Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Meg Fuller teaches her second grade student at Ambition Prep in Jackson, Miss., Friday, August 7, 2020.

Donna Boone was ready for her school to reopen.

The superintendent at Forrest County Agricultural High School said her teachers received professional development, plans were in place, and parents had already decided whether they wanted their child enrolled in traditional or virtual learning for the new school year, scheduled to begin Aug. 10.

But then news came that Gov. Tate Reeves would make an Aug. 4 announcement about whether to reopen schools across the state, which has become one of the nation’s worst COVID-19 hotspots. Boone said she knew “there was a possibility that he was going to push it back, but we thought it would be for all of us.”

She watched the governor announce his decision in real-time Tuesday afternoon, when he said districts in just eight counties deemed coronavirus hot spots would have to push back their reopening date to Aug. 17 for grades 7-12. Her county, Forrest, was one of those counties, along with Bolivar, Coahoma, George, Hinds, Panola, Sunflower and Washington.

The school now plans to open its doors with in-person learning on Aug. 17. Parents have the option to opt-in to virtual learning, but most chose face-to-face instruction, she said.

“I won’t tell you that I wasn’t surprised,” Boone said of the governor’s announcement. “We find out everything when the public finds out everything.”

Boone is one of several school leaders forced to make last minute adjustments to already complicated school reopening plans. Before Reeves’ announcement this week, schools across the state were directed to decide for themselves how and when to open their doors this fall.

But Reeves’ decision further complicated those previous plans for several school districts affected by the order. Especially in districts previously scheduled to reopen virtually, there is confusion about whether they can do so.

Reeves’ order affects less than 7% of students in the state. However, 13 of the 21 school districts were planning to open before Aug. 17, so the other eight are not affected by the order. Six of these districts were already planning an all-virtual opening before Aug. 17 and are now fielding mixed messages about whether that’s allowed under the governor’s executive order.

The language in the executive order simply strips the power of local school boards in those eight counties to set the date for the opening of the school term for grades 7-12, and it sets the start date 2020-21 school year for these grades in these counties at Aug. 17. But the order does not mention virtual learning.

When asked by a reporter on Tuesday whether schools that had already planned a fully virtual opening could still do that before Aug. 17, Reeves responded: “There is absolutely no prohibition of virtual learning, of teaching, of catching kids up.”

But this answer conflicts with guidance school leaders are receiving from state education officials. In an email to superintendents, the Mississippi Department of Education wrote they reached out to the governor’s office for clarity on the executive order.

“We were advised that the delay in the academic year applies to all types of school schedules: virtual, traditional or a hybrid schedule,” the department wrote to the superintendents. “Therefore, school districts in the eight counties identified in the order may not start school for grades 7-12 until August 17.”

The mixed messages have spurred confusion at the local level.

At the Leland School District is in Washington County, officials were planning to start school Aug. 10 completely virtually. Alexandra Melnick, a high school English teacher at the Leland district, said when she first heard the governor’s announcement she thought her school wouldn’t be affected.

“This is the most confusing part. We all were very confident that (Reeves’ order) does not affect us at all because we’re doing the right thing. He even said in the conference that he’s not talking about us (districts going back virtually),” Melnick said.

Since the order came down, Leland has pushed all school — virtual or otherwise — back to August 17.

“There’s no good line of information from the governor’s office,” Melnick said. “I totally get why (the change) happened because nobody wants to be found out of compliance with an executive order.”

She’s frustrated that the order came this late in the pandemic, this close to the start of school and at this point in time when schools have spent months nailing down their plans for reopening. Instead of having adequate time to interpret the order and plan accordingly, districts are realigning their entire calendar year on a moment’s notice.

“That’s what’s so ridiculous about how Tate Reeves and MDE for that matter is behaving,” Melnick said. “They’re acting as if the decisions they’re making give us enough time to discern what’s going to happen. But in reality it’s causing an immediate, next-hour impact to all of these districts that were planning for three months.”

In the Forrest County School District, superintendent Brian Freeman said the executive order led him to make the decision to postpone all grades’ return to school to Aug. 17, rather than have grades K-6 return on the Aug. 10 as was originally planned.

“We could have opened the younger grades, but what that would have done was have our students on two separate calendars and our staff on two separate calendars, which would mean technically your staff would have to work an extra week somewhere at the end of the year or however you made up the days for those students,” Freeman said. “That could have been a budget killer.”

Like Forrest County AHS, Freeman’s district reached out to the community to ask what they wanted and landed on in-person instruction with the option for parents to choose all virtual. So far only about 20% of families have chosen virtual, he said, but after the governor’s announcement the district reopened virtual registration in case parents changed their mind.

South Panola School District, Coahoma Early College High School, and others moved their start dates back in compliance with the order. But others like Greenville, Clarksdale Municipal, and Sunflower County Consolidated districts had already made this decision ahead of the governor’s announcement, so the executive order did not technically affect them.

Sunflower County Superintendent Miskia Davis said the district pushed school opening back until September 8 more than a week ago. Instead of planning for a hybrid model, students will participate virtual only.

“We were closely watching the numbers, and noticed that the trajectory did not support our initial hybrid plan,” Davis said in an email. “The Sunflower County Consolidated School District is committed to doing whatever it takes to safely navigate these treacherous times, even if it means scrapping a plan that we have worked months perfecting, or implementing a plan that we’ve only had days to create.”

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Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/Report For America

Capitol Building

The Legislature plans to reconvene Monday afternoon amid a battle with Gov. Tate Reeves, who has vetoed bills and refused to call lawmakers back into session, saying too many of them might still have coronavirus.

On Wednesday Speaker Philip Gunn and Pro Tem Jason White, the top two leaders of the GOP-controlled House, sued Republican Reeves over his line-item vetoes of much of the public education budget and parts of a federal COVID-19 relief spending bill for health care providers. They said Reeves does not have the constitutional authority to selectively pick and choose such items to veto in legislative spending — a long-running battle between the Legislature and governors, in which lawmakers have generally prevailed in court.

Reeves blasted the lawsuit as a “power grab,” accused some of his fellow Republican leaders of being “liberal,” and said his vetoes were protecting taxpayers from “payoffs from friends” and “pet projects” in Mississippi’s federal coronavirus relief spending.

Reeves, in his first year as governor after two terms as lieutenant governor, has frequently clashed with his fellow Republican legislative leaders. They have fought over whether the governor or Legislature has authority to spend $1.25 billion in federal COVID-19 aid for Mississippi — with the Legislature prevailing — and other issues. Reeves often clashed with his fellow Republican leaders when he was lieutenant governor, as he used a heavy hand in controlling spending and other legislation. As governor, he has relatively little power over legislation.

Reeves this week noted that lawmakers’ ability to call themselves back into session is very limited, per the Legislature’s own resolution. Otherwise, Reeves has sole authority to call lawmakers back for a special session and said he’s reluctant to do so now for lawmakers’ own health and wellbeing because of an outbreak of COVID-19 at the Capitol that infected about 50 lawmakers and staff in July.

The resolution legislators passed earlier this year allows Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, to jointly reconvene the Legislature for COVID-19-related issues. It could be argued that Reeves’ partial veto of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Acts bill for health care provides gives legislators the authority to reconvene as does changes in the federal rules on how states can spend the CARES Act money.

Of Reeves’ five vetoes or partial vetoes issued in early July, the most pressing is the partial veto of the bill funding kindergarten through 12th grade public schools. It will take a two-thirds vote to override any veto.

It also will take a two-thirds vote of both chambers to take up any issue other than coronavirus-related legislation, based on the resolution passed by legislators.

Any effort to try to override the education budget bill partial veto or the CARES Act partial veto would begin in the House.

The Legislature, with a two-thirds vote, also could try to pass a budget for the Department of Marine Resources, which provides regulatory and law enforcement services on the Gulf of Mexico. The Legislature adjourned on July 1 without being able to reach agreement on a budget for the agency.

Reeves also opined legislative leaders “don’t have the votes to override the vetoes” so they filed the lawsuit as a “Hail Mary.” He said many Republican lawmakers don’t want to fight with him and are concerned the Legislature is running amok with liberalism.

But legislative sources say the Republican leadership has the votes to override the vetoes and Reeves is overstepping his constitutional authority as governor.

Gunn and Hosemann on Friday issued a formal call for the session to reconvene at 1 p.m. on Monday.

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On the lawsuit, the Governor Tate Reeves said, “There’s a small group in the House that only wants to pick fights with me—some liberal Republicans who’ve joined forces with liberal House Dems. They run the show these days: Democrats and some left-leaning GOP politicians. (Republican) Trey Lamar and (Democratic caucus leader) Robert Johnson lead that crew around.”

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Where there’s uncertainty in the pandemic, poverty is a constant

The pandemic has both offered a short reprieve and exacerbated existing turmoil for Mississippi families living in deep poverty, whose complicated circumstances are not addressed by narrow relief.

By Anna Wolfe | August 6, 2020

“I don’t understand how you’re going to continue to pay the rent,” said Keri Marshall’s landlord, his voice coming through the speakerphone on her Android.  

An hour earlier on July 28, Marshall, wearing blue skinny jeans, a grey T-shirt and her dark brown hair slicked back in a ponytail, was standing in a Lee County Justice Court room.

A judge told the 34-year-old single mother of four she had three days to pack up her belongings and move out of the three-bedroom Verona home where she and her children lived with her mother Dorothy Meadows.

The property company had evicted Meadows over a light bill, which was in the company’s name and went unpaid for months, racking up nearly $2,000 in debt. The landlord said the tenant should have switched the utility over to her name. Plus, no one but Meadows was supposed to be living there, per the lease. But by the time the 74-year-old Meadows was set to attend court at the end of June, she was too ill to appear.

She died of a heart attack on June 29, leaving Marshall and her children powerless in the eviction and reliant on the goodwill of a businessman.

The big brown recliner chair where Meadows had spent much of her time recently sits under the awning out front of the house now, collecting dirt.

“Everything I know, I learned from her,” said Marshall, who relied heavily on her mother for emotional, childrearing and financial support. “The only thing she never got a chance to teach me was how to be on my own, how to make it on my own.”

The economic fallout of COVID-19 has thrown many families into uncertainty, especially as relief dwindles in the 20th week of the pandemic and with Congress yet to pass a new stimulus package.

But these conditions are all too familiar for families like the Marshalls, who were already living on the edge of homelessness in the most impoverished state in the nation before shutdowns began in March. In Marshall’s northeast Mississippi town, nearly a third of people live in poverty, compared to about one-fifth statewide.

Landlords typically require proof of income from tenants, which helps ensure landowners, who may have mortgages to pay, will not sustain missed payments. But that requirement also presents an issue for renters with nontraditional employment or who struggle to maintain a job. This is particularly true for single parents and during a shaky economy and can create a cycle of evictions, damaging the tenant’s credit and further entrenching them in poverty.

For some of these families, the pandemic has offered a short reprieve through eviction moratoriums, stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits. And yet, the pandemic’s devastating impacts on health, social life and the larger economy has exacerbated their turmoil in other ways.

Lacking a high school diploma, Marshall said she’s having trouble finding not only stable employment, but a safe, open childcare center that is accepting new kids. That’s only when her day is not dominated by trying to keep a roof over her family.

Three of Marshall’s young children listened from the cement steps outside their apartment, a pale-blue bungalow, as their mother tried to convince landlord Johnoson Crutchfield of her position. “Mr. John, I’m not struggling. I’m really not,” she said.

Marshall, who last worked a part-time job at Burger King for a short stint, began drawing Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits in the last three weeks after telling the state unemployment office she was jobless due to the pandemic.

With the $600 weekly boost in benefits, Marshall has pulled more income, about $3,000 in July, than ever before. She had the money to pay August rent, she explained to Crutchfield. She could afford to stay another 30 days, at least.

“In the process, I’m trying to figure out where I can place my kids so I could go to work,” she told him. “If I go to work, I don’t have anybody to watch them. I can’t leave them by theyselves.”

He agreed to let her stay, even though Marshall’s name is not on the existing lease. To be sure, he didn’t have to do that. But Marshall’s unemployment benefits, which shrunk to under $100 a week at the end of July, will run out eventually — hence Crutchfield’s hesitancy.

“Basically, I’m still sinking. It’s not even keeping me above water,” Marshall said of the drop in benefits. “I just went straight under.”

Marshall said she spent her recent influx of cash through unemployment on past due bills — not just for utilities and cable, but also payments on the rent-to-own television and stove on which her mother had fallen behind — and back-to-school clothing for her growing children. What’s left isn’t more than about $5, she said. And she doesn’t have much family help: Two of her children’s fathers are incarcerated, and the other stopped checking in.

“I’m just living day by day,” Marshall said. “My mom always told me to never plan ahead because if you plan ahead, everything will not turn out the way it’s supposed to be. I literally learned that; I thought she was playing when she said that.”

Marshall wanted to work in the nursing field ever since she was a little girl, and she said she got close to securing her Certified Nursing Assistant credentials through Job Corps in 2004. But the program kicked her out when officers caught her friend shoplifting while they were together at Walmart.

On top of raising four children, she’s held a couple of short-term jobs — from food service gigs to factory positions through a temp agency to hairdressing for cash — every other year or so since then. At times, without her own vehicle, she’d often catch a ride with coworkers, and if they left the job, she’d have to quit too.

Marshall catches on quickly when someone demonstrates a skill or task, but she struggles with reading comprehension — the main barrier to completing her GED.

While the number of jobless Mississippians spiked from about 70,000 at the beginning of 2020 to nearly 104,000 by June, three months into the pandemic, a lesser regarded statistic shows another 86,000 have simply fallen out of the labor force altogether in that time, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Driven in part by the state’s unequal education system, low education attainment and lagging economic development, Mississippi has historically had one of the lowest labor force participation rates.

In June, Mississippi had the smallest workforce in the nation with just 52% of non-institutionalized working-age people in the state either working or looking for a job. The national average was 62%.

A statewide, multi-million dollar, federally funded program called Families First for Mississippi was purportedly designed to help people just like Marshall, who are often disconnected from the workforce, gain useful life skills like parenting, financial literacy and workplace etiquette. But earlier this year, the state auditor revealed that its creators had allegedly perpetuated the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history and the program ceased completely.

Now the state agency hasn’t retooled the welfare program to offer more cash assistance to families struggling to meet basic needs, the way at least one neighboring state has, during the pandemic.

Instead, Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Wednesday the creation of a new workforce development program to help people who have been laid off or otherwise economically damaged and are receiving unemployment benefits. The state is not conducting the job training itself, but is offering to reimburse companies who agree to hire and train new employees by 75% of the person’s wages during the training period, as long as they pay at least $15-an-hour.

Human Services also offers employment services called Skills2Work to low-income people who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which essentially offers grants to existing work training programs in the community. But a representative at the DHS office in Lee County, where Marshall lives, said their work program has been on hold since the start of the pandemic.

Marshall is considering getting back a night shift at the lawnmower manufacturing facility in town. That way, she can stay with her kids during the day while they conduct their schooling from home, like thousands of other Mississippi children will do this school year due to the virus. Marshall said they’ll use her old cellphones to complete their work. She’d have to find someone who can babysit during the night. Sleep is barely part of the plan.

While the nation is bracing for an avalanche of evictions in coming months if Congress does not appropriate more rental assistance funds, landlords and rental managers told Mississippi Today they have been trying to work with people who have faced hardships due to COVID-19. Crutchfield, Marshall’s landlord and owner of Grab The Map properties, waived late fees in April for his tenants.

Those who have faced evictions since the state moratorium lifted on June 1, Crutchfield told Mississippi Today, “by and large are people who were not paying prior to coronavirus.”

“The people who were struggling before the virus are the people who are struggling now,” he said.

Officials from the Mississippi Center for Justice, Mississippi Center for Legal Services and the University of Mississippi’s Housing Clinic confirmed to Mississippi Today that they haven’t seen the wave of COVID-related evictions this summer that they might have anticipated, but they believe it’s coming.

These urgent circumstances could be temporarily relieved through policies — such as extended unemployment benefit enhancements, more rental assistance funding and eviction moratoriums — that Congress is hashing out in the coming stimulus package.

But the narrow relief proposals do not address longstanding barriers to economic mobility for thousands of Mississippians living in poverty, like Marshall, who face limited job prospects and an increasingly unaffordable housing market.

One local housing expert says the policy that would get closest to alleviating these conditions in Mississippi is universal basic income, similar to the $1,200 stimulus check working people received in the spring — only monthly for every adult. Jackson is the home to one such basic income pilot program.

“Nobody wants to be behind on their rent. Nobody wants to be chased by the utility companies and have their water shut off, and their lights shut off and their gas shut off. That is not desirable for anybody,” Scott Spivey, executive director of the Mississippi Home Corporation, told Mississippi Today. “Giving people the resources to where they don’t have to live in that situation would be a huge windfall.”

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