by Vickie King, Mississippi Today
May 5, 2025

For the Pearl River Glass Studio, located in the Midtown neighborhood of Jackson, it started as an honor and labor of love, with Memphis-based artist Lonnie Robinson, who out of hundreds of artistic contestants, won the privilege to create the stained glass windows along with artist Sharday Michelle, for the historic Clayborn Temple, located in Memphis, Tennessee, as part of a massive renovation project. 

This team of artisans restored three enormous stained glass windows, panel by panel, for the historic church that was a bastion for the Civil Rights movement in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1960s. The stained glass windows depicted Civil Rights icons and paid homage to the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, which lasted 64 days from Feb. 12 to April 16, 1968. It is the site where sanitation workers agreed to end the strike when city officials recognized their union and their raised wages.

Over time, the church fell into disrepair and closed in 1999.

In 2018, it was officially named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The $14 million restoration of Clayborn Temple was a collaborative effort by non-profits, movers and shakers on the national scene, community leaders and donations.

The hard work, the labors of love, the beautiful stained glass arch windows and other restorative work at the historic church all came to an end due to a fire in the wee hours of Monday morning on April 28 of this year. 

The cause of the fire is currently under investigation.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Pearl River Glass Studio's stained glass windows for historic Memphis church destroyed in fire appeared first on mississippitoday.org

by Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender, Mississippi Today
May 5, 2025

State Economist Corey Miller talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Bobby Harrison about the state of the state economy, chances of recession amid trade war, federal spending cuts and state tax overhaul. He declines to answer questions about MSU baseball.

READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Podcast: Economist discusses Mississippi economy's vulnerability appeared first on mississippitoday.org

by Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today
May 4, 2025

The Mississippi Legislature’s insistence of not requiring oversight has resulted in a way for private schools to “double dip,” or receive money from two separate state programs to educate the same handful of students.

There is currently no mechanism in state law to allow state officials to determine whether double dipping is occurring. More importantly, there is nothing in state law to prevent double dipping from occurring.

So, maybe the private schools are double dipping and maybe they are not. And this is not an effort to demonize private schools — many of which are doing stellar work — but to point out the lack of state oversight and to question the wisdom of sending public funds to private schools.

There are two primary programs in Mississippi that provide public funds and state tax credit funds to private schools: the Education Scholarship Account and the Children’s Promise Act.

The programs overlap in terms of the children the private schools must educate to receive the state benefits. To receive money through an Education Scholarship Account of up to $7,829 per year to attend a private school, a student must be designated as a special needs student. The special needs designation could be the result of a physical, mental or emotional issue. An attention deficit disorder, for instance, could result in a special needs designation.

On the other hand, students who make private schools eligible to receive the Children’s Promise Act tax credit benefits must have “a chronic illness or physical, intellectual, developmental or emotional disability” or be eligible for the free lunch program or be a foster child.

No more than $3 million per year can be spent through the Education Scholarship Account while the Children’s Promise Act is capped at $9 million annually.

The bottom line is that state officials do not know how many students the private schools are serving through the Children’s Promise Act state tax credits.

The Mississippi Department of Revenue, which has a certain amount of oversight of the Children’s Promise Act funds, has said in the past it knew the number of children being served in the first year a school received the state tax credit funds, but the agency does not know whether the number of students being served in following years changes.

In short, there is nothing in state law that would prevent a private school from receiving the maximum benefit of $405,000 annually while enrolling only one child fitting the definition that would make the school eligible to receive the tax credit funds.

There is a little more oversight of the Education Scholarship Account funds, though that oversight has been slow and has only occurred after a legislative watchdog group pointed out the lax oversight.

If a school has fewer than 10 students receiving the ESA funds, the state Department of Education will not release the exact number, citing privacy concerns. But the Department of Education has released the amount of ESA funds each school received during the 2023-24 school year.

According to that information, multiple schools receiving those ESA funds but educating fewer than 10 ESA students also are receiving significant Children’s Promise Act tax credit funds. According to the Department of Revenue, as of January, six schools had received the maximum tax credit funds of $405,000 for calendar year 2024.

Three of those schools also received Education Scholarship Account funds for fewer than 10 students. For instance, one private school received $16,461 in Education Scholarship Account funds, or most likely money for two students.

If the students receiving the ESA funds were the same ones making the school eligible for the $405,000 in tax credit funds, that would mean the state was paying $210,730 per student whereas the average per pupil spending in the public schools is about $11,500 per pupil in state and local funding.

Of course, state law does not prohibit private schools from educating only one child with special needs and being eligible for the maximum tax credit benefit of $405,000 annually.

Perhaps it seems far-fetched that a private school would be educating only one child to be eligible to receive up to $405,000 in tax credit funds.

But it also seems far-fetched that for years the students receiving the Education Scholarship Account funds were mandated by state law to use the money to go to schools equipped to meet their special education needs. Yet, research by the Legislature’s Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Committee (PEER) found the students were going to private schools that in some instances did not have any special education teachers and in some cases the students were still getting those services from the public schools.

Perhaps the Legislature’s PEER Committee needs to do some more research to determine whether double dipping is occurring.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post How state law allows private schools to 'double dip' by using two public programs for the same students appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article presents a critical examination of Mississippi state law and the potential for private schools to receive funds from multiple public programs, with little oversight. The tone is analytical, raising questions about the effectiveness and transparency of the system, without offering a strong ideological stance. The language is factual, with a focus on state law and fiscal policy rather than promoting a political agenda. Although the article critiques the absence of proper oversight, it avoids demonizing private schools, instead advocating for more legislative scrutiny. The piece sticks to the reporting of facts, with a call for further investigation into the issue.