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Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who wields significant control over the state of Mississippi’s budget, said he is open to appropriating funds to the city of Jackson, where thousands of residents are in their fourth week without running water.

A historic winter storm in mid-February froze water plant equipment and burst many pipes in the capital city, and at least 40,000 residents — mostly Black — were without water for nearly three weeks. Today, while city officials said water pressure has been restored to “95% of the city,” about 5,000 Jackson residents are still without water. City leaders say they need major investment from the state to replace their entire water and sewage system, which is estimated to cost about $2 billion.

Hosemann, in a one-on-one interview on Monday with Mississippi Today, said that he considers all options on the table in terms of financially supporting Jackson, including through several bills pending in the Legislature and potentially sending some of the state’s share of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Congress is expected to pass later this week.

“I’ve lived in Jackson more than 50 years. More than half my life has been spent here,” Hosemann told Mississippi Today. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it better, and I want to make it better now. There’s a water crisis, and we want to help. Where we can help them with the funding, I want to do that. Jackson is the capital of Mississippi. It deserves to be supported as such.”

Hosemann continued: “The people that are responsible are the leaders of the city, and they need to come up with a cogent plan that explains how much they need and what they’re going to do with funding they may get. That gives us more room to support them monetarily.”

Hosemann and Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba are scheduled to meet Tuesday morning to discuss the crisis and how the state can help. Lumumba, who wrote a letter to state leaders last week asking for an initial emergency appropriation of $47 million, met with Speaker of the House Philip Gunn on Friday.

READ MORE: Talks begin at Capitol to secure state funding for Jackson water crisis

In addition to considering potential state funding, Hosemann and his staff studied the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Congress is expected to pass this week. The lieutenant governor on Monday said he believed there are several pots of money within that package that could be appropriated to Jackson for work on its water system.

Questions about whether lawmakers will support the city have swirled after tension between Hosemann and Lumumba — long whispered about in the halls of the Capitol — came to light on March 4 during a mayoral debate ahead of 2021 municipal elections. At the heart of the tiff between the lieutenant governor and mayor is control of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, which state leaders have tried for years to wrest from the city.

In 2016, lawmakers approved a bill to take over the airport and replace the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority with a regional board made up of state, county, and city appointees.

That law, however, has not gone into effect after the city joined a federal lawsuit to block the takeover. That lawsuit has continued, and city officials have said the state’s motives were race-based. Currently, the city controls the airport with its own board. All board members are African American. The lawmakers who pushed and passed the 2016 legislation are white.

“I sat down with the lieutenant governor to talk about Jackson’s infrastructure problem,” Lumumba said during the debate, referencing a meeting that occurred before the current water crisis. “We had a conversation that lasted for about an hour and a half, and he asked everyone to leave the room only to say, ‘Mayor, I need you to give me my airport, and I look at it for about $30 million.’”

Lumumba continued: “Not only am I supposed to be dumb, I’m also supposed to be cheap.”

When asked on Monday about the mayor’s comments, Hosemann said the inference that infrastructure funding from the state would be held up over any airport-related business “is completely inaccurate.”

“My concern about the work we have to do on Jackson’s water is a totally separate matter,” Hosemann said. “In regards to pending litigation between the city and state over the airport, I did speak about that with the mayor and said I would like to settle that case. But there is not a quid pro quo here. (The current water crisis) occurred after our meeting. We were in discussions about a number of things about the city, and I told him it was confidential. I intend to honor my side of the bargain.”

When asked if the airport would be a consideration during debate about whether to provide Jackson with state funding for its current crisis, Hosemann said, “Absolutely not. I just disagree with that.”

Meanwhile, a House bill introduced by Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, on Monday seeks legislative approval to allow the city of Jackson to hold a summer referendum to pass a one-cent sales tax increase. If approved, that new revenue — an estimated $14 million per year — could be used to back large bonds that the city would use to revamp its water and sewer system.

The House bill was dropped after a Friday meeting between Lumumba and Speaker Gunn in which the mayor asked for support of the city’s one-cent sales tax increase. Lumumba also asked Gunn to consider the $47 million emergency appropriation for specific projects.

While Gunn made no promises, several of the meeting’s attendees expressed optimism that future talks between the speaker and mayor would continue as the 2021 legislative session approaches its scheduled end of April 4.

Hosemann said he’ll hear the mayor out in their Tuesday meeting and will work with senators to determine the best course of action. He added: “Everything is on the table.”

“I think asking questions (of the city) about a specific plan is healthy and important,” Hosemann said. “But we’re not going to ignore the crisis or the people affected. That’s not who I am personally, whether I’ve been an elected official or not. The city has its leadership, the state has its leadership, and we want to make sure we’re helpful to any citizen in a crisis.”

READ MORE: As Jackson residents suffer during historic water crisis, state leaders keep their distance

The post Lt. Gov. Hosemann on Jackson water crisis: “We want to help.” appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Whether the light at the end of the tunnel is the end of the pandemic or just the light of the variant train, at least the current low number of cases are leading to a break for hospitals and medical staffs across the state.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Slow Recovery appeared first on Mississippi Today.

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package poised to be approved by Congress offers a sizable financial incentive for Mississippi to expand Medicaid to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor.

Mississippi Senate Public Health Committee Chair Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said if the legislation ultimately becomes law in coming days, the package would provide Mississippi roughly $300 million a year for two years if state leaders would agree to expand Medicaid. Bryan said he bases that number on estimates provided to him by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid and other health care groups.

Mississippi is one of just 12 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

“For a number of years, the federal government has been offering us a $1 million a day to take care of sick people,” Bryan said. “Now they are offering $1 million a day to take that other $1 million a day. You can’t make this stuff up.”

The coronavirus relief bill, based on information from the American Hospital Association, would provide the incentives to expand Medicaid for the 12 states that have not by increasing the matching dollars they receive from their federal government for their traditional Medicaid program by 5%.

Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, receives the highest matching rate from the federal government. The federal government normally has paid about 75% of the cost of treating Medicaid recipients in Mississippi with the state paying the rest.

READ MORE: Mississippi missed out on $7 billion when it did not expand Medicaid. Will that figure jump to $20 billion?

In recent times, based on language in past COVID-19 relief bills that have become law, the amount of the match the federal government pays of Mississippi’s Medicaid costs has increased to 84.5%.  The federal match rate averages 56.2% for all 50 states.

If the Biden legislation — the American Rescue Plan Act — ultimately passes Congress and is signed into law by Biden, that matching rate for the regular Medicaid program could increase to nearly 90% for two years for Mississippi if state leaders opted to expand Medicaid.

Thus far, Mississippi’s Republican political leaders, led by Gov. Tate Reeves, have been adamantly opposed to expanding Medicaid. They maintain the state cannot afford the costs.

Under current law, the federal government pays 90% of the costs for treating people covered under Medicaid expansion, and the state pays 10% of the costs. Estimates show that as many as 300,000 more Mississippians could be covered if Medicaid is expanded in the state. Many of those covered under the expansion would be people who work in jobs that do not provide private insurance and do not earn enough to afford to purchase private coverage.

“We must work to find ways to provide healthcare for all Mississippians, especially in rural areas, but Medicaid expansion is not the answer,” Reeves has said.

When Mississippi House Medicaid Chair Joey Hood, R-Ackerman, recently was asked if Mississippi might agree to the expansion if the federal match rate for the traditional Medicaid program was increased by 5% as proposed in the legislation, he said there was no need to even consider the issue until the bill becomes law.

“It still has to pass both chambers,” Hood said.

Earlier this session, the Mississippi Senate rejected Medicaid expansion on a straight party line vote with all Republicans voting no. But during a recent appearance before the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute/Capitol Press Corps, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, indicated Medicaid expansion could be an issue studied during the summer by senators while the Legislature is not in session.

“It’s no surprise… that the delivery of health care is on my agenda for next year,” Hosemann said. “And I anticipate that we will have public hearings concerning how that will proceed.”

The current Mississippi Medicaid program covers primarily poor children, poor pregnant women, the disabled and the elderly, but generally does not cover able-bodied adults other than pregnant women and a small group of caregivers.

As of February, the Division of Medicaid website showed about 750,000 enrolled in the Mississippi Medicaid program. Another 48,200 children whose parents make too much for them to be on Medicaid are enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program — another federal program.

While many state leaders argue that the state cannot afford Medicaid expansion, others claim it would save the state money while expanding the economy and aiding hospitals that are currently treating patients who have no ability to pay. The Mississippi Hospital Association has endorsed a hybrid Medicaid expansion that has been approved in other states.

“Mississippi will make money if we expand Medicaid,” Bryan said even before the added incentive in the U.S. House COVID-19 relief bill was unveiled. “There will be more money in the state treasury if we expand Medicaid than if we don’t.”

READ MORE: Could Indiana’s ‘conservative’ version of Medicaid expansion work for Mississippi?

The post Congress poised to offer Mississippi more money to expand Medicaid appeared first on Mississippi Today.

WJTV morning anchor/reporter Kayla Thompson and Mississippi Today reporter Will Stribling join host Adam Ganucheau to discuss covering the 2021 Jackson water crisis. They discuss what residents affected by the crisis have said as they have been without water for three weeks and the politics of the moment.

Listen here:

The post Podcast: Covering the Jackson water crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: March Madness appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Revenue to fund the Mississippi Department of Transportation from the 18.4-cent per gallon motor fuel tax grew nearly 40% between 1989 and 2019.

During a similar time, sales tax revenue grew by about 156% and personal income tax revenue increased a whopping 365%.

Revenue from the sales tax and personal income tax provide about 70% of the state’s share of funding for education, public health and many other areas of state government. But that revenue does not go for state transportation needs. The gas/diesel tax provides more than half of state funding for the Department of Transportation.

The fact that gas tax revenue is growing at a relatively slow rate compared to the income tax and sales tax is an example of why various groups — ranging from the Mississippi Economic Council to the Legislature’s own oversight committee — have argued that additional funds are needed to aid with the maintenance and construction on state highways. The motor fuel tax simply is not growing fast enough to keep up with inflation.

In August 2018 state leaders — then-Gov. Phil Bryant, House Speaker Philip Gunn and then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, who is now governor — gave themselves a collective pat on the back for enacting a lottery in a special session and dedicating the first $80 million of that revenue annually for work on state highways. They viewed the lottery as a way to avoid raising the gasoline tax.

While studies by the MEC and others indicated an additional $300 million per year was needed to address state highway needs, everyone conceded the lottery revenue was better than nothing.

But if Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and his Senate colleagues get their way, the state will essentially be back at near nothing in terms of new revenue for Mississippi’s highways.

The Senate, with Hosemann’s support, has voted to transfer those lottery funds from the state highway system to the road and bridge needs of local governments.

In the 2018 special session, the much-ballyhooed agreement was that the lottery revenue would go toward the state system and a transfer of use tax funds from education, law enforcement and other state needs would go to local governments for transportation needs. The lottery funds going to the state system would be capped at $80 million annually, while it was anticipated the use tax funds would generate about $120 annually for local roads and bridges. And that would be a growing source of revenue for local governments, as the use tax — a tax on internet purchases — continues to grow.

Earlier this session on a bizarre night when the Senate was in session past midnight, members by a 40-10 margin rejected the bill that transferred the lottery funds from the state system to local roads and bridges. But, as is often the case in the Mississippi Legislature, seldom is an issue actually dead. Senate leaders that night took up a more comprehensive transportation bill that included the same language to transfer the funds.

The bill also increased the weight limits for large trucks carrying agriculture products and other goods and transferred the Department of Transportation law enforcement officers to Public Safety.

Senate Appropriations Chairs Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, offered what he thought was “a no brainer amendment” to remove the lottery revenue from the bill.

“We already voted this down once,” Hospon reasoned. But lo and behold, the Senate changed its mind, rejecting Hopson’s amendment and transferring the lottery revenue to local roads and bridges.

In the House, Transportation Committee Chair Charles Busby, R-Pascagoula, said he opposes the Senate plan to transfer the lottery revenue.

Busby said he feared in the August 2018 special session the lottery revenue for state roads and bridges “was a vulnerable revenue stream. People would be reaching out for it often. This is a demonstration of that. Just as I feared.”

Hosemann said the money is needed on the local level to fix bridges that will be impacted by the proposed increase in the weight limits. He said the increase in the weight limits on Mississippi’s often decrepit roads and bridges is needed to ensure the state’s farmers and others are competitive with counterparts in surrounding states. Busby pointed out that about 137 bridges on the state system will have to be posted to prevent the heavier traffic on them if the Senate weight limit increase is passed.

Without the lottery revenue, there will be less money to fix those state bridges that would be impacted by heavier weight limits. The only other revenue dedicated to the state system in the August 2018 special session is expected to generate about $20 million annually.

Fight over the lottery revenue, pitting state roads and bridges against local roads and bridges, will play out during the final days of the legislative session.

The post If Senate gets its way, ballyhooed special session plan will be erased appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House Speaker Philip Gunn met with Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Friday to discuss several legislative proposals that would send the city of Jackson state funding to repair its aged and failing water and sewage system.

Meanwhile, a feud between the mayor and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann came to light this week, raising questions about whether Hosemann, a Jackson resident who has heavy influence over the state’s purse strings, is willing to provide state support to the city. Hosemann did not meet with city officials this week.

A historic winter storm in mid-February froze water plant equipment and burst many pipes, and at least 40,000 Jackson residents — mostly Black — were without water for nearly three weeks. Today, about 5,000 Jackson residents are still without water. City leaders say they need major investment from state leaders to replace its entire water and sewage system, which is estimated to cost about $2 billion.

Gunn met with Lumumba and Charles Williams, the city’s public works director, in the speaker’s office on Friday morning to discuss the crisis. The city of Jackson’s entire House delegation — seven state representatives — also sat in the meeting. The mayor made two main asks of the speaker, several meeting attendees told Mississippi Today:

• Support the Jackson city council’s recently approved 1-cent sales tax increase proposal, which requires legislative approval. The tax increase, implemented only within the city of Jackson, would generate about $14 million per year — nowhere close to the $2 billion needed to completely replace the city’s water and sewer system. But Lumumba told Gunn that new annual revenue, if lawmakers sign off and Jackson voters approve this summer, would be used to back large municipal bonds that would help the city make substantial repairs on the system in the short-term.

• Pass a state bond package totaling $47 million that would give the city immediate funding to begin necessary repairs on its water and sewer system. Lawmakers send cities and counties millions nearly every year in a large bond package, and city officials say they’ve been shorted in recent years by the Legislature. On March 3, Lumumba sent a letter to state and federal officials laying out the need for that $47 million emergency appropriation.

Gunn, a resident of the suburb Clinton, listened intently to the mayor, and several of the meeting’s attendees said the speaker seemed sympathetic to the city’s position. Gunn asked several questions of Lumumba and Williams. No promises were made, the meeting’s attendees said, but they all expressed optimism that future talks between the speaker and mayor would continue as the 2021 legislative session continues.

On Saturday, Jackson’s public works director, Charles Williams, acknowledged that even if it’s approved, the $47 million in bonds will not be nearly enough to protect Jackson’s water system from the kind of large-scale service disruptions seen over the past few weeks.

“This ask will help. It will get us started. But, it will not solve our overall infrastructure problems for the long term,” Williams told Mississippi Today. “We have a plant and we have a distribution system. Over the years, there have been many plans and studies for both, but we have not had the funding for implementation. You cannot fund what you don’t have.”

Meanwhile, details of tension between Hosemann and Lumumba — long whispered about in the halls of the Capitol — came to light Thursday night during a mayoral debate ahead of 2021 municipal elections. At the heart of the tiff between the lieutenant governor and mayor is control of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, which state leaders have tried for years to wrest from the city.

“I sat down with the lieutenant governor to talk about Jackson’s infrastructure problem,” Lumumba said during the Thursday night debate, referencing a meeting that occurred before the current crisis. “We had a conversation that lasted for about an hour and a half, and he asked everyone to leave the room only to say, ‘Mayor, I need you to give me my airport, and I look at it for about $30 million.’”

Lumumba continued: “Not only am I supposed to be dumb, I’m also supposed to be cheap.”

In 2016, lawmakers approved a bill to take over the airport and replace the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority with a regional board made up of state, county, and city appointees.

That law, however, has not gone into effect after the city joined a federal lawsuit to block the takeover. That lawsuit has continued, and city officials have said the state’s motives were race-based. Currently, the city controls the airport with its own board. All board members are African American. The lawmakers who pushed and passed the 2016 legislation are white.

Many hoped Hosemann, the most powerful Jackson resident at the Capitol, would be open to helping solve the city’s water crisis. Lumumba and Hosemann did not have contact this week, nor did their staffs. But the mayor sent Hosemann the letter requesting $47 million in emergency appropriations.

The only public comments Hosemann has made about the water crisis came on Monday, when he was asked at a press event if the state should offer financial support to the city to solve its infrastructure problems.

“If you remember during Kane Ditto’s administration, he did repair work on water and sewer,” Hosemann responded, referring to the last white Jackson mayor who left office in 1997. “So what’s happened since then? The prime mover (of solving the problem) needs to be the city itself. Those people have to come up with a reasonable plan to get their water bills out on time.”

That comment has been sharply criticized by current and former city officials, with some calling Hosemann’s comment racist and a continuation of state leaders’ attitude toward Jackson and its officials.

READ MORE: As Jackson residents suffer during historic water crisis, state leaders keep their distance

Jackson, the state’s largest city, is at least 80% Black. Statewide elected officials are white; the state of Mississippi has never elected a Black statewide official by popular vote, and legislative leaders who control the state’s budget are white. Most of the city’s white residents like Hosemann, because of more recent infrastructure upgrades in northeast Jackson and their proximity to water treatment plants, rarely experience long-term outages.

Meanwhile, residents in south and west Jackson, majority-Black areas of the city, take the brunt of the city’s infrastructure failings. And because of careful legislative gerrymandering and segregated politics, Black elected officials at the Capitol have little influence over the budget process or other major policy negotiations.

Talks between city leaders and state leaders regarding the water crisis are expected to continue between now and April 4, the scheduled end of the 2021 legislative session. At least one piece of legislation that would award state bonds to the city for its water system is expected to be filed in the House next week.

The post Talks begin at Capitol to secure state funding for Jackson water crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

New Site, an unincorporated community in the far, northeast corner of Mississippi, was settled in 1899 by a Virginia-born farmer named William Cicero Denson. The Civil War veteran stopped at a place about 20 miles west of the Alabama state line, about 20 miles south of the Tennessee line. Apparently, he was precisely where he wanted to be.

Denson wrote home to his loved ones: “I have found us a new site.”

And New Site it became. Still is. In the last census, it was home to 899 people, seemingly all of whom are passionate about basketball. Friday afternoon at Mississippi Coliseum — more than a three-hour drive from New Site — at least that many red-shirted New Site fans cheered their Lady Royals to a thrilling 55-50 victory over Calhoun City for the State Class 2A championship.

William Cicero Denson surely would have been proud. The New Site girls, mostly slightly built and with blonde ponytails, scrapped and shot their way past an outstanding Calhoun City team that had entered the championship match with a 25-1 record. This was terrific basketball — two well-coached teams, playing with precision, playing incredibly hard and playing well. New Site, 33-2, somehow prevailed.

Thus, still another Prentiss County team has earned still another state championship. You’d need a calculator to add them all up. Schools such as Booneville, Baldwyn, Jumpertown, Thrasher and Wheeler all have rich basketball histories that include many multiple championships. Kids there grow up bouncing basketballs. Few schools even field a football team, partly because many of the small schools don’t have enough boys and maybe because it’s hard to find a piece of Mississippi Hill Country 120 yards long and 50 yards wide flat enough on which to play the sport.

It is a rich piece of Mississippi basketball history that in 1969 the New Site boys, champions of Class B (the smallest division then), knocked off Jackson Wingfield of Class AA (largest) for the overall state championship. Hickory, Ind., and the movie “Hoosiers” has nothing on New Site, which once won five straight boys state titles in a row, causing one sports writer to ask a New Site fan if every yard in town had a basketball goal. Answered the gray-bearded fan, smiling, “Yeah, if it’s not in the living room.”

New Site coach Byron Sparks has been at the school for 19 years, long enough to know, “It’s a blessing to coach at a place where the people care so much about basketball.”

Just a few feet away from where Sparks was speaking, many red-clad fans were hugging players, smiling and laughing through tears. They lined up to get their photos made with the championship gold ball that will go into what already must be a crowded trophy case.

When a sports writer mentioned that his team was hardly physically imposing, he laughed and replied, “Yeah, but they will fight you for that basketball, won’t they?”

And they can handle and shoot that ball, too. The Royals made 7 of 16 3-point shots, often penetrating the lane and then dishing the ball out to an open shooter. Hannah Campbell, a senior and a four-year starter, made three of four treys, scored 19 points and pulled down six rebounds to win MVP honors. This was after she scored 31 to lead the Royals past Newton in Wednesday’s semifinals.

Campbell was a freshman in 2018 when the Royals made it to the state championship game only to lose a heartbreaker. Said Campbell, “We’ve waited a long, long time for this. This is the best feeling in the world. We played our hearts out.”

Campbell had plenty of help. Ivy Loden, listed at 5 feet, 4 inches but seeming shorter, scored 15 points and drove the lane for big bucket after big bucket in the fourth quarter. When Campbell missed a free throw late with New Site leading by only two, Loden somehow rebounded, was fouled and made two free throws to make it a four-point game with only 30 seconds remaining.

Junior Lily Whitley, the only non-senior in the lineup and the tallest Royal at 5-10, scored eight points and pulled down 13 rebounds despite suffering a hard fall and banging her head on the hardcourt in the third quarter. She was clearly woozy as she was helped off the court. But two minutes she was back out there, fighting for rebounds.

“I had to play,” she said. “Had to.” You could tell she meant it. To borrow from the SEC, in a Prentiss County place like New Site, it just means more. And that’s nothing new.

The post It just means more in New Site, where hoops is a way of life appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves distributed $23.4 million of discretionary federal money in the second round of applications for the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds.

The funds went to schools, universities and education organizations providing support to Mississippi students in the areas of social and emotional learning, online learning, device access and returning to in-person learning. 

“We know that the GEER application required a lot of effort, and we received many quality applications from across the state,” said Bailey Martin, press secretary for Reeves.

The U.S. Department of Education announced the nearly $3 billion in GEER funds in April 2020 to “quickly be made available to governors to ensure education continues for students of all ages impacted by the coronavirus national emergency,” the department said in a press release at the time.

The funding is meant to provide relief to schools identifies as having been most significantly impacted by COVID-19. It may also go to colleges and universities in need.

Mississippi received a total of $34.6 million in GEER funds last year, and Reeves prioritized two general categories for the funding: educational services for children under 5 years old and innovative educational solutions for students of all ages.

There are a total of three funding rounds, or chances to apply for the money. For the first round, the governor’s office awarded $5.4 million for educational services for children under five years old. This second round, in which the governor’s office awarded $23.4 million, was for innovative opportunities in education. Early childhood applicants who didn’t initially receive money in the first distribution have another chance to apply for remaining money in a third round. 

About $6 million remains in the pot to be distributed. 

In the latest round of funding, Mississippi State University received $4.3 million for 15 different projects to address several pandemic-related needs. These include improving online learning for K-12 and higher education students and providing mental health services and supporting at-risk students such as those with dyslexia and autism through an Autism and Developmental Disabilities Clinic. 

The university is also using funding to expand a program that provides support to Mississippi State students nearing graduation who are in need of financial assistance to complete their degree. 

“The proposals funded will not only support MSU students, but provide meaningful resources for our state’s K-12 students and teachers,” said Julie Jordan, vice president for research and economic development at Mississippi State. “We pride ourselves on leveraging our expertise to work with partners across Mississippi to make an impact.” 

The University of Mississippi received about $3.8 million for four projects, including expanding its Mental Health Counselors on Campus program. This will provide counseling services to 400 public school students and an initiative designed to accelerate reading achievement for 1,000 kindergarten through fifth grade students from low-income families. 

Several other public and private colleges and universities, including Mississippi College’s School of Education, received funding for projects. 

Mississippi College is using the $1.1 million it received to launch an Online Instruction and Design program that aims to help teachers develop and conduct standards-based, technology-supported lessons for students. Teachers can take individual courses to satisfy licensure renewal and may also receive a certification after taking a certain combination of the courses, and 30 hours of coursework could be taken in order to achieve a master’s degree.

The North Mississippi Education Consortium — a partnership between 44 north Mississippi school districts, three community colleges and the University of Mississippi’s School of Education — received around $1.5 million to provide research-based programming or curriculum for students at schools or education-related entities. 

The consortium is partnering with Edgenuity, a company that provides K-12 online coursework, to offer social and emotional curriculum to around 144,000 public school students across the state, said Director Jimmy Weeks. They will also be providing professional development for early childhood educators around supporting children who have experienced trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The consortium also received another $170,744 to provide support for at-risk groups such as students with developmental delays including autism and dyslexia. 

Lobaki, a Jackson-based company that develops educational and training “extended reality” experiences, received almost $800,000 for online learning.

Mississippi, along with other states, will also see another wave of federal COVID-19 relief funding for education after Congress passed the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA). These stimulus funds also include GEER funding, and Mississippi is set to receive almost $47 million. Of that, roughly $31 million must go to private and independent schools.

Reeves’ office said the leftover $15.5 million will be distributed as soon as the first pot of GEER funds have been used.

The post Reeves awards another $23M of emergency education stimulus funds appeared first on Mississippi Today.