My first day at Mississippi Today — five years ago last month — I flipped an empty cardboard box upside down to use as a desk. There was no WiFi to connect my laptop to, and I had exactly three colleagues in a small office that smelled like fresh paint.
Workers came later that week to install desks and internet. A couple weeks later, two new colleagues joined the team. A couple weeks after that, our website went live and we unceremoniously published our first article. It was a humble beginning for what has become Mississippi’s largest newsroom.
What started in March 2016 as a staff of five has grown to 23 (we had to literally tear down a wall a couple years in to expand the newsroom). State capitol coverage was our main focus from the jump, but we now have reporters covering more than a dozen beats. We’re the only statewide newsroom with full-time reporters based in several regions of the state: the Jackson metro, the Delta, the North Mississippi Hills, and the Gulf Coast.
While many things have changed in five years, some of the most important things have not. From day one, our vision for Mississippi Today was anchored in three values: fairness, accountability and truth. I’m proud to say we’ve stuck to those values these past five years.
But if I’m being completely honest, it’s been difficult. In this ever-polarized political era, everyone has their own definitions of those three values. They have been bastardized by people on both ends of the political spectrum, and so-called “news outlets” and media personalities have used them to sow discord rather than inform. We’ve done our very best to report in a way that honors the actual definitions of those values, not just the way they’ve been weaponized for political purposes.
Readers on the political right sometimes criticize us for framing our journalism with a left-leaning bias. I can understand why they see it that way. After all, the fundamental mission of American journalism is to hold government officials accountable for their words and actions, and Republicans dominate nearly every pocket of government power in Mississippi.
Readers on the left, meanwhile, have criticized us for not doing more to directly bring about political change. I can understand how hopeless it must feel to have little platform in a state where there are few means to balance the scales.
But there’s common ground I know we can all stand on, regardless of the lens through which you read our reporting: Unchecked power is harmful to every Mississippian. That’s why we came together five years ago. We tell stories and share perspectives we believe to be true, and we hold officials — Republicans and Democrats — accountable. All the while, we focus our reporting on the experiences of Mississippians most marginalized by the decisions those powerful officials make.
We’re a group of native and adopted Mississippians who love this state and believe in its future. We’ve celebrated our state’s successes, and we’ve demanded more of its leaders. We’ve exposed government wrongdoing, and we’ve inspired change. We’ve seen our work improve lives, and we’ve pondered what more we can do to help. We’ve made mistakes, but we’re careful to learn and grow from them.
We’ve done some good work, but we want to do so much more in the next five years and the years after that. This is just the beginning of how we plan to serve Mississippians.
We want to continue hiring journalists to serve as watchdogs of our public officials. We want to find innovative ways to tell the stories of Mississippi’s ignored or forgotten citizens. We want to reach even more Mississippians and arm them with the information they need to become more civically engaged.
But we cannot do any of that without your support.
The generosity of so many people over the past five years has made our work possible. But what I tell people any chance I get is that we are not the beneficiaries of that generosity; Mississippians are.
We need you to help us continue to grow. Let’s all keep an eye on the future of Mississippi together.
Treasure Cosie smiles for a picture after her interview with reporter Kelsey Betz.
Even before the pandemic, Treasure Cosie was already on a path to not have a geometry teacher her junior year at Leland High School.
Her school district isn’t technically designated as a Critical Teacher Shortage area by the Mississippi Department of Education, but there aren’t enough teachers to teach even core subjects like math.
“You’re expecting to have a teacher teach you something you didn’t know before, but you don’t get that because you don’t have a teacher in the class,” Cosie said about her geometry course.
Instead of having an educator who can work with her in real time, her district uses an online program called Grade Results that essentially relies on students to self-teach. Students work through different sets of problems, get electronically graded on them, and if they get something wrong, they have no one to ask why.
The stress of this was only made worse by the pandemic, explained Cosie, whose classes have been all virtual since the pandemic hit.
“It’s depressing to some kids because they’re used to teachers explaining stuff to them. Everybody learns differently,” she said. “… And we’re dealing with this pandemic plus on top of not having teachers. It just makes you want to quit it all.”
In Mississippi, she’s not alone in being enrolled in this type of program instead of having an actual teacher. The practice is increasingly common, even in school districts not chronically plagued with teacher shortages.
When the pandemic hit, many schools in Mississippi looked to a company called Edgenuity to help serve virtual students. Districts in areas of the state hardest hit by the teacher shortage had been using the online course provider for years, but this year, even students in some of the largest, high-performing districts like Madison and DeSoto are using the program to earn initial or traditional credits.
Courses offered through online learning programs like Edgenuity are different from the virtual learning methods that schools across the country turned to as the pandemic broke out. With a typical virtual learning class, educators teach online in real time through platforms like Zoom. If that doesn’t happen, the teacher will still have designated times to work with students.
Either way, there is intentional student-teacher interaction where students can ask questions and teachers can explain lessons. But this is not the case with programs like Edgenuity, where the only education professional connected to the program is a school district “facilitator” who may or may not know anything about the subject they’re facilitating.
Previously only used for credit recovery (when students get the chance to retake a course they previously failed) and summer school, virtual students in Madison County could take Edgenuity courses such as physics, AP U.S. government and psychology as part of their coursework for the year.
But Jan Richardson, the parent of a 10th-grader at Ridgeland High School, said there are problems with the program. Although a teacher or administrator is technically assigned to each of the Edgenuity courses, the reality is that for much of the year, they struggled to find answers for her son’s questions when he had an issue.
“We had a facilitator assigned to the class, but their role was not well-defined to us. We didn’t always have someone certified in the subject area assigned to help, so the students seem to be on their own,” said Richardson.
Last semester, her son and all other virtual students were supervised as a group by the district rather than their individual school, she said. When he needed help with his Personal Finance class, Richardson emailed a district employee.
“(My son’s) question is that when he takes a test it doesn’t report back what questions were missed so it isn’t possible to learn what one got wrong,” she wrote. “He also had a concern (about) a question on a recent test where he said the answer didn’t seem correct based on the content taught. He wanted to go over that with someone.”
The district employee responded that he did not have an answer because it is a “completely self-taught course/platform. However, I will consult with the individual that oversees Edgenuity for the district and see if there is any info I can pass along.”
Richardson then went to Edgenuity.
“The Edgenuity representative told me the role of the assigned teacher was to field student questions, communicate with Edgenuity, and help the student if they are struggling with something. The intention is not for students to be on their own,” she said.
Richardson and her son never got those particular issues resolved, but she did say since the district changed the way it oversees virtual students this semester, more help has been available.
Amanda Coyle, a spokeswoman for Edgenuity, said the company provides schools with guidance on best practices for use of their programs, “as well as the option to toggle settings and customize the way their classroom leverages Edgenuity.”
“However, we do not have influence over — or insight into — the way these teachers actually choose to engage with their students or assign workloads,” she said.
Mississippi’s use of these programs is happening as the critical teacher shortage persists and teacher pay remains low. Though the legislature recently passed a $1,000 raise for teachers, average Mississippi teacher pay ranks lowest in the Southeast and nation. Low pay is one of the most common listed reasons as the cause of the teacher shortage.
School districts designated as critical teacher shortage areas rose from 49 school districts in 2018-2019 to 54 in 2019-2020 (the latest data available). This data only considers the percentage of teachers who are not properly certified; MDE does not track teacher vacancies.
Teacher vacancies, however, are the reason why some school districts turn to programs like Edgenuity.
The number of school districts that use these programs has remained somewhat steady during the past five years. But from the 2018-2019 school year to the 2019-2020 school year, the number of courses in the state through programs like Edgenuity increased from 381 to 670. During the 2020-2021 school year there were again 670 courses offered through online courses.
Graphic created by Bethany Atkins
Edgenuity has been the subject of scrutiny recently, particularly during the pandemic. Parents in a Tennessee school district picketed outside a school board meeting at the beginning of the school year. They said the online options offered through Edgenuity were supposed to be accompanied by a district teacher, but that was not happening.
“When I begin my assignments, it becomes clear that no one really cares about my education. Most of the Edgenuity assignments are graded immediately upon submission, simply based on ‘keywords’ the system looks for in my responses,” she wrote. “So far in this school year, I have received an estimated 30-40 automatic 0% grades in my various classes … To make matters worse, it seems no one at my school, nor the district, nor Edgenuity knows exactly how to correct the error.”
It’s unclear which districts in Mississippi are using Edgenuity and similar programs because of the pandemic, the teacher shortage, to expand course offerings or some combination of those.
But the Mississippi Department of Education did have to conduct an additional review of approved courses over the summer due to “additional demand” created by the pandemic, a spokeswoman for the department said.
The use of Edgenuity also grew nationwide, according to Amanda Coyle, a spokesperson for the company.
“K-12 schools were already increasing use of digital curricula and tools, but the pandemic fueled increased — and wider — use,” she said, noting Edgenuity is used by more than 20,000 schools, including 20 of the 25 largest school districts in the country.
Nathan Oakley, chief academic officer for the state education department, said ideally, schools have a designated person facilitating the online course.
“If I were in a school, I would say, ‘OK, do I have somebody on staff for a period of day that students in that online course can come (to) if they need technical assistance or support with software?’” said Oakley. “There may be a point person in the school in each content area or at the school level at least so the students get a touch point at the school.”
Education advocates have argued for years that this reasoning is a “band-aid” fix that is used instead of working to get qualified teachers into critical shortage areas, which is ultimately damaging to kids.
“Online learning platforms like that where you don’t have a teacher just scream, ‘Nobody cares about you,’” said Lucas Rapisarda, a former program director at the Rosedale Freedom Project, during a 2018 interview with Mississippi Today. “It screams we have to create a program where we have to pre-record people talking to you because nobody else would come to your school. I see it in the kids every single day. That’s where their indifference comes from. Because they don’t think that anybody cares.”
Instructor Lucas Rapisarda, right, helps Kasha Williams, 17, with work during their session at Rosedale Freedom Project in Rosedale Thursday, November 1, 2018. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/Report For America
The Rosedale Freedom project serves students in the West Bolivar Consolidated School District, administrators have turned to Edgenuity as the critical teacher shortage persists.
Yazoo County School District used Edgenuity and other online platforms several years ago for credit recovery but recently began using Edgenuity specifically for initial credit, remediation courses and test prep courses.
During the pandemic, the district does not use it for virtual learners like Madison County does, however, except for one special circumstance involving a social studies course.
“Students have been able to take several classes through Edgenuity that weren’t available on campus for a variety of reasons, but it basically boils down to numbers. Whether it’s limited teacher certifications or limited student interest in a course, we have to utilize our staff in the most cost-effective way possible,” explained Amy Trammell, graduation coach for the district. “Smaller districts (like ours) can’t afford to assign a teacher to teach a class of 10 or fewer students… Edgenuity has been a tremendous help in filling that gap.”
Instead, virtual learners primarily use Canvas and are taught directly by local teachers.
“With Edgenuity being somewhat self-paced, we decided that virtual students would perform better with assistance from one of our local teachers,” she said.
Trammell said some students do better with the “self-paced” courses than others, but she believes the presence of a facilitator who oversees students’ progress and answers any technical questions helps the students perform better.
“Through trial and error, we have discovered that students who are successful in Edgenuity are those who are assigned time during the school day to work on their coursework. We have a facilitator who oversees their progress and encourages them to complete assignments daily,” said Trammell.
While the facilitator may not be able to provide academic assistance depending on the situation, tutors or other subject-area specialists can help students who are struggling.
Back in Leland, Treasure Cosie said she does have a facilitator to be a touch person for her geometry class.
“She motivates us to keep going because she knows it could be difficult for us. We’re already doing all virtual learning and then (in geometry) we don’t have a teacher,” Cosie said.
To Cosie, even though this district support is helpful, it doesn’t replace the basic need of having an actual instructor teach the course — whether that be virtual or in person.
“We need teachers. That’s the whole thing. We need teachers for every subject that we have so that we can better understand it instead of teaching ourselves. I’m not saying we can’t. I can understand most of the concepts, but I know some kids are different from me,” Cosie said.
Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe joins editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau to discuss federal charges filed last week against Nancy New and Zach New, what’s next in the ongoing federal and state investigations of their alleged misspending, and who else may be ensnared in the alleged schemes.
Gov. Tate Reeves and other Republicans have argued that states do not need the $195 billion in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan to offset revenue losses caused by the coronavirus-induced economic slowdown.
Mississippi is slated to receive $1.8 billion from the pot of money — a sizable amount considering the annual general fund state budget is about $6 billion.
Reeves is right in the sense that many states, including Mississippi, have not yet suffered as dramatic revenue losses from the COVID-19 economic slowdown that they experienced during the recession caused by the financial meltdown in 2008-10.
Mississippi’s tax collections have continued to grow during the pandemic. Through February, which is the seventh month of the fiscal year, the state has collected $338.5 million, or 9.5% more than during the same time last year. Sales tax collections, the state’s largest single source of revenue, is up $73.3 million, or 5.5%. Use tax collections — primarily the 7% tax on internet purchases and the fastest growing source of state revenue — is up $63 million, or 30.3%.
Because of these strong revenue collections, Mississippi’s policymakers do not have to use the American Rescue Plan funds just to make up for revenue lost because of the coronavirus economic slowdown as some states will have to do. They have a chance to be innovative in spending the funds for the betterment of the state.
There are restraints on how the funds can be spent that will need to be explored. But policymakers can take their time to study their options because they have multiple years to spend the funds. The funds can be spent, for instance, “to make investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
There are, of course, countless local governments throughout the state, with the city of Jackson at the head of the list, with water and sewer infrastructure needs they cannot afford to fix on their own.
“A lot of options are available,” said Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, who said House attorneys are still evaluating those possible options.
“We have the opportunity to stretch out and take bold action in spending the funds to help Mississippians,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader.
The situation is much different for Mississippi than in 2009 when Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Mississippi received about $1 billion from that federal legislation to help make up for state revenue lost from the so-called Great Recession.
Mississippi needed every dime of those federal funds and more to prevent state budget cuts, including the layoff of state workers. The decline in state tax collections during that time was unprecedented. In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the state for the first time in modern history experienced consecutive years where less revenue was collected than the previous year.
Mississippi used the ARRA fund to partially offset the reduction in tax collections during a period of three fiscal years.
This time around, Reeves says that the Mississippi economy has fared better than the economies of many other states because businesses were not shut down because of COVID-19 to the extent they were in other states.
Many economists also point to the impact of past federal COVID-19 relief packages as being particularly helpful to Mississippi. The $600 per week in unemployment benefits provided in the past federal legislation combined with the $235 available in state unemployment relief resulted in many Mississippians earning more while not working than they were making at the job they lost because of COVID-19. In other words, the extra $600 in unemployment benefits went further in Mississippi than nearly every other state in the nation because Mississippi has more low-paying jobs than most states.
In addition, past COVID-19 stimulus payments of $1,200 and then $600 for individuals went a long way in Mississippi.
The payments of $1,400 — another round of enhanced unemployment benefits and tax credits for children in the American Rescue Plan recently signed into law by President Joe Biden — should help keep the Mississippi economy going strong.
In addition to the $1.8 billion in aid to the state, another $1.3 billion will go to Mississippi’s cities and counties.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann called it “a staggering amount of money.”
The city of Jackson is receiving the most at $46 million, while the village of Satartia is receiving the least federal funds at $11,273.61. In between Jackson and Satartia, Lee County, for instance, will receive $16.6 million, the city of Gulfport will garner $18 million, Alcorn County will get $7.2 million and Adams County will receive $6 million.
Meridian receives $8.2 million, DeSoto County gets $35.8 million and Greenwood gets $3.1 million to name a few others.
How policymakers on both the state and local levels opt to spend those funds could have long-term consequences for Mississippians.
A more infectious and vaccine-resistant variant strain of COVID-19 was detected in Mississippi on Friday. One person in Harrison County was found to be infected with the B.1.351 variant, which was discovered in South Africa in December and reached the United States in January.
There are currently 181 confirmed cases of the B.1.351 variant across 26 U.S. states and territories.
Scientists are concerned about the variant because clinical trials of the three vaccines approved in the U.S. are showing that they offer less protection against B.1.351 than other variants. People who recover from COVID-19 may be reinfected if exposed to B.1.351 because one of its mutations makes it harder for antibodies to latch onto.
While more data is needed, preliminary studies have shown that despite any small decreases in overall effectiveness, the vaccines being administered in the U.S. still provide robust protection against the most severe outcomes of a COVID-19 infection.
“This just reinforces our messaging how important it is to get vaccinated and protected now. Time is of the essence,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during a Friday press conference.
Dobbs also encouraged Mississippians to continue to follow preventative measures like masking in public, because limiting community spread is the best way to prevent new strains from gaining significant footholds in the state.
As infections from variants continue to surge in the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is preparing a plan to update vaccines if needed. This could include the development of a third booster shot by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech for their vaccines.
B.1.351 is the second variant strain of COVID-19 to reach Mississippi. Ten cases of the U.K. variant, B.1.1.7, have been confirmed in the state since mid-February. Preliminary studies in Britain have found this variant to be 30-50% more infectious and around 55% deadlier than the original strain of COVID-19.
In Mississippi, 627,922 people — 21% of the state’s population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. More than 350,000 people have been fully inoculated since the state began distributing vaccines in December.
From an Underwood manual to this shiny new laptop, it has been a long, mostly enjoyable ride for this sports scribe.
These are the first words I have typed on my shiny new laptop, and I am pretty pumped about it. It arrives, after all, at my favorite time of the sporting year.
Spring is here and with it college baseball and soon the Final Four. They will play 16 games of March Madness on TV today. If I want, I can watch several of those games on this shiny new laptop, replete with a sharp picture and bright colors. It does not even resemble the manual Underwood typewriter on which I typed my first game stories all those years ago. My late daddy, who bequeathed me that Underwood, would be greatly amazed.
He would be excited, too. After all, the Masters is just around the corner, along with Major League Baseball. Our own golf courses are greening. Flowers are blooming. Every indication is we might be nearing the end of this god-awful pandemic that has so changed the way we play — and watch — sports.
Rick Cleveland
But before I wax on about the future on this shiny new computer, I must first pay homage to the one that is retiring and bears the scars of 10 years of loyal service. You can scarcely read the letters on her keys. Indeed, she’d probably still be with me if I hadn’t pounded those keys so hard. When you learned to type on an Underwood manual, the adjustment to sensitive, 21st century keyboards apparently takes longer than a lifetime.
My retiring computer was dependable almost to the end. She endured through three jobs, 10 March Madnesses and more deadlines than either of us care to remember. She couldn’t have enjoyed the deadlines any more than I did. You see, the less time I have to write, the harder and more furiously I type. Go figure.
And still, I had to replace her keyboard only once.
She endured. She was a plugger. An old coach would describe her as solid and dependable, a team player. She endured Ole Miss winning the Sugar Bowl on deadline. She endured two NCAA Women’s Final Fours on deadline, several College World Series and nine Egg Bowls. She endured being lost in the Atlanta airport. Twice. She made it through a working, golf vacation in Ireland. I typed on that old computer in the Crow’s Nest at Augusta National, in a Tuscan villa, and at 30,000-feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
She outlasted three football coaches each at Mississippi State and Ole Miss and four at Southern Miss. Rick Comegy was the Jackson State football coach when I put her into service. Deion Sanders is the JSU coach as I take her out. There were three in between, five total.
As I mentioned, I began typing on a creaky, old Underwood that I still have in my attic. I was 13 and not quite five feet tall. I looked more like eight or nine. But I wanted to cover games for my hometown newspaper and the editors said I would need to learn to type. So I took a typing class at the university, and you should have seen the looks I got when I walked in that classroom.
I can tell you, for certain, it was a long climb to the press box with a manual typewriter before press boxes had elevators. The evolution of how sports writers type and send their stories has gone through several phases since. We used to type our stories and then read them over the telephone to somebody back on the copy desk. Often, in those early days, my stories thankfully were edited as I talked.
Then came something called telecopiers, which transmitted the printed pages back to the office, often in blurry, almost unreadable condition. Then, there were these things called portabubbles, sort of a precursor to today’s computers. Those early portabubbles were sensitive to loud noise. Once, during a rowdy Alcorn-Mississippi State basketball game at Biloxi, my portabubble began spitting gibberish every time the crowd went crazy, which was about every 30 seconds in those Davey Whitney days. I lifted that damnable thing above my head and was about to heave all 25 pounds of it to mid-court when Orley Hood, bless his soul, snatched it out of my hands, thus saving my job and probably keeping me out of jail.
“You’ll thank me later, Pards,” Orley said.
And so now, on my shiny new laptop I could almost throw like a frisbee, I am. Thanks, Pards.
