As the city of Columbus was struggling financially, its Chief Financial Officer Milton Rawle Jr. was allegedly embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars — the largest municipal embezzlement case in the state auditor’s records.
State Auditor Shad White announced Tuesday that agents arrested Rawle, 49, on the Coast on Monday.
Rawle is accused of stealing nearly $290,000 from the city. White said the impact of such amounts missing on a city with a $33 million budget is profound.
“Mr. Rawle stole a great deal from the taxpayers of Columbus,” White said. “… Now it’s time for prosecutors to send him to prison and get the money back.”
Rawle was being held in the Lowndes County Jail on Tuesday morning and awaiting an initial court appearance, White said. Rawle faces up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines if convicted. White issued a repayment demand for Rawle of nearly $355,000, which includes interest and investigative costs.
White and Columbus Mayor Robert Smith Sr. on Tuesday said that Wanda Holley, a certified public accountant performing a routine audit of the city, discovered the issue and notified city leaders, who contacted White’s office.
White said his office is legally prohibited from auditing Mississippi cities, so he relies on tips from private audit firms and government employee whistleblowers. He said suspected fraud can be reported to his office by “clicking the red button” at www.osa.ms.gov or via telephone during business hours at 1-(800)-321-1275.
Good Wednesday Morning Everyone! Temperatures are in the low 70s, under partly cloudy skies this morning. We will see a mix of sun and clouds today with a high near 89. Lingering low pressure in the area will give us a 30% chance of spotty showers and thunderstorms, mainly mid afternoon into early evening. North wind around 5 mph.
Tonight, a slight chance of showers and thunderstorm. Otherwise, mostly clear skiez, with a low around 68.
Kamala Harris speaks with presumptive Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden on Aug. 13. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy stops short — just short — of saying that he believes Kamala Harris will make a good vice president because she is a Howard University graduate.
“I am a Bison through and through,” Espy said of his alma mater’s mascot.
“Kamala is a personal friend, but more so than that she will be good for the country, strong, capable and competent,” Espy said. And, he adds, the fact that she is an alumna of Howard, the historically Black university in Washington, D.C., does not hurt.
The time at Howard for Espy, age 66, and Harris, 55, did not overlap, but their shared alma mater has played a role in their friendship in recent years, Espy said.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, selected Harris as his vice presidential running mate last week. As Harris seeks to become the first Indian American and Black vice president in the nation’s history, Espy is trying to become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator elected by popular vote.
Espy says not only does he believe a Biden-Harris administration will be good for the country, but he believes it will help his Senate candidacy.
Espy, who in 1986 became the first Black Mississippian elected to the U.S. House since the 1800s, has said in order to win this November, Black voter turnout must increase by 3% from 32.5% of the total turnout in 2018, and he must increase his white share of the electorate from 18% in 2018 to 22%.
Espy said he believes Harris, the first Black woman to serve as a vice presidential nominee of a major party, will increase African American turnout in Mississippi.
“I was on a Zoom call during the (Harris vice presidential) announcement,” he said. “I gave her a digital shout out. I said right then she should come to Mississippi. I don’t control that, of course, but if possible, she would be welcome — and Joe Biden, too.”
Espy said he will be proud to witness Harris being nominated on Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention as the first graduate of a historically Black university as the presidential or vice presidential nominee for a major party.
Espy said he introduced himself to Harris, a U.S. senator representing California, at a Washington banquet about the time he was preparing to run in the special election in 2018 to replace veteran U.S. Sen Thad Cochran, who stepped down in 2018 for health reasons.
“We talked about Howard University and about me running for the Senate,” Espy recalled. Harris later participated at fundraisers for Espy in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, and she came to Mississippi to campaign for him in 2018.
Espy lost the special Senate election in 2018 to Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, appointed to the post in the interim by then-Gov. Phil Bryant, by 7 percentage points. Espy is challenging the incumbent Hyde-Smith again this year.
Not surprisingly, Hyde-Smith and Espy have different views of Harris. Hyde-Smith, a fierce ally of President Donald Trump, posted on her social media account a campaign ad from the president’s campaign describing Harris as embracing “the radical left” and “calling for trillions in new taxes.”
Espy said Harris and former Georgia House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams, who grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, were his personal favorites to share the ticket with Biden.
Both Harris and Espy served on the Liberal Arts Student Council at Howard. Espy described the experience at Howard as life-changing for him after growing up in Yazoo City on the edges of the Mississippi Delta.
Espy told Mississippi Today he was serving as “negro senior class president” at Yazoo City High School in 1970 when he led a walkout because none of the teachers from the Black high school were transferred to the previously all-white high school. Because of his role in the boycott, he said, white administrators lowered his grade point average.
“I had good grades before then,” Espy said. “I had to write an essay explaining to colleges what had happened.”
Based on that essay, Howard offered him a full scholarship. His twin sister, Michele, also received a full scholarship. Espy said Howard prepared him for his career in politics, which culminated in him serving as the first Black secretary of agriculture in the nation in the early 1990s.
Students stand six feet apart as they wait to enter Ambition Prep in Jackson, Miss., Friday, August 7, 2020.
“There are a lot of things happening in our country that students have feelings about.”
As schools reopen during a pandemic, post George Floyd, teachers have more to prepare for than just educating their students. Are they getting the training they need?
After 23 years of teaching, Zimiko Turner has developed a rhythm for back to school preparations. Usually, the summer is about stocking up on supplies and deciding how to decorate her classroom.
This year, she’s buying extra face masks for her students, making sure she has enough hand sanitizer, and brainstorming with colleagues about how to care for children without risking infection.
“This particular time of the summer is spent (asking) …What theme are we going to use this year?” said Turner, a high school chemistry teacher at Columbus Municipal School District. “And now we’re wondering, ‘Are we going to be able to go back safely? How is this going to affect my health? What kind of danger am I putting myself in?’”
Like most teachers, she’s expected to have answers for students and be prepared when they return. But what has been nearly impossible to prepare for is the stress, grief and trauma her students will be bringing with them when they come back this year.
Some teachers are taking advantage of professional development to help prepare them for this. One afternoon in early July, 29-year educator, researcher and consultant Joe Olmi welcomed teachers via Zoom to a three day virtual training on how to approach the reopening of schools. This training, hosted by the Mississippi Professional Educators and The Impact Education Group, was different than most.
Rather than focus solely on safely reopening schools, the training centered around how to address social, emotional and mental health challenges students and staff may bring with them into the classroom this fall. The controversy over the former Mississippi state flag, a deadly pandemic, the upcoming general election and the Black Lives Matter Movement, for example, are all potential issues impacting students, Olmi told the group of more than 20 educators.
“For us in the state of Mississippi, it encompasses far more than COVID-19. And if we fail to think about these other societal issues then we’re going to be at a significant disadvantage when our kids show up in mid-August,” he said.
Teachers shared their questions and concerns with Olmi: What about tracking my students who may have moved out of the state? Or students who moved into the state who have to adjust to a new environment? As an educator, how do you meet the emotional needs of children with special needs if they choose to be a distance learning participant? What about students who deal with deaths related to COVID-19?
Teachers say they are more or less expected to have answers to these questions without having had the training to help them.
Every school district had to submit their reopening plans to the Mississippi Department of Education by July 31. They had three broad options to choose from: going back to school “traditionally” (face-to-face), resuming classes completely online, or creating a hybrid version that incorporates both.
What’s not required in those plans is the steps that school district leadership must take to help teachers advance their understanding of social emotional learning (SEL) or how they’ll provide training on creating a trauma informed classroom.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines SEL as a process for which youth and adults apply knowledge and skills to “understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”
CASEL advocates for social emotional learning in prekindergarten through high school and provides “high quality, evidence-based” resources around SEL for educators and policy leaders, according to its website.
This type of training is important because it helps identify students’ mental health needs earlier in their academic career and helps the students equip them to make better decisions, Olmi, the researcher, said. It also teaches kids to think critically about their place and purpose in society. In Mississippi, there is no legislation in place that deals with training teachers how to educate traumatized kids.
“As far as my district, we have not had that training. We haven’t had the opportunity there to explore those areas and what we can do as educators to meet the needs of those students,” Turner said.
She isn’t alone. There currently aren’t state-mandated educational standards that measure how well school districts meet their students’ social and emotional needs. With the onslaught of grief that COVID-19 has ushered in, the need for this type of training is necessary, education advocates say.
Research shows adults and kids already grapple with the meaning of their own race and ethnicity and how it relates to their role in society. This wrestling with mental health and trauma needs has been exacerbated by the impact of the pandemic and heightened levels of police brutality and vigilante killings.
“With some of the events that have occurred over the summer, for example the George Floyd incident, some of our students may come back to school fearful of different things — of being discriminated against or things that they’ve heard or things that they might have viewed on television,” said Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators.
That’s why, Olmi says, it’s imperative for educators to know how to navigate these challenges with students before the problem escalates.
“It’s almost too late or the prognosis is certainly much more negative if we’ve given them all these years to solidify these behaviors that are unhealthy or these behaviors that don’t fit with society,” he said. “Do we wish to be the guard rail around the curve or do we wish to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff?”
In order to effectively address these complexities, Olmi says teachers must acknowledge their own prejudice, implicit and confirmation biases, which is critical as students come back to school.
He added it’s important for educators to note the implications of their own biases and its susceptibility on students. The University of Southern Mississippi’s School Psychology Program, where Olmi is a professor, created a resource manual for teachers, administrators, parents and students.
In addition to this resource, he emphasized the need for schools to produce a social emotional plan for re-entry. Some of the items recommendations include planning ahead to address the needs of staff to prevent burnout, prioritizing a fully staffed mental health team with positions like counselors, school psychologists and social workers, among other suggestions.
“What are they going to do when that kid walks in and says, ‘I’m not putting on a mask’?” Olmi said. “There’s all kinds of negative opportunities that concern me and schools have to be prepared for the worst case scenario not the best case scenario.”
Some districts are being proactive about how to construct these plans.
For example, at Columbia High School, 22-year educator Shelley Putnam mentioned her district is creating space to have discussions around inequities and injustices, critical consciousness, developing character lessons, and social emotional learning.
“We recognize there are a lot of things happening in our country that students have feelings about,” she added.
Alison Rausch, a special education teacher in Prentiss County Schools, said her main focus is to meet her students’ basic needs when school reopens. In the past, schools focused a lot of time into “passing a test,” and now it’s time to just be there for students, she said.
“I want to make sure your social emotional needs are met. I want to make sure you have the food that you need. I want to make sure that when you’re ready for academic learning, we do that,” Rausch said. “As we begin the process of opening schools I think if we focus on the child instead of everything else around them, I believe those needs will be met.”
As a way to provide resources for teaching holistically, the Mississippi Professional Educators holds regional trainings around the state each year. And now with the uncertainty of what learning looks like, it’s important to provide professional growth for members, Kelly Riley, executive director, said in an email.
“This pandemic and the subsequent school closures last spring have been very stressful for students, teachers, and parents,” she said. “I am confident these trainings and other resources have proven beneficial to our members’ planning for the upcoming school year so that they may effectively support and teach their students during this traumatic event.”
While there is currently no statewide structure in place that ensures SEL training for teachers, it has been on the minds of state educational leaders.
Before COVID-19 derailed the 2020 legislative session, a bill was gaining traction that would have required teachers to receive at least one unit of professional development for social emotional learning.
The bill, pushed by the Mississippi Association of Educators, died when the Legislature recessed as the pandemic was first hitting, but its proponents intend to file it again next session.
MAE has also coordinated Zoom meetings for educators that provided tools for them to bring back into the classroom when dealing with social emotional learning.
In addition to that, Jones, president of MAE, is advocating that schools spend the first 30 days of class focusing mostly on social emotional learning. What might that look like?
“Just having a conversation with the student so the student is able to put their feelings into the room so the educator can gather that. Also not doing a deep dive into academics because the students are already stressed out,” Jones said.
At the Mississippi Department of Education, officials are also working on creating standards for social emotional learning.
In July, Dr. Nathan Oakley, chief academic officer at MDE, told the State Board of Education last month that though it’s just in draft form right now, it is “Work that we think is very timely right now for us as a state … When we look at a return to school, we’re not only concerned by the academic outcomes of our students and their progress in our content areas, but also have concerns about their social and emotional well being.”
Oakley added that the social emotional learning standards could be a useful way for teachers, guidance counselors and families help students build the skills that would help them as they develop academically and become students.
State Superintendent Carey Wright also said she had met with the Mississippi State Medical Association and the Mississippi Association of Pediatricians about the idea of telehealth and teletherapy that’s in the state’s plan for returning to school.
“They are very excited about the whole idea of telehealth and teletherapy that’s in our plan. They want to partner with us and they are willing to do whatever it is that we need to do to ensure that the children of our state get the health care that they need and the therapy that they need,” Wright said.
Until these efforts get worked out, teachers are still on their own when it comes to figuring out how to skillfully handle their students’ mental health.
“These students have experienced trauma,” Turner, the chemistry teacher, said. “It may not seem like it to some people, but there is trauma there and those needs are going to have to be addressed. The training that MAE provided, it did help, but of course we need prolonged training. We need ongoing training to help us understand how to support our students in this situation.”
Mississippi Today’s political reporters discuss how Gov. Tate Reeves’ heavy-handed leadership style in previous years has led to contentious moments with Republican legislative leaders in 2020.
Lawmakers wear masks during the legislative session at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, May 28, 2020.
The ongoing 2020 session has been like no other — to a large extent because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to a lesser degree because of the ongoing donnybrook between Gov. Tate Reeves and legislative leaders.
But thus far it has not been catastrophic. It could have bordered on catastrophe if the COVID-19 outbreak that besieged the Legislature, beginning in early July, had occurred two weeks earlier.
On July 1, the first day of the new fiscal year, legislators completed their task of approving a $21 billion budget to fund state government — everything from education to transportation to law enforcement. The enactment of a budget by the Legislature is a massive task, entailing the approval of more than 100 bills and the work of a dozen or more staff members.
Normally the budgeting process is completed in March or April or, in some instances, early May. But because of an interruption in the session in March caused by the coronavirus, the Legislature was completing the process just as the new budget year began.
Had the Capitol COVID-19 outbreak occurred a week or two earlier, it would have been difficult — nearly impossible — to complete the budgeting process in a timely fashion, throwing into question the function of various agencies such as whether health care providers could have been paid for treating Medicaid patients, whether Highway Patrol troopers could have patrolled Mississippi roads, and the list goes on.
State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs recently said during a call with the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute and Capitol Press Corps that 49 of the 175 legislators, including the lieutenant governor, contracted the coronavirus — most testing positive almost immediately after the Legislature adjourned on July 1. According to Dobbs, four were hospitalized, including three in intensive care. Tragically, there was one death of a person who presumably contracted the virus from a legislator. Those testing positive included House Speaker Philip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and some key committee chairs.
While the Legislature finished the budget before being overwhelmed by the virus, as it turned out, the governor partially vetoed the $2.5 billion education budget, and the Legislature has not been able to agree on a budget for the Gulf Coast-located Department of Marine Resources. Those issues have created enough chaos. Imagine the chaos if the whole budgeting process had been delayed two weeks or more into the new budget year because of the coronavirus.
Last week a near coronavirus-free and mostly masked-up Legislature returned to Jackson to override Reeves’ veto of the education budget. The veto override itself was historic in that it was the first since 2002 and was the first time at least since the 1800s a Republican governor had been overridden by a Republican-controlled Legislature.
And to add more oddity to an already unusual session, it was revealed just before legislators returned to Jackson that Gunn and House Speaker Pro Tem Jason White are suing fellow Republican Reeves, arguing the governor’s partial veto of a bill disbursing funds to health care providers to fight the coronavirus is unconstitutional. The lawsuit is in addition to the very public spat between legislative leaders and the governor over who had spending authority of $1.25 billion in federal funds disbursed to Mississippi to fight the coronavirus.
The Legislature, which won that fight, was disbursing many of those funds right up to July 1 when members adjourned. It would have been embarrassing if the coronavirus outbreak had prevented legislators from making those disbursements.
But in reality nothing would have prevented legislators from returning after the COVID-19 outbreak had run its course amongst legislators to appropriate the funds. After all, much to the governor’s dismay, legislators have changed rules allowing them to stay in session for almost the full year, though in reality they are in Jackson essentially the same number of days they would be in a normal year. Their days in Jackson are just more spread out.
Despite the pandemic and the ongoing rift with the governor, the Legislature has accomplished some monumental feats during this unusual session. Those feats include:
Removing the 126-year-old state flag that featured the controversial Confederate battle emblem in its design.
Spending $75 million to improve internet access in rural areas.
Placing on the November ballot a resolution to remove from the state Constitution a white supremacist-inspired provision that could throw statewide elections to the House to decide, even if a candidate obtained a majority vote.
On a side note, the bill changing the flag also could have been placed in jeopardy if the coronavirus had hit legislators earlier.
For many reasons, the 2020 session is unusual and historic. And it is not over yet.
Good Monday morning everyone! The front that moved through Sunday brought in some slightly cooler and drier, air overnight. Temperatures are in the upper 60s across the area this morning. It is a great morning to enjoy a hot cup of coffee on the porch! We will see plenty of sunshine today, with a high near 93, but the air wont be as muggy. North northeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Tonight will be clear, with a low around 68. Rain chances return to the forecast mid-week with afternoon pop up thunderstorms.
