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Introducing, Mississippi Explained: our weekly news quiz to test your knowledge of this week’s news 🧠

Tuesday is the deadline for committees to pass general bills from the other chamber. However, some lawmakers, including Rep. Rob Roberson and Sen. Lydia Chassaniol, have said it’s unlikely they’ll call another committee meeting ahead of the deadline. The move will likely kill school choice and prison health care reform.

Quiz question: Who decides which bills are brought up for a vote in committee?

Email your answer to newsletter@mississippitoday.org with your first name and last initial, and we’ll shout you out in the next quiz post on Monday, March 9.

Last week’s answer: Committee

Congratulations to last week’s winners: Jon A., John O. and Rita H.

Think you know the news? Take more quizzes like this one: sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and never miss a chance to test your knowledge.

Two men have pleaded guilty in federal court to fraudulently receiving COVID-19 unemployment benefits while they were incarcerated in Mississippi. 

Kev’Veonta Short and Travis Thorn were convicted last week in separate cases in the Southern District of Mississippi of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They are expected to be sentenced in the coming months. The charge carries a maximum 20-year sentence and a $250,000 fine. 

The unemployment insurance benefits were federally subsidized through the CARES Act during the pandemic. Incarcerated people were not eligible to receive the money. 

Short, 32, of Natchez, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for submitting false unemployment insurance claims while imprisoned at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution. Short is scheduled for sentencing in July.

Between May and July 2020, Short submitted an application through the Mississippi Department of Employment Security, according to court records. 

Within a span of two weeks that May, a dozen incarcerated people in the state, including Short, submitted unemployment benefit applications, the indictment states. 

After receiving the money, Short and other members of the conspiracy transferred it to other prisoners using “Green Dot” reloadable debit cards, Way2Go Cards and CashApp, according to court records. 

In 2020, Short was serving time for cocaine possession and aggravated assault, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He was discharged in 2022.  

He was ordered held in federal custody pending trial in September 2025 for a number of reasons, including prior criminal history for violent offenses and failure to appear at past municipal court appearances, according to court records. 

Short’s two accomplices in the COVID fraud scheme, Adrian Wilson and Aaron Sanders, pleaded guilty to the same charge in February. Both men are still incarcerated and state prison records list their unit as “Federal court order.” Wilson is set to be sentenced in June.

Another co-defendant, Vicki Page, is set to go to trial in April. She is accused of receiving over $7,000 of fraudulently obtained unemployment benefits and transferring them to Sanders through CashApp, according to court records. 

On Wednesday, Thorn, 45, of Monroe, Louisiana, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for working with others to fraudulently obtain about $13,500 in unemployment benefits while he was in a Mississippi prison. He is expected to be sentenced in July. 

Between May and September 2020, he worked with an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator and others in Harrison County to fill out an application for benefits for him with the Mississippi Department of Employment Security, according to court records. Thorn gave his personal information to another person to apply for the benefits, and the co-conspirator provided her address in Gulfport as the residence on Thorn’s application. 

Through a debit card, he received about $3,400 in state unemployment benefits and about $10,200 in federal unemployment compensation, according to the indictment. Then the co-conspirator used some of the benefit money to make purchases and transferred some of it to Thorn through his commissary fund. 

In 2020, Thorn was serving time for burglary and aggravated assault, according to MDOC. He was released on probation in March 2025 and was being supervised by federal officials in Louisiana. 

The FBI and Mississippi State Auditor’s Office investigated the case involving Short and the other SMCI prisoners. The auditor’s office, the U.S. Department of Labor and the Office of the Inspector General handled the investigation of Thorn.

Auditor Shad White launched Operation Payback in May 2024 to investigate unemployment compensation during the pandemic. It has resulted in another state prisoner’s conviction for fraud. 

“We will continue to find as many of these fraudsters as possible and hold them accountable for their crimes,” White said in a February statement announcing a 15-year sentence and restitution for Kenjarell Thomas, who received benefits while incarcerated. 

Secretary of State Michael Watson on Monday announced he will not run for reelection in 2027, further fueling the speculation that he will run for lieutenant governor next year.

Watson, a Republican, said at the Stennis Institute’s Capitol Press Forum that while he won’t run for secretary of state again, he will “still be on the ballot” next year. 

“We have really gotten to the point where we feel like we’ve done our duty,” Watson said. We’ve done our work at the secretary of state’s office. I can walk out of there feeling like I’ve left the place better than I found it.” 

Watson, 48, represented Jackson County in the state Senate for three terms. He later won a bid in 2019 to become secretary of state and was easily reelected to a second term in 2023.

Since serving as secretary of state, Watson has championed measures to ensure only U.S. citizens vote in Mississippi elections, to strengthen the state’s campaign finance laws and to repeal onerous “red tape” regulations on businesses.

Watson is the second statewide official to reveal at least part of his future political plans, though Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Gov. Tate Reeves are prevented from running for another term in their current offices because of term limits. State Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson has announced he is running for governor next year.

The lieutenant governor has enormous sway over the legislative process and is the presiding officer of the Senate. The chamber’s rules allow the lieutenant governor to appoint people to lead legislative committees and refer bills to specific committees. 

A state senator says she is unlikely to advance bills aimed at improving medical care in Mississippi prisons and redirecting control of the state prison health care contract.

Corrections Committee Vice Chairwoman Lydia Chassaniol, a Republican from Winona, called a committee meeting on Thursday and advanced only two House bills. She told Mississippi Today that she was unlikely to call another meeting ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for committees to pass general bills from the other chamber.

Chassaniol is running the committee while Corrections Chairman Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg, is out with an illness. She said Barnett only requested two bills be passed, and that she planned to honor his wishes even if it meant the House proposals, which passed that chamber 120-0, would die.

“Well, too bad. Too bad. I mean, I was trying to, it’s very important to me to show respect for our chairman, and that’s what he asked us to bring forward, so I’m basically a stand-in for Chairman Barnett, who was unable to be here today because he’s ill,” Chassaniol said.

The proposals Chassaniol is poised to let die include a bill to require the creation of a hepatitis C program and an HIV program aimed at improving the treatment to prisoners. An Mississippi Today report in October revealed that only a fraction of Mississippi prisoners diagnosed with hepatitis C receive treatment, which has allowed the treatable infection to develop into a life-threatening illness. Additionally, the bill would require the state to develop a plan focused on improving the health of female prisoners.

Another bill Chassaniol declined to take up would take the power to award health contracts away from the Department of Corrections and task the Department of Finance and Administration with soliciting proposals for a new medical contractor. The current medical contractor, Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, was awarded over $315 million in emergency, no-bid state contracts by the Department of Corrections from 2020 to 2024. It has since faced legal challenges and allegations that it routinely denies or provides inadequate care inside Mississippi’s prisons.

​​Those bills, which follow an ongoing investigative series from Mississippi Today on the alleged denial of care in state prisons, are part of a reform package spearheaded by Rep. Becky Currie, the Republican House Corrections chairwoman from Brookhaven.

Chassaniol did advance a bill authored by Rep. Justis Gibbs, a Democrat from Jackson, that would require MDOC to develop policies for supplying protective equipment when incarcerated people use strong cleaning chemicals. Gibbs introduced the legislation, which also passed the House last year but died in the Senate, in response to the case of Susan Balfour, a woman who developed terminal breast cancer after she came into contact with raw industrial chemicals during cleaning duty. Balfour died in August. 

The other measure passed by the Senate panel on Thursday would create more oversight of prison deaths. The bill would direct and empower the Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force to look into “unexpected” deaths using information provided by coroners’ reports and MDOC. 

Prison understaffing and gang violence likely led to the killings of nearly 50 people since 2015, according to an investigation by Mississippi Today, The Marshall-Project Jackson, the Clarion Ledger, the Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link.

Both of the prison health measures that haven’t advanced were double-referred, which means they would need to pass out of an additional committee on top of the Corrections Committee. When a bill is double-referred, it’s sometimes a sign that it lacks the support of the chamber’s leadership.

A spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann did not respond to a request about whether Hosemann supports the prison reform measures or whether he would urge Chassaniol to call another meeting to pass more bills ahead of Tuesday’s deadline.

Chassaniol said she would only call another meeting at Barnett’s request.

“I have been directed by Chairman (Juan) Barnett, whose wishes I’m trying to comply with.”

We are proud to announce that Anna Wolfe, an editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Mississippi Today, will join the staff of the newly formed Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center, created in collaboration with The New York Times and Big Local News.

Wolfe joins as an investigative reporter covering Mississippi, beginning March 16. She will remain based in the Mississippi Today newsroom, and her work will be published in Mississippi Today and The Times.

Deep South Today, the nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today, Verite News in New Orleans and The Current in Lafayette, Louisiana, launched the investigative center in January. The center will employ reporters in Louisiana and Mississippi and produce investigative stories on topics and institutions critical to local communities in each state.

The center will operate in collaboration with editors at the Local Investigations Fellowship program at The Times, including Dean Baquet, former executive editor of The Times, who now leads the fellowship program.

Wolfe joined Mississippi Today’s newsroom in 2018 to report on poverty and immediately began spotlighting the state’s failures to serve its most vulnerable residents. Her 2020 joint reporting on Mississippi’s restitution centers, Prisoners for Hire, exposed modern-day debtors prisons and received multiple national awards. Her yearslong investigation into the state’s spending of federal welfare funds led to a 2022 series called The Backchannel, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting and earned her a Livingston Award.

In 2023, Wolfe became the youngest solo winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, one of the nation’s top journalism honors, and only the third two-time winner of the award. In 2024, she was named in TIME100 Next, which recognizes emerging leaders driving change. In 2025, four women who were imprisoned on lengthy sentences for offenses related to their pregnancies were released from prison shortly after Wolfe wrote about the hazy legal theory that landed them there. 

A native of Washington State and a 2014 Mississippi State University graduate, Wolfe has spent her entire journalism career in Jackson. Last year, she led the launch of Mississippi Today’s Jackson desk dedicated to telling accountability-focused stories about life in the capital city.

“Anna Wolfe has fundamentally changed Mississippi with her relentless, dogged investigative reporting,” said Adam Ganucheau, Deep South Today’s executive editor and chief content officer. “Her work hasn’t just surfaced problems. It’s also forced accountability at the highest levels and given Mississippians the clear, documented truth they couldn’t get otherwise. In an era of diminished watchdog reporting, particularly in Mississippi, Anna’s commitment to going deeper, staying longer and following the facts wherever they lead has proved exactly why investigative journalism still matters. Every Mississippian is better informed because of her, and we’re so lucky to have her fighting for all of us in this new role.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Anna as the first hire of the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center,” said Chris Davis, deputy editor for the Local Investigations Fellowship. “Our mission is strengthened by her expertise, and readers across Mississippi will be better informed because of her relentless reporting. Her arrival marks the first step in our commitment to building a world-class investigative team in this region.”

By working with The Times to launch and build out a new Investigative Reporting Center, Deep South Today will position an upstart investigative team alongside some of the most prominent editors in the journalism industry. This initiative builds on the success that Mississippi Today already established with The Times and Big Local News. A joint investigation by those organizations about corruption and abuse by Mississippi sheriffs was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting and led to expanded federal investigations and legislative reforms in the state. The Local Investigations Fellowship won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in 2025 in collaboration with the Baltimore Banner and Big Local News for an investigation into the deadly opioid crisis.

ABOUT DEEP SOUTH TODAY

Deep South Today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today, Verite News and The Current.

Founded in 2016, Mississippi Today is now the largest newsroom in the state, and in 2023 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Verite News launched in 2022 in New Orleans, where it covers inequities facing communities of color. The Current is a nonprofit news organization founded in 2018 serving Lafayette and southern Louisiana.

With its regional scale and scope, Deep South Today is rebuilding and re-energizing local journalism in communities where it had previously eroded, and ensuring its long-term growth and sustainability.

ABOUT THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Company is a trusted source of quality, independent journalism whose mission is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. With more than 12 million subscribers across a diverse array of print and digital products — from news to cooking to games to sports — The Times is a diversified media company with curious readers, listeners and viewers around the globe.

ABOUT BIG LOCAL NEWS

Launched in 2020 as a program of Stanford University’s Journalism and Democracy Initiative, Big Local News helps reporters better use data in service of accountability journalism. Big Local News shares data and reporting recipes for journalists to localize stories at biglocalnews.org. It also provides news detection tools that monitor a wide variety of data and information streams. The goal: Make it easier for journalists to find the stories that matter at the local level.

Big Local News regularly supports and mentors journalists in computational methods, including The New York Times’s Investigative Reporting Fellows, and was integrally involved with a collaborative project with The Times and The Baltimore Banner, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting earlier this year.

Some toplines from the Mississippi legislative session this week:

• School choice appears dead

• Ice storm aid hangs in the balance

• House-Senate GOP leadership relationship is historically icy

School choice: Going into the 2026 legislative session, school choice – using tax dollars for private schooling – was the big bugaboo issue. House Speaker Jason White and Gov. Tate Reeves deemed it issue No. 1. Senate leaders didn’t want it, but had a more modest proposal to make it easier for students to switch public school districts. But heading into the final month or so of the session, each chamber has snuffed out the other’s proposals. The only related item still kicking is a House-passed plan to double tax credits available for private school scholarships to $20 million over the next few years. Its fate in the Senate is unclear.

Ice storm aid: There are several proposals pending – $20 million in direct spending for MEMA, a recovery loan program and the state loaning Entergy $200 million for utility damages to prevent customer rate hikes. But there appears to be some disagreement on how the state can best help Mississippians and communities recover. Lawmakers heard from the state insurance commissioner that private claims for damages have topped $107 million and will grow.

House-Senate feuding: It’s something of a tradition for lawmakers and Capitol observers to proclaim nearly every session that House and Senate relations are “the worst we’ve ever seen.” But given the current state of affairs between the Republican administrations running the chambers since 2024, that may be on point. The two chambers, as has become the new custom, have killed most of each other’s major initiatives so far this session. Some lawmakers and observers are questioning whether Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Jason White are communicating at all, and whether the Legislature can set a budget by deadline.

Quote of the Week

“If you’re going to run for office and say that you are capable of running any level of government, you need to know how to use the damn internet.” – Rep. Shanda Yates of Jackson, discussing a bill that would require Mississippi candidates to file their campaign finance reports online.

In Brief

Education bills set to die

House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, announced last week that the panel of representatives would not meet again this session. 

That means, aside from two Senate education bills passed on Feb. 18, a handful of other measures are set to die. These include bills that would have given teachers money for classroom supplies earlier, required school boards to adopt policies restricting or banning cell phones in classrooms and ramped up initiatives to combat absenteeism.

There are no House bills still alive that address these issues. 

The Senate Education Committee met and passed three House bills, including one that’s intended to make it easier for school districts to sell unused buildings. More than a dozen House education bills are still pending, but it’s not clear if the Senate committee will meet again, either. 

The committee chairmen have until Tuesday to call meetings. – Devna Bose

State loans could stave off Entergy rate hikes

A bill passed the House last week would allow the state to issue bonds to loan Entergy money to repair its system after Winter Storm Fern, an effort to prevent rate hikes for customers from the damages.

Similar borrowing was provided for Mississippi Power Company after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

HB 4069 would give Entergy better rates on the borrowing than it could get on the commercial market. It’s estimated the company had $200 million to $250 million in damages from the storm. – Katherine Lin

Proposal would provide resource officers to private schools

A bill that would fund school resource officers at private and public schools with state dollars has passed the House. 

HB 4065, authored by Republican Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar of Senatobia, would establish the Mississippi School Resource Officers School Safety Act. Under the proposed legislation, any school in the state can apply for the Department of Public Safety to pay part of the salary, up to $55,000, for one school resource officer.

The measure, which would cost $5 million for the first year, awaits consideration in the Senate. – Devna Bose

Bill would allow black bear hunting in MS

Lawmakers have advanced a bill during the legislative session that allows the Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Commission to create regulations for a bear hunting season that could begin during the 2027 hunting season.

SB 2436 allows the commission to establish a lottery system for issuing black bear hunting tags. The commission would determine how many tags to issue based on the current bear population. To participate, hunters would have to purchase a Mississippi hunting license and apply for a harvest tag through the lottery system.

Black bears were once nearly extinct in Mississippi and hunting them is currently prohibited.

The measure passed the Senate 49-3, and the House Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Committee passed it. The full House must vote to approve it before it can head to the governor for consideration. – Taylor Vance

Another online sports betting measure advanced

A bill passed by the Ways and Means committee last week would tax all gross revenue from mobile sports betting at 22%, up from the 18.5% rate that has been proposed in other legalization measures. That would boost the overall revenue Mississippi would generate through mobile sports betting to $100 million, said House Gaming Chairman Casey Eure. Estimates for previous legalization bills that would tax at a lower rate range from $30 million to $80 million. The bill would also lower the state’s regular gambling tax rate from 8% to 6%, which would amount to a $48 million tax cut for brick-and-mortar casinos, Eure said.

The House already passed a separate measure to legalize mobile sports betting in early February. Both proposals would direct gambling revenue to the Public Employees’ Retirement System. Eure said the House plans to keep as many options alive to win over a skeptical Senate, where mobile sports betting legalization has died without a vote. – Michael Goldberg

By the Numbers

$0

Amount Mississippians would have to pay to get an associate degree or professional credentials in qualifying fields at Mississippi community colleges under SB 2522, a “last-dollar” scholarship program proposal. The scholarships would cover the remaining balance for a student once they’ve exhausted all other financial aid, essentially free education. The measure is modeled after programs in other states, and similar bills have been unsuccessfully proposed in the Mississippi Legislature in recent years.

More Legislative Coverage

Advocates call for funding, collaboration as more Mississippians are expected to struggle with food insecurity

Mississippi’s three main food banks last year handed out 40 million meals across all 82 counties and had their largest-ever distribution of produce as a result of a new collaborative effort, food bank leaders said Wednesday at the Capitol. Read the story.

Mississippi lawmakers are looking to regulate AI after the technology is misused

Mississippi currently has two laws dealing with AI, and three more are being proposed. One current law criminalizes creating political deepfakes meant to damage a candidate. The other classifies AI-generated images of children performing sexual acts as child exploitation. Read the story.

Mississippi House wants to increase public school oversight

A House bill aimed at increasing public school accountability in Mississippi awaits consideration in the Senate. Read the story.

An effort to require Mississippi candidates to file their campaign finance reports online appears, once again, likely to fail in the state Legislature. 

The House Elections Committee on Thursday voted to pause debate on SB 2589, with the option to resume debate in the future. But if the committee does not pass the bill by Tuesday, the legislation will die. Similar measures have died in the past.

PODCAST: Secretary of State Michael Watson says Mississippi needs campaign finance reform

The bill would require county, municipal and state candidates to file their campaign finance reports online with the secretary of state’s office. This is an effort to provide the public with searchable, legible campaign finance data, as most states, including all those surrounding Mississippi, have.

But some House members expressed concerns about requiring candidates, especially in rural areas, to file reports online.

“I’m not trying to make an 80-something-year-old try to figure out how to file something online,” House Elections Chairman Noah Sanford said.

But Shanda Yates, an independent from Jackson, said candidates need to learn how to use the internet because it’s “not going away” and technology is an integral part of modern life.

“If you’re going to run for office and say that you are capable of running any level of government, you need to know how to use the damn internet,” Yates said. 

Sanford, a Republican from Collins, proposed a compromise that would require candidates for a state office to file online reports, but exempt local candidates from filing an online report with the secretary of state if they receive less than $2,000 in campaign donations in a year.

But Yates and Rep. Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, disagreed with that proposal because they believe every candidate in Mississippi, local and state level, should be held to the same standard. 

“If we’re not making everyone do it, I’m going to vote no,” Currie said. 

Current state law requires candidates for state office to file reports with the secretary of state’s office, county candidates with local circuit clerks and municipal candidates with local municipal clerks. 

But the law gives candidates wide latitude in how they can submit the report. 

Candidates can handwrite reports, submit pictures of them, or submit them in spreadsheet format. Lax requirements allow some handwritten reports to be illegible, or the print on the report too small for a person to read. 

To solve this issue, Secretary of State Michael Watson plans on rolling out a new searchable, user-friendly campaign finance website similar to the one operated by the Federal Election Commission for federal candidates. 

During the debate, Yates pointed out that every candidate is already required to file a statement of economic interest online, which is a report filed with the Mississippi Ethics Commission to disclose sources of income. 

Tom Hood, the director of the Ethics Commission, told Mississippi Today that the commission first required candidates and public officials to file the forms online in 2010, and since moving to online filing, the commission has received positive feedback.

For people who have trouble with technology, Hood said the commission allows them to send their form in through the postal service or by alternative means. But “only a handful” of people choose other options, the director said.

“People should not be afraid of online filing,” Hood said. 

If passed, the bill would not mandate online filing until 2028, one year after statewide elections in 2027, to give candidates time to acclimate to the new requirements.

Late in his second term as governor of Mississippi, Kirk Fordice delivered a State of the State speech where he was not interrupted a single time by applause.

The House chamber in the state Capitol was as quiet as a church mouse on a Sunday morning.

By the time Fordice delivered the State of the State address sans applause, a series of events had occurred making it clear he was cheating on First Lady Pat Fordice. Those events culminated with a near-fatal car wreck the governor suffered in November 1996 while returning to Jackson after sneaking away to visit another woman in Memphis.

The Fordice State of the State speech in the late 1990s, juxtaposed with President Donald Trump’s recent State of the Union address, crystallizes the political change that has occurred in the last quarter of a century.

Modern-day politicians, at least Donald Trump, can survive many more scandals than they could during the era of Kirk Fordice.

Fordice was a blunt spoken, in-your-face politician, and was immensely popular, especially among a growing Republican base of voters who had revered him as the party’s first governor of Mississippi since the 1800s.

For much of his gubernatorial tenure, hints of Fordice’s marital infidelity had been ignored, especially by the Christian right that embraced him.

But by the time of that fateful State of the State speech as the evidence piled up of Fordice’s indiscretion, no one was willing to stand up for him on that quiet January day in the ornate chamber of the Mississippi House as he spoke uninterrupted.

It should be noted that Fordice’s combustible tendencies, often berating both his allies and his enemies, might have contributed to those attending the State of the State not displaying any support for the governor.

The president also has a penchant for exploding in anger at those loyal to him and those who are not. In short, the president has said and done things that would have doomed politicians in a past era – a not too distant era, such as the era when Fordice served as governor of Mississippi. Trump, on the other hand, remains popular among Republicans.

For instance, as Trump recently delivered the longest State of the Union speech in modern American history, he was repeatedly interrupted by thunderous applause by his Republican supporters.

True, Democrats sat quietly and a few heckled him, as has also occurred in recent years with Republican lawmakers when past Democratic presidents delivered their State of Union addresses. Many other Democrats simply did not attend Trump’s speech. 

Still, the support of loyal Republicans, both politicians and non-politicians, to Trump has not wavered and did not as he delivered his State of the Union address.

The president’s missteps or misdeeds are far too many to count. They include multiple claims of sexual misconduct, including bragging of sexually assaulting women, being found guilty by a civil jury by a preponderance of the evidence of sexually assaulting a woman, being accused of sexual assault by countless others. He infamously belittled the late Sen. John McCain for serving as a prisoner of war after his airplane was shot down in Vietnam. Trump was forced to close his charity endeavors after they were found to be a scam. The list goes on and on.

There is evidence that Trump was sleeping with a porn star.

Still, nowhere is the support for the president stronger than right here in Mississippi among many Republican politicians and non-politicians. It is of note that right here in the heart of the Bible Belt not that many years ago people were so troubled by the conduct of a Mississippi governor that they sat quietly as he delivered his State of the State speech.

And what did poor Kirk Fordice do to deserve their disdain?

The 60-something Fordice ended up leaving his wife, not for a younger woman, but for a woman who had been his high school sweetheart.

Granted, that is nothing to be proud of, but compared to what is tolerated nowadays by Mississippians, especially by Mississippi politicians, Fordice’s scandal was fairly tame stuff.

CENTREVILLE — Dysfunctional leadership and low academic achievement have been a challenge in the Wilkinson County School District for at least six years, according to past superintendents, district parents and a review of documents from three state agencies. 

The Mississippi Board of Education voted in January to take over the district in the rural southwestern corner of the state, where schools have posted some of the lowest scores in math and reading on state assessments since the 2018-19 school year.

Leaders’ decision to close two schools forced students from rival communities of Centreville and Woodville to attend classes together, spurring fights.

School board meetings sometimes devolved into name calling, and the group’s financial decisions raised questions and concerns about whether they complied with state law. 

As of January, district officials had not submitted a financial audit since the 2023 fiscal year, and they had indicated a $1.7 million deficit in the budget outlook for the current school year.

The district’s struggles reflect those in the community, former Wilkinson County leaders and school administrators told Mississippi Today. In the county, one of the most rural in the state, almost 30% of residents live in poverty. Some of the largest employers are the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, a private prison.

Mobile homes and A-frame homes are situated in thick forest off roads that cut through bluffs in Centreville, a rural community without a bank. Ancient live oak trees hug the 19th century courthouse in Woodville, which boasts a downtown populated by small businesses.

The district student population decreased by half in the last six years, from 1,210 to 648, and the county population has similarly shrunk as locals sought opportunities in Louisiana, which borders Wilkinson County to the west and south.

As L.C. Clark, the former chief of the district’s campus police, put it: The children of Wilkinson County haven’t yet had the opportunity to succeed. Others including Hope Price, whose child attended Wilkinson County High, said they feel it will take greater parental involvement to change a school and community culture that normalized dysfunction.

“When (some parents) found out that the state had taken over the school, they were on Facebook rejoicing,” Price recalled. “And it’s crazy to me. You have no school board, no superintendent. Why are you excited about that?”

Some parents were eager to see the outgoing superintendent punished, she said. 

Now, the district has an opportunity to return to its “glory days,” Interim Superintendent Lee Henry Coats said.

School closings fuel fights

For now, there is bad blood between some residents of Centreville and Woodville, two similarly sized towns roughly 14 miles apart, and the strife spills over into the district’s schools, according to more than a dozen locals who spoke to Mississippi Today. The ensuing clashes started before the two cities’ high schools were football rivals.

Price, of Woodville, said her son was sent to the district alternative school after defending a friend who got into a fight with a student from Centreville on a school bus. 

“They see each other at school after they’re done beefing on social media,” Price said. “It’s where it all comes out.”

The rivalry worsened when district officials decided to shutter both schools in Centreville. The elementary school closed after a 2019 fire, and William Winan Middle School shut down in 2024 despite being renovated in the last decade.

The school closings meant a longer commute for Centreville students and injured pride for alumni. Linton Trahan, an alumnus, had to start waking up his grandchildren at dawn to catch the school bus for the long ride to Woodville.

“You can’t teach them discipline at home if they can’t do nothing but get up, go to school and come back and go to bed,” he said. “And then they get tired and can’t learn because they fall asleep in class.”

A dysfunctional school board

Discipline programs aren’t limited to students. 

Wilkinson County locals may not agree on much, but most who spoke to Mississippi Today pointed to five people they blame for the district’s decline: school board members. Two state agencies have investigated whether board members’ financial decisions and actions broke state law. 

The State Auditor’s Office found that in fiscal year 2023, the school board approved financial statements and paid vendors without presenting the buys at its meetings. The board also accepted bids for consulting fees without reviewing cheaper alternatives and couldn’t account for some expenditures that were $5,000 to $72,000. One invoice was billed incorrectly and another was split in half to circumvent state purchasing law. 

In October, the state Department of Education sent district leaders a letter about allegations that school board members were interfering in the district’s daily operations. The letter states that President Fred Anderson, whose service was terminated as part of the state takeover, had not completed training required under state law. The letter also cited allegations that board member Elease Sullivan, whose service was also terminated, had “expressed concerns” about her daughter’s salary — a conflict of interest, texted other board members about hiring a new football coach after a losing season and arranged an impromptu walkthrough of the high school without the superintendent’s approval.

Two former Wilkinson County superintendents accused board members of violating the state open meetings law and discussing school district business outside of the boardroom. One recalled chaotic board meetings where board members would engage in name calling and make it difficult to fund supplemental pay for teachers and other priorities that would directly impact students in the classroom.

It seemed that serving on the school board “created a level of significance for them, for people to stop in the grocery store or stop at church and want to talk to you,” former Superintendent Kimberly Jackson said of board members’ behavior. Some board members also seemed to enjoy traveling to conferences on the district’s dime, she said. 

Clark, who was a campus police officer for the district for more than 15 years, said he felt ignored by several school board members he thought were out of touch with parents’ and community members’ concerns. He said board meeting minutes were not readily available.

“If you didn’t catch the board member out and talk to them, they weren’t going to talk to you,”Clark said. “To me, they couldn’t have done it any better than getting rid of the board.”

Academics in free fall

After she was hired as Wilkinson County Schools’ superintendent in July 2023, Shemekia Rankin said she struggled to change the dysfunctional school culture and improve test scores. She said she encountered staff who were complacent and willing to pull rank with the help of board members.

“There was no structure,” Rankin said. “So with me coming in, putting new policies in place, teachers and other staff pushed against me. Some left. They didn’t want the culture to change.”

A 2023 report on district instruction backed up some of Rankin’s observations. The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER), which monitors state agencies, contracted an education technology firm to analyze information about instruction at 30 school districts, including Wilkinson County. The consultant’s analysis indicated significant grade inflation in Wilkinson County schools because about 90% of district fourth and fifth graders received As and Bs but less than a quarter of elementary students scored as proficient on state standardized tests.

Rankin said she faced additional hurdles while filling principal vacancies. In her first semester, the high school principal died, the elementary school principal resigned, and a counselor was serving as the middle school principal. Rankin said she was unable to find replacements by end of year due to low job interest and a small applicant pool. 

“Year one was bound to be an F,” Rankin said of the district’s accountability grade. “I didn’t have effective leadership at any of the schools.”

She also struggled to fill teacher vacancies in state tested subjects such as algebra and English II during her second full year on the job. Substitute teachers taught most of those courses, she said.

Many teachers who were stalwarts in the community, some of whom commuted from Louisiana, had retired, leaving a new generation hesitant to join the local teacher workforce. Rankin also struggled to hire a truancy officer during her tenure; the Wilkinson County schools share one with the Natchez-Adams School District.

Rankin looked internationally, primarily in Jamaica, for educators to teach state tested subjects in math and science. She said she was seeing improvements in benchmark data.

“It takes more than two and a half years to move a district, especially given what challenges the district has faced for as long as it had,” Rankin said. “People in the district had stopped caring.” 

Tracking down cheaters

Such apathy might explain concerns about cheating in the district.

In 2023, the state Department of Education began investigating testing irregularities in the district. Department officials reached out to interview Wilkinson County High School teachers  who might have helped students cheat on state tests, but could not reach them.

Those teachers weren’t working at public schools in Mississippi or Louisiana after that year, which prevented state education officials from questioning them, said Brian McGarity, the department’s director of educator misconduct.

“We’ve put a timestamp on their licenses in which they can’t upgrade, move around, or add an endorsement until they talk to us,” McGarity said. “From what we can tell, the last employer for all of these educators was the Wilkinson County School District.”

To complete its investigation, the department needs to question between one and five of those teachers, state education officials told Mississippi Today. The investigation is still open.

“We’re not going to give it up,” McGarity said. “We do work diligently to try to keep a list with cases cleared.”

The state invalidated the high school’s test scores. The “C” accountability grade the district received in 2023 now only applies to the elementary and middle school.

Meanwhile, Coats, the interim superintendent, faced a difficult first few weeks leading the district. He canceled two days of classes because of Winter Storm Fern. A beloved high school senior and a homecoming court attendant was shot and killed.

Coats previously helped improve test scores and attendance at the Holmes County School District, which the state took over in 2021 because of violations including dysfunctional leadership and financial mismanagement. Before that, he worked as a principal in Kosciusko.

“I think a lot of times when you have an MDE takeover, a lot of people are left in the dark. I just want to be transparent on what we’re doing to move the district forward,” he said.

For community members, new leadership brings the hope of improved educational outcomes for the county’s youngest residents.

“For both kids and parents, I just pray that one day we have unity,” Price said. “Genuine unity. We can only go up from here.”