19. All school-level employees have also received an additional four days of sick leave to use. In Enterprise, another mask-optional district, employees were granted seven days of COVID-related leave, Superintendent Josh Perkins said.
Two of Lincoln County’s kindergarten through 12th grade schools, Loyd Star and West Lincoln, have recently transitioned to a hybrid schedule because of COVID-19 cases and quarantine numbers. Martin recently told the Daily Leader that a totally virtual schedule was “not an option” for students in the district because students don’t have reliable internet access.
Martin also sent a letter to parents on Aug. 23 informing that the schools’ rapid testing supply was running low.
“Each school will have to stop offering testing once their supply runs low,” the letter stated. Enterprise Attendance Center announced on its Facebook page the school would not be performing rapid testing on students until further notice.
The district did not report COVID-19 data for any of its schools for the week ending Aug. 20, the most recent data available, so the data used to determine the move is unknown.
Martin said the district did submit the data to the Mississippi Department of Health, but it was after the deadline had passed. District-wide, 70 students and 9 staff members tested positive for COVID-19 last week, and 278 students and 10 staff members were quarantined, he said.
The district has around 2,700 students, according to the state education department.
School districts are required to report their COVID-19 data weekly to the state health department. Mississippi Department of Health officials said the department’s protocol is to call a school to make sure administrators know the process for reporting, but it does not enforce the requirement in practice.
Only 28% of Lincoln County residents are fully vaccinated, according to the state health department. A total of 119 people in the county have died from the virus as of Aug. 14.
As lawmakers study eliminating Mississippi’s personal income tax and raising sales taxes in an effort to spur economic growth and jobs, state business leaders told them they either oppose or have trepidation about the plan.
The penultimate moment came late Thursday, in the second day of hearings for a joint House and Senate Tax Study Committee. Scott Waller, president of the state’s chamber of commerce, told lawmakers that no business leaders have voiced eliminating income taxes as a priority, but some fear it could have unintended consequences. Waller addressed House Speaker Philip Gunn — who’s leading the charge to eliminate the personal income tax — and members of the tax study panel.
“Where is this in the priorities we have?” Waller said. “We’ve been on the road, holding 39 meetings with members all across the state. I know you don’t want to hear this, Mr. Speaker, but this issue (personal income taxes) has not come up a single time as a priority, something we want to do.”
Waller said the state’s business community is more focused on workforce development and education, improving infrastructure, marketing the state and “keeping people here” — stopping the loss of population and “brain drain” in Mississippi, one of only three states to have lost population over the last decade.
Other business leaders testifying on Thursday included representatives of associations for manufacturers, auto dealers, manufactured housing, and restaurants and hospitality businesses.
Restaurant Association Director Pat Fontaine, in a prepared statement to the panel, said a sales tax increase would result “in a reduction in the frequency of dining out, or the decision to eat at home” and the proposed plan “would not benefit members of our industry at this time.”
The two days of tax hearings Wednesday and Thursday are in response to Speaker Gunn’s proposal to eliminate the state’s individual income tax and raise the state’s sales tax from 7% to 9.5%, along with increases in other user or “consumption” taxes. His plan, which passed the House but died in the Senate without a vote in this year’s legislative session, would also cut the sales tax on groceries in half, from 7% to 3.5%.
Gunn says his plan will give a net tax break to a vast majority of Mississippians while creating a better tax structure and being “revenue neutral” for the state budget while eventually cutting taxes overall by more than $740 million. He points to nine states without personal income taxes, including Florida, Tennessee and Texas, seeing large population and economic growth.
But others say the plan could hamstring the state budget, unfairly shift more tax burden onto the state’s low- to moderate-income families and retirees with higher sales taxes and hurt many businesses.
Waller said one concern business leaders have is that the state’s main incentives programs for luring new businesses include individual income tax credits for new jobs created — which would disappear with no income tax. He said there is also concern that limited liability corporations and other “pass through” types of businesses pay taxes through the owners’ personal income taxes. Eliminating the tax could leave the remaining “C-corp” businesses shouldering the tax burden, or cause many businesses to switch their formations, which could skew the projections on the tax change not hurting the state budget.
Lawmakers over two days heard from several economists, state budget officials and national tax think tank experts.
On Thursday, noted tax cut advocate and founder of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist told the panel that there is a “wave,” particularly among red states, of cutting or eliminating income taxes. He said Mississippi needs to seize the opportunity to be near the front of the pack to reap economic rewards from such a change.
“Pretty soon nobody’s going to be further than a hop, skip or jump from a no income tax state,” Norquist said. “The question is, do you want to be early on that?”
Most of the tax think tank experts testifying in the Mississippi hearings this week stopped short of endorsing Gunn’s specific plan. But Norquist said he supports it. He said that even though it includes increases in sales and other taxes, it is a net cut.
“It’s a fine bill, and it’s a step forward from where you are now,” Norquist said. “… It’s much better than what you’ve got now, and it’s a very good place to start.”
But Kyra Roby, with the nonprofit One Voice that advocates for marginalized and vulnerable communities across the South, said Mississippi’s tax code is already regressive, with poor people and those of modest means paying more of their income in taxes than the wealthy. The proposed shift from income to sales taxes will exacerbate that, she said, and provide more of a tax break for the wealthy.
A study of data compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy for One Voice showed disparity in taxation is worse for Black families, which pay an effective tax rate of 8.7% of their income compared to white families, who pay 8.2%. Hispanic families pay an effective rate of 9.1%.
Roby told lawmakers that even with the accompanying grocery tax cut, the proposed plan would mean an increase in taxes for the bottom 60% of Mississippi taxpayers and reduction for the top 40%.
Roby said the $1 billion surplus in the state budget — largely due to federal government pandemic spending — should not drive talk of income tax elimination. Increased revenue should be used to help Mississippi’s ailing education, health care and infrastructure and should be driving talk of raising the minimum wage, passing a state equal gender pay law and Medicaid expansion.
“A budget surplus indicates the state has more money than anticipated,” Roby said. “It does not mean it has more than it needs.”
But Russ Latino, with the conservative Empower Mississippi group, said: “If it is not prudent to have the conversation about (tax cuts or elimination) now, when we are sitting on a $1 billion cushion, then it will never be prudent.
“We are in a pivotal place in this state,” Latino said.
Robert Khayat, president of the Ole Miss M Club in 1960. (Nautilus Publishing)
Robert Khayat’s fascinating new book “60” — as in 1960 — comes with the subtitle: “A Year of Sports, Race and Politics.”
The year 1960 was all that and much more for Khayat, the future transformational chancellor of Ole Miss. What a whirlwind 1960 must have been for the impressionable young man from Moss Point, who turned 22 on April 18 that year.
Khayat began the year, on Jan. 1, helping the football Rebels crush LSU 21-0 in the Sugar Bowl. That spring, he was the slugging catcher for the Ole Miss baseball team that won the SEC Championship and would have been a national championship contender had it not been for the unwritten rule that barred Mississippi’s all-white colleges from competing against integrated teams. Drafted by the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, he was traded to the Washington Redskins before he ever played a game. As fate did have it, Washington was the only NFL team that had not integrated. He came in second in NFL Rookie of the Year voting. He was selected for the Pro Bowl, where a devastating injury would change his life.
Rick Cleveland
And that’s just the sports part.
In politics, 1960 was the year Ross Barnett became Mississippi’s governor and the year John F. Kennedy was elected president, thus foreshadowing a showdown that would come. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 1960 was also a year when Robert Khayat’s father, Edward A. Khayat, was gaining power and popularity as a county supervisor with much higher political ambitions that would later come crashing down.
As for race, well, in 1960 race relations provided the backdrop for most everything else. Indeed, Ole Miss and LSU played the rare rematch in the Sugar Bowl largely because neither was allowed to play against teams with Black players. The year 1960 was also when James Meredith first applied for admission to Ole Miss. It was when four college students in Greensboro, N.C., took a stand against segregation when they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served, thus launching sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities across the South.
On April 24, 1960, one day after Ole Miss clinched the SEC Western Division baseball title, an estimated 125 Black citizens protested the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s segregated beaches with a “wade in” at Biloxi beach. About 300 whites gathered on the seawall to challenge the protest. The protestors thought they would receive police protection. They were wrong. Many were badly injured. Twenty-three people were arrested, 22 were Black. A young Robert Khayat, the Gulf Coast native, was appalled.
“60” comes eight years after Robert Khayat’s award-winning “Education of a Lifetime.” (Nautilus Publishing)
Khayat’s book, edited by noted author Neil White for Nautilus Publishing, weaves all this together with rich, anecdotal storytelling. At times, it will make you laugh out loud. At others, it will make you want to cry.
This book comes eight years after Khayat’s “Education of a Lifetime,” which won numerous awards statewide, regional and national in scope. Says White, “That first book was framed on his years as chancellor, but Robert said then he thought he had a lot more stories he wanted to tell. In our conversations, he kept coming back to 1960 and all that happened in Mississippi, in America and with him personally. That’s this book.”
In it, Khayat writes much of his upbringing in Moss Point and his Lebanese heritage. His father was especially dark-skinned, so much so that he was asked to sit toward the rear of the Methodist church the family attended. The reader needs little imagination to believe much of Khayat’s later stance on social justice and compassion at Ole Miss at least partially was formed at an early age.
No report about “60” would be complete without at least one example of his anecdotal writing. In August of that year, Khayat flew to Chicago to take part in the annual College All-Star Game that matched a group of college all-stars against the defending NFL champions — that year the Baltimore Colts. The Colts’ lopsided victory was predictable. The Khayat’s first play was not.
“I assumed my position at left guard,” Khayat wrote. “With my hands on my knees I looked across the line of scrimmage and stared straight into my opponent’s sternum. The number of his jersey read ’76.’ That number belonged to a man named Eugene ‘Big Daddy’ Lipscomb.”
Big Daddy Lipscomb was already an NFL legend, a giant of a man. He dwarfed Khayat, who had just begun to shave.
“Big Daddy was 6-feet-8. He weighed just under 300 pounds. I was a 22-year-old kid from Mississippi. He was a 31-year-old man who grew up in Detroit. Big Daddy’s dark, thick beard was tucked behind a gray face mask… I looked up at him.
“‘’Boy,’ Big Daddy said, ‘does your mama know you are out here tonight?’
“‘Yes sir,’ I answered. Then the ball was snapped and I was dealt a crushing blow from his huge right forearm. Big Daddy brushed me aside as if I were a fly and tackled our ball carrier for a loss.”
Khayat ends that anecdote with this: “I began to wonder if professional football was really my destiny.”
As it turns out, Robert Khayat’s destiny far surpassed a relatively short, injury-riddled NFL career. Sixty-one years after ’60, we learn how that remarkably eventful year shaped his future.
This photo gallery is part of our new initiative, MT Listens. Learn more about the project here or be part of it by taking our survey.
Take a virtual stroll through Forest, a historic Mississippi community, through the lens of Mississippi Today photojournalist Vickie King.
Forest is just one of five communities our newsroom is focusing on for our community listening project, MT Listens. The others are Canton, Yazoo City, Moss Point and New Albany.
The Scott County Courthouse located in historic downtown Forest. The structure is the city’s fourth and current courthouse.
A view of downtown Forest. Colorful poultry works of art brighten many corners in the historic area.
Town Square Park south of historic downtown Forest.
Banner in the historic district of downtown Forest.
Main Street in the historic district of downtown Forest.
A view of East Main Avenue and First Street in the historic district of downtown Forest.
Artwork depicting Forest’s diversity.
Mural painted on the side of law offices at West Main Avenue and West 2nd Street in Forest.
Forest is the home of a thriving poultry processing industry. Artwork of chickens are on nearly every street corner.
The B. Gatewood Studio and Gallery located on Front Street in Forest.
Water tower in Forest. The city’s motto: “Leading the Way”.
At the corner of East Main Avenue and West Second Street, a suited rooster is one of the many brightly painted poultry ambassadors greeting all who travel through the historic district.
The Forest water tower.
Huge windchime sculptures in the heart of Forest’s historic downtown district.
The old train depot in Forest.
Although the train depot is no longer operational, freight trains still run the west-east rails south of downtown in Forest.
Tyson Food Inc., is a poultry processing plant, located on Jack Lee Drive in Forest.
A game of soccer is enjoyed at Gaddis Park in Forest.
Friends enjoy a game of soccer at Gaddis Park in Forest. The city is home for a large Hispanic community.
Koch Foods is another processor of chickens in Forest, as well as a major employer of residents in the city and surrounding areas.
Wind sculpture in Town Square Park in the Forest downtown historic district.
Intersection of US 80 and MS 35 in Forest.
A view of animal feed manufacturer H. J. Baker and Bro., Inc in Forest.
Not colorfully painted chicken artwork, instead an homage to the fire department in the form of a Dalmation painted fire plug in Forest.
Be part of this project.
If you live in Canton, Yazoo City, Forest, Moss Point or New Albany, please take a minute to fill out the below survey, or share it with someone you know.
The New Orleans Saints have played two preseason games, and it is becoming clear that Jameis Winston is the heir apparent to Drew Brees. Meanwhile, nothing seems really clear about Mississippi high school football, which would be having its first full Friday night slate of games this week if it weren’t for COVID.
At least 22 hospitals in Mississippi had no open intensive care unit beds last week as a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations due to the delta variant pressing the state’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.
The lack of ICU bed capacity at these hospitals offers a snapshot view of the strain all healthcare providers in Mississippi are seeing across all departments. It is only a limited view, however, as many other hospitals were near capacity on paper but had no ability to staff ICU beds.
“The real focus has been on trying to get staffing so we can keep people in hospitals and utilize those beds to release the pressure on the system,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said during a press conference on Wednesday.
More than 2,000 medical professionals have left the field in Mississippi over the past year, and MEMA is deploying over 1,100 healthcare workers to 61 hospitals in the coming weeks to help alleviate the staffing strain.
As of Wednesday morning, only 15 ICU beds were available across the state. There were also 63 patients waiting for an ICU bed — 31 of them being COVID-19 patients. At the same time, more than 400 of the contract workers had been deployed to 11 of the 61 hospitals that submitted staffing requests to MEMA. This included 347 nurses, 11 nurse practitioners and 78 respiratory technicians.
Below is a list of the hospitals that reported having fewer than one open ICU bed between Aug. 13 and Aug. 19 to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. During that period, nearly 94% of ICU beds in the state were full, with nearly 64% of them being occupied by COVID-19 patients.
Adams County
Merit Health Natchez
Alcorn County
Magnolia Regional Health Center
Bolivar County
Bolivar Medical Center
Clay County
North Mississippi Medical Center – West Point
DeSoto County
Methodist Healthcare – Olive Branch Hospital
Forrest County
Forrest General Hospital
Merit Health Wesley
George County
George Regional Health System
Grenada County
University of Mississippi Medical Center – Grenada
