Elizabeth Crisp • elizabeth.crisp@clarionledger.com • January 12, 2010

Unlike many of the students at school, Ellen Reddy’s daughter is performing above proficiency in her areas of study.

But that doesn’t stop Reddy from being concerned about the quality of her daughter’s education.

“I worry about my child’s future, as I worry about every child in that district,” she said. “There’s a stigma there.”

Her daughter is a ninth-grader in the Holmes County School District, which was taken over by the Department of Education in 2006 because of violations of accreditation standards and state and federal law.

“It’s not enough to send us someone who’s going to ‘fix us,’ ” Reddy said.

Still, she’s weary of a state task force that has spent several months studying ways to improve school performance, including the possibility of allowing charter schools.

Reddy, as well as several other parents and interested parties, addressed Mississippi’s Task Force on Underperforming Schools during a public hearing Monday at the Capitol.

While some bills proposing school district consolidations and charter schools have been filed, the task force has taken no official stance.

“No decisions have been made,” said House Education Committee Chairman Cecil Brown, D-Jackson.

State Superintendent Tom Burnham took notes during several of the presentations.

“There are several things I want to follow up on,” he said. “I think a lot of these comments were on target.”

Several who spoke expressed concern about the anticipated cut to state funding for education, as state revenues continue to fall below expectations.

Others who spoke Monday said they were against proposals to fix Mississippi’s underperforming schools by consolidation or by replacing them with charter schools.

But Nancy Loome, director of the Parents’ Campaign, spoke in favor of replacing schools with charter schools in certain cases.

“In Mississippi, we have a number of schools that are chronic underperformers,” she said. “That means thousands of children are trapped in chronically failing schools with no good options.”

Burnham said he also is in favor of some consolidation and charter schools in cases when school districts are failing.

Marilyn Young, a member of Concerned Citizens for a Better Tunica Community and a member of the Tunica County School Board, said she did not feel the task force has been representative of the people most affected by underperforming schools.

“We believe that this process has been unfair and biased,” she said.

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