Mississippi Today
Clarksdale health department, once possibly poised to close, gets a new building
Instead of potentially closing, the Coahoma County Health Department is moving to a nicer, newer home.
The move to a building at the local hospital will preserve public health care in Clarksdale, the heart of the Mississippi Delta and a region with unique health needs. As health departments across the state struggle, the relocation is an example of what happens when local entities partner with the state to serve the community, said Jon Levingston, economic development director for Coahoma County.
The decades-old building was in need of multiple repairs, but it would be too expensive to renovate, and no other buildings in the area were suitable, according to a July 24 press release from Crossroads Economic Partnership, an organization tasked with increasing economic viability in Coahoma County.
“Simply by looking at it, one could tell it was an old building with multiple issues,” Levingston said. “The staff, I think, really wanted to be in a different facility where their patients felt more at ease.”
Coahoma County is not alone – some of the state's county health departments are beyond repair. Former State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs in 2021 showed photos to lawmakers of county health departments with gaping holes in the walls, leaking ceilings, mold and dilapidated bathrooms, according to a New York Times article.
The State Health Department was prepared to direct Coahoma County patients to nearby facilities. The closest health departments are miles away in Quitman, Tunica, Tallahatchie, Sunflower and Bolivar Counties. In an area where transportation can be a major challenge to health care access, keeping the health department in Clarksdale is a major win, Levingston said.
In a statement emailed to Mississippi Today, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney denied that the health department was going to close, though it's unclear how it would have remained open. Levingston said his understanding was that the facility would have closed without another building.
The new space became available after Delta Health System, which has undergone financial stress in recent years, bought out its lease of the Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center in April, and the county resumed its operation. Delta Health had leased the facility since February 2021.
Together, the hospital's board of trustees and Coahoma County Board of Supervisors offered the space to the health department.
“… It was an easy and natural decision for our board to offer to assist the State Department of Health,” said Bowen Flowers, president of the hospital board of trustees, in the press release. “The county health department needed to upgrade their space. We have the space and wanted to make it available to them, which our board voted unanimously to do.”
After relocation and a ribbon cutting, the health department will be located in the hospital's adjacent medical office building, along with other health care offices connected to the hospital.
While it's relocating, the health department, which is usually open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays, will only be open on Fridays during the entire month of August, according to the state health department's website. Once it's complete, the health department will resume normal hours, and there are no plans to extend its hours in the future, according to Mississippi State Health Department spokesperson Liz Sharlot.
Edney has spoken extensively about increasing health care services in the Delta, where he was raised, as well as the need for partnerships between local and state partners to ensure the vitality of county health services especially. Edney called the collaboration in Coahoma a “model” to follow in other communities.
“These are the types of partnerships that are necessary to sustain excellent healthcare for all our citizens, especially in the rural areas of our state such as the Mississippi Delta region,” he said in the press release.
Public health services are becoming even more essential as Mississippi's health care infrastructure continues to crumble. Almost half of the state's rural hospitals are at risk of closure, according to one report.
Though budget cuts imposed on the State Health Department in recent years have trickled down to reduced hours and services at county health departments, they still offer essential services, such as STI testing, vaccinations, diabetes and hypertension care, pap smears and pregnancy testing.
Edney has prioritized increasing staffing, hours and services at county health departments statewide despite not receiving the funding he requested from the state Legislature this year.
“I can't allow this to continue,” Edney previously told Mississippi Today. “I can't allow counties not to have access to public health.”
Currently, Mississippi has 86 health departments and 82 counties — several counties have more than one, while others have none.
Levingston recalled reactions from Coahoma County Health Department employees when he showed them the new facility.
“They were just looking around with stunned looks on their faces because it was so clean and so nice,” he said. “One lady looked at me with tears in her eyes and whispered, ‘Do you think this could really be ours?'
“‘Absolutely,' I said.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
MAY 20, 1961
A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them.
“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled.
After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders.
“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled.
As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.”
The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood.
“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.”
To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi
Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters
Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.
School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative session, with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.
But the Legislature, which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.
Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.
Going forward, thanks to the new law, to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will help the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.
Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children's Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children's Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.
Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children's Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.
The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.
The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that the group that brought the lawsuit – Parents for Public Schools – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.
The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution's plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”
In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds. The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.
The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational funding away from public schools.”
And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”
Granted, many public school advocates lamented the decision, pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.
Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.
But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.
And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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