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Lawmaker behind bill to close three universities says its has ‘slim’ chance to pass

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A lawmaker behind a controversial bill to close three public universities in Mississippi says its chances of becoming law this session are “slim.”

Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, told Mississippi Today that he just wanted to start a conversation when he filed Senate Bill 2726, which would require the governing board of Mississippi's eight public universities to shutter three by 2028.

“It's pretty out there,” Polk said.

Start a conversation, Polk did. Social media was a flurry the after the bill dropped. By Wednesday, an online petition opposing the bill had gained more than 7,500 signatures. A local newspaper serving Columbus, the northeastern home to Mississippi University for Women, published an op-ed warning the bill would devastate the local .

And alumni of the state's three historically black universities and colleges decried the bill as a do-over of former Gov. Haley Barbour's plan to merge those schools.

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That isn't his intention, Polk said. Any of the eight universities could be closed under his bill. And among the most vulnerable based on enrollment are three of the state's regional colleges: MUW in Columbus, Delta State University in Cleveland and Mississippi Valley State University, a historically Black university in Itta Bena.

“If I were trying to close an HBCU, I would've put that in the bill,” Polk said.

The bill will likely die in the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee due to , Polk said, and the emotional ties that have to their colleges. His bill is not on the committee's agenda for Thursday.

Still, it at an inauspicious time for higher education in Mississippi as university are scrambling to contend with a dwindling number of high school graduates going to college, a trend that will hit the regional colleges the hardest. It also comes on the heels of a failed push this session to rename MUW, part of an effort to boost the college's declining enrollment.

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“You can see how changing the name of the W causes such angst,” Polk said. “This bill will cause much more, and I know that.”

A number of solutions have been offered to this problem. Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, the chair of the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee, has introduced a bill that would create a legislative taskforce to study how the “enrollment cliff” will impact the state's higher education system.

But Polk's bill is the first to propose the state close universities instead of coming to their rescue.

“Sometimes you just have to pull the Band-Aid off the wound,” Polk said. “Until I introduced this bill, no one was talking about that.” 

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Polk said the bill was his idea and that he did not consult the 12-member Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees before filing it. An IHL spokesperson said the board does not comment on pending legislation.

If passed, IHL would be required to decide which three schools to close after conducting statewide listening sessions and evaluate criteria such as enrollment data; tuition rates; economic impact; additional services such as medical, agricultural, engineering or research; and “any other special factors that the board believes the institution offers that cannot be easily replaced or replicated.”

Involving IHL, Polk said, seemed like a way to make this process less political than if the Legislature decided which three to close. But many universities in Mississippi have felt overlooked by the board at various points in their history. Nine of the 12 trustees are graduates of Mississippi's three largest research universities. Some are high-dollar donors to Gov. Tate Reeves, and all are gubernatorial appointees.

“IHL has the best interest of the education of in higher education settings in Mississippi, and they're the ones that can make the best for all of Mississippi,” Polk said.

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Though Polk says his bill will save taxpayer dollars, he does not envision it reducing the annual IHL receives. He referred to an IHL handout showing the appropriations each school received last year.

If IHL closed the three schools with the smallest enrollments — Delta State, Valley State and MUW — the state could save $85 million, Polk said, money he sees as better off distributed among the remaining five. 

“If they didn't choose the three I just mentioned, the savings to the state would be better,” Polk said.

What would happen to the towns around these smaller colleges, like Itta Bena, Cleveland and Columbus? Polk said that's not why the state universities exist.

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But he noted his bill would not permit the closed campuses to become branches of the remaining five. The buildings would have to be sold or repurposed, he said.

“Our universities have a mission,” Polk said. “We forget sometimes their mission is to educate in a higher form than K-12. It is not economic development.”

If the University of Southern Mississippi closed, Polk said he would say he's sorry, “but that's what IHL thinks is best for the state of Mississippi.”

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

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-05-20 07:00:00

MAY 20, 1961

In this 1961 , leader John Lewis, left, stands next to James Zwerg, a Fisk student. Both were attacked during the Rides. Credit: AP

A white mob of more than 300, 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. 

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“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 about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my . 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.” 

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To quell the violence, Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi

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Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with 's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. 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 Speaker's as a 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.

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Mississippi Today

2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-05-19 14:11:52

Despite a recent 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 , 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 has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.

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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 to attend private schools.

Going forward, thanks to the new law, to 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 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 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.

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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 – Parents for – 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.

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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 , pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.

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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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