The wife of a man who sometimes experiences crises related to his bipolar disorder feels he has been “subjected to treatment that should not happen in a civilized society.” 

The unnamed woman, who moved to Mississippi with her husband, told the court-appointed special monitor of the state’s mental health services that her husband was held in jail without medication and continued to decline as he waited for a bed at a state hospital. Another time, he was taken to a crisis stabilization unit (CSU), which can provide intensive treatment and serve as an alternative to hospitalization and to waiting in jails.

But after the staff called police, he wound up back in jail. 

A year later, she took him to the CSU again, where a staff member said, “You can’t come in here because of how you behaved last time.” He was taken to jail again until his wife was able to get him a bed at a private hospital. He then had to wait for a state hospital bed to become available. 

Monitor Michael Hogan included her story in his second report to illustrate how Mississippians can be subjectively denied admission to their regional crisis stabilization units, increasing the odds that they spend time in jail while waiting for a bed at a state mental hospital, without ever being charged with a crime.

Throughout his report, Hogan emphasized the issue of sick people waiting in jail for treatment.

“On average during FY ’22, according to DMH, on any given day 25 individuals waited in a jail cell for a hospital bed, a clearly unacceptable pattern,” Hogan wrote. 

The monitor recommended the Department of Mental Health consider adopting “a structured, validated instrument” to help clinicians make placement decisions and bring uniformity to the admission process for CSUs.

In 2016, the Department of Justice sued the state over its mental health system. U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves sided with the federal government in 2019, finding that the state had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by essentially segregating people with mental illness in hospitals far from their homes and families. Last year, Reeves appointed Hogan, a former New York State Commissioner on Mental Health with 40 years of mental health experience, to create twice-yearly reports evaluating the state’s compliance with the settlement agreement. 

Hospital admissions have declined statewide since 2019. That could be a sign of progress: Reducing the number and length of hospital stays was a key requirement of the remedial order. 

But the monitor also noted that some people were not admitted due to staffing shortages at the state hospitals. Staffing shortages also limited capacity at the crisis stabilization units (CSUs).

“In the view of the Monitor, gross numbers of admissions do not reveal much about whether these admissions could have been avoided,” he wrote. “Indeed, where admissions to Hospitals or CSUs may have been appropriate but beds were not available, the failure to admit is a problem.”

Hogan determined the state was in “partial compliance” with that piece of the order.

In an email to Mississippi Today, Department of Mental Health communications director Adam Moore said staffing challenges had increased wait lists by decreasing bed availability at two of the four state hospitals, as well as CSUs.

“DMH agrees that someone having to wait in jail to receive acute psychiatric treatment at a state hospital bed or a CSU is undesirable,” he wrote. “We are implementing strategies to increase staffing to reopen the remaining 30 acute psychiatric beds at East Mississippi State Hospital and 20 beds at Mississippi State Hospital and are encouraging the CMHCs to do the same in regard to the CSUs.”

Hogan’s report described significant differences across the state’s 13 regions, each of which is served by a different community mental health center. For example, the number of involuntary commitments – when a person with mental illness is forced into treatment by a local chancery judge after someone attests the person could harm themselves or another person – ranges widely, with some counties committing around one per 300 residents and others only one per 1,500.

“Since levels of serious mental illness do not vary this widely between counties, this variance reflect (sic) historical and local variability in patterns of care,” Hogan wrote. 

Care coordination – identifying people with serious mental illness, offering appropriate treatment, and working to ensure they actually receive that treatment – also varies dramatically across regions. 

Hogan’s team asked community mental health staff what happened if someone missed an appointment. Responses ranged from “Three strikes, you’re out” to “We go look for them, and if they aren’t home, we keep looking.” 

Care coordination is a key part of the remedial order, and Hogan said that because of the variations across regions he could not determine whether the state was in compliance. He recommended the Department of Mental Health establish and enforce standards for care coordination. 

In part, the differences across the regions are rooted in the history of the state’s mental health system. Since the community mental health centers were created 40 years ago, they operated with little oversight from the Department of Mental Health, which focused on running the state hospitals. Some regions are very poor and rural, while Hinds County, Region 9, is entirely urban. 

“Differences in services organization and management also reflect the substantial autonomy in CMHC operations and may not in all cases reflect best practices in organizing care,” Hogan wrote. 

Hogan’s first report, issued in March, described Mississippians waiting days and even weeks in jail for a bed at a state hospital. He also found that some people admitted to state hospitals did not have a serious mental illness – meaning the hospital wasn’t the right place for them and they were occupying a bed that could have been used by someone else.  

In his second report, he surveyed North Mississippi State Hospital and community mental health centers in the northern part of the state and did not find patients admitted without a serious mental illness diagnosis.

If there were fewer denials at the crisis stabilization units, fewer Mississippians with mental illness would wait in jail to receive health care. 

Of 1,275 CSU denials in the first half of Fiscal Year 2022, Hogan reported, about 30% occurred because no bed was available, in many cases because of staffing shortages. A fifth occurred because the CSU determined the person was too violent; other denials were based on the person’s substance abuse or medical issue.

The Department of Mental Health has increased funding to the community mental health centers for security in an effort to reduce the number of denials. 

Hogan wrote that upcoming monitoring reports will focus on reviewing state data about utilization of key community services like mobile crisis teams. Previously, the state said it had funded those programs, but data to see how they work was not yet available. 

Moore said the Department’s latest data indicates intensive community services have helped reduce rates of readmission to state hospitals. Of 2,424 Mississippians who received the services in Fiscal Year 2022, only 126 were readmitted to a state hospital.

More than a decade after the Department of Justice first determined Mississippi was unnecessarily institutionalizing people with mental illness, the lawsuit still isn’t over. The state appealed Reeves’ ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and oral arguments will take place on Oct. 5 in New Orleans. 

Read the monitoring report here:

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College football’s playoffs will expand to 12 teams. It could happen as soon as 2024 – and will happen no later than 2026.

If you follow college football at all, you probably already knew that. It was big news last week.

What you might not have known is that a former Northeast Mississippi Community College football center Mark Keenum led the way. Keenum – born in Starkville, raised in Corinth, and now his 13th year as president at Mississippi State – was integral in the process. His leadership was crucial. Indeed, many closely involved in the process say he made it happen.

Keenum serves as chairman of the 11-person College Football Playoff Board of Managers, the group of university CEOs who voted on the 12-team format. We are talking about presidents at colleges ranging geographically from Buffalo, N.Y., to Pullman, Wash., and in size from Ohio State to Troy. As you might suspect, finding common ground was not always easy.

In fact, there were many times, even last Friday before the final vote, when there were holdouts, presidents who thought the board was moving too fast and needed more time to consideration such a radical expansion.

“My message was simply, ‘It’s time,’” Keenum said in a phone conversation Tuesday. “I said, ‘It’s time for us to send a message to all the fans of college football. They want this. The country wants this. College football players and coaches want this. Let’s move. Let’s get this done.’”

The vote, when finally taken last Friday, was unanimous. We will have a 12-team playoff, up from four.

Said Keenum, “This a historic and exciting day for college football – more teams, more participation and more excitement are good for our fans, alumni and student-athletes.”

He is exactly right. And it should have happened sooner.

SMU president Gerald Turner, former chancellor at Ole Miss, and Troy chancellor Jack Hawkins both say it might not have happened at all – and certainly not last week – had it not been for Keenum. Both serve on the CFP Board of Managers.

“Mark’s skillful leadership was the key ingredient,” Hawkins said. “He moved us through any number of obstacles. He had just the right touch. He has a collaborative approach. He’s very diplomatic, but very determined as well. In this case, he was motivated by the right factors.”

Turner, who was chancellor at Ole Miss from 1984 until 1995, called Keenum’s stewardship “masterful.”

“Mark deserves much of credit,” Turner said. “I would describe his leadership style as smooth and effective. Certainly, there were other presidents who spoke up and were also influential, but Mark, more than anyone, got it done.”

When told what others, including several national football writers, had said about his leadership, Keenum said, “I’ll just say we got it done, and it was unanimous and I am proud of that.”

Pressed on his role, Keenum offered this: “Sen. Trent Lott once wrote a book about his life in politics and called it ‘Herding Cats.’ That’s a pretty good description of this playoffs expansion process. There were a lot of moving parts, a lot of different issues. Sometimes it seemed like you’d get one kitten back in the basket and another would fall out. In the end, we got it done.”

A cynic might say, “Yeah, but what does it matter, really? You can have a four-team playoff, a 12-team playoff or a 64-team playoff and you’re still going to have Georgia and Alabama playing for the national championship.”

And that might be true this season. It was true last season. It will not be the case forever. After all, Nick Saban is 70.

Said Keenum, “I just think back to 2014, which is the first year of the four-team format. That’s when Dak Prescott was our quarterback at Mississippi State and we were No. 1 in the country for longer than any other team that season. Now, obviously, we didn’t make the four-team playoffs in the end. But we would have been very much a part of this 12-team format. In fact, we would have hosted a first-round game in Starkville. Can you imagine what that would have been like?”

What’s more, Ole Miss, too, would have been part of a 12-team tournament that same 2014 season. In fact, Ole Miss would have been part of a 12-team playoffs system as recently as last season.

“For the Mississippi schools, this is very attainable,” Keenum said. “And once you get in the tournament, anything can happen.”

Southern Miss? The 2011 Golden Eagles, 12-2 and champions of Conference USA, might well have qualified for a 12-team playoff tournament and certainly would have if not for a narrow, upset loss to UAB  that November. 

The point being, with a 12-team format, it could happen. It is entirely possible. More playoffs berths means more playoffs access. It just makes sense, and it will make millions and millions more dollars.

If you are a college football fan, you should thank Mark Keenum next time you see him.

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A Hinds County Circuit Court judge has denied State Auditor Shad White’s motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by University of Mississippi Professor James Thomas. 

In his January 2021 motion, White alleged he could not be sued for defamation for allegations he made that Thomas, by participating in a two-day event called a “Scholar Strike,” violated state law prohibiting public employees from striking. 

White argued that as a state executive officer, he is entitled to a legal doctrine known as “absolute immunity” – the complete protection from liability for actions committed in the course of his official duties – even though he acknowledged no Mississippi court has considered the issue. 

Judge E. Faye Peterson was not persuaded, writing that Mississippi law is clear state officers have “no absolute privilege for any and all comments,” only those made during legislative, judicial and military proceedings. 

“Hence, Shad White is not entitled to absolute immunity for any and all statements which he makes as a state governmental official,” Peterson wrote in a Sept. 2 order. “That blanket theory of immunity has not been recognized by our courts, nor does it comport with the laws of this state.” 

Peterson added that “to the continued detriment” of White’s defense, Mississippi courts have found that immunity does not extend “to fraud, malice, libel, slander, defamation or any criminal offense.” 

Peterson declined to issue a declaratory judgment just yet on whether or not Thomas’ participation in the Scholar Strike actually violated state law – a key argument in his case for defamation.

Fletcher Freeman, a spokesperson for the state auditor’s office, said White and his counsel from the Mississippi attorney general’s office will “continue defense against this case.” 

“Auditor White absolutely has a right to tell people when they misspend money, which is what Thomas’ lawsuit is about,” Freeman wrote in an email. 

The lawsuit filed in December 2020 centers on White’s claims that Thomas participated in an “illegal” work stoppage on Sept. 8 and Sept. 9, 2020, and thus violated state law. White sent Thomas a letter demanding he repay $1,912 – his salary and interest – for the two days and another letter asking the University of Mississippi chancellor to consider termination. 

READ MORE: Auditor Shad White says a professor broke state law. The professor is now suing White for defamation.

Thomas’ initial complaint alleged this was defamation in part because it was false of White to claim that the Scholar Strike was illegal.

According to state code, a strike is an action taken “for the purpose of inducing, influencing or coercing a change in the conditions, compensation, rights, privileges or obligations of public employment.” 

Thomas’ participation in the Scholar Strike was intended to highlight racism and injustice in the United States, not to change his working conditions, according to the initial complaint. 

“Shad White falsely claimed that Professor Thomas violated the law against public employee strikes when it was clear to anyone who could read that he didn’t,” said Rob McDuff, an attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice who is representing Thomas. 

White’s motion to dismiss argued that a declaratory judgment would be improper because “there are no ongoing legal relations between the parties to be clarified or settled.” Furthermore, it would “set a precedent inimical to the orderly and efficient disposition of Auditor demands.” 

“This will effectively create a need for expedited review (and potential defense) by the Attorney General of all Auditor demands referred for non-payment, regardless of whether the Attorney General may otherwise have ultimately elected not to pursue a given claim—an inefficient use of State resources,” the motion states. 

Thomas’ lawsuit does not ask for a set amount of monetary damages and says a jury should decide in the event White is found liable. 

“If the jury says he should pay one dollar, that is fine,” the complaint says. “If the jury orders payment of more money, that is fine too.” 

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent agents to Jackson to help with emergency water distribution efforts, but organizers who work with undocumented immigrants say its presence may prevent them from seeking assistance. 

The Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity is distributing water from its headquarters at 406 West Fortification St. It is also collecting donations for two immigrant families impacted by flooding in central Mississippi about two weeks ago. Much of the operation is volunteer-based.

Organizers learned DHS agents would be in Jackson on a call where an agent announced they would visit distribution sites “to check things out,” said Jess Manrriquez, director of the Queer and Trans Justice Project for the alliance. The department also released a statement last week saying agents would be in the city. 

“We don’t want anything to do with them because we have people on site who are vulnerable,” Manrriquez said. “As much as they say they won’t (conduct immigration enforcement), we don’t believe that. There are too many instances of people getting caught up.” 

DHS includes Immigration Customs and Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol, which are agencies responsible for immigration enforcement. 

In a Friday statement, the department said emergency relief sites, such as those to receive food and water and to apply for disaster-related assistance, are protected areas where “to the fullest extent possible” ICE and CBP don’t conduct immigration enforcement. 

“ICE and CBP provide emergency assistance to individuals regardless of their immigration status,” according to the statement. “DHS officials do not and will not pose as individuals providing emergency-related information as part of any enforcement activities.”

Other examples of protected areas include schools, hospitals, places of worship and social services establishments. 

Manrriquez said she doesn’t take the department’s word as a guarantee not to enforce immigraton laws. Although DHS says it won’t do it, the department relies on individual agents to determine whether to enforce the laws, she said. 

People who the alliance has helped have reported ICE agents going to protected sites such as schools to request information about children’s parents, she said. 

DHS has also deported people during crises, the alliance said in a Tuesday statement. 

The alliance also highlighted the department’s impact in Mississippi. In 2019, a series of raids at poultry plants resulted in the detention of 680 people. Then-U.S. Attorney Mike Hurt called it “the largest single state immigration enforcement operation in our nation’s history.”

Unless DHS agents wear a badge, uniform or other form of department identification, Manrriquez said there isn’t a way to know whether they visited the alliance’s water distribution site. 

The alliance’s headquarters is a DHS and ICE-free zone, she said. 

The National Guard has been called in to distribute water, similar to how members administered COVID-19 shots earlier in the pandemic. 

Manrriquez said people who are undocumented and in the immigrant community are not as comfortable around people in uniforms. There is a fear that they will be asked to show immigration documents, she said. 

“It’s just the perception, it honestly is,” Manrriquez said. 

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The State of Mississippi is now in talks with a private company about managing its capital city’s struggling water system, Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said during a press conference Tuesday. The City of Jackson was also in discussions with the company before the State took over, he added.

“We had been in discussion with a corporation about taking over an operations and maintenance contract, but what I delayed telling you is that conversation stopped because they picked it up with the State,” the mayor told reporters. “So we’ve been unable to reach an agreement with them because we’re no longer at the table to talk about what that agreement would look like.”

Lumumba did not name the company. His remarks came a day after Gov. Tate Reeves, at a separate Labor Day press conference, said he was considering various long-term ideas for addressing Jackson’s water problems and that “privatization is on the table.” 

The Mississippi Free Press asked the mayor’s office for the name of the company with whom the City and State have had discussions, but Jackson Communications Director Melissa Faith Payne said the City was not releasing its name “due to ongoing negotiations.” The City provided no indication of a request-for-proposal process.

No ‘Mission Accomplished Banner’

The City of Jackson has been under a boil-water notice since July 29, but the problems reached acute levels early last week when residents lost water pressure due to failures at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant. The crisis required the mobilization of state and federal resources to help fix the immediate issue and supply residents with millions of bottles of water in the meantime. 

Officials said they had restored water pressure to the capital city by Monday, but the boil-water notice remains in effect. Though Jacksonians again have running water,

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Last month my office released a report on the tragic consequences of fatherlessness. Kids who grow up without an engaged father in the home are more likely to go to prison (especially boys), less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to be healthy, and young girls are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers.

For pointing out these facts, two out-of-state academics submitted a Mississippi Free Press column calling  the report “misinformation,” “poorly written,” etc.

What’s interesting is that our report relies on the same sorts of statistics that President Obama quoted in a 2008 speech on fatherlessness.

“We know the statistics,” Obama said. “[C]hildren who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools; and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”

I don’t recall the critics of our report reprimanding President Obama for talking about the issue. I’ve searched for Christine Dickason and Kaitlyn Barton’s (the two academics) scathing analysis of Obama’s speech and subsequent report, but it’s nowhere to be found.

‘White Dads Can Be Deadbeats, Too’

Dickason and Barton said my office’s “whole report is a dog whistle” and racist. I don’t recall them saying President Obama was racist for pointing out similar facts. But I’ll keep looking.

I’m not sure why Dickason and Barton decided to bring race into the conversation. It reveals more about them than it does the report. If I say, “fathers need to be engaged in kids’ lives,” and they say that statement is demeaning to Black fathers, that tells you exactly

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CLEVELAND — On the first day of school this year, seven of the eight school buildings in the district here didn’t have working air conditioning, leading multiple classes to be conducted simultaneously in the auditorium as parts of the building reached temperatures in the 80s.

The recent infrastructure problems have driven the community frustration in Cleveland into overdrive. Parents have been expressing their discontent with the school conditions and leadership for multiple years, a rift that parents say has grown since the consolidation of the district’s majority Black schools and historically white schools in 2017. 

Mississippi Today spoke to nearly a dozen parents and former employees who say this failure is the latest in a series of problems created by mismanagement and lack of communication. 

The district’s superintendent says he’s aware of the community’s complaints, but many of the problems are bigger than he alone can fix, and also questions whether others’ issues are racially motivated.

At a community meeting on Aug. 25, Superintendent Otha Belcher fielded questions from a heated crowd. Parents pressed him for solutions to the district’s infrastructure woes and ways to address the declining enrollment, problems Belcher said his team is actively working to address. Parents repeatedly said that they wanted “less talk and more action.” 

At the community meeting, Belcher said HVAC renovations have been on the books for months in the district’s plans to spend pandemic relief funds, but have been generally delayed by supply issues and became more urgent when several units quit completely. Portable units are currently in place in every classroom without air, according to Belcher. 

“It’s so embarrassing and it’s just such a stain on our town and community that we can’t even take an entire summer … to get this figured out and get children in our buildings with air conditioning and food,” said Todd Davis, president of the Bell Academy Booster Club. 

The air conditioning issues have also compounded problems for meals served by the schools. Child Nutrition Director Shenika Newsom said at the meeting that when the high school’s kitchen was without air conditioning they drove meals over in vans for a few days from the middle school, but regular cafeteria service has since resumed. She said supply chain issues will continue to cause meal substitutions and changes to menus. 

“This is not something we want to do, but something we have to do,” she said. 

Steven Chudy, a parent at the community meeting, called the HVAC renovations a waste of taxpayer dollars and compared them to “putting lipstick on a pig,” instead saying that the district should be focusing its efforts on building new facilities. 

“I’m getting blamed for something that happened 40 years ago,” Belcher told Mississippi Today, referencing the district’s long-running infrastructures woes. “Do we need new buildings? In my opinion that’s the largest issue, everyone wants new buildings, but that takes a lot of money.” 

Belcher said that while he agrees infrastructure is an issue, these problems exist across the Delta as the area sees population decline. 

“If people are leaving, that means children are leaving,” he said. “It’s not just aimed at the Cleveland School District, it’s everywhere.” 

While enrollment numbers are not yet available for the new school year, the Cleveland School District has seen a relatively steady decline in enrollment over the last 10 years according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education. The annual decline of about 3% is steeper than the statewide average but similar to other school districts in the Delta. 

The percent of teachers leaving the district was 11% higher than the state average, reaching 28% at the end of the 2020-21 school year. This was an increase from prior years when the percent of teachers leaving the district hovered between 20-24%. 

Multiple parents have questioned Belcher’s leadership in the district more broadly, an accusation that he says is racially motivated. 

“I have been called so many racial names, I’ve had three cars vandalized, I’ve had all these phone calls, people delivering things to my house, and I don’t ever say a word,” he said. “There is a lot going about racial stuff but I keep pushing through it because it’s not about me, it’s about the kids.” 

He added that no matter who serves in his position, he does not believe the community will see the change they are looking for without first coming together. 

Jennifer Adams Williams moved to Cleveland because her husband’s family is native to the area and said the district is “unlike anything she has ever seen.” 

Her older daughter, a student at Cleveland Central High School, had been a part of the STAR program, an academic enrichment program, in elementary and middle school but was disappointed to discover a lack of advanced classes at the high school to continue to be challenged. Williams also expressed frustration with the district for discontinuing the STAR program altogether. 

“To hear that they’ve taken it away, it’s like you’re working against your own self-interest,” she said. 

She took issue with the building conditions and meal issues as well, saying they would have already moved if not for her husband’s family and her daughter’s desire to graduate with her friends.

“We’re really trying to get things together because my hope is that our younger children don’t have to deal with what I’ve seen these children go through,” Williams said. 

Additional parents echoed this sentiment, saying their children have enjoyed the community at the high school but are concerned that they are not getting what they need to be adequately prepared for college. 

Christie Coker Tolbert said her major issue with the district was the unaddressed bullying.

“There’s supposed to be this huge no bullying, zero tolerance, but it seemed like if not every day then every other day (my daughter) was getting threats on her life,” Tolbert said. 

She said she was unhappy with the way the district handled the bullying incidents and how they notified her about it. Her daughter, now in third grade, has since left the district for private school.

Other parents told Mississippi Today they are dissatisfied with the care provided for their special needs children, both in terms of classroom instruction and handling of bullying. They raised concerns about what they say is a lack of communication from administrators and verbal bullying by students and teachers, to the point that their children were hiding from teachers in the building or didn’t know their teacher’s name to ask for help. 

Belcher said that there had not previously been a procedure to handle bullying before he arrived in the district, but that he felt the principals had successfully implemented the policy that was developed. According to the district’s online policy directory, there are two bullying policies, one adopted in June 2014 before the superintendent joined the district and one from July 2021.

When pressed about bullying against special needs students specifically, Belcher said he was not aware of any issues. 

 “We haven’t heard any of that,” he said. “Usually if there’s a complaint of that nature and the district hasn’t handled it, it goes directly to (the Mississippi Department of Education) because that parent will go to MDE quick. But I haven’t been informed of anyone that’s complaining. Again, if you know some names please give them to me so that we can contact them.” 

LaDonne Sterling, a parent in attendance at the community meeting, said she thinks pressure should be focused on the school board rather than the superintendent, but he should be working to make himself more visible in the community. 

“I think that he’s trying because I work in a district where the air conditioning is out,” she said. “Everybody is short staffed … Overall I wouldn’t know where to take my kids because things are happening everywhere.”

Clarification 9/6/22: This story has been updated to clarify when the district put a bullying policy in place.

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