Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Thursday that eligibility for a COVID-19 vaccine is being expanded to include all Mississippians ages 50 years or older. There are currently over 11,000 open first-dose appointments available on the MSDH website.
We are officially expanding vaccination eligibility to anyone fifty years of age or older!
Reach out to our partners like your local healthcare provider, hospital, or pharmacy. Or keep watching https://t.co/ONejOtoyMZ for drive-through appointments statewide!
The Mississippi State Department of Health reported on Monday that 407,647 people in Mississippi — about 14% of the state’s population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. About 219,000 people have received both doses since the state began distributing vaccines in December.
January saw the most coronavirus-related deaths in a single month in Mississippi, with 1,240 confirmed. The state also set new single day records for new cases: 3,255 cases on Jan. 7, and 98 deaths on Jan. 12.
Additionally, the number of COVID-19 cases, COVID-related hospital admissions and clinic visits for COVID-19 like illnesses in Mississippi have been trending sharply downward in 2021.
MSDH reported 479 new COVID-19 cases and 21 coronavirus-related deaths on Wednesday. This brings Mississippi to a total of 296,154 coronavirus cases and 6,764 deaths since the pandemic began in March 2020.
Ole Miss women next week takes aim at a national championship in the sport of rifle. Pictured here are, from left to right, Erin Walsh, Lea Horvath and Abby Buesseler. They will compete at Columbus, Ohio, against seven other teams March 12-13.
Stanford has won 126 NCAA Division I team national championships, the most of all colleges and universities. UCLA has won 118. Among SEC schools, Arkansas has won the most with 47, followed by Georgia with 33.
No Mississippi team has ever won one — not a D-I team championship. Delta State has won NCAA Division II and AIAW national championships. Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss athletes have won individual titles. But there have been no team championships at the highest NCAA level. That could change next week in Columbus, Ohio, and you’d probably never guess in what sport.
Rick Cleveland
Rifle.
Ole Miss will go into next weekend’s NCAA Rifle Championships as the No. 2 ranked team nationally and with a legitimate chance to win the national crown. Here’s something else you probably did not know: The Ole Miss team is made up entirely of women and the head coach is a woman.
They compete against men.
NCAA rifle is a coed sport. Women compete with — and against — men. In the case of the Ole Miss Rebels, they more than hold their own. These ladies can shoot. They have defeated both Army and Navy, which might give you pause until you realize how proficient these Ole Miss women are at what they do.
Claire O’Neel, a sophomore from Frederick, Md. takes instruction from her Ole Miss head coach, Marsha Beasley.
Marsha Beasley, the head coach, can tell you all about it. Although no Mississippi team has ever won a national championship, Beasley has coached eight national championship teams at West Virginia, which was a national rifle powerhouse back before Ole Miss even had a rifle program.
Says Beasley of the Rebels’ national championship hopes, “Certainly, we have put up scores this season that could win a championship on any given day.”
We will get to that. But first, we should get into a little Ole Miss rifle history here.
The program was born in 1996 back when Pete Boone was the school’s athletic director and the Southeastern Conference was determined to improve its gender equity standing. The SEC mandated that each member school offer two more women’s sports teams than men’s in an effort to alleviate football’s effect on scholarship totals for men and women. At the time, Ole Miss offered scholarships in eight men’s sports and seven women’s sports. Boone did not want to drop a men’s sport so that meant adding three women’s sports. Ole Miss added softball, soccer and rifle, designating the rifle team as a women’s sport. Of the three, rifle was by far the least expensive.
Boone will tell you he never could have imagined what Ole Miss rifle would become, which is a national power. Says Boone, retired and living in Oxford, “It has been amazing to watch.”
If you didn’t know any better — and I didn’t — you would think that the Magnolia State might be a hotbed of rifle shooting prospects. After all, many young Mississippians — boys and girls — grow up shooting at deer, squirrels, doves and ducks. But the sport of rifle is a different kind of shooting, at stationary targets from different positions with both air rifles and smallbore (.22 calibre) rifles.
Lea Hovath, a freshman from Hungary, has emerged as one of the stars of the nation’s No.2 ranked rifle team.
Although the Ole Miss rifle squad has included a sprinkling of Mississippi natives in the past, the current roster has none from anywhere near the state. Young ladies from New York, Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, Texas and Connecticut dot the roster — and there is a freshman star, Lea Horvath, all the way from Hungary. Horvath, part of Hungary’s junior national team, made program history in January, shooting a perfect score in air rifle competition at West Virginia. In so doing, Horvath became only the 12th person in NCAA history to achieve the feat.
Ole Miss rifle recruiting has become international and Beasley credits her assistant coach Jean-Pierre Lucas, a former rifle All American for her at West Virginia, for much of that. Lucas, who competes himself internationally, has upgraded the Ole Miss talent level. Says Lucas, “We’re flat out recruiting the best team we can no matter where they are from.”
And here’s the deal: The Ole Miss rifle program has reached a point where sometimes the student-athletes recruit the school. That was the case with redshirt junior Jillian Zakrzeski from Constantia, N.Y., who reached out to Beasley.
“She took a chance on me,” Zakrzeski says of Beasley. “I walked on and I am grateful for that.”
As is the case with several on the team, Zakrzeski is an honor student. She majors in criminal justice and is exceedingly well-rounded, having competed in rifle, track and field, lacrosse and soccer, as well as ballet in high school.
Jillian Zakrzeski
As all the Rebels, she works at it. The NCAA allows for 20 hours a week of organized practice time. Beasley and Lucas make certain they use all of it. Not only do the shooters practice shooting, they spend much of their 20 hours in strength training, cardio work and yoga to improve their considerable skills. As is the case in all sports, excellence didn’t just happen. Yes, there’s innate skill involved, but they work hard.
Says Beasley, “I think what we are proudest of is how much better our athletes have gotten since they have been here.”
Ole Miss is one of eight schools that qualified for the NCAA team championships. Air Force, Alaska-Fairbanks, Kentucky, Memphis, Nebraska and defending national champ TCU are the others. Of the eight, Nebraska, TCU and Ole Miss are the three that compete with all-female squads.
Yes, there will be pressure — and plenty of it.
“Every athlete has to deal with the pressure,” Zakrzeski says. “You have to just focus, treat it as you would any other match. You can’t treat it like it’s the Holy Grail.”
Perhaps not, even if — where Mississippi and NCAA Division I championships are concerned — the Holy Grail seems a perfect metaphor.
Legislation designed to prevent transgender people from competing in female sports in K-12 schools and at colleges and universities is on its way to Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk for signature.
On Wednesday the “Mississippi Fairness Act” passed the state House 81-28 with Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, refusing to take any questions about the legislation after providing a brief explanation of the proposal from the well of the House.
The bill, written by Sen. Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune, would prevent transgender students from participating in both varsity and intramural sports designated for the gender in which they identify.The legislation states: “Athletic teams or sports designated for ‘females,’ ‘women’ or ‘girls’ shall not be open to students of the male sex.”
If there was any question about a person’s gender, that person could go to a doctor to have the issue clarified based on genetics and other factors.
“Allowing males to compete in girls’ sports destroys fair competition and women’s athletic opportunities,” Currie said.
At no point during the legislative process this year could a supporter of the bill pinpoint a time in which this issue has come up at any educational institution in Mississippi. Transgender competition in female sports has been a hot topic in national social conservative circles and the subject of lawsuits in some states. The administration of new President Joe Biden has advocated for equal rights for transgender individuals.
The bill, SB 2536, is one of the first to make the governor’s desk this session. In Mississippi, opponents say the legislation is transphobic and dangerous.
“All this bill does is put transgender youth at risk of bullying, exclusion, and increased danger while discrimination and violence against transgender people is at a record high in this country. If legislators would simply listen to medical experts and transgender athletes, they might know that transitioning for the sake of a competitive advantage is simply unrealistic,” said Rob Hill, chair of the state’s Human Rights Campaign earlier in the session when the bill passed out of the Senate.
Hill continued: “So is the idea that transgender athletes even gain a supposed advantage in the first place. Rather than use this all-important legislative session to bully transgender youth, the Mississippi legislature would be wise to focus their efforts on economic relief and addressing the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 6,000 Mississippians.”
During past debate this session, some questioned why the bill was needed in Mississippi. In addition, Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, pointed out there have been instances when people are born with physical characteristics of both sexes.
The bill passed the Senate earlier this session by a 34-9 margin. No Republican legislator voted against the proposal, though it split the Democratic caucus in both the House and Senate. Some Democrats did not vote on the issue or voted present.
“If Governor Reeves signs this bill, Mississippi will face consequences,” Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi told Mississippi Today on Wednesday. “As we’ve been saying all along, SB 2536 aims to solve a problem that does not exist. Transgender people of all ages have been participating in sports consistent with their gender at all levels for years, and no dominance by trans athletes has been observed or documented.”
When I first heard the Governor had joined Texas in lifting the mask mandate ( just a couple days after the head of CDC said it was too early,) I thought of that iconic moment when President Bush stood in front of the Mission Accomplished sign during the Iraq War — right before the fighting got even more severe.
We’re at mile 26 of the marathon. Let’s finish the .2 strong.
A bill that has angered many state historians would have the governor and lieutenant governor appoint members to the board that oversees the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, a move opponents say would politicize an agency that has remained above that fray for more than 100 years.
“This is an outrage,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, a vocal opponent of the bill. “… I don’t know of any other board or agency that has for decades been running so well. Changing the board to a bunch of political appointees is very troubling … They’ve been insulated from the political whims of the moment. Where would we be if (former Gov. Ross Barnett, a segregationist) had appointed Archives and History board members?”
Currently the nine-person board’s members appoint their own successors, a “self-perpetuating” board, subject to state Senate confirmation of members. MDAH preserves and provides access to the state’s archives and records, does historic preservation work for the state’s historic sites and structures and runs numerous museums, including the world-class Mississippi Civil Rights and Mississippi History museums.
Senate Bill 2727, authored by Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Long Beach, would have the governor and lieutenant governor name board appointees, subject to Senate confirmation. The bill passed the Senate and this week was passed by a House committee, but only after it made changes that would ensure more deliberations, and a trip back to the Senate, before it could be passed into law.
Thompson, during Senate committeework, said the change would simply bring Archives and History’s board appointments in line with many others — political appointments by the state’s elected executives.
Sen. John Polk, chairman of the Senate Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee that first handled the bill, said having the governor and lieutenant governor make appointments would bring new thought and ideas to the board, and prevent myopic thinking.
But 46 Mississippi historians, many from the state’s colleges and universities and from the Mississippi Humanities Council, penned a letter urging lawmakers to “not interfere with the independence of an entity that has done so much good work for our state.”
“As scholars and teachers of history at Mississippi’s colleges and universities, we have benefitted from the considerable resources of the Department of Archives and History,” the historians wrote to lawmakers. “Whether conducting research in its vast archives, examining its artifacts spanning 13,000 years of Mississippi history, or participating in one of the Department’s many public events, we have directly experienced the incredible asset of a competent and well-run state history department.”
The historians said MDAH has become one of the most respected such agencies in the country. They said its running of the Civil Rights and Mississippi History museums “has rightfully garnered nationwide praise and acknowledgement” and the “Two Museums” have become one of the state’s largest tourist attractions since opening in 2017.
“Last year, the department also modeled for the world how to navigate historic moments in a way that embraces the future while respecting the past,” the historians wrote. “The Department showed integrity, dignity, and transparency throughout its role hosting the Commission to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag … As a direct result of the Department’s leadership, the process was dignified and helped bring Mississippians together like few events in the state’s long history.”
The historians pleaded with lawmakers to not interfere with the independence of the agency and suggested to improve it, “what is needed is an increase in funding.”
“Please do not politicize its board of trustees,” the historians wrote.
Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey visits with award-winning director Tate Taylor (The Help, Get On Up, The Girl on the Train, Ma and his new film, Breaking News in Yuba County) on his career, his move to Natchez and his belief in Mississippi’s film industry. Taylor also talks about Film Natchez and its goal to grow Natchez’s and Mississippi’s creative community. Taylor talks about the importance of chasing your dream and what Mississippi needs to do to make sure its youth has a chance to realize those dreams.
A teacher with nearly two decades of experience in schools across Mississippi, Chanda Ferguson has done everything she can to raise her salary to support her family, including three kids.
In addition to having a master’s degree, she is National Board Certified, the highest certification a teacher can achieve. The certification process costs money, but the state reimburses the costs, in addition to awarding anywhere from a $6,000 to $10,000 increase in salary for certified teachers.
Ferguson, a kindergarten teacher in the A-rated South Pontotoc Elementary School, considered going for her doctoral degree to get a $5,000 yearly bump in pay. The problem, however, is the cost of the degree outweighs the salary increase.
“I don’t know if I could recoup my cost (for the degree) before I’m eligible to retire,” Ferguson explained, noting a single doctoral class at Mississippi State University runs around $1,500, plus the cost of dissertation hours and a $200 fee to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).
Despite her achievements and 19 years of experience in the classroom, she still doesn’t make what her husband, a community college instructor, made just five years into his career.
So, she currently works weekends at a local restaurant and as a mentor for the World Class Teaching Program at the University of Mississippi, where she mentors teachers who are candidates for National Board certification. Her husband also works a second job as a part-time adjunct instructor for Mississippi State University.
Chanda Ferguson begins her shift doing prep-work at the Seafood Junction in Algoma, Miss. Working at the restaurant is Ferguson’s second job. She also is a teacher at South Pontotoc Elementary School .
As patrons fill the restaurant, Chanda Ferguson begins to fill call-in and drive-thru orders at the Seafood Junction in Algoma, Miss. Working at the restaurant is Ferguson’s second job. She is also a teacher at Pontotoc Elementary School.
Chanda Ferguson fills a call-in order at the Seafood Junction in Algoma, Miss. Working at the restaurant is Ferguson’s second job. She is also a teacher at Pontotoc Elementary School.
A call-in order arrives for crab legs and Chanda Ferguson retrieves them from cold storage at the Seafood Junction in Algoma, Miss. Working at the restaurant is Ferguson’s second job. She is also a teacher at Pontotoc Elementary School.
Chanda Ferguson fills a drive-thru order at the Seafood Junction in Algoma, Miss. Working at the restaurant is Ferguson’s second job. She is also a teacher at Pontotoc Elementary School.
With an order prepared, Chanda Ferguson rushes to place it at the staging area for call-in and drive-thru orders at the Seafood Junction in Algoma, Miss.
Emily Speck, her boss and school principal, said she is an “outstanding” teacher.
“She is passionate about students and it shows in her classroom,” she said.
But she must direct some of that passion to making enough money to pay for her children’s extracurricular activities, go on vacations and sometimes simply pay the bills.
Recent reports from the Southern Regional Education Board and Mississippi First revealed startling data about teacher salaries. Take-home pay for new and even mid-career teachers is extremely low compared to neighboring states, according to the SREB’s teacher pay dashboard that uses data from the 2018-19 school year.
In turn, there’s been a 32% decline in graduates of educator preparation programs from 2013-2014 to 2017-2018, and the out-of-state pipeline of teachers has diminished almost entirely with a 96% drop in four years, according to the Mississippi First report. In short, fewer college students are choosing teaching as a career, and educators coming from out of state have declined to almost nil.
In Mississippi, teachers are paid primarily with state funds. The average salary for a classroom teacher this school year is $46,862. Some districts also include supplements from local tax dollars, and additional stipends are available for teachers in certain underserved areas.
The report concludes the declining value of teacher salaries coupled with the rising cost of college attendance could be responsible for the state’s teacher shortage. Current proposals to raise teachers’ annual salary by $1,000 do not come close to the $3,000 across-the-board raise, plus an additional stipend for teachers in certain areas of the state, the report says is needed to make a difference.
Two young, single teachers, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution in their jobs, work additional jobs to make ends meet — including paying off student loans.
“This is my 7th year teaching, and I’ve (worked additional jobs) every year,” one said, noting she works as a bartender and waitress two to three days a week.
She’s still paying off her student loans from college, though a special grant covered the costs of her master’s degree. In addition, she has a large family that occasionally depends on her for support, particularly since her dad has fallen ill with a terminal disease and is unable to work.
Another fellow teacher, who has some financial support from her family and fewer student loans, still works extra jobs to survive financially.
Both teachers know they are meant to be in the classroom. They both say the same thing about their first year teaching, which can often be a challenge.
A few months into their first semester, they both say they had hit their stride.
But the financial stresses make it difficult, and they often wonder how they will be able to make it work with a family.
“I always pictured myself more ‘settled’ by now,” said the 29-year-old teacher. But her only day off every week is Sunday, and that doesn’t leave much time for a personal life.
Ferguson, a mother of three who decided to become a teacher partly because of what she described as a “family friendly” schedule, said the more years that pass, the less true that becomes of the career.
“Every year it’s gotten a little bit more demanding, and even more so this year with virtual teaching, online learning platforms and everything we’ve had to learn so quickly. I love what I do … but unfortunately there’s not a lot of reasons to stay with it, especially for young (people) coming out of college,” she said, noting other benefits have dwindled as well. “When I first started, you only had to work three years to be vested in the retirement system. Now it’s eight.”
A 13-year veteran teacher in a Delta school district, who also spoke off the record to protect his job, said he and his wife make their finances work with strict budgeting.
But he also spoke of extra costs that fall on districts like his — especially during the pandemic.
He said his district told teachers last semester they couldn’t use their procurement cards for classroom supplies for disinfectant and hand sanitizer, and the district didn’t provide enough to make him and his students feel safe.
Then there’s the needs of the students in a low-income area even without the added pressures of the pandemic.
“Our kids need so much stuff, especially in the Delta,” he said, noting how he spends his personal money buying things like snacks and bookbags for his students.
“We’re doing double the work — we’re having to prepare for kids that are present and kids that are virtual,” he said. “They made us essential workers but they don’t pay us like essential workers.”
One teacher was working her second job as a bartender at a wedding and struck up a conversation with a guest.
“I told him I was a teacher and he said, ‘My daughter wanted to do that, but I told her no, the only way you can make it (as a teacher) is if you have another income,’” she recalled. “I wanted to argue with the man but there I was, working my second job.”
Five years ago this month, Mississippi Today launched as the state’s first nonprofit, nonpartisan, digital-only news outlet. The vision of our founders and early team was that of an entrepreneurial start-up: build a new way of delivering news and usher in an age of journalism that answers to the reader, not to a mass media holding company.
We cut our teeth on Capitol coverage and watchdog reporting, and have since grown to cover a myriad of beats, never straying from our mission of providing the best journalism for Mississippians without the barriers of paywalls and subscriptions. Our reporters listen, dig deep and mine data to give you the full picture of what is happening in our state, bringing awareness to systems, issues and stories that have long gone untold.
We will be celebrating our five year milestone all year long, and as we kick off this anniversary, I want to say thank you for reading our site, sharing our stories and helping us get the word out about Mississippi Today. We are humbled by the support we’ve been shown since 2016, and are especially grateful to become a part of the lives of so many new readers over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the next month, we’ll be sharing more about our past and future. I invite you to join us in celebrating the value of mission-driven journalism focused on Mississippi. We intend to be around for a long time, and we need your continued support to make it happen.
Being a nonprofit is central to who we are as a newsroom. It means we are driven by values, not by dividends, and it means that we rely on donations from readers to power the work we do: paying for records requests, keeping the lights on (literally), providing our team with health care and much more.
To our current membership: thank you, truly, for your generous support. Our work is not possible without you.
To our readers who are not yet members: thank you for your readership and engagement. I hope you’ll consider joining our community of members by making a donation. Our journalists may be the ones writing the stories, but without you, those stories go untold.
Editor’s note: Based on House leaders’ comments, we reported in an earlier version of this story that the House had killed SB 2765, the legislative medical marijuana alternative proposal. But House Ways and Means later took the bill up, overhauled it to match a voter-passed medical marijuana program, and passed it on to the full House before Tuesday’s deadline.
A House panel on Tuesday gutted a Senate medical marijuana proposal and inserted the medical marijuana language voters passed as a constitutional amendment in November.
“I’m interested in seeing that bill die — I think it just did die,” said Rep. Robert Johnson III, House minority leader. “The people have spoken, with a constitutional amendment about medical marijuana, and that bill went against the spirit of what the people decided.”
Johnson made those statements about Senate Bill 2765 on Tuesday afternoon, when it appeared the bill had died, with no Ways and Means Committee meeting called on the floor for the afternoon to take the bill up. Later, Ways and Means had a meeting and took the bill up, then struck the Senate language and inserted Initiative 65. It now goes to the full House and if passed, back to the Senate in its amended form.
Rep. Joel Bomgar, R-Madison, who helped lead, and fund, the successful citizen initiative to enshrine medical marijuana use in the state constitution, offered the amendment to replace the Senate bill language with Initiative 65’s language.
Senate Bill 2765 was originally a legislative alternative to the medical marijuana program voters overwhelmingly approved in November with Ballot Initiative 65, which is now being challenged in the state Supreme Court. The bill passed the Senate only after much wrangling and a “do-over” vote in the wee hours of the morning in mid-February. It was initially drafted to create its own medical marijuana program, regardless of whether the court upholds the voter-passed program. But it was amended during heated Senate debate to take effect only if the courts strike down the voter-passed program.
The legislative move had many Initiative 65 supporters crying foul, claiming the Legislature was trying to usurp the will of the voters. After lawmakers failed for years to approve use of medical marijuana despite a groundswell of public support, voters took matters in hand in November with Initiative 65.
Jessica Rice, director of the Mississippi Cannabis Trade Association was among many watching the legislative alternative marijuana bill with skepticism and trepidation. She questioned whether lawmakers were truly trying to provide a backstop in case courts strike down Initiative 65. If so, she said, they would codify Initiative 65 — as the House panel did — not come up with a proposal with higher taxes and more or different regulations as in the Senate version.
“Our position is that the people have already had an option to vote on a legislative created program, and they chose not to,” Rice said last week. “Just because this is up before the Supreme Court does not give the Legislature a second bite at the apple … I think this is about control — they want to be able to be in control of the program, but people have already rejected that.”
But many state leaders and lawmakers had lamented that Initiative 65 was drafted to favor the marijuana industry and is just short of legalized recreational use. It puts the Mississippi State Department of Health in charge of the program, with no oversight by elected officials. It also prevents standard taxation of the marijuana, and any fees collected by the health department can only be used to run and expand the marijuana program, not go into state taxpayer coffers. The measure allows little regulation by local governments, no limits on the number of dispensaries and otherwise leaves many specifics … unspecified.
The Senate proposal would have taxed medical marijuana, with a 4% excise at cultivation, and with a 7% sales tax patients would pay, which was originally 10% in earlier drafts of the bill. Most of the taxes collected would have gone to education, including early learning and college scholarships. And the Departments of Agriculture and Revenue would be in charge.
The bill also would have imposed large licensing fees on growers and dispensary shop owners. Originally, those fees would have been $100,000 for growers and $20,000 for dispensaries. Those were reduced to $15,000 and $5,000, respectively, on Thursday night. Other changes were made in an effort to assuage those who believed such fees would keep small businesses and farms out of the game.
The bill barely gained the three-fifths vote it needed to pass the Senate. It faced a Tuesday deadline for the Ways and Means Committee to pass it on to the full House. Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar had said late Tuesday he was still undecided on what to do with the bill.
He noted the Ways and Means meeting late Tuesday was not announced on the House floor, as is standard procedure.
“No, it wasn’t announced,” Lamar said. “We just added it to the schedule. I know that’s not the usual way we do it, but I wasn’t there to announce it on the floor.”
This left many believing the bill had died on deadline without a vote Tuesday — apparently, including House Speaker Philip Gunn.
Gunn said: “The issue, or the challenge here is that the people voted on it in November, and they spoke pretty strongly … I know there is a lawsuit, but that can be dealt with later if we need to. If the Supreme Court throws out that vote, then the Legislature can come back and deal with it. If they uphold it, well then I don’t know what the Legislature would have to do with it then.”
