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Ole Miss and Mississippi State baseball teams will enter the weekend ranked in the top five in the nation in various polls. Southern Miss is in the top 25 of RPI ratings. Jackson State is undefeated in the SWAC. Delta State remains a Division II power.

Many assume this college baseball excellence is a relatively modern Mississippi phenomenon and that college baseball has become a point of state pride only in recent decades.

Such an assumption is dead wrong. Today’s story is about a Mississippian who pitched at Mississippi A&M, now Mississippi State, 112 years ago, long before metal bats, before luxury suites and before any pitch was known as a split-fingered fastball or a circle change. This was seven decades before Raffy and Will slugged for State, before Donnie and Archie went into the hole to throw out runners for Ole Miss. This was more than six decades before Ray Guy overpowered hitters for Southern Miss and Oil Can Boyd dazzled hitters for Jackson State. This was even three decades before the great Boo Ferriss became the first fully scholarshipped college baseball player in Mississippi. 

This was even a few years before Casey Stengel, the New York Yankees’  “ol’ perfessor,” actually coached the Ole Miss baseball team. (That was in 1914. As Casey, himself would have told you: “You could look it up.”)

This is Willie Mitchell’s story and of all the wonderful history chronicled in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, this is one of my favorite chapters. Mitchell made his way to Starkville in 1906 from the tiny Panola County town of Pleasant Grove (near Sardis). Willie apparently was an outstanding student, entering the college at age 16. By the time he was 19 and a senior, he had become something of a left-handed legend. Boo and Oil Can, future Boston Red Sox stars, would have nothing on Willie.

One spring weekend in 1909,the A&M baseball team took the train to Baton Rouge to face LSU in a doubleheader. Mitchell took the mound in the second game and pitched what must remain the most perfect game in the history of perfect games.

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Mitchell struck out 26 of 27 LSU batters and retired the 27th on a ground ball to second base. You read right: Only one LSU batter hit a fair ball.

If you are wondering how Mitchell did it, the line forms behind the guy typing these words. One hundred and twelve years later, we have only hints. The Revielle, State’s yearbook, tells us Willie’s favorite pitch was “one that has a very sharp downward break, which is called the ‘Willie Ball’ for the simple reason that no batter has been able to connect with it.”

Was it a spitball, legal in those days? Was it a split-fingered fastball, before they knew there was such a thing? We will never know.

Now those Bulldogs – actually they were called Aggies then – were good. They would finish the 1909 season with a 22-4 record, which even today’s Bulldogs can appreciate. Willie Mitchell was better than good. He had a 6-1 record with 97 strikeouts in just 56 innings. Remember, he was only 19.

Naturally, professional scouts were intrigued. The Cleveland Indians – they were called the Naps then – won the prize and signed Willie. He started his pro career with San Antonio in the Texas League. Just a couple months after striking out 26 LSU hitters in one game, Willie struck out 20 Galveston Sand Crabs in a Texas League game. By September of 1909, still 19, he was in the Big Leagues.

One of his first games was against the Washington Senators and the legendary Walter “Big Train” Johnson, he of a record 417 Major League victories and one of the first five men inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Big Train got one of his 417 that day, but it took him 12 innings in a head-to-head battle with a 19-year old rookie. The Senators eked out a 2-1 victory.

WIllie Mitchell turned 20 three months later.

He went on to pitch 11 Major League seasons, most of those with bad baseball teams. He averaged 12 victories a year with an outstanding earned run average of 2.88. His best year was 1914 when he was 14-8 with a miniscule 1.98 earned run average. That season, he became the first Major League pitcher to strike out Babe Ruth. We can only assume he used the Willie Ball. Ruth, a pitcher then, won a 4-3 pitchers’ duel. A couple years later, Willie beat the Babe 1-0.

Of Mitchell, none other than Shoeless Joe Jackson said this: “Willie Mitchell is the hardest pitcher in the league for me to hit. He has a ball that looks like a balloon and the only thing I’ve ever been able to do is to get it on the handle and break all my bats. I’ve given up trying to hit him. The cost of bats adds up.”

Mitchell’s career was interrupted – and shortened – by injuries suffered in a Germany mustard gas attack in France during World War I. He tried to pitch, without much success, after the war. 

He returned to Mississippi where he lived in Greenville and worked for many years for Standard Oil. He died in 1973 at the age of 83 near his childhood home in Sardis. Thankfully, the legend of Mitchell and his Willie Ball lives on.

The post In a season of baseball excellence, we should recall the ‘Willie Ball’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When 64-year-old Carl Plessala first moved to Mississippi seven years ago, he wanted to start a new life.

He stumbled upon a pamphlet that advertised classes at a community college. The idea intrigued him, but there was one problem: He was among the thousands of Mississippi adults who couldn’t read or write.

Plessala grew up in Louisiana, and he didn’t take school seriously. He called himself “a class clown,” which he said was a way to mask his low confidence in reading and writing skills. He entered the workforce and never learned to read or write.

“I thought I didn’t need much education because school was boring and riding tractors was fun until I got older,” he said. “Then, I realized riding tractors was a whole lotta work.”

So after he moved to Mississippi, he enrolled in a program at Hope Adult Learning in Harrison County and was matched with a tutor there. After three years in the program, Plessala’s initial 3rd or 4th grade reading level rose to a 10th grade level.

Today, Plessala says that learning how to read made him “feel like somebody,” and he plans to share his story with churches and other organizations. 

There are many similar stories in Mississippi, where 16% of the adult population lacked proficient reading and writing skills in 2003, according to the National Center for Education for Statistics. That year is the last time conclusive data on the state’s literacy rate was collected, though more recent studies and interviews with experts across the state indicate not much has changed. By all measures, Mississippi’s adult literacy rate is among the lowest in America.

Advocates who spoke with Mississippi Today say several factors perpetuate the state’s adult literacy problem, including generational poverty, incarceration rates, trauma and lack of funding for educational programs.

“We’ve kind of put adult education on the back-burner because early childhood education has taken the forefront,” said Beth John, a Hope Adult Learning tutor who currently works with Plessala. “So while those little babies are starting to read, we shouldn’t forget about the population of adults who can’t read.”

Mississippi Today spoke with several advocates and educators working to curb adult illiteracy in the state. Here’s what they had to say.

Donna Daulton, the executive director of Hope Adult Learning in Harrison County who also worked with Plessala, provided a snapshot of a typical literacy rate amongst adult learners who enter the program.

“Most of the students that come to us are functioning at a (low-grade) level,” Daulton said. “Even though I had a little bit of training in adult literacy and years of experience which set me up well to teaching, I still didn’t understand the role dyslexia, poor oral language skills, poverty, and being an adult who couldn’t read impacted our learners nor did I have the tools to address these issues.”

One prevailing issue Daulton shared through common narratives like “Mama couldn’t read” or “Mama had a baby, and I had to drop out of school” conveyed the parabolic nature of poverty and inadequate access to education and their firm grip on Mississippi.  

Mississippi’s poverty rate is 19.6%, the highest in the nation. This illustrates the lack of access to education where less than a third of the state’s adult population holds a bachelor’s degree. 

With generational poverty continuing to cycle, adult learners who are not a part of adult learning programs engage less with their community and experience difficulty in acquiring jobs, maintaining personal well-being and stability.

Understanding the impact of low literacy among adults, Daulton provides an even more intimate portrayal of low literacy’s effect on the day-to-day experiences in an adult learner’s life.  

“Mississippi does not seem to recognize that there are adults who struggle with basic reading skills,” Daulton said. “That there are people who can’t read road signs, prescription labels, forms such as medical, employment, or instructional workplace documents, notices from their child’s school or even their mail.” 

Another factor at play, according to advocates, is the state’s sky-high incarceration rate. Mississippi has the second highest imprisonment rate in the country, and many formerly incarcerated people experience difficulty finding employment.

Familiar with prison educational services and its need for improvement, Larry Perry has worked at New Way, a six-month program based in Hinds County designed to give incarcerated people soft-skills training in work ethics, communication skills, reading and writing skills. Perry says complex factors of generational poverty, dysfunctional homes, and embarrassment that is intricately connected to adult literacy.

““You’re not just dealing with adult literacy, so you have to focus on all of the other factors tied to adult literacy as well,” Perry said. “They (adult learners) want to do better, but at the same time they lack the opportunity. They enter entry-level jobs that won’t lead down a path of success.”

Perry attested to initial success with New Way, but he acknowledges funding challenges and that the program is “always one step away from being closed.”

Despite the challenges of limited funding as a non-profit organization, Perry says the presence of programs like New Way is vital to combat adult literacy’s reach among Mississippi’s adult population.

“I believe in humanity because somebody has to do something to help these people,” Perry said.

Cindy Heimbach, the volunteer state literacy missions coordinator at the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board’s Litearcy Missions Ministry, provides reading strategies to English Speaking Learners (ESL) and loves to help people.

“I felt like teaching adults to read was what I was called to do,” Heimbach said.  

The Mississippi Baptist Convention Board’s Literacy Missions Ministry provides a unique approach to adult literacy, providing training to church volunteers in three core areas: teaching English to non-native speakers, adult reading and writing, and tutoring children and youth.

In an interview with Mississippi Today, Heimbach described the daily limitations adult learners face in their lives, from not being able to run a business to an inability to read prescription labels. But Heimbach also highlighted another aspect of adult literacy that is not mentioned extensively: low literacy among middle class adults.

“People don’t wear it on their sleeves that they can’t read or that they have low literacy levels,” Heimbach said after telling a story where she encountered a middle-aged man who could not read even though he was a well-known pillar of his community.

Even though Heimbach may view poverty’s correlation to adult literacy differently than her peers in adult education, she does agree more involvement could improve adult literacy.  

“I would love to see churches get more involved and help people in the community,” she said. 

Sandy Crist, assistant executive director of workforce, career, and technical adult education at the Mississippi Community College Board, believes that more awareness about adult literacy is needed in the state.

“One of the hardest things we have is getting our message across to people, so that they know what options they have,” Crist said. “People don’t read newspapers a whole lot anymore, and we’re not on TV, so it’s very hard to reach that audience that needs us most.”

Seven years ago, adult education officially became part of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which provides federal loans for adult education.

The Office of Adult Education at the Mississippi Community College Board receives approximately $9.5 million a year from the state and federal government to provide classes, training, and other services that support adult education.

Modeling other states’ approach to adult education, Crist explained that the GED, the HiSET, and TASC exams function like subject-matter assessments in which there are core subject areas like reading & writing, math, social studies, language arts, etc.; however, the Competency-Based High School Equivalency Option developed for students who need extra assistance in order to pass exams like HiSET and others.   

“This is not the easy way out, but it’s ideal for students who just can’t get that one last exam,” said Beth Little, the state director of adult education and high school equivalency at MCCB.

The MCCB uses data that pertains to adult literacy and co-partnered with other organizations to create the MIBEST program, which is focused on providing economic mobility in the workforce for Mississippians who did not complete a traditional high school degree or are in low-wage jobs.

“The plan for adult ed was great because it recognized that we’re serving the same clients,” Crist said. “The same clients receiving SNAP benefits or Medicaid benefits depending on their level of income and poverty or other conditions and issues. We’re all serving the same students, but we weren’t all on the same page with communicating, and some of those services were being duplicated.”  

Further unpacking adult literacy’s complexity, Crist also explained that the Office of Adult Education assists adult learners with other needs like paying light bills, providing transportation to classes, and providing support and education for drug addiction — factors that tend to inhibit an adult learner’s educational success.

Little also acknowledged that Mississippi has a cycle of poverty and incarceration that her programs aim to break, but Crist also described a recurring issue with adult learners that is not so visible: trauma.

“A lot of our kids have experienced trauma, and that’s one thing we’ve done differently in the past year is training our instructors on recognizing trauma like mental health issues with our students because they come with more than just the lack of a diploma. They come with so many other barriers,” Crist said.

The post Mississippi has an adult literacy problem. Here’s what advocates are doing to curb it. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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The state Public Service Commission this week has awarded $268 million to local electric cooperatives across the state to hook up more than 102,000 homes and businesses to broadband internet.

Mississippi’s expansion of internet services, fueled by $570 million in federal money with more on the way, promises to be as life-altering for rural Mississippi as electricity was in the 1930s, PSC Northern District Commissioner Brandon Presley said.

Mississippi has ranked near the bottom — as low as 49th in some studies — among states for access to broadband internet services, with about 40% of the state lacking access.

“I will not stop on this mission until the last house at the end of the most rural road is connected,” said Presley, who has championed expansion of broadband to rural areas before lawmakers in Jackson and Washington. “… Our state is expanding connections at an unprecedented pace. I have a co-op here in the Tupelo area making about 50 connections a day — that’s more than anywhere else in the country … I assure you Mississippi has the pedal to the metal with broadband right now.”

The funding awarded this week is part of $495 million the state is receiving from the federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund — the second-largest earmark behind California. Last year, Mississippi lawmakers routed $75 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to broadband expansion, and the state expects to receive another $166 million for broadband and other infrastructure from the recently passed federal American Rescue Act. Beyond that, Presley said, money from the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure spending plan would likely go to rural broadband expansion as well.

Presley on Monday kicked off signing ceremonies for the funding awards to electric co-ops on Robins Field in Tupelo, where President Franklin Roosevelt once announced Tupelo as the first Tennessee Valley Authority city in the push to bring electricity to rural America.

The Legislature in 2019 adopted a measure to allow local co-operatives to provide internet services. This year, lawmakers passed a measure to allow existing and future unused fiber optic lines, or “dark fiber” owned by Entergy and Mississippi Power Co. to be used for broadband expansion. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said this will add thousands of miles of cable for broadband expansion, which he called a “giant step” for Mississippi.

Presley said the internet service expansion funded by the money awarded this week to 13 electric co-operatives should be completed within three years, with much of the work, and connections, done far sooner. Some co-operatives “are already halfway there, without having received a dime yet” and at least a couple will complete their expansion by the end of this year.

“We know that while these funds will help a lot of people, we still have tens of thousands of homes to get to, and areas that may have some connection, but are really underserved,” Presley said.

The post Mississippi broadband internet expansion ‘pedal to the metal’ as federal money flows appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Nancy New and her son Zach, owners of several for-profit and nonprofit organizations, were well on their way to building an education empire in Mississippi.

Their private schools, called New Summit, had been gaining acclaim, especially for catering to nontraditional students and those with disabilities — the only type students the state can pay private schools to educate.

“School choice” — the concept of allowing tax dollars to follow a student to a private school — was becoming a rallying cry in the Republican-dominated state Legislature.

Lawmakers were shorting public schools hundreds of millions of dollars annually according to state law, including for special education. And apparent holes in oversight at the Mississippi Department of Education were going ignored or unnoticed.

This was the landscape in 2016 when Nancy and Zach New allegedly began defrauding the state out of millions of public school dollars. 

To be sure, Nancy New’s schools have for years provided meaningful services to the small number of Mississippi families they serve. Her lobbying efforts and connections to powerful politicians such as former Gov. Phil Bryant and current Gov. Tate Reeves only served to further legitimize her companies, gaining them unfettered access to the public trough. 

Federal authorities are now accusing the News of scamming the Mississippi Department of Education and the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the funding formula that is supposed to determine how many state dollars public school districts will receive for each student.

Specifically, the questioned funding comes from a niche program to educate children in state licensed facilities, such as hospitals and psychiatric treatment centers. For over a decade, the News have claimed to serve hundreds of these students each year.

The alleged fraud is reminiscent of previous charges the News still face: In 2020, they were arrested on state charges alleging they embezzled Mississippi Department of Human Services block grant funds, which their nonprofit had received to run social programs for poor adults. The lax federal guidelines around welfare spending made it easy for the New nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, to get its hands on those free-flowing dollars.

But there aren’t many ways for private schools to secure MAEP dollars, since the funding is typically tied to a public school student. 

So, according to the indictments, the News got creative.

The most well-publicized avenue for private schools to capture public school dollars is through Educational Scholarship Accounts, which the Legislature created in 2015 for special-needs students who are not getting enough attention or support from their public schools — possibly as a result of the state’s underfunding of special education in public schools. 

“The privatization groups exploited that concern,” said Nancy Loome, director of the Parents Campaign, a pro-public education advocacy nonprofit. “They used children with special needs as a means to get a foot in the door.”

New Learning Resources has received $3.1 million in voucher payments from the department over the last several years, through hundreds of periodic tuition reimbursements ranging from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars, Mississippi Today found in public expenditure reports.

But these aren’t the funds the News allegedly bilked.

Federal authorities are accusing the News of defrauding an older, lesser-known program called “504 teacher units,” a U.S. Attorney’s Office representative confirmed to Mississippi Today. 

And their involvement in the program — by far their private company’s largest state funding stream — dates back much further than the time period examined in the federal indictment. New Learning Resources has received roughly $20 million in these funds since 2007.

The 504 program is supposed to supply a private teacher for a child after a doctor or psychologist determines the student requires placement in a hospital or licensed psychiatric facility. The state then uses MAEP funds to reimburse the private facility or school that hires the teacher. 

“To me, just having some psychologist or doctor, especially if they work for a facility, say a child needs to be somewhere without any protections in place and the facility will then get money really opens the door to children getting exploited,” said Joy Hogge, executive director of Families as Allies and longtime advocate for families and children with disabilities, developmental delays or behavior disorders.

Compared to the other entities receiving these funds since 2016, when the alleged scheme began, the New Summit schools stick out like a sore thumb. All the other recipients are hospitals or residential psychiatric treatment facilities or their affiliated in-house schools.

The New private schools also received the vast majority of the funding — 61% to as much as 74% each year — for a total of $7.7 million over five years.

Between 2016 and 2020, New Summit School in Jackson and North New Summit School in Greenwood each reported hiring between 10.5 and 16 teachers for the program per year, according to the public records. State education department officials told Mississippi Today each teacher is supposed to serve 10 to 14 students.

That translates to the two tiny private schools purportedly serving between 215 and 434 students — a number that’s more than half or possibly even larger than their total enrollment — with conditions so acute they require placement in a hospital or psychiatric treatment facility and also do not have disabilities.

The two campuses serve a total of 327 students today.

The number of these special teachers New Summit reported hiring is also significantly more than any other facility. University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital with the state’s only dedicated children’s hospital and in-house school, had just four. 

The Mississippi Department of Education acknowledged in a statement to Mississippi Today that the approval process for this program contained holes.

“MDE should have been on watch and should have been able to catch this. It sounds like they should have anyway,” said former Rep. David Baria, D-Bay St. Louis. 

But in so many ways, it was state leaders and lawmakers who had given this practice their blessing.

“Lot of red flags were raised along the way with respect to this whole process of taking public school dollars and taking that money to private schools, private entities with little to no accountability to the Mississippi Legislature,” Baria said. “We tried to raise as many warnings as we could about the fact that this process was ripe for graft and corruption.”

Prosecutors allege Nancy and Zach New submitted reimbursement claims that were fraudulent in several ways. According to the indictments, the News claimed they employed teachers who no longer worked at New Summit or never worked at the school. They identified some employees as teachers when they were not. They claimed teachers had higher experience and certification level than they did. 

The News also allegedly claimed they were serving students who no longer attended New Summit or had never attended the school. 

Loome said: “What has been reported is really blatant. I mean, we’re not talking about a little bookkeeping error. We are talking about very intentional fraud.”

Officials publicly accused the News of fraudulently obtaining more than $2 million since 2017. Federal prosecutors discussed $5.5 million worth of wire transfers in the indictment, but it’s not clear exactly how much they are alleging was fraudulently obtained.

Prosecutors haven’t outlined where all the money went, but they accused Nancy New of using at least some of the public school dollars to purchase a $250,000 home in northeast Jackson.

For a student to be eligible to receive 504 teacher unit funds, according to Mississippi State Board of Education’s policy manual, they must be placed in a state-licensed facility.

The school appears to qualify as a “state licensed facility” because New Learning Resources became certified by the Mississippi Department of Mental Health for day treatment — sometimes referred to as partial hospitalization.

The student must not qualify for special education under federal law and therefore lack an Individual Education Program plan or IEP.

Only kids with IEPs can secure private school vouchers in Mississippi, hence New Summit seeking out other funding possibilities for children who may need some help but don’t qualify for special education.

Public school advocates worry that the broader school choice movement aims to exploit the voucher program, potentially neglecting students who need the specialized attention the most.

“Private schools are not going to be just clamoring to bring in children like mine,” said Florance Bass, mother of a public school student with Down syndrome.

Instead, Bass believes current efforts to privatize education targets “these kids who are a little bit easier to deal with versus those that require a whole lot of services.”

Private schools have no obligation to accept every child who applies. Anecdotally, one parent Mississippi Today spoke with was turned away from New Summit because her child’s disability presented as behavioral issues.

Ironically, New Summit claimed the majority of its student population were students with acute behavioral disorders and not learning disabilities, according to their 504 submissions to MDE.

Department of Mental Health spokesperson Adam Moore described the duties of certified day treatment facilities: “Day Treatment services promote successful community living through activities like social skills training, and may also include skills training in areas like anger management, problem solving, or conflict resolution.”

None of the other entities receiving 504 funds are day centers. They are either inpatient healthcare or psychiatric residential facilities or affiliated with one.

The other facilities receiving 504 teacher unit funds include:

• Canopy Children’s Solutions’ psychiatric residential facility called CARES Center in Jackson

• CARES Center in Gulfport

• Parkwood Behavioral Health Systems and affiliated Park Academy

• Merit Health Gulf Oaks

• Diamond Grove School of Diamond Grove Behavioral Health Center

• Crossroads Residential Treatment Facility at Brentwood Behavioral Healthcare

• Oceans Behavioral Hospital

There is another program called the Educable Child Program, which is similarly designed to provide funding to private schools to educate children in health department-licensed care facilities. New Learning Resources has received a small amount — $13,340 — through this program over the years. North New Summit School received $133,428 in these funds from 2006 to 2013 under the name of a separate private company called Alternative Youth Services, according to public records from the education department.

The state can also provide education funding to private schools for dyslexia scholarships or through direct legislative appropriations. Lawmakers have allocated a total of $3 million to New Learning Resources and affiliated Mississippi Autism Center starting in 2013, but records show the education department actually paid these “flow through grants” to the New-owned nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.

The News have also used at least $400,000 in welfare dollars the state awarded to their nonprofit to lobby the Legislature for public education funds, Mississippi Today first reported. 

The 504 funding came from the education department to New Learning Resources in big chunks. The largest was a nearly $1 million lump sum.

The large payments are reminiscent of the Mississippi Department of Human Services welfare grants that Mississippi Community Education Center received and the News allegedly abused. 

In the case of the welfare scandal, multi-million dollar upfront payments, shoddy accounting and nearly nonexistent accountability created ample opportunity for the alleged embezzlement of more than $4 million. The state agency had required the nonprofit to provide very little justification or proof of what it was accomplishing with the funds.

Agents arrested DHS’ former director, John Davis, along with the News, the nonprofit’s accountant and two others in this alleged scheme. One defendant pleaded guilty; the accountant tried to plead guilty but a judge rejected the deal. The remaining four are still pleading not guilty.

While the state auditor alleged a widespread conspiracy at the welfare agency, federal prosecutors allege the News falsified records in order to scam the education department.

The education department told Mississippi Today in a written statement that the entities receiving 504 funding must maintain documentation showing student eligibility, including medical records showing a physician or psychologists determination that the student needs services from a state licensed facility. 

State policy requires the entities to submit “an assurance” to the education department that it possesses these documents, but doesn’t require they actually submit the records. Private schools generally have little obligation to report their operational practices or outcomes to anyone.

“They are allowed to operate in secret and receive public funds at the same time,” Loome said.

The state agency did not answer questions about how New Summit was able to secure so much 504 funding or why their claims for so many teachers did not raise red flags, citing the ongoing criminal case. Prosecutors have not accused any state employees of participating in the scheme.

“MDE acknowledges there were gaps in the approval process for this program,” the department said in a statement. “… Under new leadership in the MDE Office of Special Education, MDE instituted additional accountability measures in the 2020-21 school year that includes requiring the entities to submit the eligibility documentation for every student the teacher units serve … Further revisions are being made for 2021-22, and applicants will receive the new protocols in May.”

The post Alleged scam: Nancy New’s school claimed to treat hospitalized kids appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Before Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann finished his post-legislative session press conference on April 1, education advocates and politicos rapidly fired off texts to one another and to reporters, opining about an assertion he made.

“This year education had its best year since, probably since William Winter,” Hosemann said early in the press conference.

Hosemann was harkening back to the 1982 session, when former Gov. William Winter ushered one of the state’s most transformative legislative education packages. It increased teacher pay, established public kindergarten and compulsory school attendance, and created a statewide testing program for performance-based accreditation of public schools.

The change Winter led in 1982 demonstrated a shift in thinking about public education. It signaled to the nation that Mississippi cared to think critically and act boldly about its future. This year, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to magnify wide educational disparities and years of legislative under-funding of public education, lawmakers failed to match the transformative action of Winter.

READ MORE: State employees, higher ed employees to receive pay raises as lawmakers finalize budget

Lawmakers this year spent about $100 million more on education than last year. Half of that amount went to a modest $1,000-per-year pay raise for teachers. They also doubled funds for the state’s early childhood programs and increased the teacher classroom supply fund by $8 million, to $20 million.

Additionally, lawmakers learned that the latest federal stimulus package will send a whopping $1.6 billion to K-12 education in Mississippi — part of what Hosemann was highlighting when he referenced Winter’s legacy — though schools, not lawmakers, will control how those funds are spent.. Other legislative leaders seemed to share Hosemann’s feelings about the 2021 session.

“It’s just a real good year for education as far as money going into it,” House Education Committee Chairman Richard Bennett told fellow lawmakers on the floor of the House.

Leah Smith, Hosemann’s education policy director, pointed to the teacher pay raise, doubling support for the pre-kindergarten programs, increasing money for math and early learning coaches, increasing teacher supply money and the creation of a new teacher loan repayment program as successes from the 2021 session.

“The lieutenant governor believes investing in the human mind is the best way to move Mississippi forward, and has consistently advocated for providing teachers and schools with the resources they need to be successful,” Smith said.

While the 2021 legislative accomplishments and funding realities were commendable, according to every education advocate who spoke with Mississippi Today this week, they were not transformative relative to 1982 and other sessions since.

Winter’s policies in 1982 proved that Mississippi prioritized public education, and the nation took notice. This year, lawmakers offered a modest pay raise that doesn’t move Mississippi out of last place for average teacher pay in the region, allocated lottery funds to public education based on existing state law, and passed a student loan forgiveness program that arguably wouldn’t be necessary if teachers were paid more in the first place.

Before the passage of Winter’s reform, Mississippi was still reeling from integration and the subsequent creation of segregation academies. It was the only state in the nation with no public kindergarten, and it was also the second-most illiterate state in the nation, according to Ellen Meacham’s Mississippi Encyclopedia entry.

If Winter’s Education Reform Act ushered in a new commitment by the state to public education, it could be argued that commitment continued in the 1990s and early 2000s. What legislation has been most impactful in terms of improving education might be open for debate, but based on any criteria, Mississippi schools would be much worse off today if not for proposals enacted in the 1990s and early 2000s.

During that period — considered by many a golden age in terms of education legislation — funding was dramatically increased, teachers were placed on the state health insurance plan, classrooms were air conditioned and a new funding formula was enacted to ensure a level of equity in funding for Mississippi schools.

From 1992-1996, then-Sen. Ronnie Musgrove and Rep. Billy McCoy chaired their respective chambers’ education committees. While the two headstrong and ambitious politicians often butted heads, they shared a common belief that transformative education legislation was needed to help the state progress. Together, they passed proposals that are often taken for granted as part of the state’s current education fabric.

Those proposals were kicked off in the first year of a new four-year term in 1992, when the Legislature’s education committees teamed up with the revenue committees to pass a 1-cent sales tax increase for education. The education enhancement legislation now generates about $400 million each year for education.

Unthinkable in today’s no-new-tax environment, the sales tax increase was passed during an election year. Legislators, who had just won election in 1991, were forced to run again in 1992 as a result of federal litigation over redistricting issues. Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice, who vetoed the 1-cent sales tax increase, pledged to campaign against legislators who voted to override his veto of the tax hike. Despite that threat, the veto was overridden. Only one key legislator lost reelection later that year: Senate Finance Chair Rick Lambert of Hattiesburg. But his defeat was attributed to personal issues more so than to his role in passing the sales tax increase.

With the new money coming in, the Legislature later put teachers, who had no health insurance program, on the state employee health insurance plan and mandated the air-conditioning of classrooms. Before then, teachers most likely had no health insurance unless they were married and on their spouses’ plans.

And people who have attended school in classes without air-conditioners in hot Mississippi summers might argue that no more impactful legislation has been passed.

But other programs enacted in the 1990s included a $5,000-a-year salary supplement for National Board Certified teachers and money for teachers to purchase classroom supplies. The teacher supply program was part of the 1-cent sales tax increase legislation.

In 1997, the Legislature passed the watershed Mississippi Adequate Education Program — again over a governor’s veto. The legislation ensured that property-poor school districts received more state funding per student than did more affluent districts, based on a formula. The legislation is credited with ensuring Mississippi did not lose an equity funding lawsuit as many surrounding states had.

And in 2000, during Musgrove’s tenure as governor, the Legislature passed a teacher pay plan phased in over six years costing the state $338 million, or $516 million in today’s dollars. No pay raise since then has come close to that total.

When fully phased in, teachers were projected to have received a 30% pay raise. The average teacher salary when the pay raise was passed — $31,913 — was increased to about $41,000 when fully enacted, according to reports at the time.

Thinking back on the 2021 legislative session, the Mississippi Association of Educators, the state’s teachers union, said while there were some successes, there were failures as well.

“While we certainly saw several successes … we also saw a number of bills that would’ve demonstrated lawmakers’ understanding of the importance of a whole-child approach die on the calendar or not make it out of committee,” said Erica Jones, the president of the association.

One example, she said, was a bill dealing with incorporating trauma-informed practices and awareness into schools with the goal of ensuring every student is well-known by at least one adult in the school setting.

“After watching educators struggle to meet the needs of students and their families over the past year, it has never been more clear that addressing issues like trauma and providing wraparound services is critically needed in Mississippi,” Jones said. “The pandemic didn’t create new issues in public education; it simply exposed, highlighted, and exacerbated the preexisting challenges students and educators face every day in our schools. If lawmakers haven’t been spurred to action now, when will they be?”

Nancy Loome, executive director of the public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign, said 2021 was a strong session for public schools — one that sets the Legislature up to go further in future years.

“The bump in funding for teacher pay and important programs like pre-K will serve students well and positions us for some critical next steps, like closing the gap between what Mississippi invests in public schools per student and what our neighbors like Arkansas spend,” Loome said.

The Legislature has consistently underfunded the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the state’s education funding formula passed in that 1997 session, every year since 2008. This year, MAEP funding was about $271 million below full funding.

Kelly Riley, executive director of Mississippi Professional Educators, had a similar take and pointed to necessary policy improvements for the future.

“While the $1,000 pay raise is not enough to make Mississippi competitive with surrounding states, it is a step in the right direction,” Riley said. “We are encouraged by the Senate’s commitment to developing a long-range plan this summer for increasing Mississippi’s average teacher salary to the southeastern average. We hope the House will partner in the development of this plan.”

Nearly 40 years after Winter’s historic education reform, Mississippi’s average teacher salary is $45,105, compared to the southeastern average of $53,340, according to 2018-2019 data. The national average is $62,304.

The 2021 Mississippi legislative session saw increases in teacher pay and education funding. But whether it equals or bests other education-focused sessions of recent decades is questionable.

The post How public education fared during the 2021 legislative session appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Resurrection appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Primary elections for municipal offices — mayor, city council, and board of aldermen — were held across Mississippi on April 6. 

Some races were decided by the primary, as all candidates for that office were from the same political party. Those races where no candidate received more than 50% of the vote will now advance to a runoff election with the top two candidates. Primary runoff elections will be held on April 27.

The general election for all municipal races will be held on June 8. 

Mississippi Today has compiled links that show unofficial election results from around the state. These have been organized by region for convenience. Click on the hyperlinks below to visit the news organizations’ websites for election results.

North Mississippi (links include results for the following cities: Hernando, Horn Lake, Tupelo, Starkville, Columbus, West Point, Amory, Baldwyn, Booneville, Brooksville, Ecru, Eupora, Farmington, Fulton, Houston, Louisville, Macon, Nettleton, New Albany, Okolona, Oxford, Pontotoc, Ripley, Shannon, Southaven, Verona, Water Valley, Winona)

• WTVA election results hub

• The Daily Journal election coverage

• DeSoto Times-Tribune election coverage: (1) (2) (3)

Central and South Mississippi (links include results for cities in the following counties: Attala, Hinds, Holmes, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, Rankin, Simpson, Walthall, Warren)

• WLBT election results hub

• Clarion Ledger election coverage (1) (2)

• The Vicksburg Post election coverage

Mississippi Gulf Coast (links include results for the following cities: Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, Pass Christian, D’lberville, Ocean Springs, Moss Point, Pascagoula, Gautier, Bay St. Louis, Picayune, Poplarville)

• WLOX election results hub 

• Sun Herald election coverage

The post Election results: Who won 2021 Mississippi municipal primaries appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with the dean of Mississippi sports writers, Rick (The Governor) Cleveland.

Cleveland, a native of Hattiesburg and resident of Jackson, has been Mississippi Today’s sports columnist since 2016. A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi with a bachelor’s in journalism, Rick has worked for the Monroe (La.) News Star World, Jackson Daily News and Clarion Ledger.

He was sports editor of Hattiesburg American and executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. His work as a syndicated columnist and celebrated sports writer has appeared in numerous magazines, periodicals and newspapers. Rick has been recognized 13 times as Mississippi Sports Writer of the Year and is recipient of multiple awards and honors for his reporting and writing.

The post Mississippi Stories: Rick Cleveland appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Educators assessed Mary Harbin Hinds, who has a rare chromosome disorder resulting in academic delays, as a nonreader when she entered New Summit School in third grade. 

Halfway through the year at the Jackson private school, “she was reading poems on her own with words as large as ‘wonderment,’” her mom, Jodi Kimbrell Hinds, recalled. By the end of her first year, the girl — now a ninth grader at the school — was reading on grade level.

“It was life changing,” the mom of two said. “Mary Harbin is just a mystery. She can do great at some things and some things she can’t. New Summit just plugged into that immediately and figured out what works for her.”

Parents of New Summit students — nine of whom spoke with Mississippi Today — rave about their children’s educational successes and emotional growth, the result of opportunities that the state’s public school system typically cannot provide. 

But behind the scenes, school owners and operators Nancy New and her son Zach New were allegedly lying about the teachers they employed and the students they served, defrauding the state out of more than $2 million in public school dollars. The recent federal indictment, to which they’ve pleaded not guilty, came more than a year after the two were arrested on separate state charges alleging they also embezzled more than $4 million in welfare dollars through their nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.

Now, several parents of students with special needs — who found a safe haven at New Summit in Jackson — are caught in the fray, uncertain about whether the school will remain open and if the 185 students will continue to have access to the specialized instruction they’ve come to cherish.

They dread the possibility of returning their children back to the public school system with the other 65,000 students with disabilities, according to public records, who are served by Mississippi’s special education services mandated under federal law. 

Nancy New founded the school in 1997 to offer smaller classes and more individualized instruction to Mississippi schoolchildren. Her for-profit company and school district called New Learning Resources eventually encompassed six private schools, including an online diploma program. New Summit School began rapidly growing in recent years, and though it is not specifically a special education school, it had earned a reputation of catering to nontraditional students.

“If it fails, you’re going to have 200 kids with special needs that need placement tomorrow and I just don’t know how that’s going to happen,” said Josie Alston, mother of 14-year-old Will, who has autism. “We don’t know where we could send Will that we haven’t already tried.”

Spectrum Academy, an offshoot of New Summit, already closed in late 2020, displacing about 30 children with autism, a parent of the academy told Mississippi Today. The closure was never publicized.

Roy Balentine, who took over as interim executive director of New Learning Resources shortly after the 2020 arrests, told Mississippi Today when reached on his cell phone in late March that there are no plans to close the schools. He would not answer any other questions about the company’s future. Because of the ongoing criminal case, school staff have remained extremely mum; no teachers were willing to interview with Mississippi Today. 

The secretary of state’s office website lists the status of New Learning Resources, Inc. as “intent to dissolve: tax,” which an office employee said indicated an issue with the company’s taxes.

After state agents arrested the News in 2020 within the separate Mississippi Department of Human Services scandal, the state welfare agency froze funding to the New nonprofit. Parents feared that the schools might struggle to pay their teachers if something similar happened to New Summit. They also wondered if they would get their money back for prepaid tuition or registration fees. The best they can hope for, they say, is another organization buying the school and maintaining operations.

On Mar. 26, about a week after the most recent arrests, the Mississippi Department of Education sent voucher payments totaling $122,000 to New Learning Resources, according to state expenditure records. The department had also made a payment of $42,418 on Mar. 15, the day before the News’ indictment, for “dyslexia funding.”

Many of the parents who enrolled their kids in New Summit Schools, nine of whom spoke to Mississippi Today, have parallel stories. Their kids are different, they say, maybe due to a disability, developmental delays or social issues. In their eyes, their children were drowning in public schools.

The parents say they fought through poor communication and apathetic attitudes of public school faculty. Meetings about their Individualized Education Program (IEP) — a specialized education plan granted to students with disabilities under federal anti-discrimination law — were frequently confrontational. School officials told parents they couldn’t diagnose dyslexia.

“I’m like, wait a minute,” Alston said. “You tell me you have several reading specialists on staff in this school alone, but in the whole Madison County there is no one that can assess him and say if he has dyslexia, when it’s very clear that he has it?”

Will receives dyslexia therapy every day at New Summit. When Will started at the school as a 9-year-old, he couldn’t count to 20. Now he has his multiplication tables mastered.

Like many families at the school, the Alstons receive the Education Scholarship Account, sometimes called the school choice voucher, from the department of education. It pays $5,600 toward Will’s roughly $10,000 tuition.

Some parents received trustworthy recommendations to try New Summit; others took a leap of faith in desperation. 

“What really drove my decision was the numbers,” parent Melody Norris said, citing a graduation rate she believed was as low as 15% for students with special needs at her local district, Rankin County School District. She also cited funding cuts at the district, resulting in his school alone losing two resource teachers. (Rankin County School District had a 22% graduation rate for students with disabilities in 2012, the year Norris chose to move her son, but like most districts, Rankin has drastically improved that rate to 62% in 2021).

Norris never checked New Summit’s graduation rate — a stat that’s not published like it is for the public schools. 

Her son DJ, who has autism, graduated with a high school diploma and the honor of co-valedictorian in 2020. He’s now participating in a program called Project SEARCH, which helps place students with disabilities in training and full time employment.

At the specialty private school, the numbers don’t seem to matter to parents. Because when the families arrived, they found significantly smaller class sizes — a max of twelve students per teacher — tailored instructional style and extremely dedicated and caring teachers. They didn’t need to see standardized metrics; they could visualize the difference in their child’s self confidence and enthusiasm for learning.

“I always referred to New Summit as this cocoon,” Norris said. “This place, this magical place that was one block off of Lakeland Drive that most people never even knew existed. But it was unlike any other school in the state.”

Scott Herrod’s 7-year-old son Tory, who has dyslexia, never used to try to read the words he’d encounter throughout his day. Going to school was a drag. And even though he couldn’t read or write, the public school kept graduating Troy from kindergarten to first to second grade with straight A’s.

Beginning at New Summit School, Herrod said, “it was almost like turning a switch on.” Now Troy is reading road signs from his car seat and asking his parents to take him to get new books during his freetime.

“I actually don’t know where we would actually go to get him what he needs right now,” Herrod said.

LauraBeth Johnston says if New Summit were to close, her son Frasier would survive in the public school, where he used to receive just 20-30 minutes of special instruction for autism each day.

But New Summit provided more than an educational opportunity. Before attending New Summit, Johnston said, Fraiser would come home from school crying, saying he “wished he was regular.”

“He didn’t understand why he wasn’t regular like the other kids in his class,” the mom of three said. After moving to New Summit in second grade, Johnston said, “I can’t describe how much happier he was.”

After Nancy and Zach New were originally arrested in February of 2020 on charges related to their nonprofit, district officials said that New Summit would remain open — business as usual, parents told Mississippi Today. 

Federal agents arrested the News on Mar. 18 on the charges related to the school district and released them on a $10,000 bond after they pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors haven’t outlined where all the money went, but they accused Nancy New of using at least some of the public school dollars to purchase her roughly $250,000 home in northeast Jackson.

The families have received radio silence ever since, leaving them in limbo, wondering if and when their children might lose their school.

Reached April 1 at the school, Kyle Nobles, headmaster for New Summit School K-12, said only Balentine could speak on behalf of the school or district. Balentine, a former principal at Pearl High School and employee of New’s nonprofit, did not respond to Mississippi Today’s follow up phone calls or texts. 

Families say the allegations, even if true, don’t erase the life changing impact New Summit had on their children.

“I will go to my grave thankful that Nancy New started this school over 20 years ago,” Hinds said. “Whatever else may have transpired, as far as the school itself and the employees in place teaching our children, or at least mine, that job was done correctly, because these kids have thrived.”

The post Parents of special needs students worry about New Summit School’s future after owner’s arrest appeared first on Mississippi Today.