If we do have a college football season in Mississippi — and I still think it’s 50-50 at this point — we’re looking at quite possibly the most abnormal season since 1918. That’s when Mississippi State legend Dudy Noble coached at Ole Miss, Mississippi State played Ole Miss twice and Southern Miss didn’t play football at all.
Not coincidentally, that’s the last time the world experienced a pandemic to rival this one.
We knew months ago this was going to be a most interesting football season in the Magnolia State. First, Ole Miss hired Lane Kiffin last December. Then, a month later, Mississippi State hired Mike Leach. Two of college football’s lightning rods, friendly rivals on the other side of the continent in the past, were headed to Mississippi. Clearly, the 2020 season was going to be interesting and different. We had no idea…
Rick Cleveland
Then came the pandemic. And we still have no idea. Things change every day.
Today, let’s pause, take a deep breath and consider what we do know:
• The SWAC — to which Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State belong — won’t play this fall. The hope is to play an abbreviated spring schedule. We’ll see.
• The same is true in the Gulf South Conference. The next Heritage Bell Classic, pitting Delta State against Mississippi College, will not take place until at least next spring.
• Mississippi’s junior colleges have delayed their season until an October start, but perennial powerhouse East Mississippi Community College, which has won five national championships since 2011, will not play. “The well-being of my players will always come first,” EMCC coach Buddy Stephens said. “There are too many unknowns to put in front of our players moving forward at this time.”
• Those unknowns have caused the Big Ten and the Pac 12 — two of college football’s five power conferences — to postpone all fall sports. That, in turn, has caused an open rebellion of some coaches, many players and at least one Big Ten school (Nebraska).
• The Southeastern Conference has delayed its season until a Sept. 26 start and will play a 10-game (all league games) schedule, followed by a championship game. If it goes off as scheduled, State will open at defending national champion LSU and Ole Miss will play host to Florida. The league games-only schedule will be brutal. There are no cupcakes. Leach and Kiffin will earn those millions. Kiffin reportedly makes $4 million a year, Leach makes $5 million. In 2020, that may well end up equating to a million bucks per victory.
• Ole Miss senior center Eli Johnson, who started all 12 games last season, became the first player at either State or Ole Miss to opt out of playing in 2020. And who can blame him? Eli’s father, sports writer David Johnson, spent weeks on a ventilator in ICU and nearly died from COVID-19. Eli Johnson, who has played through numerous injuries and already has graduated, will work on his Masters in criminal justice.
• Difficult to tell what changes more often these days, the Southern Miss schedule or its roster. Both have changed radically, all related to the pandemic. Three of the Golden Eagles’ best players have opted out in recent days: defensive end Jacques Turner, linebacker Rakeem Booth and wide receiver/return specialist Jaylond Adams. All say they will enter the transfer portal. The same is true of reserve running back Steven Johnson, at 260 pounds, one of the nation’s largest.
While other leagues have postponed or delayed the season, Conference USA will begin in early September. In fact, Southern Miss plans to open at home Sept. 3 (a Thursday night) against South Alabama. The Eagles’ schedule has continued to evolve with Jackson State, Auburn and Tennessee Tech all having to be replaced. The schedule now includes home games with Tulane and North Alabama. Yes, it’s hard to keep up.
Still, the 2020 season will have to go some to surpass 1918 for eccentricity. State played only five games, Ole Miss four, 102 years ago when another pandemic was ravaging Mississippi and the nation. State defeated Ole Miss 34-0 at Starkville and 13-0 at Oxford. That’s right, Dudy Noble’s Ole Miss team scored as many points against State as you and I.
The next year Noble was back at his alma mater: State. We can only hope things get back to normal so soon this time around.
State Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, R-Picayune, said she didn’t mean to tweet a photo of the Confederate battle flag in response to a tweet reminding people they could vote on a new flag design for the state of Mississippi.
Wilkes, who was first elected to the Mississippi House in a 2017 special election and re-elected in 2019, said she quickly removed the tweet of the Confederate flag flying with a rainbow in the background from her private Twitter account.
“It was a huge accident,” she said. “I just saw the rainbow and the pretty picture. I did not notice that it was not the state flag.”
She was replying to a tweet from freshman Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, encouraging people to go to the website of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to express their preference for a new flag design for the state. In June, the Mississippi Legislature voted to remove the 126-year-old state flag that featured the Confederate battle emblem in its design. Wilkes voted against the bill removing the controversial flag.
A commission has been formed to recommend a new flag design for voters to approve or reject in the Nov. 3 general election. If voters reject that design, the commission will recommend another one. The law mandates the new design contains the phrase “In God We Trust,” but cannot include the Confederate battle emblem.
Wilkes said when she mistakenly posted the photo of the Confederate flag, she was trying to make the point that people should have been given the opportunity to vote on whether they wanted to remove the Confederate symbol from the flag.
“I think the voters would have done the right thing and voted to change the flag,” she said.
A group called Let Mississippi Vote has been formed and says it will attempt to gather the more than 100,000 signatures needed to place on the ballot a proposal that could restore the flag with the Confederate emblem as the state’s official flag if approved by voters. Their proposal would let voters choose between the old 1894 flag, a flag with the state seal on it, the Hospitality Flag and whatever design the flag commission adopts.
The group filed paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office on Monday. Once the initial paperwork and legal work is completed, the group will have one year to gather the necessary signatures.
Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes
Wilkes’ Twitter account is private. She has 168 followers.
Former Pearl River County Supervisor Anthony Hales Sr. said he received screenshots of her tweet from two residents of the county. He posted the screenshot of her tweet of the Confederate flag on his Facebook page.
“They were appalled by her posting that,” he said of the residents who alerted him of her tweet. Hales, who served as supervisor from 1996 until 2016, said, “I don’t know why she chose to put that up. It is not a good look.”
Yvonne Moore tests Charles Holmes for COVID-19 outside of the Aaron E Henry Community Health Services Center in Clarksdale, Miss., Wednesday, March 29, 2020.
Mississippi recently hit a positive COVID-19 milestone, touted by Gov. Tate Reeves and other state officials in recent days: For the first time since mid-July, the rolling average for new daily cases fell below 1,000.
But as both the daily number of new cases and weekly average number of cases continue to fall, the average number of tests administered has also fallen to a three-month low, meaning Mississippi could be failing to identify and isolate active cases.
On Monday, the state reported its lowest number of daily cases in over a month, at 276. Weekend reporting tends to reflect lower numbers because of reporting lags from the previous week. But even for weekend numbers, Monday’s daily case report was low. Monday case numbers from the last three weeks showed 476 last week and previously 572 and 653, respectively.
But on Tuesday, numbers ticked back up to 795 new cases. Though the new cases are still above average for the last week, they’re the lowest Tuesday since late June.
State officials point to masking and social distancing as successfully driving case numbers down, but they also caution Mississippians to not let their guard down. Praising the declining case trends, Reeves says the concerted effort is paying off.
“This didn’t just happen,” Reeves said. “The virus spreads until we can do the little things to mitigate further spread, and that’s what happening in Mississippi.”
But as the number of new cases continues to decrease, statewide COVID-19 testing has also decreased over the same time to its lowest daily average since mid-May. Though the average daily number of tests administered ticked up slightly Monday to just over 3,000, that number was at a three-month low as of Sunday. A month ago, as daily new cases were heading toward their peak, Mississippi averaged 6,000 daily tests.
As both new cases and new tests decrease, the state’s net positivity rate remains high — still the highest in the nation using the last week’s worth of total positive tests out of all tests, currently averaging 22%. Mississippi also still has the fourth-most daily new cases per capita, behind Georgia, Florida and Texas.
Reeves disputes the test positivity rate and says not all clinics report all tests, which can falsely inflate the test positivity rate. Using the White House Coronavirus Task Force methodology, which analyzes a test positivity rate based on a consistent number of clinics that reliably report both negative and positive test results, showed previous weeks between 13 and 15%.
This week’s update from the White House task force showed a new positivity rate of 12% for Mississippi, according to Reeves’ spokesperson. Though they only reflect about a quarter of tests across the state, as of Monday the state health department’s and University of Mississippi Medical Center’s in-house labs show weekly test positivity rates of about 11 and 15% respectively, more aligned with the White House’s previous reports.
“Test positivity, when taken in context with all the other data we get, it is an important number, but when you take it and say this is all that matters, it is a flawed approach — test positivity matters in context with all the other data points.” Reeves said Monday.
The “lagging indicators” that show delayed results of previous weeks’ cases are still high in Mississippi. The state’s hospital system is one of the most strained in the U.S. and new deaths per capita are only matched by Florida. Looking at deaths across the pandemic, Mississippi is ranked eighth for most deaths per capita overall — mostly behind states that saw early spikes in deaths due to quick case surges, like New Jersey and New York, that have plateaued since, compared to Mississippi’s deaths that have only recently spiked.
Across the nation, COVID-19 is now the third-leading cause of death, despite only eight months of U.S. activity. In Mississippi, long-term care residents once dominated deaths, accounting for a disproportionate share of more than half of all deaths in the spring — they now account just just over 40% of all deaths and just one-quarter over the last month.
Though overall COVID-19 hospitalizations — confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients — hit their lowest point in a month Sunday, and intensive care units saw their lowest COVID use in the past three weeks, the state’s health care system is still stretched too thin, warned State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs Monday.
Using the state health departments new hospitalization tracker, the state’s high-level COVID care centers are particularly stressed. Of the 16 hospitals across the state designated as the highest level of COVID care (levels 1 and 2), their combined 555 ICU beds are 90% full, about one-third of which house COVID patients, as of Sunday. Across the state, 903 ICU beds are 83% full with the same proportion of COVID patients. Pre-COVID, the state’s ICU capacity ran about two-thirds full on average.
As the city of Columbus was struggling financially, its Chief Financial Officer Milton Rawle Jr. was allegedly embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars — the largest municipal embezzlement case in the state auditor’s records.
State Auditor Shad White announced Tuesday that agents arrested Rawle, 49, on the Coast on Monday.
Rawle is accused of stealing nearly $290,000 from the city. White said the impact of such amounts missing on a city with a $33 million budget is profound.
“Mr. Rawle stole a great deal from the taxpayers of Columbus,” White said. “… Now it’s time for prosecutors to send him to prison and get the money back.”
Rawle was being held in the Lowndes County Jail on Tuesday morning and awaiting an initial court appearance, White said. Rawle faces up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines if convicted. White issued a repayment demand for Rawle of nearly $355,000, which includes interest and investigative costs.
White and Columbus Mayor Robert Smith Sr. on Tuesday said that Wanda Holley, a certified public accountant performing a routine audit of the city, discovered the issue and notified city leaders, who contacted White’s office.
White said his office is legally prohibited from auditing Mississippi cities, so he relies on tips from private audit firms and government employee whistleblowers. He said suspected fraud can be reported to his office by “clicking the red button” at www.osa.ms.gov or via telephone during business hours at 1-(800)-321-1275.
Good Wednesday Morning Everyone! Temperatures are in the low 70s, under partly cloudy skies this morning. We will see a mix of sun and clouds today with a high near 89. Lingering low pressure in the area will give us a 30% chance of spotty showers and thunderstorms, mainly mid afternoon into early evening. North wind around 5 mph.
Tonight, a slight chance of showers and thunderstorm. Otherwise, mostly clear skiez, with a low around 68.
Kamala Harris speaks with presumptive Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden on Aug. 13. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy stops short — just short — of saying that he believes Kamala Harris will make a good vice president because she is a Howard University graduate.
“I am a Bison through and through,” Espy said of his alma mater’s mascot.
“Kamala is a personal friend, but more so than that she will be good for the country, strong, capable and competent,” Espy said. And, he adds, the fact that she is an alumna of Howard, the historically Black university in Washington, D.C., does not hurt.
The time at Howard for Espy, age 66, and Harris, 55, did not overlap, but their shared alma mater has played a role in their friendship in recent years, Espy said.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, selected Harris as his vice presidential running mate last week. As Harris seeks to become the first Indian American and Black vice president in the nation’s history, Espy is trying to become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator elected by popular vote.
Espy says not only does he believe a Biden-Harris administration will be good for the country, but he believes it will help his Senate candidacy.
Espy, who in 1986 became the first Black Mississippian elected to the U.S. House since the 1800s, has said in order to win this November, Black voter turnout must increase by 3% from 32.5% of the total turnout in 2018, and he must increase his white share of the electorate from 18% in 2018 to 22%.
Espy said he believes Harris, the first Black woman to serve as a vice presidential nominee of a major party, will increase African American turnout in Mississippi.
“I was on a Zoom call during the (Harris vice presidential) announcement,” he said. “I gave her a digital shout out. I said right then she should come to Mississippi. I don’t control that, of course, but if possible, she would be welcome — and Joe Biden, too.”
Espy said he will be proud to witness Harris being nominated on Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention as the first graduate of a historically Black university as the presidential or vice presidential nominee for a major party.
Espy said he introduced himself to Harris, a U.S. senator representing California, at a Washington banquet about the time he was preparing to run in the special election in 2018 to replace veteran U.S. Sen Thad Cochran, who stepped down in 2018 for health reasons.
“We talked about Howard University and about me running for the Senate,” Espy recalled. Harris later participated at fundraisers for Espy in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, and she came to Mississippi to campaign for him in 2018.
Espy lost the special Senate election in 2018 to Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, appointed to the post in the interim by then-Gov. Phil Bryant, by 7 percentage points. Espy is challenging the incumbent Hyde-Smith again this year.
Not surprisingly, Hyde-Smith and Espy have different views of Harris. Hyde-Smith, a fierce ally of President Donald Trump, posted on her social media account a campaign ad from the president’s campaign describing Harris as embracing “the radical left” and “calling for trillions in new taxes.”
Espy said Harris and former Georgia House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams, who grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, were his personal favorites to share the ticket with Biden.
Both Harris and Espy served on the Liberal Arts Student Council at Howard. Espy described the experience at Howard as life-changing for him after growing up in Yazoo City on the edges of the Mississippi Delta.
Espy told Mississippi Today he was serving as “negro senior class president” at Yazoo City High School in 1970 when he led a walkout because none of the teachers from the Black high school were transferred to the previously all-white high school. Because of his role in the boycott, he said, white administrators lowered his grade point average.
“I had good grades before then,” Espy said. “I had to write an essay explaining to colleges what had happened.”
Based on that essay, Howard offered him a full scholarship. His twin sister, Michele, also received a full scholarship. Espy said Howard prepared him for his career in politics, which culminated in him serving as the first Black secretary of agriculture in the nation in the early 1990s.
Students stand six feet apart as they wait to enter Ambition Prep in Jackson, Miss., Friday, August 7, 2020.
“There are a lot of things happening in our country that students have feelings about.”
As schools reopen during a pandemic, post George Floyd, teachers have more to prepare for than just educating their students. Are they getting the training they need?
After 23 years of teaching, Zimiko Turner has developed a rhythm for back to school preparations. Usually, the summer is about stocking up on supplies and deciding how to decorate her classroom.
This year, she’s buying extra face masks for her students, making sure she has enough hand sanitizer, and brainstorming with colleagues about how to care for children without risking infection.
“This particular time of the summer is spent (asking) …What theme are we going to use this year?” said Turner, a high school chemistry teacher at Columbus Municipal School District. “And now we’re wondering, ‘Are we going to be able to go back safely? How is this going to affect my health? What kind of danger am I putting myself in?’”
Like most teachers, she’s expected to have answers for students and be prepared when they return. But what has been nearly impossible to prepare for is the stress, grief and trauma her students will be bringing with them when they come back this year.
Some teachers are taking advantage of professional development to help prepare them for this. One afternoon in early July, 29-year educator, researcher and consultant Joe Olmi welcomed teachers via Zoom to a three day virtual training on how to approach the reopening of schools. This training, hosted by the Mississippi Professional Educators and The Impact Education Group, was different than most.
Rather than focus solely on safely reopening schools, the training centered around how to address social, emotional and mental health challenges students and staff may bring with them into the classroom this fall. The controversy over the former Mississippi state flag, a deadly pandemic, the upcoming general election and the Black Lives Matter Movement, for example, are all potential issues impacting students, Olmi told the group of more than 20 educators.
“For us in the state of Mississippi, it encompasses far more than COVID-19. And if we fail to think about these other societal issues then we’re going to be at a significant disadvantage when our kids show up in mid-August,” he said.
Teachers shared their questions and concerns with Olmi: What about tracking my students who may have moved out of the state? Or students who moved into the state who have to adjust to a new environment? As an educator, how do you meet the emotional needs of children with special needs if they choose to be a distance learning participant? What about students who deal with deaths related to COVID-19?
Teachers say they are more or less expected to have answers to these questions without having had the training to help them.
Every school district had to submit their reopening plans to the Mississippi Department of Education by July 31. They had three broad options to choose from: going back to school “traditionally” (face-to-face), resuming classes completely online, or creating a hybrid version that incorporates both.
What’s not required in those plans is the steps that school district leadership must take to help teachers advance their understanding of social emotional learning (SEL) or how they’ll provide training on creating a trauma informed classroom.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines SEL as a process for which youth and adults apply knowledge and skills to “understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”
CASEL advocates for social emotional learning in prekindergarten through high school and provides “high quality, evidence-based” resources around SEL for educators and policy leaders, according to its website.
This type of training is important because it helps identify students’ mental health needs earlier in their academic career and helps the students equip them to make better decisions, Olmi, the researcher, said. It also teaches kids to think critically about their place and purpose in society. In Mississippi, there is no legislation in place that deals with training teachers how to educate traumatized kids.
“As far as my district, we have not had that training. We haven’t had the opportunity there to explore those areas and what we can do as educators to meet the needs of those students,” Turner said.
She isn’t alone. There currently aren’t state-mandated educational standards that measure how well school districts meet their students’ social and emotional needs. With the onslaught of grief that COVID-19 has ushered in, the need for this type of training is necessary, education advocates say.
Research shows adults and kids already grapple with the meaning of their own race and ethnicity and how it relates to their role in society. This wrestling with mental health and trauma needs has been exacerbated by the impact of the pandemic and heightened levels of police brutality and vigilante killings.
“With some of the events that have occurred over the summer, for example the George Floyd incident, some of our students may come back to school fearful of different things — of being discriminated against or things that they’ve heard or things that they might have viewed on television,” said Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators.
That’s why, Olmi says, it’s imperative for educators to know how to navigate these challenges with students before the problem escalates.
“It’s almost too late or the prognosis is certainly much more negative if we’ve given them all these years to solidify these behaviors that are unhealthy or these behaviors that don’t fit with society,” he said. “Do we wish to be the guard rail around the curve or do we wish to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff?”
In order to effectively address these complexities, Olmi says teachers must acknowledge their own prejudice, implicit and confirmation biases, which is critical as students come back to school.
He added it’s important for educators to note the implications of their own biases and its susceptibility on students. The University of Southern Mississippi’s School Psychology Program, where Olmi is a professor, created a resource manual for teachers, administrators, parents and students.
In addition to this resource, he emphasized the need for schools to produce a social emotional plan for re-entry. Some of the items recommendations include planning ahead to address the needs of staff to prevent burnout, prioritizing a fully staffed mental health team with positions like counselors, school psychologists and social workers, among other suggestions.
“What are they going to do when that kid walks in and says, ‘I’m not putting on a mask’?” Olmi said. “There’s all kinds of negative opportunities that concern me and schools have to be prepared for the worst case scenario not the best case scenario.”
Some districts are being proactive about how to construct these plans.
For example, at Columbia High School, 22-year educator Shelley Putnam mentioned her district is creating space to have discussions around inequities and injustices, critical consciousness, developing character lessons, and social emotional learning.
“We recognize there are a lot of things happening in our country that students have feelings about,” she added.
Alison Rausch, a special education teacher in Prentiss County Schools, said her main focus is to meet her students’ basic needs when school reopens. In the past, schools focused a lot of time into “passing a test,” and now it’s time to just be there for students, she said.
“I want to make sure your social emotional needs are met. I want to make sure you have the food that you need. I want to make sure that when you’re ready for academic learning, we do that,” Rausch said. “As we begin the process of opening schools I think if we focus on the child instead of everything else around them, I believe those needs will be met.”
As a way to provide resources for teaching holistically, the Mississippi Professional Educators holds regional trainings around the state each year. And now with the uncertainty of what learning looks like, it’s important to provide professional growth for members, Kelly Riley, executive director, said in an email.
“This pandemic and the subsequent school closures last spring have been very stressful for students, teachers, and parents,” she said. “I am confident these trainings and other resources have proven beneficial to our members’ planning for the upcoming school year so that they may effectively support and teach their students during this traumatic event.”
While there is currently no statewide structure in place that ensures SEL training for teachers, it has been on the minds of state educational leaders.
Before COVID-19 derailed the 2020 legislative session, a bill was gaining traction that would have required teachers to receive at least one unit of professional development for social emotional learning.
The bill, pushed by the Mississippi Association of Educators, died when the Legislature recessed as the pandemic was first hitting, but its proponents intend to file it again next session.
MAE has also coordinated Zoom meetings for educators that provided tools for them to bring back into the classroom when dealing with social emotional learning.
In addition to that, Jones, president of MAE, is advocating that schools spend the first 30 days of class focusing mostly on social emotional learning. What might that look like?
“Just having a conversation with the student so the student is able to put their feelings into the room so the educator can gather that. Also not doing a deep dive into academics because the students are already stressed out,” Jones said.
At the Mississippi Department of Education, officials are also working on creating standards for social emotional learning.
In July, Dr. Nathan Oakley, chief academic officer at MDE, told the State Board of Education last month that though it’s just in draft form right now, it is “Work that we think is very timely right now for us as a state … When we look at a return to school, we’re not only concerned by the academic outcomes of our students and their progress in our content areas, but also have concerns about their social and emotional well being.”
Oakley added that the social emotional learning standards could be a useful way for teachers, guidance counselors and families help students build the skills that would help them as they develop academically and become students.
State Superintendent Carey Wright also said she had met with the Mississippi State Medical Association and the Mississippi Association of Pediatricians about the idea of telehealth and teletherapy that’s in the state’s plan for returning to school.
“They are very excited about the whole idea of telehealth and teletherapy that’s in our plan. They want to partner with us and they are willing to do whatever it is that we need to do to ensure that the children of our state get the health care that they need and the therapy that they need,” Wright said.
Until these efforts get worked out, teachers are still on their own when it comes to figuring out how to skillfully handle their students’ mental health.
“These students have experienced trauma,” Turner, the chemistry teacher, said. “It may not seem like it to some people, but there is trauma there and those needs are going to have to be addressed. The training that MAE provided, it did help, but of course we need prolonged training. We need ongoing training to help us understand how to support our students in this situation.”
