Mississippi Today hosted healthcare and education experts to answer your COVID-19 questions at Mississippi Today’s COVID Community Town Hall.
Mississippi State Department of Health Chief Medical Director Dr. Dan Edney and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann opened the event with a Q&A led by Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau and WJTV’s Byron Brown.
Edney then joined superintendent of Ocean Springs School District Dr. Bonita Coleman, principal of DeLisle Elementary School Dr. Mandy Lacy and Dr. LouAnn Woodward, Vice Chancellor and Dean of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, for a panel moderated by Mississippi Today’s Kate Royals and Will Stribling. Viewers also heard from Michelle Henry, a parent in the Jackson Public School District.
This event, presented by Mississippi Today, is sponsored by the Delta Health Alliance and The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi and produced in partnership with WJTV.
Enrollment continued to decline at Mississippi’s 15 community colleges this semester amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to preliminary numbers from the Mississippi Community College Board.
About 64,000 students are attending community college this semester, MCCB’s initial headcount shows, a drop of around 3,500 students from last fall.
The numbers represent a slight improvement from the start of last school year, when enrollment dropped by more than 5,000 students.
The longer this decline continues, the bigger the impact will be on community colleges and the working class students of color they serve. For one, community college funding in Mississippi relies in large part on tuition. A sustained period of depressed funding could affect services down the line. And for the students who aren’t enrolled, research shows the longer they don’t attend college, the less likely they will be to ever go.
“Students are the lifeblood of any community college campus,” said Kell Smith, MCCB’s interim executive director. “Our colleges are committed to actively recruiting students to come to a community college so they can transfer to a university or enter the workforce. And when they’re successful in that endeavor, the state is successful as well because we have a higher skilled workforce and a better educated citizenry.”
It’s not just Mississippi community colleges that are experiencing a decline. Across the country, these schools have lost students since the start of the pandemic with enrollment falling by more than 11%, according to the latest numbers from the National Student Clearinghouse.
Nationally, the decline is worse among students of color who comprise nearly half of all community college students. Among Black students, there was a 19% decrease in enrollment from fall 2019 to fall 2019, and among Hispanic students, there was a 16% drop, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.
MCCB’s preliminary numbers did not include a breakdown by race, gender or school year; that data will be available later in the semester when MCCB does a more detailed demographic count. From fall 2019 to fall 2020, the number of Black students at community colleges decreased by 8%, according to MCCB. The share of white students also fell by nearly 7% as the number of Hispanic students actually increased from 1,891 to 1,910.
This decline is somewhat surprising to higher education experts who expected to see enrollments rise as they did during the 2008 recession. In Mississippi, the Great Recession saw students flocking to community colleges to study trades from computers to nursing.
COVID may have triggered a recession, but there are still jobs available, Smith said.
James Gary, the dean of enrollment management at Mississippi Delta Community College, said he thought fear and uncertainty of the nature of the coronavirus led students to initially put off attending community college. A better understanding of COVID may now be leading them back to the classroom.
“Once people started to realize that we have a vaccine, we have all these safety measures in place to make sure the student had a safe learning experience, we’re going back to — air quotes — normal, they began to come back to us,” Gary said.
Located in Moorhead, MDCC was one of the three schools that did not see a decline in enrollment this semester. MDCC’s enrollment increased by around 115 students this fall, about half the students it lost from fall 2019 to fall 2020.
Gary, who started as dean of enrollment this summer, also credited the increase in students with MDCC reopening its dorms and advertising its Delta Rides program, which provides students with transportation to classes. He also implemented a canvassing program for students who had registered late, a sign they might not follow through with taking classes.
Northeast Mississippi Community College in Booneville also brought students back in person this semester. Chassie Kelly, the director of enrollment services credited the numbers to the school’s four-day instruction week, which allows students to more easily work while they take classes. She also thought a decrease in the rate for dual enrollment, the creation of a scholarship specifically for students studying career and technical programs, and instituting a direct-texting line with students helped bring them back.
“We were able to reach our students in ways that we never even thought of before,” she said.
Another concerning aspect of this decline is funding for the community colleges. Budgets decreased during the 2008 recession even as enrollment went up, and community colleges have been playing catch-up with funding ever since. Shrinking enrollments could affect services when students finally do come back to community colleges in full force, Kelly said.
“Our decline in enrollment affects all areas, from student services to travel as far as conferences to train our faculty and staff,” Kelly said. “When enrollment goes down it affects every area of the campus.”
In turn, that has economic implications for Mississippi, with the community colleges housing career and technical training as well as workforce development.
“That’s one of our focuses as a community college is getting students into the workforce,” Kelly said. “If the students don’t enroll, we don’t get them there.”
No new charter schools were approved to open in Mississippi this application cycle, and some charter school advocates say it represents bigger problems with the climate in the state.
The Mississippi Charter Authorizer Board, which oversees all existing charter schools and authorizes new ones, denied applications from Instant Impact Global Prep and Relentless Prep Academy at its Monday meeting.
Each year the authorizer board goes through a months-long process to screen potential operators and grant them the authority to open a school in Mississippi. Three other potential schools from two operating organizations withdrew their applications late in the process. This marks the second time no new schools were approved in an application year. The first occurred in the 2016 cycle.
Mark Baker, an authorizer board member and the chair of the applications committee, said he is frustrated by the results of this year’s application cycle and that this would be the last year no new charter schools are approved
Baker told Mississippi Today he believes the problem is that the current charter school law is “too onerous” and changes need to be made to provide charter schools more flexibility.
He said he hopes the board will approach the Legislature with specific points to address in the next legislative session.
But Rachel Canter says the needed change is not in the law itself but the board’s support of applicants before and during the application process. Canter, the executive director of Mississippi First and an advocate who worked with lawmakers to write the Mississippi Charter Schools Act in 2013, said there’s “no real support” given to hopeful schools.
“The sector’s only eight years old,” said Canter. “If the board wants the charter sector to grow, there are things they need to be doing differently. They need to be more collaborative with schools and partners.”
She also said the law doesn’t dictate specifics of the application process — those are determined by the board.
In recent years dozens of prospective schools have started the process, but by the end of the application cycle just a handful actually receive the green light from the authorizer board.The board has approved nine schools total since 2014, when the first cycle began.
“If they want a different application process than the one they have intended that is longer, or offers more opportunity for feedback, that’s all on them,” she said.
Lisa Karmacharya, the executive director of the Mississippi Charter Authorizer Board, said her office and the consultant that evaluates charter school applicants and makes recommendations to the board provided a lot of feedback and outreach to applicants.
“I don’t know anybody that is more disappointed than I am,” she said of the fact no schools were approved.
But it was not due to lack of support, she said, noting that since March, the consultant held over 40 meetings and exchanged around 200 emails with the organizations vying to open schools.
“(The consultant) had constant communication, constant feedback and constant opportunities to engage with them,” said Karmacharya.
Karmacharya also said the board has put out a request for organizations to help with recruiting efforts and has been doing some of its own work on that in house.
Grant Callen of Empower Mississippi, which supports school choice options including charter schools, echoed Baker’s frustration in a series of tweets responding to the news.
“Last I checked, all seven of Mississippi’s current charter schools had a waiting list to get in and 90% plus retention rates. Parents love the education their kids are receiving, and more parents want that opportunity,” he said. “Another cycle without approving new charter schools is a travesty.”
Instant Impact planned to open a K-8 school in the Natchez-Adams School District while Relentless planned a K-5 in the Greenville Public School District. Jackson Leadership Academy, Columbus Leadership Academy and Resilience Academy of Technological Excellence all withdrew their applications.
Charters are public schools that do not charge tuition and are held to the same academic and accountability standards as traditional public schools. By law, charter schools have the capacity for more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction. Unlike traditional public schools, charters do not have school boards or operate under a local school district, although they are funded by school districts based on their enrollment.
Charter schools can apply directly to the authorizer board if they’re planning to open in a D or F district. If an operator wants to open in an A, B, or C district, they need to get approval from the local school board.
There are currently seven schools operating throughout the state with two additional schools set to open in 2022.
The most common refrain of prominent Mississippi elected officials who have long rejected the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — that the state cannot afford the costs of the program — was refuted this week by the state’s leading economic expert.
State Economist Corey Miller, a researcher employed by the state’s public university system, released a comprehensive report this week showing that expanding Medicaid would effectively pay for itself and the state would incur no new expenditures.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government would cover 90% of the health care costs related to expansion, while Mississippi would have to cover 10%. The economists found that the 10% state match would be more than covered by health care-related savings to the state and new tax revenue generated.
Two of Mississippi’s most prominent elected officials — Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn — oppose Medicaid expansion, repeating that the state cannot afford the costs. But this week’s research directly refutes their claim for Mississippi, one of just 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid.
“Based on our estimates of the costs and savings associated with Medicaid expansion, Mississippi could enter Medicaid expansion in 2022 and incur little to no additional expenditures for at least the first decade of expansion,” Miller and senior economist Sondra Collins wrote in the report.
What’s at stake, the researchers found, is providing health care coverage to between 228,000 and 233,000 Mississippians who are not currently insured. This estimate primarily includes Mississippians who politicians often refer to as the “working poor” — people who are employed but cannot afford health insurance.
Mississippi, if leaders chose to expand Medicaid, would have to foot a bill between $186 million and $207 million from 2022 to 2027, the researchers found. But cost savings to the state in several other areas — most significantly from reductions in uncompensated care costs that the state’s hospitals must currently cover — would more than offset the costs to the state in at least the first 10 years of expansion, the research found.
The report was released this week, as there’s more incentive than ever to expand Medicaid. In addition to covering 90% of the costs, the federal government would provide Mississippi an additional $600 million to expand Medicaid under recent legislation passed by Congress. Mississippi lawmakers would have virtually no limitations on what they could spend that money on.
In addition to the health care benefits, the researchers showed that expansion would be an economic boon to the state, creating almost 11,300 jobs a year between 2022 to 2027. A majority of these jobs would be added in the health care and social assistance sector.
Medicaid expansion would also increase the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) each year between about $719 million and $783 million, and it would increase the state’s general fund revenue by about $44 million per year. That added revenue would come primarily from an increase in individual income tax collections, the researchers found.
Additionally, Medicaid expansion would also increase the state’s population by about 3,300 to 11,500 new residents per year between 2022 and 2027. This is notable given that Mississippi was one of just three states in the U.S. to lose population between 2010-2020.
Similar reports from economists in recent years have not moved several prominent elected officials. Reeves, an ardent opponent of Medicaid expansion, will not hear a question about expanding without quickly using the term “Obamacare” and promising to never support it.
Gunn is also among prominent leaders to reject talks of Medicaid expansion.
“I am not open to Medicaid expansion,” Gunn said at the end of the 2021 legislative session in April. “… I don’t see Medicaid expansion as something that is beneficial to the state of Mississippi. I just don’t think the taxpayers can afford it. That is what it boils down to is the taxpayers. It is their money. I just don’t have taxpayers calling saying we want you to raise taxes so we can expand Medicaid.”
Gunn argued that the “most sick, those who are the poorest” have health care coverage now. He said expansion is “to bring in another class of citizens who are not in the lowest category. This would be the next tier up. I just do not think we can afford it.”
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is open to considering some version of Medicaid expansion, though he will not refer to it by that term. The Senate, under Hosemann’s leadership, plans to hold hearings on the issue in October.
“We are working on making healthcare more accessible and affordable in Mississippi,” Hosemann said in July at the Neshoba County Fair. “The time for simply saying ‘no’ to our options for working Mississippians has passed. When a cancer diagnosis can bankrupt a family, we have a responsibility to help. Further, no Mississippian should be further than 30 minutes from an emergency room.”
While most Mississippi politicians have touted their commitment to a pay raise for public school teachers, Wednesday’s hearing will be the first comprehensive legislative study of the issue in several years.
“I am just trying to glean, learn as much information as possible about teacher pay and the benefits that go with the salary teachers receive,” said Senate Education Committee Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville.
DeBar added, “We are looking at what we can do to retain teachers and entice education students to go into teaching.”
Those scheduled to appear at the Senate Education Committee meeting Wednesday at the Capitol include a representative of the Southern Regional Education Board, who presumably will discuss how the pay for Mississippi teachers lags behind the regional average, and state economist Corey Miller. Also scheduled are representatives from the Public Employees Retirement System and from the state health insurance program, both of whom will talk about the benefits package that teachers receive.
No Mississippi teacher is on the agenda to speak before the committee this week. Teachers were asked to provide written comments ahead of time.
“We are hopeful that tomorrow’s hearing is illustrative of a shift in thinking among state leaders and legislators, and representative of an understanding that education funding — and specifically teachers’ salaries — is more than just appropriations,” Mississippi Association of Educators President Erica Jones said. “They’re an investment in the future of our state.”
Kelly Riley, executive director of the Mississippi Professional Educators, said, “We appreciate the Senate Education Committee studying teacher compensation in Mississippi and for the Senate’s commitment to developing a long-range plan to increase Mississippi’s average teacher salary to be competitive with that of other states in the region. Mississippi’s teacher shortage is impacting districts throughout our state. In the current 2021-22 school year, 90 local districts, seven charter schools and one early college high school are designated as 2021-22 Critical Shortage Geographical Areas. This compares to 41 districts being identified as 2016-2017 Critical Shortage Geographical Areas just five years ago.”
In his successful 2019 gubernatorial election, Gov. Tate Reeves campaigned on increasing teacher pay by $4,300. But his first budget proposal released before the 2020 legislative session did not specify funds for a teacher pay raise. But in July at the Neshoba County Fair, he proposed a $3,300 pay raise over three years. That, coupled with the $1,000 pay raise approved by legislators and signed into law by the governor at the end of the 2021 session, would allow Reeves to honor his campaign promise.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann also pledged to make teacher pay a priority during his successful 2019 campaign for lieutenant governor. It is the Senate, where Hosemann now presides, holding Wednesday’s hearing.
“Recent pay raises have absolutely been a step in the right direction,” Jones said. “That said, as we continue to grapple with the state’s teacher shortage crisis and the knowledge that Mississippi teachers still struggle to make ends meet, it’s important to remember that sporadic pay raises won’t help us to recruit and retain teachers or allow teachers to quit their second and third jobs.
“We need to work together to develop a bold, long-term teacher pay plan that will help stop the hemorrhaging of teachers who can’t afford to stay in the classroom and allow us to pay these hardworking professionals a salary reflective of their value,” Jones continued.
In the 2000 session, legislators passed what is still the state’s largest teacher pay raise. Lawmakers that year passed a $337 million proposal that was enacted over a six-year period. That pay raise is equivalent to $523.9 million in today’s dollars.
“Too many Mississippi teachers are having to work second and third jobs to make ends meet,” Riley said. “Mississippi teachers are professionals and should be respected and compensated as such. It is critical that they be paid a salary that is reflective of their professional practice.”
The state education department deemed the Canton Public School District’s federally funded after-school program high risk and may require the district to pay back around $42,000 of federal dollars, according to a recent report.
The federal programs compliance report came several months after a Mississippi Today story highlighted issues in the district, including parents’ complaints that their children’s after school program was inexplicably stopped just months into the school year.
Terrical Travis and Krystal Williams’ children were receiving extra help through the program, called the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Grant Program. But both received messages from their children’s teachers saying the program was discontinued “due to unforeseen circumstances.”
Williams received the message from her son Ca’Marion’s teacher in November of 2020, and he was not able to receive extra help for the rest of the year. At the end of the school year he was told he would have to repeat the grade.
His mom now says he is in the same grade as his sister and “doesn’t take to school” like he did in kindergarten, where he was named a “star student,” and first grade.
The district has maintained it ran the program at every elementary school through March of 2021.
But the Mississippi Department of Education’s report released late last month found that although the district reported it operated the program from November 2020 through March 2021, “The district halted the 21st CCLC Program in January 2021, and the MDE Office of Federal Programs was not notified of any such program changes,” an Aug. 26 letter to the district from Judy Nelson, executive director of federal programs for the Mississippi Department of Education, said.
LaToshia Stamps, Canton’s federal program director, declined to answer questions from Mississippi Today.
“The monitoring report has been received and reviewed accordingly,” she said in an emailed statement. “No further comments will be available until all areas have been satisfied and cleared respectively.”
As a result, the Mississippi Department of Education will now consider the program “high risk,” meaning the district is subject to drop-in visits from the department officials along with increased monitoring of attendance records, time sheets, and expenditures of funds, said Nelson.
In the letter to the district, Nelson said district officials told the department the discontinuation of the program was due to the schools being completely virtual last year.
Nelson said the district told the Mississippi Department of Education that because school was virtual all year long, an after school program that was also virtual was not effective.
The state also identified $42,618.57 in questioned costs of federal funds spent in the 2019-2020 school year. The majority were for that school year’s iteration of the 21st Century program, including around $3,000 worth of equipment such as laptops and a projector cart that could not be located at the time of the monitoring visit, according to the report.
The report also noted that the district “failed to provide documentation that it remained in compliance of ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act ) with Immigrant funding,” or a federal funding source for extra support services for English learners and immigrant students.
If the district can provide the documentation to the department to show the funds were properly spent, they will not have to be repaid, Nelson explained.
Eighty-nine percent of incarcerated people inside Mississippi’s three state-operated prisons are fully vaccinated, according to data obtained by Mississippi Today.
While Mississippi Department of Correction officials boast high vaccination rates in comparison to the state as a whole, some within these facilities say they were never informed about which vaccine they received and are still waiting on their second shot, leaving them vulnerable to infection because they are not fully protected.
“I only had one Pfizer shot,” Linda Ross, a woman in prison at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, told Mississippi Today. “I keep putting in medical, clinical forms and sick calls. I had one COVID shot about four months ago, and I haven’t had another one since then. And I don’t see one in sight yet.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the second dose of the Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines be administered within a month after the first dose. Women in the state’s largest prison, CMCF in Pearl, tell Mississippi Today they have only received the first dose five months ago, leaving them partially vaccinated and more vulnerable to a serious COVID-19 infection than fully vaccinated people.
According to data obtained by Mississippi Today, MSDH distributed over 31,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to MDOC and VitalCore, MDOC’s contracted healthcare provider, between Jan. 30 and Aug. 11.
MDOC Assistant Deputy Commissioner Leo Honeycutt said as of Aug. 26, 90% of the population at the Mississippi State Penitentiary was fully vaccinated and 93% received at least one dose. In the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, 82% were fully vaccinated and 93% received at least one dose.
He said 99% of incarcerated people at CMCF are fully vaccinated. It is at CMCF where incarcerated women say they are still waiting to receive the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, but MDOC said in a statement it will vaccinate any incarcerated person who asks for a shot.
“The second dose has been administered to the overwhelming majority of inmates. MDOC stands ready to administer the second dose of the vaccine to any additional inmate that requests it,” Honeycutt told Mississippi Today.
However, Ross said she’s put in multiple requests to receive the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to no avail. She said her zone was under quarantine from the end of August until early September because someone in the neighboring zone tested positive for COVID-19.
“I have underlying medical conditions. I have (hepatitis) C, so I should’ve been one of the first ones on the list (to get the second shot),” Ross said.
Sherri Murray and another woman in prison at CMCF who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation also said they received one shot in March and haven’t been able to get the second shot since then. They said they’ve repeatedly asked prison officials about getting the second dose and were never told which vaccine, Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna, they originally received in March.
Six weeks after getting the first COVID-19 vaccine in March, Murray had a shingles infection and had to go to the prison clinic, she told Mississippi Today. Murray said when she asked the doctor about getting the second shot, the doctor responded by asking her which vaccine she received, which Murray said no one ever told her.
“I never got my second shot, and I have no idea what type I got,” Murray said.
The anonymous woman said she received the first COVID-19 shot in March, but she’s unsure if it was Moderna or Pfizer BioNTech. She said she was so busy thanking prison officials for administering the first vaccine that she forgot to ask which shot they were administering, and no one ever volunteered the information to them, she told Mississippi Today.
In mid-April, prison officials returned to administer the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccines, the anonymous woman said, but she, along with many other women, were called out of their zone for work that morning. When she returned to the zone in the evening, she said that’s when she learned that prison officials had administered the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We walked the whole yard chasing the nurses around trying to get them to give us shots. We went to the warden’s office and everything,” the woman said. “We tried to do everything within our power to get these shots...They placated us telling us that we were going to get our shots later.”
Despite these efforts, the woman said she has yet to receive a second COVID-19 shot. She said she has hepatitis C and is fearful of prison officials and correctional officers who could be unknowingly spreading the delta variant to the incarcerated population. In the meantime, she said she’s been trying to socially distance from everyone.
“I don’t want to be around anybody coming in from the free world,” the woman said. “I think they should have vaccine and mask mandates put in place for nursing homes and prisons. I mean, because these people are coming in to see about us…They come to work sick and everything. Some of them refuse to get vaccinated.”
Honeycutt, the MDOC assistant deputy commissioner, told Mississippi Today that department staff “continue to be encouraged to be fully vaccinated for the safety of all.”
“I’ve been here a long time. I don’t want to die in here because of neglect. My life is at risk,” the anonymous woman said.
