OurTupelo

The Jackson Convention Complex was abuzz with activity.

Upstairs, groups of teens got to learn about topics such as starting a business and working at nonprofit organizations. Downstairs, one group of students browsed tables, talking to representatives from local colleges, nonprofits, and more. One table passed out free candy-colored popcorn.

Christopher Steverson, a senior at Jackson’s Callaway High School, was among the many students in attendance.

“I love making money,” Steverson said. “Money’s always there, you just have to find a way to get it.”

Steverson, 18, runs a lawn care business with his father, and is working on his own streetwear line and has two properties from his father.

He’s one of about 200 high school students from the Jackson metro area who attended workshops and received hands-on experience on college and career readiness, financial literacy and business skills Wednesday at the Entrepreneurship and Employability Skills Symposium. 

United Way of the Capital Area and Jackson State University TRIO Talent Search partnered to put on the event. Tiffany Anderson, the United Way affiliate’s economic mobility coordinator, said young people are working in the gig economy.

“They’re doing braids. They are doing makeup. They are influencers. They’re Ubering,” Anderson said. “They’re doing all the things, so we just want to set them up for success and to do things the right way.” 

Steverson attended to network and explore his interests. He learned about improving his credit score and investing in an individual retirement account. He hoped his peers at the event learned new ways to make money.

“I feel like with money, I have the opportunity to change things that not too many people will be able to without,” Steverson said.

At lunch, students listened to a speech from Nick, Khaliq and Kareem Brown from Boss Brothers Universe, a Jackson-based company that publishes books and online videos teaching children about financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

Kymora Dorsey, who attended last year, was excited to volunteer this year as a youth ambassador for United Way. Dorsey, 17, is a senior at Callaway High School.

“I realized that it was a great idea for people to understand what it means to have a business and get an understanding of financial literacy as well as the opportunity to earn $200 as a reward for their ideas,” Dorsey said.

To cap off the day, teams of students competed in a “Shark Tank”-style competition for cash prizes. Each team was coached by a local business owner. This year, two teams won, and each participant earned $250. The students could choose whether to start a bank account with the money or invest it in their business. 

United Way of the Capital Area is a nonprofit organization that works to improve local communities. Jackson State University TRIO Talent Search provides support and resources to help Jackson Public Schools students graduate from high school and college.

“I hope that they learned today, if nothing else, that you have a voice and that you can use your voice,” said Teresa Palmer-Jones, director of TRIO Talent Search.

A Mississippi infant recently died from pertussis, or whooping cough, the State Department of Health announced Monday. 

It is the first whooping cough death reported in Mississippi since 2012 and the third since 2008. 

Whooping cough cases in Mississippi are the highest they have been in at least a decade.

The infant was not eligible to be vaccinated against the disease due to his or her age, the agency said in a statement. 

State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney has repeatedly said that vaccines are the best defense against diseases like pertussis.

Because infants are not eligible for the pertussis vaccination until they are two months old, the health department recommends that pregnant women, grandparents and family or friends who may come in close contact with an infant get booster shots to ensure they do not pass the illness to children.

This year, 115 pertussis cases have been reported to the health department, compared to 49 total last year. 

Over 20,000 whooping cough cases have been reported across the U.S. this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The highly contagious respiratory illness is named for the “whooping” sound people make when gasping for air after a coughing fit. It may begin like a common cold but can last for weeks or months and make it difficult to breathe. Babies younger than 1 year are at greatest risk for getting whooping cough, and can have severe complications that often require hospitalization. 

Mississippi for many years had the highest child vaccination rates in the nation. But rates have fallen since 2023, when a federal judge ruled that parents can opt out of vaccinating their children for school with a religious exemption.  

The pertussis vaccination is administered in a five-dose series for children under 7 and booster doses for older children and adults. 

Immunity from pertussis vaccination wanes over time, and there is not a routine recommendation for boosters. 

The Mississippi Health Department offers vaccinations to children and uninsured or underinsured adults at county health departments.

READ MORE: School choice opponents warn lawmakers of segregation and financial collapse as advocates tout ‘education freedom’

HOLLY RIDGE, La. — In a rural corner of Louisiana, Meta is building one of the world’s largest data centers, a $10 billion behemoth as big as 70 football fields that will consume more power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans at the peak of summer.

The colossal project is impossible to miss in Richland Parish, a farming community of 20,000 residents, about 50 miles west of Vicksburg, Mississippi. But not everything is visible, including how much the social media giant will pay toward the more than $3 billion in new electricity infrastructure needed to power the facility.

Watchdogs have warned that in the rush to capitalize on the AI-driven data center boom, some states are allowing massive tech companies to direct expensive infrastructure projects with limited oversight.

Mississippi lawmakers allowed Amazon to bypass regulatory approval for energy infrastructure to serve two data centers it is spending $10 billion to build. In Indiana, a utility is proposing a data center-focused subsidiary that operates outside normal state regulations. And while Louisiana says it has added consumer safeguards, it lags behind other states in its efforts to insulate regular power consumers from data center-related costs.

Mandy DeRoche, an attorney for the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, says there is less transparency due to confidentiality agreements and rushed approvals.

“You can’t follow the facts, you can’t follow the benefits or the negative impacts that could come to the service area or to the community,” DeRoche said.

Private deals for public power supply

Under contract with Meta, power company Entergy agreed to build three gas-powered plants that would produce 2,262 megawatts — equivalent to a fifth of Entergy’s current power supply in Louisiana. The Public Service Commission approved Meta’s infrastructure plan in August after Entergy agreed to bolster protections to prevent a spike in residential rates.

Nonetheless, nondisclosure agreements conceal how much Meta will pay.

Consumer advocates tried but failed to compel Meta to provide sworn testimony, submit to discovery and face cross-examination during a regulatory review. Regulators reviewed Meta’s contract with Entergy, but were barred from revealing details.

Meta did not address AP’s questions about transparency, while Louisiana’s economic development agency and Entergy say nondisclosure agreements are standard to protect sensitive commercial data.

Davante Lewis — the only one of five public service commissioners to vote against the plan — said he’s still unclear how much electricity the center will use, if gas-powered plants are the most economical option nor if it will create the promised 500 jobs.

“There’s certain information we should know and need to know but don’t have,” Lewis said.

Additionally, Meta is exempt from paying sales tax under a 2024 Louisiana law that the state acknowledges could lead to “tens of millions of dollars or more each year” in lost revenue.

Meta has agreed to fund about half the cost of building the power plants over 15 years, including cost overruns, but not maintenance and operation, said Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a consumer advocacy group.

Public Service Commission Jean-Paul Coussan insists there will be “very little” impact on ratepayers.

But watchdogs warn Meta could pull out of or not renew its contract, leaving the public to pay for the power plants over the rest of their 30-year life span, and all grid users are expected to help pay for the $550 million transmission line serving Meta’s facility.

Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard University’s Electricity Law Initiative, said tech companies should be required to pay “every penny so the public is not left holding the bag.”

How is this tackled in other states?

Elsewhere, tech companies are not being given such leeway. More than a dozen states have taken steps to protect households and business ratepayers from paying for rising electricity costs tied to energy-hungry data centers.

Pennsylvania’s utilities commission is drafting a model rate structure to insulate customers from rising costs related to data centers. New Jersey’s utilities regulators are studying whether data centers cause “unreasonable” cost increases for other users. Oregon passed legislation this year ordering utilities regulators to develop new, and likely higher, power rates for data centers.

And in June, Texas implemented what it calls a “kill switch” law empowering grid operators to order data centers to reduce their electrical load during emergencies.

Locals have mixed feelings

Some Richland Parish residents fear a boom-and-bust cycle once construction ends. Others expect a boost in school and health care funding. Meta said it plans to invest in 1,500 megawatts of renewable energy in Louisiana and $200 million in water and road infrastructure in Richland Parish.

“We don’t come from a wealthy parish and the money is much needed,” said Trae Banks, who runs a drywall business that has tripled in size since Meta arrived.

In the nearby town of Delhi, Mayor Jesse Washington believes the data center will eventually have a positive impact on his community of 2,600.

But for now, the construction traffic frustrates residents and property prices are skyrocketing as developers try to house thousands of construction workers. More than a dozen low-income families were evicted from a trailer park whose owners are building housing for incoming Meta workers, Washington says.

“We have a lot of concerned people — they’ve put hardship on a lot of people in certain areas here,” the mayor said. “I just want to see people from Delhi benefit from this.”

The Associated Press’ Sophie Bates reported from Holly Ridge, Louisiana, and Jack Brook reported from New Orleans. Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Mississippi Today reporter Alex Rozier gives an update on the city of Jackson’s third-party water utility system, how the organization’s request to raise the water rates on customers in the capital city is playing out in federal court and if the water system can sustain natural disasters in the future.

Jennifer Allen has wanted to be a teacher since high school. She admired her social studies and English teachers especially. After four years studying elementary education at Delta State University and a full-time teaching position in a local district her senior year, she felt she had cleared all the important hurdles to becoming a certified teacher in Mississippi.

But then came PRAXIS, a series of tests that nearly every teacher in Mississippi must take to become a certified teacher. 

“It made me second guess a career that I fell in love with,” she said. “Much of what I learned over the four years of college is not in the practice material.”

She’s not alone. In roughly half of public and private universities with education programs, 50% or more of students do not pass at least one section of the PRAXIS exam on their first try.

Some students even opted for more classes at school to bypass having to take the test, which would mean an additional $1,200 for Allen.

Nearly a quarter of the 1,892 Mississippi test takers walked away after flunking on the first attempt of the most commonly taken PRAXIS Elementary Education exam from 2015 to 2018, leaving fewer teachers to fill a growing list of teacher vacancies in critical shortage areas.

The Board of Education implemented a waiver during the pandemic to allow students to be certified without taking the PRAXIS, but that waiver ended in December 2021. Students graduating as late as December 2023 took advantage of the waiver.

Now university education departments, school district officials and teachers are struggling to re-adjust to a more rigid path to teacher licensure.

“It’s outrageous that effective educators are dismissed by the profession for not passing PRAXIS,” said Clayton Barksdale, a former public school principal in Greenville and executive director of the West Mississippi Education Consortium. “Many prove their impact while on emergency licenses, only to be fired then immediately rehired as a long-term substitute – doing the same work for a fraction of the pay, with no benefits or retirement.”

“We must do better.”

Shortage areas

Didriquez Smith has taken the PRAXIS content test three times and spent nearly a thousand dollars. He coaches football at Clarksdale High School and teaches physical education on an emergency license.

He failed just one of the three tests in his past two attempts: Foundations of Reading, which covers reading comprehension and teaching reading.

The Praxis exam has several parts. The content knowledge test covers the subject aspiring teachers want to teach, like biology or elementary English. The Principles of Learning test covers how teachers should prepare lesson plans and approach classroom instruction for different subjects. Students who don’t have at least a 3.0 GPA must also take an Academic Skills for Educators test, which is also called PRAXIS Core.

Per try, the elementary education exam costs $209, and the PRAXIS core test $90. Some of the content tests such as art instruction cost $130.

Smith had to travel nearly 300 miles to Birmingham to take his third attempt at the test because the test wasn’t offered closer at the end of the school year. He is currently saving up enough money to take it again.

He loves his job, particularly informing his community about the importance of healthy habits. 

He hopes he can continue to keep students healthy and active at school. In the Mississippi Delta, the obesity rate among children is 29%.

However, if he can’t pass each required PRAXIS test in the next year, he may be out of a job. As much as his boss in the principal’s office may want to keep him in his role, state regulations penalize schools in their annual accountability scores if they have faculty teaching without a license. Schools can also lose accreditation.

Since childhood, Skylar Ball had planned on becoming a kindergarten teacher. She followed her mother into education, even attending the same alma mater of Blue Mountain Christian University. 

“Teaching elementary school is like Disney World,” she said. “Elementary students, you can do so much with them. You can make an early impact.”

However, one and a half years after graduation, she remains an assistant teacher, making several thousand less a month than she budgeted for while she saves enough money to take the PRAXIS exam for the third time. 

She was two questions shy of passing on her latest attempt.

“I was so blessed to educate 20 amazing kindergartners last school year under an emergency license … I am currently a paraprofessional in an amazing district, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t upset about not being able to lead a classroom of my own,” Ball said.

She struggled with the Elementary Education exam, a PRAXIS test with the lowest pass rate in the state. Although she was aiming to become a kindergarten English teacher, her test covered kindergarten through sixth grade instruction as well as science, math, art, English, and social studies, among other subjects.

In an analysis conducted by the National Council on Teacher Quality, the nonprofit found that Mississippi’s Elementary Education content test has a subpar job measuring whether would-be teachers have the knowledge and skills needed for a career in their classrooms.

“Does this test tell districts if they are prepared to lead an elementary school classroom in this content area? It does not,” said Hannah Putman, managing director of research at the National Council on Teacher Quality.

The university’s role

Universities in Mississippi play an important role in filling teacher vacancies with fresh talent. Pass rates on PRAXIS exams vary among universities with Alcorn State University posting the lowest first-time pass rates, according to the most recent data from 2022-2023 school year. Mississippi Valley State University posted that none of its students took two of the three main PRAXIS exams for the same year.

This data has a smaller sample size of teachers as a majority gained licensure under the  COVID waiver.

Mississippi College posted the best results with over 93% of students passing the pedagogy section test and 100% of students passing both the content test and the Foundations of Reading test. Over 90% of University of Southern Mississippi students passed their three PRAXIS exams.

Timolin Howard, a Mississippi Valley State graduate, doesn’t regret enrolling in the school’s masters in teaching program. She believes instructors have given her the tools to succeed in the classroom.

After finding out her test scores were insufficient for licensure, she had a stroke. She also says she received mixed messaging from the state licensure board regarding cut-off scores.

“I found that, while I was well-prepared for real-world teaching, I wasn’t fully prepared for the demands of the certification exams,” she said.

She said she can manage students, build lesson plans and come up with classroom activities that help students master common core competencies. But Howard realized she had gaps in her foundational knowledge when it came to studying for the PRAXIS exams. She reached out to her school for help.

The university cancelled a workshop taught on campus, which was preparing students for the Foundations of Reading exam. It wasn’t the first a PRAXIS preparation workshop was cancelled, Howard said.

“It left me feeling overwhelmed as I tried to catch up, and it significantly impacted my confidence, academic performance and health,” she said.

This year, her Delta school district released her from her contract because she lacked the right licensure.

Mississippi Valley State University’s education department did not respond to comment despite repeated attempts to reach representatives.

Grow Your Own

For eight years, Adrienne Hudson has led the nonprofit organization RISE, which helps recruit and retain new teachers in Mississippi Delta school districts.

Hudson had already been informally mentoring and tutoring teachers who struggled with the PRAXIS exam and other technical aspects of licensure in her Clarksdale school. She founded RISE to help more.

Hudson takes pride in the start of performance-based licensure in her district. Letting teachers become certified teachers through improving test scores in state-tested subjects will help schools retain talented teachers, said Hudson of the new path to teacher certification.

“Some of the responsibilities are on the university and some are the systems that require the test to be the measuring stick for becoming a teacher,” she said. “We have students getting dean’s list, who can’t pass the test.”

More would-be teachers are going back to school later in life than ever before. Fewer teachers are entering the traditional route, which involves majoring in education as an undergraduate as opposed to the alternate route through a masters. In the 2018-2019 school year, 27% of students getting an education degree went the alternate route in 2022-2023, 45% did.

Tony Latiker, dean of Jackson State University’s school of education, saw a similar trend. He theorizes the reason so many students are going the alternative route is because of the many requirements that await undergraduates at the end of their four years. Alternative route students have fewer testing requirements to meet.

One solution he has found is to have traditional route students take exams closer to when they finish coursework that corresponds. For example, he encourages students to take the Foundations of Reading exam after they complete their early literacy courses, which are offered in some form at all Mississippi universities with an education program.

Jackson State also offers an elective that prepares students for the PRAXIS tests and other technical requirements of licensure. Professors and visiting instructors also host workshops on campus.

“We really should be questioning the exams,” Latiker told Mississippi Today. “I’m not against the exams and testing, but I’m against them being the high stakes tests they are. It should be a part of a more holistic process, incorporating district personnel and university faculty input in classrooms, assessing pre-service teachers and interns at the end of lessons, to see if they’re actually effective.”

For a while Saturday, it looked as if we might be stepping back in time — at least where Mississippi college football is concerned.

Back to 2014.

Remember?

For a while there, both Mississippi State and Ole Miss both ranked among the nation’s top three football teams. State, coached by Dan Mullen, was No. 1. Ole Miss, coached by Hugh Freeze, was No. 3. At one point, both teams were a perfect 7-0. The college football world was astonished. Actually, so were most of us Mississippians. No, it didn’t last, but wasn’t it fun while it did?

Fast forward to Saturday: Ole Miss surely did its part, earning a solid, not-as-close-as-it-sounds 24-19 victory over previously No. 4 LSU to move to 5-0. After a slow start, the Rebels dominated LSU, nearly doubling the Tigers in total offense. In one of the most amazing stats you’ll see this year, the Rebels were penalized for nearly twice as much yardage (109) as LSU was able to gain (59) running the ball.

The Rebels, previously ranked No. 13, soared to No. 4. Trinidad Chambliss should enter the far-too-soon discussions of who might win the Heisman Trophy. And it is not in any way too soon for Chambliss to enter any discussion of the most interesting story in this, or any, college football season. From Division II Ferriss State and the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to Ole Miss and the SEC. From the D-II national championship to the FBS national championship contention. More on that later.

Meanwhile, in Starkville, Mississippi State did everything but knock off 15th ranked Tennessee. If State isn’t the most improved college football team in the nation, the Bulldogs are in the first sentence of any paragraph written on that subject. Southern Miss might be in the next sentence, and we’ll get to the Golden Eagles, too.

State led for much of the game and battled the Volunteers on even or better terms throughout. Watching the Bulldogs these days, it is hard to fathom that just a season ago they lost 10 games, nine by double digits, and defeated only one FBS team. But then, that’s the way it goes in today’s college football world in which if you have the money — and spend it wisely — you can turn over your roster and turn around your football fortunes in one offseason. State and head coach Jeff Lebby clearly spent wisely. 

Same goes for Southern Miss, which spent most wisely, it seems, on Charles Huff, the head coach who last year led Marshall to the Sun Belt Championship and brought with him to Hattiesburg 21 of the players who helped him win it. Clearly, the most critical of those Marshall transfers is quarterback Braylon Braxton, who has thrown for 11 touchdowns and run for another. In Saturday night’s 42-25 pasting of Jacksonville State (which clobbered USM 44-7 a year ago), three for two scores and ran for another and did not turn the ball over.

But let’s get back to Ole Miss, which appears to have all the necessary ingredients to make a run — not only to the FBS playoffs but in the playoffs, as well. Those ingredients include:

• A special player at quarterback. Chambliss reminds me most of Kyler Murray, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2018, throwing for 42 touchdowns and running for 11 in leading the Oklahoma Sooners to an 11-2 record. What’s more, the Rebels have Austin Simmons, who opened the season as the starter, in reserve.
• A balanced offense that also features running back Kewan Lacy and a host of speedy receivers. Lacy, who runs hard but can also make people miss, has run for 445 yards and eight touchdowns. He is what Ole Miss did not have – or at least did not utilize – last season.
• Speed, speed, speed on defense. The Rebels run to the football and hit hard when they get there. Pete Golding continues to do a masterful job. LSU ran the ball 21 times for 59 yards.
• Inside stoppers on defense. This was a perceived weakness with the Rebels losing first round draft pick Walter Nolen and also JJ Pegues. But Ole Miss looks at least as proficient with gargantuan tackle Zxavian Harris and Will Echoles promoted to fill the void. LSU couldn’t block them.
• A sound kicking game. With the Ole Miss offense, the Rebels punter is often much like the Maytag repairman, but Australian Oscar Bird has been excellent when called upon. Placekicker Lucas Carneiro has hit 11 of 12 field goals, including three of four beyond 40 yards. 

The Ole Miss schedule, by SEC standards, is doable. The Rebels don’t have to play Alabama, Texas, Texas A&M, Missouri or Vanderbilt (yes, I just wrote that). They do play both Georgia and Oklahoma both on the road and back-to-back. South Carolina is no gimme and neither is Mississippi State for that matter. But again, in the SEC, it could be a whole lot worse.

The Rebels have a week off, before Washington State, a 59-10 loser to North Texas, visits for homecoming. Then, it’s at Georgia and at Oklahoma, back to back.

Will the bubble burst? Or will Trinidad Chambliss, the best story in college football, add to seemingly tall tale? We shall see.

With powerfully haunting eyes and an enigmatic expression, “Portrait of Frederick,” an image of an enslaved man painted circa 1840, stares out at visitors of the Mississippi Museum of Art.

A little further into the museum is Delia, a Black woman dressed in red and wearing a headscarf who bears a similarly unknowable expression. The pair of portraits are the only known pre-emancipation paintings of enslaved people in Mississippi.

Now, for the first time, they are on display together for the public to see.

“I was mesmerized by the painting,” museum visitor Staci Williams said. “The colors, the expression. His humanity seemed to jump off of the page.”

The portraits evoke questions about who Frederick and Delia were, why they were painted and what went through their minds as their faces were captured stroke by stroke for generations to see.

“We don’t know, for example, if either of these people had the choice to sit for the portrait. We don’t know if they had the choice of what they were wearing when they were painted,” said Betsy Bradley, the Laurie Hearin McRee director of the museum. “They certainly weren’t allowed to own their own portrait.”

The museum bought “Portrait of Frederick” in partnership with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museums will pass the portrait back and forth, each displaying it for several years at a time.

Bradley said purchasing the portrait brought up complicated feelings. Until emancipation freed him, Frederick was considered property. Now, more than 150 years later, his portrait is property, bought and sold to the highest bidder.

“If it enables us to have important conversations with each other about the human cost of slavery and why it mustn’t ever happen again, then having it in a public place can be meaningful,” Bradley said.

Since the 1860s, “Portrait of Frederick” has been displayed at Longwood, an antebellum mansion in Natchez, Mississippi, that belonged to the family of his enslavers. There, Frederick’s likeness was used to whitewash history.

According to research by the Neal Auction Company, which sold the painting to the Mississippi Museum of Art, tour guides in the 1970s informed the public that Frederick had grown up alongside his enslaver Haller Nutt, and the two were best friends. They claimed Nutt freed Frederick and referred to him by the belittling moniker “Uncle Frederick.”

In reality, Frederick oversaw other slaves on the plantation. He collected data on field production, analyzed growing conditions and acted as a manager. His role was important, and he and his family may have received better living conditions as a result.

Frederick was about 70 when the Civil War ended. He took the surname Baker and became ordained. Prior to emancipation, Black people were not allowed to marry. Frederick conducted weddings for at least 69 couples after it became legal.

Less is known about Delia. Her portrait was painted between 1840 and 1849. She appears to be sewing, which leads some to believe she worked inside her enslavers’ home. Delia’s portrait was kept by the descendants of her enslavers until the Mississippi Museum of Art bought it 2019.

Both portraits are unique in that Frederick and Delia are the sole subjects of the works. Oftentimes, Black people were painted alongside white people, likely as a way of underscoring the white person’s wealth.

Frederick is dressed in regal garb — something he likely would not have worn in his everyday role on the plantation. Both are depicted in a three-quarters composition, which was used for dignified and important subjects.

Upon looking at “Portrait of Frederick,” Williams said she felt a surprising mixture of pride and sadness.

“I wonder about what he’s thinking,” Williams mused. “He doesn’t seem to give anything away.”

House Speaker Jason White says he wants to restore the initiative process to allow citizens to place issues on the ballot.

But at the same time, White apparently does not want people to vote on the important issue of whether the state should expand its so-called “school choice” initiatives, which would provide more public funds to private schools.

His positions on two of what he calls his legislative priorities — restoring the initiative process to allow citizens to vote and expanding school choice options — seem to be incompatible.

White, the Republican House Speaker from West, has established a special committee to look at restoring the ballot initiative process, which allows voters to bypass the will of lawmakers and gather signatures to place issues directly on the ballot.

The state Supreme Court ruled Mississippi’s initiative process void in 2021 because it required a designated number of signatures be gathered from five U.S. House districts to place an issue on the ballot. The Supreme Court pointed out the state has had only four districts since 2000, thus the initiative process was invalid, even though other entities in state government are based on the five congressional districts.

Lawmakers vowed to fix the problem and quickly restore the initiative process. They still haven’t, and there’s no sign of any real movement to seek an agreement.

White has said he believes restoring the ballot initiative is important. But apparently he does not want school choice to be placed on the ballot for a vote of the citizens.

The speaker also has formed a special committee to look at expanding Mississippi school choice. The committee is expected to make recommendations before the start of the 2026 legislative session in January.

Though it may seem logical to do so, the committee does not seem interested in recommending a proposal be placed on the ballot to amend the Mississippi Constitution to repeal language that states explicitly that public funds cannot be provided to private schools.

Section 208 of the Mississippi Constitution reads in part: “nor shall any funds be appropriated toward the support of any sectarian school, or to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”

That language is stunningly clear and concise, especially compared to some of the convoluted legalese often found in historical governing documents.

Multiple states have language in their constitutions prohibiting public funds from being spent on religious or sectarian schools. The courts have struck down that language, saying religious schools could not be discriminated against. But only the South Carolina Constitution has language similar to Mississippi’s restricting public funds from being spent on any private school — religious or non-religious.

If White and his special committee were serious about expanding the state’s school choice programs, they would start with amending Section 208. That could be done by the Legislature approving the proposal by a two-thirds vote of each chamber and then placing it on the ballot for voters to approve or reject.

Therein is the problem for the pro-voucher, school choice crowd. They know they cannot garner that two-thirds vote in both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature, and furthermore they cannot convince the public to pass such a proposal.

If they thought they could, they already would have placed such a proposal before the Legislature.

Instead, if the Legislature ever passes a proposal expanding school choice to private schools, they are counting on the Mississippi Supreme Court ignoring the plain language of the state constitution and ruling that public funds can be spent on private schools.

Of course, another option would be for the Legislature to finally restore the initiative process in Mississippi and allow voters to place a proposal on the ballot to repeal Section 208 language banning public funds from being spent on private schools.

But that is not likely to happen even if the Legislature restores the ballot initiative, which is also not likely to happen.

Editor’s note: This essay originally published in the Admissions Project, a nonprofit that launched in October 2019 to publish stories from alumni of the 1970s-era segregation academies, founded at the time of school integration. Ellen Ann Fentress, editor of the Admissions Project, will speak Oct.1 at the History is Lunch program at the Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Building.

The flight back to Jackson that night in June 2023 was full. I was then serving as an interim pastor in the city after a lifetime away.

I had already boarded the plane and was settled into my seat when a young Black man in sports coat and tie carrying a huge trophy over his head came down the aisle. The trophy was at least four feet tall. About the time he got to my row, a middle-aged white man wearing a cord coat turned around and took the trophy and placed it in an overhead bin. They looked like student and teacher. Or maybe debater and coach. I had been on the debate team in high school and college. It had been a long time ago. But the wardrobe looked the same. 

He took his seat opposite mine on the aisle. Due to plane noise on the small jet and a chatty neighbor next to him, I didn’t have a chance to speak to him until we landed and were standing in the aisle ready to deplane.  

“Nice trophy.”

He won it that morning at a national debate tournament in Phoenix. He was beaming. He should be. I asked where he went to school. He said Jackson Prep. Wow. 

I was part of the Jackson Prep class of 1973. I never went to a national debate tournament. No one from Prep did back then. In college I had teammates who did. But I never went.  There were no Black students at Prep in my days there. The only Black people on campus then were the maintenance and custodial staff. 

Through the years my mother and I talked about changes that happened in Mississippi and the world. She would often end the conversation by saying: “But look how far we have come.” 

My parents were always concerned that I get a “good education.” It was a mantra for them. I think they meant they wanted my brother and me to develop critical thinking and communication skills. But it was otherwise undefined. 

When I was a public Bailey Junior High School seventh grader in 1967, I assumed I’d eventually be at Jackson’s flagship Murrah High School. A Murrah Mustang.

My parents took me and my brother to Murrah football games. They had awesome teams in the late 1960s. A neighbor played for the Mustangs and went on to Georgia Tech to play, or so I was told. I attended the student musicals at Murrah. My parents were friends with the principal and his wife. We had cookouts at each other’s homes along with other friends from church. That was the way it was supposed to be. But it did not last.

Things changed in the 1969-1970 school year. I’m not sure when I first learned about Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court case that ruled “separate but equal” for schools was unconstitutional. There was another case, Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, decided in 1969 that ordered no further community stonewalling. But it was a long time before I knew the name of that case. While it charted my path away from public Murrah High School to private all-white Jackson Prep, it was not a foreordained path. 

Talk about “good education” was everywhere in my white world. I recall my parents sharing their concern with me. They and their friends were concerned that the “new” teachers would not have the necessary skills and attributes to provide the “good education” they wanted for my brother and me. But most of these “new” teachers came from “other” schools. Schools where the students were Black. The teachers were as well. 

As a ninth grader at Bailey, I did not know about these court cases. I heard my parents and other adults talk about the “Court” but did not know specifics. The talk was that schools would be closed after Christmas break (never “winter break” in those days) for three weeks while some plan was drawn up for school attendance in the spring of 1970 and into the next year. There was even a chance I would not finish the year at Bailey. But I did. 

But the high school arrangement would be different. Murrah was paired with Brinkley High School, one of the all-Black high schools in the Jackson Public Schools. On the street where I lived, we said there were five high schools: Murrah, Central, Provine, Wingfield and Callaway. Those were the historically white ones. We didn’t count the “others.” Didn’t compete against them. Didn’t know anyone who went to them. Couldn’t have gotten to them by ourselves. Didn’t know the names of these schools.  So they did not exist in our little bubble of the world. 

But they did exist. Brinkley, Jim Hill and Lanier, schools created for the purpose of segregating Black students, all existed. There were real students who attended, real teachers who taught, real parents concerned about their children’s “good education.” 

I know that growing up my parents taught me the importance of respecting individuals for who and what they were. My father made a medical mission trip to the Eku Hospital in Nigeria in 1968 during the civil war there. My mother was deeply involved in the Women’s Missionary Union at Woodland Hills Baptist Church. They received and entertained missionaries from around the world. It was always understood that racial epithets, slurs and characterizations were not accepted in our home. 

But one evening a group of their church friends came over. A comedian/evangelist had recently spoken at church and sold copies of his LP album: Laughin’ With ‘Em. There was a second album too. My parents bought them. After dinner the guests gathered around the new Fischer stereo console and played the albums. The comedian spoke in dialect. The punch line of each yarn made fun of the Black folk in each story. Just like Amos N’ Andy. Everyone in the room laughed. I was listening from the hallway. No doubt I laughed, too. This form of racism was in the air we breathed and the water we drank on my street in the “Closed Society.” 

My parents were “good people” and respected “all” people. But not accepting that a teacher was capable of providing a “good education” to me or my brother because that teacher was Black was racism. It still is. 

The search for a “good education” took me afield from Mississippi. My parents did not want to give in to the private school bonanza that spread like wildfire in 1970. My mother stopped us from visiting her brother and his family in the early 1960s. She was disturbed by the racist reading material from the John Birch Society that she found everywhere at their house. But they were not prepared in any way for the tidal wave of change that broke in the wake of the Alexander v. Holmes decision. Good intentions and family disagreements take on a different meaning in the eye of a hurricane landmark court case.

Together we found the Darlington School for Boys in Rome, Georgia, where I attended 10th grade as a boarding student. Isn’t it ironic that to avoid going to a segregation academy, I chose to go to an all-white school almost 400 miles away from home?

There were a number of boys from Mississippi whom I met that year. I don’t recall talking about why we were there, though I am sure we did. And I would hazard a guess that it would revolve around “good education.” Of course. There were no Black students at Darlington that year. Irony abounds.

Once I went to the hallway bathroom eager to relieve myself. Standing at the urinal, I looked down on a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. I just left it there. I knew this racist act was wrong. But I lacked the courage to remove it. And I knew the Black custodian could be counted on to clean it up.

Most of my psychic energy during 10th grade at Darlington was used to figure out how to return “home.” Would I attend Murrah as I had always planned? Another option presented itself: Jackson Prep had emerged from the primal slough of the segregation academies. Or at least that’s what those in prosperous, professional northeast Jackson told itself. The rationale was that this school would be different from an academy. A couple of founders were world renowned physicians on the University of Mississippi medical school faculty. This certainly impressed my father and mother. And me as well.

Many prominent businesspeople and professionals had organized the school. As I recall, each student family purchased “stock” which provided capital for the school. On top of that, tuition was paid for each student. As if to emphasize the distinction, the name of Prep did not include “academy.” It was as if the organizers were trying to create distance between Prep and the reality of the time.

“People” said that Jackson needed a “real” option that was a “college preparatory school.” And Jackson Prep was meant to deliver that. I believed it. At least, I wanted to believe it. 

But somehow it rang hollow. There was a gathering of student leaders from around Jackson at the Mississippi Fairgrounds my senior year. Public and private schools sent groups. Another Prep student made a speech that attempted to demonstrate that students, regardless of the school attended, had more similarities than differences. I was moved by his persuasiveness. But his argument was empty rhetoric.

The exodus to private schools I was part of had been prompted by fear of the “other.” The eloquent oratory of a classmate could not stave off the trauma we all were living with. That we all continue to live with.

Many of the “best” faculty from Murrah moved to Prep. The English and drama teacher I had in 11th and 12th grade was one of them. The football coach and most of the white players came to Prep. There was a sense that Prep was a continuation of pre-integration Murrah. I don’t recall talking about the why’s or how’s of that happening. It just was. 

I was glad to be back “home.” There were many students who would have been my classmates at Murrah had we not opted out. Did we talk about this obvious fact? I don’t remember if we did. But I do remember driving by Murrah often as it was on the way to my grandmother’s apartment in Belhaven. The question of what had happened hung in the air. Unspoken. But very real.

When I look back, I see how careful and intentional a lot of our silences were. We Prep transplants wanted to believe we were a cut above academy “rednecks.” In our DNA, though, Prep was as white and as new as the other estimated four thousand white-flight private schools that popped up in the South at the time of integration.

I joined the debate team and participated in dramatic productions; signed up for the Key Club; found a group who played the board game Risk; went to most football games; had my first rum and coke. I wanted to think of myself as an “academic.” Actually, I was a pseudo-intellectual. Or maybe, I was just an awkward teenage boy in a shifting white world. 

All of our parents were middle and upper class. I don’t know what the “stock” buy-in was, nor the amount of tuition, but the costs were considerable. I knew the cost kept some from attending. I heard somewhere that maybe, one day, there would be a Black student at Prep. Maybe. One day. When a Black student had the potential to be a star athlete or win a national debate tournament was found. Then.

There was something Prep offered that Murrah could not. Murrah drew from a set city attendance zone. As a private school, Prep took in white students from beyond northeast Jackson and even outlying towns. The sectional divisions of north, south and west Jackson were quite real. Even among the white population, there was economic and class messaging for each section. In more recent years, a couple of my non-north Jackson classmates told me how awkward they felt due to the weight of class and Jackson social strata. But all of us were white.  

My journey took me to college in Alabama before returning to Ole Miss for grad school. I don’t know when, or even if, I decided I’d become a Mississippi ex-pat. It just happened. There was an invitation to enroll in an Auburn Ph.D. program, a job in North Carolina and then seminary in Kentucky.

I honed an interest in church history, especially how what is said correlates with what is actually done. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, that’s what I’m examining in my own school history here. That focus also led to my book, Religion & Race: Southern Presbyterians 1946-1983 and some published articles on religion, race and faith. 

Along the way my father retired. My parents moved to North Carolina. I found my way back to North Carolina and then to Georgia, where I’ve resided longer than I lived in Mississippi. Yet it is Mississippi, not Georgia, that has always been on my mind.

I wondered if there was a “call” for me to serve as a pastor in Mississippi. There were some conversations and interviews when our sons were school age. No offers were made. Even so the topic my wife and I often turned to in those times was how to provide our children with a “good education.” 

As it happens, I did return to Jackson for a season. I served as the interim pastor of Fondren Presbyterian Church for 18 months. So much had changed. There I found white folk who had stood firm for public schools back in that day. They seem to have found the “good education” my parents sought.

As my mother would say: “Look how far we have come.” 

I would respond: “And look how far we have to go.”

The Rev. Joel L. Alvis Jr., a Jackson native, is a retired Presbyterian PC(USA) minister and author. He lives in Dunwoody, Georgia. He has served in a variety of pastoral roles and denominational leadership positions.