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Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley

Mississippi, a rural state that has long lagged behind most in high speed internet access, is leading the nation in expanding that access with recent investments from the federal and state government, officials say.

“Right now in Mississippi, by most estimates we have the largest expansion of fiber to the home, broadband in America when you look at the number of customers who will be served,” Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, a four-term public service commissioner, said recently during a lengthy interview in his office in the Woolfolk state office building in Jackson.

By the end of 2020, 2,765 miles of fiber optic cable passing by 28,447 homes and businesses are slated to be installed. And in 2021, another 1,980 miles of fiber are scheduled to be installed, passing by 17,309 homes and businesses.

“Every household may not be hooked up, but it will be available in those areas,” Presley said.

This rapid expansion in Mississippi is needed since the state is at or near the bottom in internet access, according to several studies. According to a 2018 report by BroadbandNow, Mississippi led only Montana in internet access with 70 percent coverage across the state. Mississippi also is trailing most states in terms of the speed of the internet offered.

Earlier this year, the Legislature opted to appropriate $75 million of the $1.25 billion it received in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds to expand high speed internet. Of that pot of money, $65 million is reserved for the state’s customer-owned electric power cooperatives, and $10 million is set aside for private providers. The grants must be matched by the co-ops and the providers on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

The Legislature requires the internet that will be installed using the CARES Act funds to provide 100 megabits download and upload speeds — what Presley calls “the gold standard of internet speed.”

“This legislation brings connectivity to the world for our children, educators and parents, and is a giant leap forward for our state’s future,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said.

The electric cooperatives, called co-ops, were founded in the 1930s to provide electricity to a large geographic area of the state, including most of rural Mississippi. A law passed by the Legislature in 2019 and championed by Presley allows the co-ops to provide internet service.

Rogelio V. Solis, AP

Former state Sen. Sally Doty

“This is similar in scope to the early 1900s when co-ops provided electricity to rural homes,” said Sally Doty of Brookhaven, a former chair of the Senate Energy Committee and the recent appointee of Gov. Tate Reeves as executive director of the Public Utilities staff, which was tasked with awarding the grants. “Fast and reliable internet is really a necessity and a lifeline to the rest of the world.”

In addition to the state grants, Mississippi is also in line to receive as much as $940 million during the next 10 years in federal Rural Digital Opportunity funds. That money comes from a small federal tax customers pay on their phone bills. The program originally was developed to help ensure landline phone service to rural areas. More recently, the funds have been used to build cell phone towers in rural areas, and now the Federal Communications Commission is expanding the program to enhance internet access.

The state is slated to get its first installment of those funds — $94 million — in 2021.

These recent actions could help Mississippi move up the list of states in offering high speed internet accessibility, many state officials hope.

“To me we could have a grand slam,” Presley said. To highlight the potential impact of the federal funds, Presley displayed a chart detailing how 223,152 homes and businesses could be eligible for high speed internet based on the money the state could receive over a 10-year period from the federal Rural Digital Opportunity program.

“We should come out of COVID-19 with lessons learned and with the capability that if we must ever transition to distance education, we should do so with the same ease as switching on a light switch,” Presley said. “It should be seamless, and the only way to do that is to make sure every home has high speed internet available if they want it.”

The push to improve high speed internet access in Mississippi began in earnest in 2019 when the Legislature — by an overwhelming, bipartisan margin — passed the Broadband Enabling Act to allow the state’s electric cooperatives to begin offering broadband services. Presley began advocating for the program in 2017 after seeing the success of a rural northwest Alabama electric cooperative in expanding high speed internet to customers in its service region.

While the legislation allowing the rural electric power associations to offer internet services was popular, most agreed that the process of the customer-owned, non-profit associations installing the equipment to provide high speed internet would be slow and expensive. And some of the cooperatives would opt not to get into the business.

The process has been sped up by the COVID-19 pandemic. The closing of schools this past spring has highlighted the need of high speed internet to provide distance learning and to allow people to work from home.

“The calendar is not in our favor when it comes to distance education,” said Presley. “That is not anyone’s fault…but that is the fact. But we should never have to debate (high speed internet) necessity again. People are going to ask us when the evidence was there what did we do.”

Despite the progress, there are areas of the state where no one applied for the state grants to expand rural broadband service. There are 26 counties where no electric cooperative or other provider applied for grants to expand broadband.

Officials hope the federal money will fill some of those gaps, or co-op customers can apply pressure on their boards to offer internet service. Thus far, 15 of the 25 cooperatives have committed to providing broadband.

Another issue is that some areas of the state — like the Wren area in Monroe County and the Holly Springs area in Marshall County — are lacking service because residents in those areas receive electricity from municipal utilities. State law does not allow municipal utilities to offer internet service, and the areas are not populous enough to attract private providers.

“There needs to be some accommodation in the law to help people who live in those areas,” Presley said. “They should not be punished because of where they live.”

Doty said in the short term, many school districts will have to install hot spots in areas lacking high speed internet to accommodate distance learners in the era of the pandemic. The Legislature appropriated $200 million in CARES Act funds to help school districts with distance learning, including funds to ensure all students have a laptop or some other WiFi device so they can participate in school from home.

“I think with the pandemic the jury has returned a verdict,” Presley said. “We should never spend another breath in Mississippi debating whether internet service is a necessity or a luxury. It is a necessity.”

The post Mississippi, lagging in high speed internet, uses pandemic relief funds to expand access appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Somewhere In Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

A Neshoba County School District student looks out the window of a school bus after the first day of school on Wednesday, August 5, 2020.

Teachers at a school in the Rankin County School District were given two masks, a small bottle of hand sanitizer and a spray bottle of chemicals marked “hazardous to humans and domestic animals” by the district to last them the semester.

At a school in the Jackson County School District, teachers received so few cleaning supplies from the district that they’re having to tear off-brand Lysol wipes in half just to have enough to wipe down desks between classes. A little more than a week since students returned to the district, teachers are already spending their own money to buy additional cleaning supplies for their classrooms.

At a school in the Itawamba County School District, administrators are not enforcing mask mandates on students in hallways or other common areas, and students and teachers are regularly pulling masks below their noses. In the Poplarville School District, administrators have told teachers that students are allowed to remove masks in classrooms if they are just two feet apart, directly countering recommendations of state health officials that everyone wear masks and stay six feet from other people.

As most schools across the state have reopened for in-person instruction, dozens of teachers are sharing horror stories of not being provided the resources and protections they were promised by district and state leaders when reopening plans were finalized.

Educators whose stories were shared with Mississippi Today for this article feared losing their jobs or retaliation from district leaders. Teachers in Mississippi — the lowest paid in the nation on average — sign annual contracts that include broad termination clauses, and many districts disallow teachers to speak directly with journalists without permission from district offices. For these reasons, the teachers cited or quoted in this article are not named.

Teachers across the state have reason to be concerned as early COVID-19 data for schools paints a bleak picture. As of Tuesday — less than two weeks since the start of school in most places — at least 589 teachers across the state are quarantining because of possible exposure. At least 245 teachers have tested positive.

There are at least 2,035 students quarantined in the first few days of the school year, and at least 199 across the state have tested positive.

On Friday, 38 of the state’s 82 counties reported confirmed cases in public schools. By Monday, 71 counties reported confirmed cases in schools. Health officials have said it’s likely that many students and teachers already had the virus before school started and brought it with them with classes resumed.

Earlier this month, Gov. Tate Reeves assessed the reopening plans of all 138 school districts and announced he would let most of them commence as planned. Reeves ruled that schools in eight counties that were deemed hotspots — representing just 7% of the state’s total student population — should delay two weeks until Aug. 17.

In doing so, Reeves bucked the advice of education advocates and the state’s top medical professionals, who’d publicly urged leaders to delay the start of school to at least early September. Minutes after Reeves announced he would allow schools to reopen on time, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, sitting next to Reeves in a live press conference, said of reopening schools: “I think it’s nuts.”

“It’s impossible to imagine that we are not going to pay the price for cramming kids into schools right now,” Dobbs said earlier this month. “There’s just no plausible scenario where it’s just not going to be bad.”

Without statewide mandates and limited standards for reopening, districts were tasked with deciding for themselves how and when to reopen and how to handle safety concerns. This has caused even neighboring school districts to respond differently to confirmed cases — a point of frustration for many teachers who spoke with Mississippi Today.

For example, more than 100 students at Gulfport High School were quarantined last week after a choir teacher tested positive. A teacher at a neighboring school district told Mississippi Today that her district is choosing not to quarantine in similar ways.

“We’re hearing that a couple students in my school have tested positive,” the teacher told Mississippi Today. “But we didn’t do like Gulfport and quarantine everyone who possibly came in contact with those students. It just begs the question: Why isn’t there something uniform? Why isn’t the state making everyone do this the same way? It doesn’t feel like anyone has a good grasp on best practices, and it’s making us feel unsafe.”

And the stories of unsafe school activities or districts not adhering to their announced reopening plans are stacking up.

Seniors at Oak Grove High School in Hattiesburg participated in their annual, school-sponsored senior celebration event the first week of school. Photos of the event on social media showed students on the school’s football field in very close quarters while wearing no masks. A few hours later, Lamar County School District officials sent parents of the seniors a text that read: “If your student participated this morning in Sr. celebration, we are notifying that a positive Covid case has been identified.”

In the Grenada School District, janitors haven’t been given enough cleaning supplies to clean classrooms at the end of each day as their district leaders promised in their reopening plans signed off on by state leaders.

“It’s honestly just a disaster waiting to happen,” a Gulf Coast teacher told Mississippi Today. “We’re doing the best we can, but it feels like there’s just no way to keep everyone safe. That’s not a good feeling.”

The post Teachers share grim details of Mississippi school districts failing to uphold COVID reopening promises appeared first on Mississippi Today.

If we do have a college football season in Mississippi — and I still think it’s 50-50 at this point — we’re looking at quite possibly the most abnormal season since 1918. That’s when Mississippi State legend Dudy Noble coached at Ole Miss, Mississippi State played Ole Miss twice and Southern Miss didn’t play football at all.

Not coincidentally, that’s the last time the world experienced a pandemic to rival this one.

We knew months ago this was going to be a most interesting football season in the Magnolia State. First, Ole Miss hired Lane Kiffin last December. Then, a month later, Mississippi State hired Mike Leach. Two of college football’s lightning rods, friendly rivals on the other side of the continent in the past, were headed to Mississippi. Clearly, the 2020 season was going to be interesting and different. We had no idea…

Rick Cleveland

Then came the pandemic. And we still have no idea. Things change every day.

Today, let’s pause, take a deep breath and consider what we do know:

• The SWAC — to which Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State belong — won’t play this fall. The hope is to play an abbreviated spring schedule. We’ll see.

• The same is true in the Gulf South Conference. The next Heritage Bell Classic, pitting Delta State against Mississippi College, will not take place until at least next spring.

• Mississippi’s junior colleges have delayed their season until an October start, but perennial powerhouse East Mississippi Community College, which has won five national championships since 2011, will not play. “The well-being of my players will always come first,” EMCC coach Buddy Stephens said. “There are too many unknowns to put in front of our players moving forward at this time.”

• Those unknowns have caused the Big Ten and the Pac 12 — two of college football’s five power conferences — to postpone all fall sports. That, in turn, has caused an open rebellion of some coaches, many players and at least one Big Ten school (Nebraska).

• The Southeastern Conference has delayed its season until a Sept. 26 start and will play a 10-game (all league games) schedule, followed by a championship game. If it goes off as scheduled, State will open at defending national champion LSU and Ole Miss will play host to Florida. The league games-only schedule will be brutal. There are no cupcakes. Leach and Kiffin will earn those millions. Kiffin reportedly makes $4 million a year, Leach makes $5 million. In 2020, that may well end up equating to a million bucks per victory.

• Ole Miss senior center Eli Johnson, who started all 12 games last season, became the first player at either State or Ole Miss to opt out of playing in 2020. And who can blame him? Eli’s father, sports writer David Johnson, spent weeks on a ventilator in ICU and nearly died from COVID-19. Eli Johnson, who has played through numerous injuries and already has graduated, will work on his Masters in criminal justice.

• Difficult to tell what changes more often these days, the Southern Miss schedule or its roster. Both have changed radically, all related to the pandemic. Three of the Golden Eagles’ best players have opted out in recent days: defensive end Jacques Turner, linebacker Rakeem Booth and wide receiver/return specialist Jaylond Adams. All say they will enter the transfer portal. The same is true of reserve running back Steven Johnson, at 260 pounds, one of the nation’s largest.

While other leagues have postponed or delayed the season, Conference USA will begin in early September. In fact, Southern Miss plans to open at home Sept. 3 (a Thursday night) against South Alabama. The Eagles’ schedule has continued to evolve with Jackson State, Auburn and Tennessee Tech all having to be replaced. The schedule now includes home games with Tulane and North Alabama. Yes, it’s hard to keep up.

Still, the 2020 season will have to go some to surpass 1918 for eccentricity. State played only five games, Ole Miss four, 102 years ago when another pandemic was ravaging Mississippi and the nation. State defeated Ole Miss 34-0 at Starkville and 13-0 at Oxford. That’s right, Dudy Noble’s Ole Miss team scored as many points against State as you and I.

The next year Noble was back at his alma mater: State. We can only hope things get back to normal so soon this time around.

The post This college football season, if we have one, might be strangest since 1918 Spanish Flu appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A screenshot of Rep. Wilkes’ now-deleted tweet.

State Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, R-Picayune, said she didn’t mean to tweet a photo of the Confederate battle flag in response to a tweet reminding people they could vote on a new flag design for the state of Mississippi.

Wilkes, who was first elected to the Mississippi House in a 2017 special election and re-elected in 2019, said she quickly removed the tweet of the Confederate flag flying with a rainbow in the background from her private Twitter account.

“It was a huge accident,” she said. “I just saw the rainbow and the pretty picture. I did not notice that it was not the state flag.”

She was replying to a tweet from freshman Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, encouraging people to go to the website of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to express their preference for a new flag design for the state. In June, the Mississippi Legislature voted to remove the 126-year-old state flag that featured the Confederate battle emblem in its design. Wilkes voted against the bill removing the controversial flag.

A commission has been formed to recommend a new flag design for voters to approve or reject in the Nov. 3 general election. If voters reject that design, the commission will recommend another one. The law mandates the new design contains the phrase “In God We Trust,” but cannot include the Confederate battle emblem.

Wilkes said when she mistakenly posted the photo of the Confederate flag, she was trying to make the point that people should have been given the opportunity to vote on whether they wanted to remove the Confederate symbol from the flag.

“I think the voters would have done the right thing and voted to change the flag,” she said.

A group called Let Mississippi Vote has been formed and says it will attempt to gather the more than 100,000 signatures needed to place on the ballot a proposal that could restore the flag with the Confederate emblem as the state’s official flag if approved by voters. Their proposal would let voters choose between the old 1894 flag, a flag with the state seal on it, the Hospitality Flag and whatever design the flag commission adopts.

The group filed paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office on Monday. Once the initial paperwork and legal work is completed, the group will have one year to gather the necessary signatures.

Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes

Wilkes’ Twitter account is private. She has 168 followers.

Former Pearl River County Supervisor Anthony Hales Sr. said he received screenshots of her tweet from two residents of the county. He posted the screenshot of her tweet of the Confederate flag on his Facebook page.

“They were appalled by her posting that,” he said of the residents who alerted him of her tweet. Hales, who served as supervisor from 1996 until 2016, said, “I don’t know why she chose to put that up. It is not a good look.”

The post ‘Not a good look’: Rep. Wilkes says posting photo of Confederate battle flag was accident appeared first on Mississippi Today.