MFP Contributor
The entire University of Southern Mississippi football field, backed by coaches and staff, walked out on their planned Aug. 28, 2020 practice to protest racial injustice.
“Black Lives Matter,” the University of Southern Mississippi football team chanted as the entire group, backed by coaches and staff, marched out of Friday’s planned practice and to the front of campus to protest racial injustice. Dozens of mask-wearing fellow USM students and local residents joined them.
State Auditor Shad White said the Mississippi Department of Education limited school laptop purchases to two vendors, Apple and an Illinois vendor. State Superintendent Carey Wright denied it. Either way, now those limitations are no more.
An Alcorn County, Miss., elementary school is ordering all kindergarten students in each of its classes to quarantine at home for two weeks starting tomorrow, parents learned via text message late this evening.
Weeks into the fall semester, Mississippi schools have already identified at least 897 COVID-19 cases among students and teachers. By last Friday, schools had also ordered at least 6,532 others to also quarantine at home for two weeks due to exposure and possible infections.
Biloxi High School is suspending in-person class instruction only two-and-a-half weeks into the fall semester, Principal Teresa Martin announced in a letter to parents today. Already, officials have identified COVID-19 cases among 15 students and quarantined 324 classmates with known exposures at the Harrison County, Miss., school.
Less than a week into the fall semester that began on Monday, Aug. 17, Mississippi State University has already begun moving COVID-19 positive students out of their dorms and into two local hotels in Starkville due to the coronavirus.
For the first time in years, Brenda Pittman did not greet schoolchildren on Monday morning as they arrived for their first day back at West Marion Elementary School in Foxworth, Miss. The 49-year-old music teacher and resident of the small Marion County community died one week ago yesterday after a weeks-long battle with COVID-19. On Sunday, a day after her funeral, her husband, Charlie Pittman, also died of the novel coronavirus.
Mississippi public schools have confirmed 199 cases among students and 245 among teachers, Dobbs said, and school districts have ordered 2,035 students and 589 teachers to quarantine at home for two weeks after possible exposure to COVID-19. Schools in 71 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have reported cases, the state health officer said.
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