Mississippi lawmakers will be asked to consider a bill to expand the state’s college financial aid programs for the second session in a row. 

This year’s proposal is the same as last’s: To double the amount of money some students receive through the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant and open up the program to adult and part-time college students, many of whom have never before been eligible for aid. 

An estimated 38,000 new students would benefit from these changes, collectively called MTAG Works. 

But that comes with a $31 million price tag, an increase by more than half what Mississippi already spends on its state financial aid programs. Proponents, including the Mississippi Economic Council, will have to convince lawmakers that financial aid expansion is a good use of state dollars. 

“The Legislature has to understand the value of this appropriation,” said Scott Waller, the president of the Mississippi Economic Council. “That’s still going to be our hardest hill to climb, if you will.”

Last year’s bill stalled in the House of Representatives due to the price tag, and lawmakers in both chambers questioned if the increased spending would result in a return on investment to state taxpayers. 

This year, a taskforce behind the legislation ran an analysis to answer that very question. New students who receive MTAG Works are projected to graduate at a rate of 63% compared to the state’s current graduation rate of 49%, according to an analysis conducted by UnlockED in collaboration with Postsecondary Analytics. The study was commissioned by the Woodward Hines Education Foundation.

“This is not a cost,” said Jennifer Rogers, the director of Mississippi Office of State Financial Aid who has been pushing for updates to the programs she administers since 2018. “This is an investment.” 

Higher graduation rates mean there are more students with higher-paying jobs, which means the state of Mississippi would collect more income tax. UnlockED’s analysis showed MTAG Works will result in the state collecting an additional $63 million in income taxes, more than double the annual cost of the program.

“If you put a dollar down and get a dollar back, that’s a pretty good investment,” Waller said. “You can’t look at it from a cost standpoint; you’ve got to look at it from a return standpoint.”

The return on investment would likely be reduced if lawmakers cut the income tax this session.

Rogers and Waller have spoken with university and community college leaders about the proposal. The Education Achievement Council, a group of state education leaders that want to increase the number of Mississippians with a college degree or credential of value to 55% by 2030, also received a preview of this year’s effort.

So far, Rogers said she has heard no opposition to the bill.

“I don’t think anyone has looked at this proposal and said, ‘this is not a good idea,’ because no one loses,” she said. “Every single student who is currently receiving aid will continue to do so. … Every institution receives more funds.” 

The proposal will result in millions more in state funding to the universities and community colleges, according to numbers generated by Rogers’ office.

But Rogers, Waller and their partners on the taskforce are also working to get support outside of the state’s higher education officials. 

“We view this as not just a higher ed issue or a student issue,” Rogers said. “This is a workforce development issue as well.” 

That’s why MEC is supporting the bill, Waller said.

“If we’re gonna create the type of business environment that we need, it’s gonna begin with a strong workforce,” he said.

Students who currently qualify for MTAG receive $500 their freshman and sophomore year, and $1,000 their junior and senior year of college. Those amounts have not increased since the grant was created in 1995 with the goal of helping middle-class families pay for college. 

“But we know the cost of everything has gone up in that time,” Waller said.

The MTAG Works proposal would double those amounts for low-income students and remove a provision that excludes the poorest students in Mississippi from qualifying. Though children of millionaires have received MTAG, students who qualify for a federal Pell Grant are barred from receiving the grant. 

“Just by eliminating the Pell exclusion, we open it up to so many more Mississippi students,” Rogers said, citing her office’s estimate that 18,000 Pell-eligible students could benefit from MTAG with the changes. 

Part-time students would also qualify for MTAG Works, which will largely help community college students.

Rogers said she has been asked what compromises she would make if lawmakers do not fully fund the proposal. She said the entire proposal is important. 

“It’s hard to find fault with any aspect of the proposal,” she said. “But it carries a cost.” 

A joint legislative hearing on MTAG Works will be held on Dec. 11. 

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

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin on Tuesday called college football’s current setup “a dumb system,” and he wasn’t referring to the playoff selection process for a change.

Kiffin, who has been outspoken about his team and others from the powerhouse Southeastern Conference getting left out of the College Football Playoff, ripped the college calendar that forces many coaches to juggle a transfer window while preparing for bowl games. It came on the heels of several coaches having to squeeze national signing day into a week of preparation for conference championship games.

“We just try to make the best of the situations,” Kiffin said during a Zoom call for coaches headed to the Gator Bowl. “It really is a dumb system.”

Kiffin’s comments came after first-year Duke coach Manny Diaz confirmed that starting quarterback Maalik Murphy had entered the transfer portal, leaving Henry Belin or Grayson Loftis to start the Jan. 2 bowl game in Jacksonville.

“Think about what we’re talking about or what (Diaz) just had to address: a quarterback going in the portal,” Kiffin said. “Just think about what we’re talking about. The season’s not over yet, and there’s a free-agency window open.

“Just think if the NFL was getting ready for the AFC, NFC playoffs, postseason, and players are in free agency already. It’s a really poor system, but we just try to manage the best we can through it, and hopefully someday it’ll get fixed.”

Kiffin also said his quarterback, senior Jaxson Dart, is planning to play in the Gator Bowl. The 16th-ranked Rebels (9-3), though, could have some other starters opt out.

The Blue Devils (9-3) closed the regular season with three consecutive wins to improve their bowl spot, all of them coming after Diaz told his players, “The more we win, the warmer the (postseason) destination.”

Now, they’ll make the trip without Murphy. The California native transferred to Duke after one year at Texas. He completed 60% of his passes for 2,933 yards, with 26 touchdowns and 12 interceptions while starting all 12 games in 2024. He led Duke to the program’s most regular-season wins since 2014.

“From our standpoint, we adjust,” Diaz said. “This is the new normal. What we’re not doing right now is we’re not on the road recruiting. We’re not on the road babysitting our commits who, up until last year, were signing on the third Wednesday of December.

“So the fact we’ve already had a signing day, that takes one of the distressers out of December and removes that. However the landscape changes, we adapt to it. That’s what football coaches are; we’re problem-solvers and we’re adjusters, and we adjust.”

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

Opponents of a 2023 state law creating a separate state-run court system within Jackson with an appointed judge and prosecutors have withdrawn their federal lawsuit. 

Last week, the plaintiffs represented by the NAACP asked the court to voluntarily dismiss all of its claims and the lawsuit, which comes after months of deliberations. The defendants and Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Randolph, a former defendant, did not oppose. 

“Plaintiffs are heartened by reports that the CCID Court will be established with appropriate safeguards for Jackson’s residents, and have decided to drop their challenge to the manner of appointing officials to serve that court,” attorneys for the NAACP wrote in a Dec. 2 motion.

Judicial appointments have not been made to the court, which is not operational.

The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, which means it could be refiled if circumstances change. 

A challenge to House Bill 1020 was filed in April 2023, months after it was signed into law. 

What followed was over a year and a half in court, which included a temporary restraining order preventing judicial appointments that lasted several months and a failed attempt to secure a preliminary injunction to block appointments.  

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate said the plaintiffs have ignored the court’s directives and created “procedural chaos” through the filing of motions that don’t change his ruling on judicial immunity, which protects Randolph from civil liability. 

“Any further attempt by the plaintiffs to ignore this court’s judicial immunity ruling shall be viewed as deliberate misconduct,” Wingate wrote in a Dec. 5 order dismissing the lawsuit. 

Initially, Randolph and Gov. Tate Reeves were among defendants in the lawsuit, but they were removed not long after the lawsuit was filed.

Plaintiffs tried to keep Randolph, whose role will be to appoint a CCID judge, as a plaintiff, despite multiple written orders and verbal confirmations that he was no longer part of the lawsuit. 

Before its passage and signing, HB 1020 received pushback, with opponents seeing the court as a takeover and supporters seeing it as a way to address crime in the capital city. 

The law created the Capitol Complex Improvement District Court and expanded the Capitol Police’s presence in the existing district. 

Lawmakers gave the court the same power as municipal courts that handle misdemeanors. They also directed people convicted for misdemeanors in the CCID to be held in the state prison in Rankin County, rather than a local jail. 

HB 1020 directed the chief justice, Randolph, to appoint one judge to work in the court and the attorney general to appoint a prosecutor. In filing the lawsuit, some worried the state officials would appoint white judges to the majority Black city. 

Another lawsuit challenging a different law passed in 2023, Senate Bill 2343, was consolidated with the HB 1020 suit. Wingate granted a preliminary injunction of the bill last year, which prevents DPS from enforcing regulations stemming from the law. 

The bill calls for prior written approval for public demonstrations on a street or sidewalk at the Capitol or state-owned buildings or one where a state agency operates by the public safety commissioner or the chief of the Capitol Police, which falls under his agency. 

Attorneys in that suit were not immediately available for comment about the status of their lawsuit, now that the HB 1020 suit has been dismissed.

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