The Noxubee County School district will lose local control and be placed under state leadership, Gov. Phil Bryant announced Wednesday.
The announcement came via the governor’s Facebook page, where he wrote ” I believe this to be in the best interest of students, and the most effective way to set the District on a path toward academic and financial health.”
Last week the Mississippi Commission on School Accreditation and State Board of Education declared an extreme emergency situation existed in the district and asked the governor to declare a state of emergency.
The decision is the result of a recent investigative audit conducted by the Mississippi Department of Education which found Noxubee in violation of 81 percent of the state’s accreditation standards which all public schools are required to comply with.
The audit cited concern with district finances and ability to make payroll for its employees, as well as academic infractions. Noxubee received a F grade from MDE for the past two years.
Bryant’s declaration of a state of emergency allows the Department of Education to give the district a $2.5 million loan to help offset financial problems and place Noxubee into the “District of Transformation” model.
The state board of education will replace the local school board. Superintendent Roger Liddell will be replaced by George Gilreath, a temporary interim superintendent, and Rodriguez Broadnax will ultimately serve as the interim superintendent. Under this model, the Noxubee County will have an interim superintendent until the district earns an accountability grade of C or higher for five years.
Liddell argued last week that his district is making strides in educational improvement.
Noxubee joins the Leflore County School District and Tunica County School District which are both currently under conservatorship.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.