Gov. Tate Reeves, left, listens as State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs speaks about the state’s COVID-19 response during a press conference on April 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
As COVID-19 cases rose dramatically the past few weeks, Gov. Tate Reeves increasingly fell from public view, skipping chances to talk directly to Mississippians about his response to the worsening crisis.
Reeves, Mississippi’s top executive and the only leader who can issue statewide protocols that can stem the spread of the virus, has limited press conferences as he’s faced growing criticism from all corners of Mississippi.
In the early days of the pandemic and during the state’s first COVID-19 spike, the governor held press conferences almost daily. His staff organized those events — usually broadcast live by television stations across the state — to announce details of executive orders like mask mandates and limits on gatherings. They also gave Mississippians the chance to hear directly from Reeves while he answered questions about his decisions.
But in December, Mississippi’s worst month for the pandemic in every measure, the governor has made himself available to the public just twice. This week, he announced a substantial executive order that mandates mask-wearing in 78 of 82 counties. Instead of announcing it in front of cameras as he has all year, he announced it in short posts on Facebook and Twitter.
“Governor Tate Reeves has been more accessible to press than anyone in the media could have dreamed,” Parker Briden, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, said in a text message. “Mississippi Today, in particular, has done nothing but insult and attack him at many of these press conferences, and most of the information he would present has been the same for months. Stay home if you can. Wash your hands. Be cautious. The notion that he has not been available for press is ridiculous, and it’s just more evidence that your outlet wants to do nothing but attack Tate Reeves. It’s your only interest.”
The numbers tell a different story.
When officials confirmed the virus reached Mississippi in late March, Reeves held press conferences nearly every weekday. The governor hosted 21 press conferences in the month of April. In May, he held 19.
In June, July and August, Reeves began scheduling press conferences every other day or twice a week. The governor hosted seven pressers in June, 13 in July and nine in August.
But since the current COVID-19 spike began, Reeves changed course and decreased his public appearances.
In September, Reeves held just four COVID-19 press conferences. In both October and November, he held just two. And so far in December, just two.
(Story continues below the charts.)
While press conferences have been placed on the back burner, Reeves’ office has remained accessible to reporters this year during the many crises the state has faced. Reeves has also taken some COVID-19 questions from reporters at other events, like on Dec. 6 following a legislative budget hearing.
In addition to the press conferences providing the public a chance to hear directly from the governor, they also gave a critical platform to health experts like State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and Emergency Management Agency Director Greg Michel to offer important health and testing advice directly to Mississippians.
After Reeves called Dobbs his “closest advisor” and regularly offered time at the press conferences to the state’s chief health official, Dobbs has been hosting his own live pressers — usually once or twice a week — in lieu of the governor’s. Michel remains hospitalized himself with COVID-19.
Reeves has faced broad criticism from all quarters regarding his COVID-19 responses. With piecemeal orders on mask wearing and other measures, he’s been criticized both by those wanting stringent public health regulations and those who believe government should be hands-off.
He’s decried the “heavy hand of government,” defending criticism that he should have done more, sooner, but managed to issue enough pandemic edicts to also rile up the more libertarian wing of his base.
Along the way, he’s also managed to insult state medical leaders, who he publicly called “so-called experts” recently. At a November press conference about medical experts speaking out publicly about his actions, Reeves labeled mask mandates as the latest pandemic “buzzword.” Still, as COVID-19 numbers have risen in recent weeks, the most consistent action he’s taken is issuing mask mandates on a county-by-county basis.
While issuing executive orders for Mississippians to wear masks and limit gatherings, he’s shown up in crowds not wearing a mask and hosted Christmas parties and fundraisers.
The last COVID-19 press conference he hosted was on Dec. 9. He faced more than 90 minutes of questions, mostly about his hosting the Christmas parties and attending fundraisers. He also faced questions about why he hadn’t re-issued a statewide mask mandate even as numbers spiked.
Reeves’ last appearance was on Dec. 20 in a live video on his Facebook page. That day, he prayed and read from the Bible for about 20 minutes on what he declared as the “Mississippi Day of Prayer, Humility, and Fasting.”
Meanwhile, Dobbs and other state health experts have warned that bed space in most hospitals across the state is already at its limit. The state reported its third-highest daily total number of new cases on Wednesday, and its highest number of deaths on a single day on Tuesday.
The state auditor’s office earlier this month uncovered extensive misspending and poor financial management and record keeping in the Holmes County Consolidated School District.
The audit of the district revealed 25 total findings, including that taxpayers footed the bill for a “B.Y.O.B., adults only” party that cost $4,200, and that the former superintendent was paid $170,000 annually even though minutes from the board meeting the board approved a salary of $160,000.
The report also said the district paid $14,000 to businesses owned by relatives of James Henderson, the superintendent at the time, and that the relationships were not disclosed to the board.
“This audit reveals widespread problems,” said Mississippi State Auditor Shad White in a press release. “The public school students of Holmes County and the taxpayers are the victims here.”
Proviso Township High Schools D209
James Henderson
Henderson, who resigned in June of this year and took a position as superintendent in Forest Park, Ill., told Mississippi Today that several of the findings are untrue and described the investigation as a “witch hunt” resulting from a personnel decision he made when he first became superintendent.
He provided a copy of his contract to Mississippi Today, which shows his salary was set at $170,000. The school board sets the superintendent’s salary. He said he will not be repaying the $20,000 that auditors claim he was overpaid in the two years he worked in the district.
Henderson also said board members were aware that the businesses the district was using were those of his family members.
“Everybody knows everybody in a small town. There are only two restaurants in Holmes County,” Henderson, a native of Holmes County who has worked in schools across the country, said. “The whole board (of trustees) knows my family because I come from a large family of 16 siblings.”
As for the “adults only” gathering, Henderson said it was a “get out the vote” effort to raise awareness around a bond issue on the ballot in 2019. The auditor’s report says the event was held “celebrate the passing of a school bond; however, the bond did not pass.”
The flyer for the event, which he also provided to Mississippi Today, advertised it as a “parents’ night out” with a barbecue dinner. The bottom reads “Adults only! Bring lawn chairs & your preferred beverage.”
The event was paid for using some district funds and some funds raised by a school committee, he said, and he took issue with the way the report described the event as “B.Y.O.B.”
“I think that is racism in Mississippi at its finest in making that statement,” said Henderson. “I did not put out any flyer to bring your own bottle.”
Other findings from the report include:
An $8 million difference in what was reported in four of the school districts’ bank accounts versus the district’s general ledger’s cash balance.
$12,338 in charges on a credit card purchased by the district without the approval of the board. There were no itemized receipts.
Improper record keeping regarding employees’ travel reimbursements
During a review of 20 employees’ files, the auditor’s office found six did not have certifications on file. The auditor’s office was able to independently verify the teachers were licensed.
Sixteen of the 20 employees did not have background checks in their files. The auditors were unable to determine whether background checks were ever completed.
Henderson said he acknowledges many of the problems revealed in the audit and said he worked to correct them during his two years as superintendent.
During Henderson’s first year as superintendent, an assistant principal who had a criminal record was arrested for allegedly having sex with a student. Henderson said since that incident, he oversaw the implementation of a fingerprinting system at the district that returns results of a background check in 15 minutes. He said he also worked to ensure all teachers were properly licensed after discovering many were not when he first arrived at the district.
We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.
This page was last updated Wednesday, December 23:
New cases: 2,634| New Deaths: 43
Total Hospitalizations: 1,340
Total cases:200,325|Total Deaths: 4,553
Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.
On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far.
On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.
As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.
Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people).
The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
Biology teacher Chiquita Gaylor and students practice social distancing in the classroom at Jefferson County High School in Fayette.
A first-year teacher in Mississippi will take home an average of $25,500. By their 15th year on the job, that number only rises to around $27,000, according to new data from the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB).
“That’s extremely low, especially if they have a family at that point,” said Megan Boren, a program specialist with SREB, which recently released a dashboard analyzing teacher compensation in 16 southern states. “I think that’s a real struggle point for Mississippi.”
The teacher compensation dashboard, which uses data from the 2018-2019 school year, contains a trove of data looking teachers’ salaries, take-home pay and retirement and health care benefits across the southern region.
Take-home pay is calculated based on several factors depending on the year of the teacher’s employment. A first-year teacher, for example, does not have a health premium deducted to calculate take-home pay whereas a 15th year teacher has the $705 family premium deducted from his or her pay to calculate take-home pay. It also deducts retirement and Medicare contributions as well as federal, state and FICA taxes.
In other words, take home pay is the amount teachers are left with after their paychecks, or gross pay, have been deducted for taxes, benefits and other fees.
It shows that while Mississippi is above the regional average for salaries of teachers with at least 35 years of experience, compensation for young and mid-career educators is low.
And this is on top of the teacher wage penalty, or how much less, percentage-wise, public school teachers are paid in weekly wages relative to similarly educated workers in other fields.
In Mississippi, teachers make about 15.2% less per week than their peers in other job areas in the state. Throughout the southeast, teachers make 20.7% less than other professionals in the region.
“We have to look at teacher compensation as a package,” said Stephen Pruitt, president of the SREB. “It’s great if you’re making ‘x,’ but if you’re only bringing home ‘x’ minus a lot, it’s hard to recruit new teachers into the profession.”
The SREB acts as a bridge between 16 southern states in terms of education policies, practices and research. They are a resource for and work with legislators, governors and education officials in states on issues ranging from teacher preparation to year-round schooling to literacy instruction.
The group hopes states will use the dashboard to make long-term plans to improve teacher compensation in the future.
“We believe strongly we have to elevate the education profession and help people see that it is really the profession that creates all others,” said Pruitt.
In Mississippi, teachers are paid according to a salary schedule based on years of experience and education, and districts often supplement these salaries with their own money. Last year the state Legislature awarded teachers a $1,500 pay raise, so the minimum a teacher can earn on this salary schedule is $35,890 (for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree). The maximum is $68,870, before district supplements.
The 2020-21 salary schedule shows it will take a bachelor’s level teacher a minimum of 27 years to reach a $50,000 salary. For teachers with a master’s degree, that time frame is 20 years and 14 years for teachers with doctoral degrees.
Many teachers, if they choose to stay in education, transition to administration in order to support their families.
Couple the lack of incentives for new teachers and the rising cost of college tuition in Mississippi and the likely result is a major decline in college students completing educator preparation programs. And that is precisely what has happened over the last seven years.
According to a recent report released by Mississippi First, there has 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.
Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators and a former teacher of 19 years, said she talks to students in teacher preparation programs across the state for her job. She has heard from many of them they plan to take a job in another state after graduating so they can make a higher salary.
“I recall all too well having the low salaries and trying to make ends meet,” she said.
Her husband is also an educator, and he eventually transitioned to an administrator role.
“He was an excellent math teacher, so I hated to see him do that, but in order for us to survive as a family, he had to,” she said.
Shannon Eubanks, an academic coach in Brookhaven and a former teacher and principal, said over his 25-year education career, he has seen and experienced the impact of those numbers.
“The first three years a teacher starts out they get no pay raise from the state of Mississippi … so already, right off the bat, they’re set back,” said Eubanks.
He said he also sees young teachers struggle with costs of child care — a problem exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — and paying off their student loans.
And while many tout the quality of teachers’ health and retirement benefits, recent changes to the pension plan and high premiums for family health insurance remain a problem.
After the recession many states cut benefits by increasing employee contributions and retirement ages. Mississippi, for example, increased the required years of service to retire from 25 to 30 years for teachers hired on or after July 1, 2011.
“Anecdotally, it seems like every time there’s talk of a pay raise, there’s a raise in our family premium,” Eubanks said, noting he and other educators received notice there would be a premium increase for family coverage beginning in January. Because he’s been in the system longer, he’s not as negatively affected — but newer teachers bear the brunt of the increases.
And anywhere from 92 to 94% of teachers will never break even, or earn a pension worth more than their own contributions plus interest, according to the data. The regional average of teachers who won’t break even is 74%.
“Legislators often say teachers have a great retirement package, but for someone who’s just starting off teaching, that’s not going to put food on the table that night,” said Jones.
These are all areas policymakers need to consider, said Boren, the program specialist, as the teacher shortage issue in the state gets worse.
“Mississippi is doing pretty well for teachers who are nearing retirement — their average top salary is above the regional salary, but they’re pretty low in compensating new beginning teachers and teachers in that mid-career piece so that’s one thing policymakers could think about … to increase recruitment and retention,” said Boren. “That really does need to be coupled with a plan for increased support for teachers. Teachers are leaving more so because they don’t feel supported instructionally by their colleagues and their leaders, and increasing that quality support whether through mentorship, better professional development, better school culture, all of those things.”
Smoke rises above the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Miss., Sunday, May 20, 2012, during a disturbance at the prison. A guard at the southwest Mississippi prison died Sunday and several other employees were injured during what the facility’s private operator is calling “an inmate disturbance” that continued into the evening. (AP Photos/The Natchez Democrat, Lauren Wood)
Cameroonian immigrants in Adams County prison say they were tortured by ICE agents
Editor’s note: The Cameroonian immigrants quoted in this story are not named by Mississippi Today because they fear for their safety and retaliation from immigration officials. We carefully verified the identities of three men currently in ICE custody and agreed to identify them using their initials — the same way they are identified in federal documents. A fourth man quoted in this story is out on bond and is not named because he fears deportation and retaliation from immigration officials.
A Cameroonian asylum seeker was sitting in a cell in the Adams County Correctional Center one Sunday afternoon in late September 2020 when he was approached by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
The agent asked the man to sign a document.
“I didn’t even know what was on the paper,” the man, identified in legal documents as C.A., told Mississippi Today in a telephone interview.
The ICE agent told C.A. that it was a deportation document.
“(The ICE agent) said he’s doing his job, and he is supposed to make sure I sign because my plane has been scheduled,” C.A. said. “I told him, with all due respect, ‘I have attorneys working my case. I can’t go ahead signing any paper without the counsel of my attorney.’”
When C.A. refused to sign the document, violence ensued, he said.
Later that night, C.A., who has been in ICE detention in Natchez since March 2020, said he was handcuffed, isolated and beaten by ICE agents and detention center officials.
“They were on my fingers, struggling to open my fingers because they were forcing my fingerprints. So I was crying and begging that I want to talk to my attorney first,” C.A. said. “Before I knew it, my fingers were broken in one of my hands.”
C.A.’s experience is one of eight Cameroonian immigrants’ experiences cited in a federal complaint filed this fall by several civil rights groups. The complaint alleges ICE officers and others at the Adams County Correctional Facility used torture against “Cameroonian individuals in their custody in attempts to coerce them to sign immigration documents through pressure, threats and — in several cases — excessive use of force,” the complaint said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, Freedom for Immigrants, the Natchez Network and other immigrant rights organizations submitted the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties complaint on Oct. 7 to ICE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the DHS Office of Inspector General.
The Adams County Correctional Center, a private detention center run by Nashville-based CoreCivic, partners with ICE to detain immigrants. With a capacity of about 2,300, nearly 800 immigrants are currently detained in the medium-security facility.
Each of the eight immigrants, including C.A., said they experienced different forms of excessive force by ICE agents and CoreCivic officers, the complaint said. When the detained Cameroonian immigrants refused to sign travel documents without first speaking to their attorneys out of fear of deportation, the retaliation began, the complaint said.
In C.A.’s case, after his struggle with the ICE agent, he said he was taken to the medical unit after the incident, and three days later, he was put in isolation for two weeks.
When asked for comment by Mississippi Today, ICE did not offer any specifics about the allegations in the complaint.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not comment on specific matters presented to the Office of the Inspector General, which provides independent oversight and accountability within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” Sarah Loicano, an ICE public affairs officer, told Mississippi Today in an email.
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General did not confirm or deny an ongoing investigation into the Adams County Correctional Center or the New Orleans ICE Field Office as a matter of policy, Tanya Aldridge, a spokesperson, told Mississippi Today in an email.
CoreCivic, which owns and operates the detention center in Natchez and another facility in Tutwiler, denied the allegations outlined in the complaint.
“The allegations contained in SPLC’s October 7 letter are completely false,” Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic manager of public affairs, told Mississippi Today in an email. “CoreCivic does not enforce immigration laws or policies or have any say whatsoever in an individual’s deportation or release. Those decisions are solely made by our government partners.”
Cameroon, a country in central Africa, is embroiled in violence due to the nation’s language divide. Cameroonians have been in conflict, known as the Anglophone Crisis or the Cameroonian Civil War, since late 2016 along the lines of language between the French-speaking majority and the English-speaking minority.
More than 3,000 people have died and more than half a million people have been forced to flee their homes during the violent conflict, which intensified greatly in late 2019.
C.A., an English-speaker, said he fled Cameroon and came to the United States to save his life.
“When I got into this country, I knew I could be protected because I know, from what I’ve learned, that this country is one of the best countries in the world,” C.A. said. “Humanity is highly progressive in this country. So I was shocked at not receiving it. They just sent me to the jail and begin torture by ICE. They’re making me seem much more like I am a criminal.”
Another Cameroonian asylum seeker, previously detained at the Adams County Correctional Facility and currently out on bond, told Mississippi Today he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border into Arizona after a yearlong journey.
His journey to Natchez spanned several months and thousands of miles. He left Cameroon on foot and traveled to Nigeria, where he got on a plane and flew to Ecuador. With the help of locals, he traveled by foot from Ecuador through Colombia and into Panama, where he said he was held in a detention center for one month.
Once he was released in Panama, he continued his travels north by catching a bus through Costa Rica and traveled by foot through Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. He crossed the border into Mexico, where he said he was detained for about four months and released after the intervention of a nonprofit lawyer.
He then traveled through Mexico for the next several weeks. He said when he originally tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, it was closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, so he waited in Reynosa, Mexico, a city just across the border from McAllen, Texas, spending time washing cars on the side of the road for money as a means of survival.
“Some people passed by and kind of like hurt us, the migrants,” he said. “Life was really kind of like extremely difficult for me.”
He said he was soon forced to leave Reynosa and traveled to Mexicali, Mexico, a border city between California and Mexico. He said he paid a Mexican citizen, who showed him where to cross the border into Arizona. He arrived in the United States this summer, he said.
When he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, he said he turned himself in to border patrol agents and was quarantined for one week in La Palma Correctional Center just south of Phoenix, Ariz. He was soon transported to the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, and after about five months in ICE custody, he was released on bond from the ICE detention facility this fall.
“I fled Cameroon because of a genocide that is going on,” the man told Mississippi Today. “I fled Cameroon because of my political opinion, so I had to flee to come to the United States to seek protection.”
He told Mississippi Today that although he never experienced any violence or harm from ICE agents in the Adams County Correctional Center, he had heard about the other Cameroonian immigrants who were allegedly tortured.
“When they told me that their hands were hurt and tied to put signatures or to do fingerprints, I learned that most of them were put in chains and they were held with force to enter signatures on these documents,” the man said. “Being in detention behind four walls and behind barriers, it really wasn’t easy.”
E.O., another man listed in the federal complaint, has been in the U.S. since November 2019 and has been in Adams County Correctional Center since January 2020. He also talked in grim terms about his future if he were to be deported.
“I’m trying to stay positive because I don’t want to go back to my country,” E.O. said. “I don’t want to die.”
On Sept. 27 and Sept. 28, ICE agents handcuffed the men and took them to a dorm in the Adams County Correction Center known as “Zulu,” according to the federal complaint. This dorm “is known amongst the men as a place where those who are punished are taken,” the complaint said, and ICE agents and CoreCivic officers “took turns beating up the men and forcing them to sign travel documents.”
One of the detained Cameroonian immigrants, identified in the complaint as D.F, said when an ICE agent approached him on Sept. 27 asking him to sign a deportation document, he refused, reportedly saying, “I am afraid to go back to my country.”
“He promised he would torture me,” D.F. said in the complaint.
When an ICE agent returned to D.F. the next day, he still refused to sign the documents out of fear of deportation, the complaint said.
“He pressed my neck into the floor. I said, ‘Please, I can’t breathe,’” D.F. said in the complaint. “They continued to torture me in Zulu. They put me on my knees where they were torturing me and they said they were going to kill me… While in Zulu, they did get my fingerprint on my deportation document and took my picture.”
D.F. and four of the eight men in the complaint have since been deported, according to the SPLC. Three of the men in the complaint — C.A., E.O., and B.J. — remain in ICE custody at the Adams County Correctional Center.
There have also been reports of violence against detainees at other facilities within the New Orleans ICE Field Office, which oversees facilities and operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
On Aug. 10, 2020, detained Cameroonian immigrants at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana “staged a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention, racist treatment from prison staff, and inhumane conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to an SPLC press release. “In response, prison officials used unnecessary lethal force to place them in choke holds, pointed a gun at them and told the men they were going to be placed in solitary confinement.”
SPLC and other immigrant rights organizations submitted another Civil Rights and Civil Liberties complaint on Nov. 5, 2020 — a month after the complaint about Adams County Correctional Center was submitted — about the alleged use of force by ICE agents against detained Cameroonian immigrants in the Jackson Parish Correctional Facility in Louisiana.
Sofia Casini
“The New Orleans Field Office, which is responsible for Adams (County Correctional Center), is well aware of these allegations of torture and use of force in signing of deportation documents, and they have been for quite some time,” said Sofia Casini, director of visitation advocacy strategies at Freedom for Immigrants organization.
Casini, who was one of the main authors of the federal complaints, said ICE also has a pattern of deporting witnesses in investigations.
“What’s really important here is ICE’s pattern and practice of disappearing key witnesses to investigations,” Casini said. “There were eight people on that complaint (against the Adams County Correctional Center). The other five are key witnesses to corroborate the stories of these three men, and they themselves suffered this same violence and intimidation. Why were they deported? You know, ICE is disappearing key witnesses.”
B.J., one of the immigrants included in the complaint against the Adams County Correctional Center, told Mississippi Today that once he fled Cameroon, he never thought he would experience detention and torture in the United States.
“It was like hell to me,” B.J. said. “I don’t know why they’re doing that to us.”
Editor’s note: Charles Overby, a Mississippi Today board member and donor, serves on the CoreCivic board of directors.
Phil Graham, the late publisher and president of the Washington Post, once described journalism as “the first rough draft of history.” No year in recent memory better encapsulates that sentiment for us at Mississippi Today.
We closely covered an international pandemic and the government’s response to it, a national reckoning on racism that inspired historic changes in our home state, and arguably the most contentious election year in American history. We uncovered the state’s modern day debtor’s prison, and we shined light on what’s billed as the largest embezzlement scheme in state history.
One of our goals this year was to tell more stories through the eyes of the Mississippians who are affected by the decisions our state’s leaders make. What we saw and heard this year was so many Mississippians suffering trauma and loss. We always take seriously the responsibility of telling those stories, and this year was no different. We also worked hard to seek out the good in Mississippians, often as our reporters faced their own losses and tragedies. We tried our best to tell all those stories respectfully.
We took a lot of time this year to reflect on who we are and who we need to be. That deliberate thinking led to us undertaking several projects and initiatives that we hope will make us better and grow our state. We launched an essay series on race, predicated on the notion that we all need to do more to honestly consider and address racism. We implemented the Community Ambassador Program, which aims to help us better understand the problems, successes and stories of Mississippians.
And through it all, we doubled down on our commitment to holding government officials accountable for their actions and inactions, and we’ve continued to focus on providing depth and context that you can’t find anywhere else.
It’s been a pleasure to serve you this year. Your commitment to engaging with your state inspires us, and we look forward to continuing to grow together in 2021.
Thank you for all your support. We are proud to report to you.
Visit the Mississippi Today 2020 Recap to take some time to look back with us on an extraordinary year of uncertainty, loss, hope and growth.
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs offered a bleak outlook Tuesday about the spread of COVID-19 in Mississippi.
The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 79 COVID-19 deaths on Dec. 21, topping the previous single-day record of 67 deaths on Aug. 25.
As COVID-19 cases continue to climb and hospital ICU space continues to dwindle, the state’s top health official spoke bluntly about the virus in the state and warned people to limit Christmas and other holiday gatherings this week.
“It’s bad and it’s gonna get worse,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said Tuesday in a press conference. “Holidays are weak points for us. We let our guard down, and we allow transmission to occur that doesn’t have to occur.”
Dobbs took time during the press conference to read some information about several of Monday’s reported deaths.
“Eighty-four year old white male. Sixty-seven year-old Black female. Fifty-one year-old white male,” Dobbs said. “… These are people who would be with us for next Christmas, by and large. These are people… they didn’t have to die. If we did a little better, if we collectively were a little better at making sure we didn’t spread COVID, these people would be alive.”
This year, the state has reported 197,691 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,490 total deaths. To go along with the 79 deaths on Monday, the state reported 2,191 new COVID-19 cases.
While the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools recently released a statement asserting that its member schools should not have to report their infection numbers to the Mississippi State Department of Health.
The MAIS, which represents 120 private schools across the state, challenged the state’s reporting requirements in a statement.
“Unlike state schools, independent schools are not agents of the state. They are small businesses that happen to be in the business of teaching children,” the statement reads. “… MAIS questions the legitimacy and efficacy of the state’s reporting requirements.”
The health department issued an order in August requiring Mississippi K-12 schools, both public and private, to report their COVID-19 data to the department “in order to have awareness of the current impact of COVID-19 in school settings.” This information, which is shared publicly every week, includes the number of students, teachers and staff infected or quarantining, as well as the number of infected individuals since the school year began.
Every week, the health department publishes numbers of positive cases reported in schools, though not all schools report every week as required. Some private schools regularly report those figures.
But in the statement, the MAIS said reporting how many teachers and students contracted COVID-19 at their schools would be “hearsay.”
Midsouth Association of Independent Schools
Statement from the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools (click to enlarge)
“No other Mississippi businesses are required to report hearsay evidence of ‘positive cases’ to MSDH on a weekly basis,” the statement said.
“Small businesses, including independent schools, have no first-hand knowledge of positive cases that pass through their doors; the best they can do is report what their customers report to them. The only reliable source for tracking ‘positive cases’ is the medical community that performs and reads the test,” the statement said.
The MAIS statement has caused concern for some Greenwood parents who send their children to Pillow Academy, a private school.
“It seems like their thinking is, ‘Well if somebody has (the coronavirus), then their doctor will report that case.’ But that doesn’t do me any good as a parent,” said a parent of a student at Pillow Academy who wished to remain anonymous over concern that their child would receive negative attention because of this article.
Pillow Academy has reported its COVID-19 data to MSDH most weeks, but other private schools have not.
Though other school districts have missed weeks or quietly not reported their numbers, this is the first known instance of a school organization taking a stance against reporting school COVID-19 data to MSDH.
On Oct. 12, State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said that schools reporting their coronavirus infection data is “a public health order and by statute it actually has a fine and could even be considered a significant crime (to not report). We want to be more collaborative and make sure that people understand the benefit of it and work to understand the barriers so we can work with them to overcome this.”
When asked if MSDH would take any steps to enforce this policy with independent schools that are not reporting, a department spokesperson responded through email that “[MSDH doesn’t] have to take any action. The majority of schools report which enables us to obtain the surveillance we need.”
But to the Pillow Academy parent, the issue of MAIS bucking health department reporting orders goes beyond that one act.
“I just don’t understand the logic,” the parent said. “Why wouldn’t you set an example of being a concerned citizen to do as much as you can to keep your community safe? People should have enough information to make a decision that’s right for their family.”
We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.
This page was last updated Tuesday, December 22:
New cases: 2,191| New Deaths: 79
Total Hospitalizations: 1,307
Total cases: 197,691|Total Deaths: 4,490
Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.
On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far.
On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.
As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.
Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people).
The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Republican state treasurer Lynn Fitch, a candidate for attorney general, speaks during the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss., Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019. Fitz was elected attorney general in November 2019.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against a lawsuit that attempts to ensure Mississippi adheres to language put into the state’s 1868 Constitution guaranteeing a uniform school system for all students.
That language mandating a uniform school system was replaced in the 1890s by the creation of separate schools for Black and white students.
While the language creating the separate school systems has been removed, the lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center maintains the current language in the Mississippi Constitution expressing the state’s commitment to public education is a violation of federal law because it still falls short of the 1868 language, which says the state should operate a uniform school system.
What is at issue in the unique case is whether the state is in violation of the Mississippi Readmission Act of 1870 that was passed by the United States Congress after the Civil War. As a condition of readmission, the federal act, in part, prohibited Mississippi from making changes to its laws that lessened the guarantee of an equal or uniform school system, the lawsuit contends.
The lawsuit was filed by Will Bardwell of the Southern Poverty Law Center and others on behalf of a group of African American women who contend their children receive inferior education in majority African American schools than do students in other schools in the state.
Bardwell said the goal of the lawsuit is “to re-establish Mississippi’s obligation to maintaining a uniform school system and to hold the state accountable for not upholding that obligation.”
The lawsuit by the SLPC cited what it said were numerous examples where African American students still receive an inferior education in Mississippi. For instance, in the 2015-16 school year, of the 19 F rate school districts, 13 had a Black enrollment of more than 95% and all had enrollment of African Americans of at least 85%.
Colby Jordan, a spokesperson for Fitch, confirmed the attorney general intends to file “a writ of certiorari” asking the Supreme Court to review the case. Fitch and other state officials are asking the nation’s highest court to throw out the case after the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 9-8 vote, said earlier this month the case should be heard in federal court in the Southern District of Mississippi. District Judge William Barbour had earlier dismissed the case. When the case was first filed by the SPLC in 2017, the state moved to have it dismissed.
“At the end of the day, it should go without saying that education is of the utmost importance to all of the state defendants and the state’s citizenry,” the dismissal motion read. “And, of course there is always room for improvement in this area in the state of Mississippi. But the tactics utilized by the SPLC in this lawsuit are not, and could not be, the answer.
“Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more perverse request for intervention by the federal judiciary as the relief requested would serve to hold captive not only a sovereign state’s constitution, but also profound notions of federalism.”
Officials worry that if successful the lawsuit could result in the judiciary mandating the state provide more funds for education.
Court of Appeals Judge Edith Jones writing in the minority that the case should be dismissed, said what the SLPC “sought for judgment, in essence, would tell Mississippi what its state Constitution meant then and means now and would pave the way for federal court orders to effect a major restructuring of state school funding.”
Nearly all states have language in their constitutions expressing their responsibility to provide a public school system. The education language adopted by Mississippi in place of the 1868 language is a sort of roadmap detailing the state’s long struggle with the issue of race.
The 1868 Constitution states “As the stability of a republican form of government depends mainly upon the intelligence and virtue of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to encourage, by all suitable means, the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement, by establishing a uniform system of free public schools, by taxation or otherwise, for all children between the ages of five and twenty-one years, and shall, as soon as practicable, establish schools of higher grade.”
The state’s current Constitution, enacted in 1890, weakened that commitment by among other things removing the word uniform and adding a new section, mandating separate schools for “children of the white and colored races.”
That language establishing separate education system based on race was not removed from the Constitution until 1978.
Before then, there were amendments passed in the 1930s and famously, or infamously, in 1960, to continue to weaken the education commitment in the Constitution. With the state facing the forced integration of the schools by the federal government, the Legislature in 1960 passed a resolution that was approved by voters to proclaim that “the Legislature, may in its discretion, provide for the maintenance and establishment of free public schools for all children between the ages of six and 21 years , by taxation, or otherwise, and with such grades as the Legislature may prescribe.”
The language giving legislators “the discretion” to operate a public school system was removed in 1987. The language now says the Legislature shall provide for a free public school system “upon such conditions and limitations as the Legislature may prescribe.”
