Better MS Report

GOP gubernatorial candidate sent campaign messages to taxpayer-funded school teacher e-mail accounts From Better Mississippi Report: JACKSON (Wednesday, July 6, 2011) – Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Bryant’s weekly campaign e-mails have appeared unsolicited in teachers’ in-boxes across the Rankin County Public School system, according to documents obtained by Better Mississippi Group. Better Mississippi Group questions [...]

More than half of Barbour budget cuts would hit public education Special to the Better Mississippi Report JACKSON (Wednesday, March 23, 2011) – The chairman of the state House budget committee said today he will not cut $77 million from next year’s proposed mental health and public education budgets as ordered by Gov. Haley Barbour. [...]

Special to the Better Mississippi Report JACKSON (Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011) – State Rep. Kelvin Buck believes responsibility of the Education Achievement Council should be expanded to help improve funding at community ad senior colleges – including studying the funding formula for state universities. Buck, a House member from Holly Springs who serves as vice [...]

Mississippi Public Broadcasting: Fewer than 1,800 live in the close-knit community of Ackerman. Within minutes of the fatal school bus accident on Highway 8 just south of Calhoun City on Tuesday, kids and parents were texting each other, the news spreading rapidly. Now, most of the town’s flags are shivering at half mast in the [...]

The Clarion-Ledger: Finding out what caused a collision that killed three people, including two high school teachers on a school bus, in Calhoun County could take weeks, a Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol spokesman said Wednesday. ”This early, we won’t have any answers just yet,” Trooper Ray Hall said. At the site of the wreck on [...]

The Clarion-Ledger: The state Senate has again adopted legislation to extend charter schools in Mississippi, but it’s unclear how it will fair in the House where similar legislation has died in recent years. Supporters of Senate Bill 2774 say it would lift restrictions that have made the schools unpopular here, while those who oppose the [...]

The Clarion-Ledger: Too often, child-care centers are only providing baby-sitting services, leaving children to start school lacking basic literacy skills, said Claiborne Barksdale, CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute. That was the assessment released Wednesday of a recent study connected to a early education pilot program the institute is helping to fund. All 150 classrooms [...]

The Natchez Democrat: The state-of-the-art equipment inside Copiah-Lincoln Community College’s new health and science building will be big step forward, officials say. Walt Wilson, the respiratory care program director, said conducting labs without soot from the welding classrooms filtering though air vents will also be a definite breath of fresh air. The 24,500-square-foot facility at [...]

The Clarion-Ledger: Attempts at City Hall to save Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Lonnie Edwards Sr.’s job went into overdrive Thursday, less than 24 hours after the school board said it is not extending his contract. Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes called a special meeting today of the council’s rules committee to request a state attorney [...]

Jackson Free Press: Last week marked the final week for general bill submissions in this session of the Mississippi Legislature, and much legislation is already clearing the House and Senate. Committees in both chambers are also up against a Feb. 1 deadline to pass or dump bills in their own chamber. Representatives of the state’s [...]