A committee of legislators and state leaders convened at the Capitol this week to discuss mental health issues facing young Mississippians.

School and health officials cited a scarcity of mental health professionals for K-12 and college students in Mississippi as a major issue. 

Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford who sponsored the bill that created the committee, said she was inspired in part by the success of the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families, which gave lawmakers the opportunity to study a complex topic before making legislative recommendations.

She said she expects the task force to produce legislation and provide an opportunity for state legislators and mental health leaders to connect with one another. 

“We have networks that can solve a lot of these issues and professionals that can solve a lot of these issues if we pull them together and resource (them) properly,” she said. 

The committee is chaired by Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch and chair of Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency, and House Education Chair Rep. Rob Roberson, R-Starkville. It includes legislators, state officials, mental health and education professionals and one student. Roberson was not present for the meeting. 

The first task force meeting consisted of presentations from state government and hospital officials with expertise in mental health and education. 

Nonprofit and other experts will appear at upcoming meetings, according to Roberson. 

Task force members paid close attention to the connections between Community Mental Health Centers and schools. The regional centers, which are certified by the Department of Mental Health but operate under the supervision of counties, must offer their services to public school districts. Services include intake and risk assessments, case management, day treatment, crisis support and parent education. 

While most school districts utilize the centers, some contract with private providers and several do not use either. 

“Our community mental health centers are a great resource across the state, and what we’re seeing is that school districts and our community colleges and universities in some places are not networked up,” said Boyd, who chairs the Senate Universities and Colleges committee. 

She said she aims to strengthen the centers’ connections to schools.

Some task force members also indicated that they would like to see more mental health professionals – and staff trained to notice signs of mental health challenges – in schools. 

Mississippi’s State Superintendent of Education Lance Evans said that the counselor to student ratio in Mississippi is 400 to one. 

“I’m a little embarrassed to even say the number,” he said. 

Wendy Bailey, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, said there are 519 school therapists employed in the state. 

“We easily need to double that,” she said. 

There were 1,038 operating public elementary and secondary schools in Mississippi for the 2022-2023 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Dr. Sara Gleason, assistant vice chancellor for clinical affairs at University of Mississippi Medical Center, shared data showing that Mississippi ranks 42nd in the nation for access to mental health providers for adults and children. 

She said that there are 15 licensed child and adolescent psychiatrists with a primary practice in Mississippi. 

Staffing shortages were cited as one of the primary limiting factors in ensuring that students receive proper mental health care. 

“Whatever recommendations you make,” Bailey warned the task force, “if there’s not a workforce to implement them, it’s not going to work.

…There is a behavioral health workforce shortage in the state of Mississippi.” 

Task force members also asked about limiting the use of cell phones in secondary schools, which several presenters said can negatively impact students’ mental health. 

Evans said that though he expects pushback on a school cell phone ban, he “definitely” thinks the task force should look into it. 

The committee tasked Evans with gathering information on cell phone policies for each school district across the state. He noted while much attention has been placed on Marshall County’s cell phone ban, it isn’t the only school district with such a policy. 

The task force plans to reconvene Aug. 7 and is required to make recommendations to the Legislature by Oct. 1.

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• The results are used to create a baseline for instruction in the Pre-K and kindergarten classrooms.

The results from last school year’s Kindergarten Readiness Assessment are in and they show students are getting closer to pre-pandemic levels.

Members of the Board of Trustees for the Mississippi Department of Education were presented the results during Thursday’s meeting.

“So, as a reminder, to ensure providers are preparing students for kindergarten the Early Learning Collaborative Act of 2013 required that MDE adopt a minimum rate of readiness for each pre-kindergarten provider participating in the collaborative to remain eligible for the funding,” Chief Accountability Officer Dr. Paula Vanderford told the Board.

Kindergarten readiness tests show parents, teachers, and those providing early childhood care what that child knows and demonstrates their abilities as they enter school. The results are used to create a baseline for instruction in the Pre-K and kindergarten classrooms.

MDE stated that the tests assess how successful Pre-K programs are at preparing 4-year-olds for kindergarten.

Students are expected to get a score of 498 by the time they leave a Pre-K class, a level which ensures they have mastered 70 percent of the necessary early learning skills, Vanderford explained to the Board. 

All students are tested in the fall when they start the classes and again in the spring to determine their level of growth.

Vanderford informed the Board that results from the previous spring testing averaged 143 skill points in growth, which is higher than the spring of 2023 where students averaged 137 points of growth. Average growth in 2022 was 142 points. 

MDE released that the testing showed roughly a third of students entering kindergarten in the fall are ready for kindergarten. Of the kindergarten students retested in the spring of 2024, 63.8 percent reached the target score. Those results were an increase from the spring 2023 scores of 61.4 percent. Prior to the start of the COVID pandemic in 2019, 65.6 percent of students in kindergarten reached the target. 

“Mississippi’s early childhood educators continue to improve achievement among our kindergarten and pre-K students,” said Dr. Lance Evans, the new State Superintendent of Education. “The MDE expects this upward trend to continue as we implement strategies and enhance our support for teachers statewide.”

The number of students served by early learning collaboratives in spring of 2024 was 6,193, an increase from the previous spring’s numbers of 5,119, Vanderford told the Board.

Pre-K programs are expanding across the state with the addition of 12 early learning collaboratives starting up in the 2022-2023 school year. 

“So, it’s been quite challenging to meet the demand of the need for coaching efforts with the expansion of this program,” Vanderford explained. “But data supports that participation in the early learning collaborative does yield an increase in positive student outcome.”

State Invested Pre-K programs (SIP) began in 2023 with $20 million of legislative funding as a way to expand MDE’s Pre-K programs. The funding was provided through grants to public schools that did not have early learning collaboratives. 

Vanderford told the Board that the first cohort of State Invested Pre-K programs finished the 2023 school year with an average of 140 points of growth. Of the 891 students served by a SIP, 64.2 percent met the end of year benchmark by spring of 2024.

Programs funded by other means, such as Title I, locally funded or self-contained programs, grew by an average of 134 points for the 2023-2024 school year. Those results were similar to results seen in the prior year, Vanderford said. 

The total number of kindergarten students tested was 32,736, while 3,999 students in other Pre-K programs were also tested. A total of 6,193 students in early learning collaboratives were also tested.

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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi can wait until next year to redraw some of its legislative districts to replace ones where Black voting power is currently diluted, three federal judges said Thursday.

The decision updates a timeline from the judges, who issued a ruling July 2 that found problems with districts in three parts of the state—a ruling that will require multiple House and Senate districts to be reconfigured. The judges originally said they wanted new districts set before the regular legislative session begins in January.

Their decision Thursday means Mississippi will not hold special legislative elections this November on the same day as the presidential election. It also means current legislators are likely to serve half of the four-year term in districts where the judges found that Black voters’ voices are diminished.

The judges wrote Thursday that waiting until 2025 avoids an “exceedingly compressed schedule” for legislators to draw new districts, for those districts to receive court approval, for parties to hold primaries and for candidates to campaign.

Attorneys for the state Board of Election Commissioners argued that redrawing districts in time for this November’s election is impossible because of tight deadlines to prepare ballots. Attorneys for the NAACP, who sued the state, argued it’s important to redraw districts quickly because having special elections next year would create burdens for election administrators and cause confusion for voters.

Legislative and congressional districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes from the previous decade. Mississippi’s population is about 59% white and 38% Black.

In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022 and used in the 2023 elections, 15 of the 52 Senate districts and 42 of the 122 House districts are majority-Black. Those are 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.

The judges ordered legislators to draw majority-Black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeastern part of the state.

The order does

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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi can wait until next year to redraw some of its legislative districts to replace ones where Black voting power is currently diluted, three federal judges said Thursday.

The decision updates a timeline from the judges, who issued a ruling July 2 that found problems with districts in three parts of the state—a ruling that will require multiple House and Senate districts to be reconfigured. The judges originally said they wanted new districts set before the regular legislative session begins in January.

Their decision Thursday means Mississippi will not hold special legislative elections this November on the same day as the presidential election. It also means current legislators are likely to serve half of the four-year term in districts where the judges found that Black voters’ voices are diminished.

The judges wrote Thursday that waiting until 2025 avoids an “exceedingly compressed schedule” for legislators to draw new districts, for those districts to receive court approval, for parties to hold primaries and for candidates to campaign.

Attorneys for the state Board of Election Commissioners argued that redrawing districts in time for this November’s election is impossible because of tight deadlines to prepare ballots. Attorneys for the NAACP, who sued the state, argued it’s important to redraw districts quickly because having special elections next year would create burdens for election administrators and cause confusion for voters.

Legislative and congressional districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes from the previous decade. Mississippi’s population is about 59% white and 38% Black.

In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022 and used in the 2023 elections, 15 of the 52 Senate districts and 42 of the 122 House districts are majority-Black. Those are 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.

The judges ordered legislators to draw majority-Black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeastern part of the state.

The order does

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Mississippi can continue to impose a lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies, including some non-violent felonies, the full panel of the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

The opinion of the full panel reverses an August 2023 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5^th Circuit finding the lifetime ban unconstitutional because it inflicted cruel and unusual punishment.

The full panel said a lifetime ban on voting was not punishment, but “served as a nonpenal, regulatory purpose.”

The majority opinion was written by Edith Jones, an appointee of Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. She was joined by 12 members of the Court in finding that the section of the Mississippi Constitution imposing the lifetime ban was not in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Two of those 12, including one Democratic appointee, Irma Ramirez, agreed with the results, but did not sign on to Jones’ opinion.

Six members of the Court, all Democratic appointees, said Mississippi’s lifetime ban unconstitutional. Their dissenting opinion was written by James L. Dennis.

“Voting is the lifeblood of our democracy and the deprivation of the right to vote saps citizens of the ability to have a say in how and by whom they are governed,” Dennis wrote. “Permanent denial of the franchise, then, is an exceptionally severe penalty, constituting nothing short of the denial of the democratic core of American citizenship.”

But the majority said the framers of the Constitution in banning cruel and unusual punishment were looking to ensure laws were not passed permitting  punishment “such as gibbeting (hanging), burning at the stake, embowelling, beheading and quartering.”

Jones wrote that those wishing to end Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for people convicted of certain felonies should “do the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens the law should be changed.”

If the lifetime ban is repealed it should be done by the Legislature and “not by judicial fiat,” she wrote.

READ MORE: Senate has little appetite for changing the difficult way it restores suffrage to convicted felons

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in past cases that a lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies was not unconstitutional. But a minority of the 5^th Circuit pointed out that the Supreme Court in past instances has changed its mind and found certain punishments, such as the execution of minors, cruel and unusual punishment after states began to ban such action.

When the Supreme Court found a lifetime ban on voting constitutional, 27 states imposed such punishments, Dennis wrote. But now, he pointed out 39 states did not impose such a ban. Mississippi is one of only two states, Dennis wrote for the minority, to impose a lifetime ban for people convicted for the first time of non-violent felonies.

It is likely the 5^th Circuit ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and others on behalf of Mississippians who have lost their voting rights. The office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch opposed the lawsuit on behalf of the state.

The framers at the time admitted they placed the lifetime ban in the Mississippi Constitution as a tool to keep Black people from voting. Those crimes placed in the Constitution for the ban are bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary.

Under the original language of the constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape would still be able to vote — even while incarcerated. Murder and rape have since been added as disenfranchising offenses.

The lifetime ban was challenged in an earlier lawsuit on the grounds it was imposed to deny the vote to Black Mississippians. The 5^th Circuit rejected that argument and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

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• MSIS 2.0 addresses deficiencies in reporting that left Head Start student achievement untracked.

A new tracking system for student progress is rolling out across the state of Mississippi. It is expected to address a previous deficiency where Head Start student accomplishments were not being recorded. 

Members of the Mississippi Department of Education Board of Trustees heard an update on the rollout of MSIS 2.0 during Thursday’s meeting.

John Kraman, Chief Information Officer, told the Board the rollout began on June 28. 

“MSIS is meant to help guide with information and insight… decision making that will inform and influence the outcomes for our students helping them prepare for the future,” Kraman described.

That means the old system, MSIS 1.0, was sunset on that date, Deborah Donovan, Director of Data Analysis and Reporting added. However, the old system will remain operational as data is transferred over to the new system.

Leaving the previous system open until September will allow for data entry from last school year to be completed for its accountability run and allow staff to see the historical data until it is transferred to the new system. 

The update came as the old system came under fire last year when the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) issued a report that found the achievements of students enrolled in Head Start programs were not being recorded. MSIS 2.0 is being put in place in part to address those limitations.

As previously reported, MSIS 1.0 was unable to assign student identification numbers to students in Head Start programs because they were not district-run programs. That led to those students’ achievements going untracked as they entered kindergarten, according to the PEER report.

A statement by MDE cited in the PEER report noted that the new MSIS 2.0 system will have that capability. 

As the new system rolls out, communication with the state’s 144 school districts is ongoing as they validate the data entered, Donovan explained.  Since this is a large project, he said MDE staff are employing the theme of “grace.”

“So, one thing we’ve been communicating with districts is that we all got to have some grace here,” Donovan said. “We got to have grace with the districts as they learn how to use the new system as they work through their challenges with the data, and we hope they’ll extend us some grace as well as we get all these items ready.” 

Updates to MSIS 2.0 take place nightly, ensuring MDE has regular access to data such as student information, the special education system, and human resources. After the data is processed, the system flags any errors.

Kraman warned the state Board of Education that an increase in the number of errors is expected as more data is entered. After the validity checks are completed, each district is tasked with addressing the errors. Kraman expects the number of errors to decline in the coming months.

“By the time we get to October for the first certification we would expect those errors to go down,” Kraman told the Board.

The first major certification window is planned for October 1 through October 10.

The new system also provides a formal process to review data before the end of the school year. Each district will have autonomy to choose the person or persons responsible for data certification. 

MSIS 2.0 requires all data errors to be corrected before certification. Donovan showed the Board a slide depicting the screens staff will see as they certify the data, which requires them to correct errors recorded by each school before the entire district can be certified. 

“They cannot certify a school or district if they have errors remaining in their data,” Donovan elaborated.

Training in the new system has been conducted via in-person “boot camps” that utilized a unique method to make it more engaging.

“We gamified our training to make it interactive and a little more fun and not so painful for the districts,” Donovan explained. 

Badges are awarded for the completion of training activities. Donovan said all districts except a few have earned at least one of the seven total badges. In addition, there are staff in 22 of the state’s districts that have already earned all seven badges.  

Training is also offered virtually and MDE has ramped up the number of help desk staff to assist districts with issues. 

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• MSIS 2.0 addresses deficiencies in reporting that left Head Start student achievement untracked.

A new tracking system for student progress is rolling out across the state of Mississippi. It is expected to address a previous deficiency where Head Start student accomplishments were not being recorded. 

Members of the Mississippi Department of Education Board of Trustees heard an update on the rollout of MSIS 2.0 during Thursday’s meeting.

John Kraman, Chief Information Officer, told the Board the rollout began on June 28. 

“MSIS is meant to help guide with information and insight… decision making that will inform and influence the outcomes for our students helping them prepare for the future,” Kraman described.

That means the old system, MSIS 1.0, was sunset on that date, Deborah Donovan, Director of Data Analysis and Reporting added. However, the old system will remain operational as data is transferred over to the new system.

Leaving the previous system open until September will allow for data entry from last school year to be completed for its accountability run and allow staff to see the historical data until it is transferred to the new system. 

The update came as the old system came under fire last year when the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) issued a report that found the achievements of students enrolled in Head Start programs were not being recorded. MSIS 2.0 is being put in place in part to address those limitations.

As previously reported, MSIS 1.0 was unable to assign student identification numbers to students in Head Start programs because they were not district-run programs. That led to those students’ achievements going untracked as they entered kindergarten, according to the PEER report.

A statement by MDE cited in the PEER report noted that the new MSIS 2.0 system will have that capability. 

As the new system rolls out, communication with the state’s 144 school districts is ongoing as they validate the data entered, Donovan explained.  Since this is a large project, he said MDE staff are employing the theme of “grace.”

“So, one thing we’ve been communicating with districts is that we all got to have some grace here,” Donovan said. “We got to have grace with the districts as they learn how to use the new system as they work through their challenges with the data, and we hope they’ll extend us some grace as well as we get all these items ready.” 

Updates to MSIS 2.0 take place nightly, ensuring MDE has regular access to data such as student information, the special education system, and human resources. After the data is processed, the system flags any errors.

Kraman warned the state Board of Education that an increase in the number of errors is expected as more data is entered. After the validity checks are completed, each district is tasked with addressing the errors. Kraman expects the number of errors to decline in the coming months.

“By the time we get to October for the first certification we would expect those errors to go down,” Kraman told the Board.

The first major certification window is planned for October 1 through October 10.

The new system also provides a formal process to review data before the end of the school year. Each district will have autonomy to choose the person or persons responsible for data certification. 

MSIS 2.0 requires all data errors to be corrected before certification. Donovan showed the Board a slide depicting the screens staff will see as they certify the data, which requires them to correct errors recorded by each school before the entire district can be certified. 

“They cannot certify a school or district if they have errors remaining in their data,” Donovan elaborated.

Training in the new system has been conducted via in-person “boot camps” that utilized a unique method to make it more engaging.

“We gamified our training to make it interactive and a little more fun and not so painful for the districts,” Donovan explained. 

Badges are awarded for the completion of training activities. Donovan said all districts except a few have earned at least one of the seven total badges. In addition, there are staff in 22 of the state’s districts that have already earned all seven badges.  

Training is also offered virtually and MDE has ramped up the number of help desk staff to assist districts with issues. 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama has privately expressed concerns to Democrats about President Joe Biden’s candidacy, and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi privately warned Biden that Democrats could lose the ability to seize control of the House if he doesn’t step away from the 2024 race, according to several people familiar with the sensitive internal matters.

Pelosi also showed polling to Biden that she argued shows he likely can’t defeat Republican Donald Trump — though the former speaker countered Thursday in a sharp statement that the “feeding frenzy” from anonymous sources “misrepresents any conversations” she may have had with the president.

With time racing, Pelosi and Obama are among Democrats at the highest levels who are making a critical push for Biden to reevaluate his reelection bid, as unease grows at the White House and within the campaign at a fraught moment for the president and his party.

Obama has conveyed to allies that Biden needs to consider the viability of his campaign but has also made clear that the decision is one Biden needs to make. The former president has taken calls in recent days from members of congressional leadership, Democratic governors and key donors to discuss their concerns about his former vice president.

Biden has insisted he’s not backing down, adamant that he’s the candidate who beat Trump before and will do so again. Pressed about reports that Biden might be softening to the idea of leaving the race, his deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said Thursday: “He is not wavering on anything.”

If anything, in recent days the president has become more committed to staying in the race, according to one person familiar with the internal discussions.

This story is based in part on reporting from more than half a dozen people who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive private deliberations. The Washington Post first reported on Obama’s involvement.

Influential Democrats from the highest levels of the party apparatus, including congressional leadership headed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are sending signals of concern. Some Democrats hope Biden, off the

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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators, not the courts, must decide whether to change the state’s practice of stripping voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies, including nonviolent crimes such as forgery and timber theft, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The state’s original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who sued to challenge the list say authors of the Mississippi Constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.

A majority of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Supreme Court in 1974 reaffirmed constitutional law allowing states to disenfranchise felons.

“Do the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens that the law should change,” the majority wrote.

Nineteen judges of the appeals court heard arguments in January, months after vacating a ruling issued last August by a three-judge panel of the same court. The panel had said Mississippi’s ban on voting after certain crimes violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

In the ruling Thursday, dissenting judges wrote that the majority stretched the previous Supreme Court ruling “beyond all recognition.” The dissenting judges wrote that Mississippi’s practice of disenfranchising people who have completed their sentences is cruel and unusual.

Tens of thousands of Mississippi residents are disenfranchised under a part of the state constitution that says those convicted of 10 specific felonies, including bribery, theft, arson and bigamy, lose the right to vote. Under a previous state attorney general, who was a Democrat, the list was expanded to 22 crimes, including timber larceny — felling and stealing trees from someone else’s property — and carjacking.

About 38% of Mississippi residents are Black, according to the Census Bureau. Nearly 50,000 people were disenfranchised under Mississippi’s felony voting ban between 1994 and 2017, and about 59% of them were Black, according to an expert who analyzed data for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the ban.

To have their voting rights restored, people convicted of any of the crimes must get a pardon from the governor, which rarely happens, or persuade

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