Bryson Bradley doesn’t remember his first day of sixth grade, but his mother does. It was a warm August afternoon when she greeted her son after his first day at the TIDE school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
“I always ask him, ‘How was your day?’ on the first day of school?” Krystal Mobley told the Mississippi Free Press. His response nearly brought her to tears: “I had the best first day ever,” he replied.
“This was the first time in all the years of school that he said (that). … I made him a vow that day, (and) I didn’t care what it took. He was gonna stay at this private school,” Mobley continued. “I ain’t care if I had to get another job. Whatever I had to do, (I would). It was gonna happen because, for the first time, he enjoyed going to school. I’ll never forget it.”
Mobley first learned of Innova Prep when it was The Institute for Diverse Education, or the TIDE school. Her son, Bryson Bradley, was in fourth grade at Oak Grove Upper Elementary in Lamar County but was struggling in a regular classroom.
“I didn’t really like (public school),” Bradley told the Mississippi Free Press. “I thought it was too loud. I just didn’t feel like I was really retaining the stuff that they were teaching me. And the biggest thing was that I didn’t have many friends. At most, I would have about, like, three or two friends, including Maeson.”
It was a story that his mother had heard before.
“My baby struggled really, really hard socially in public school,” Mobley said. “He probably doesn’t even remember this, but I remember third grade being the year that he told me he felt like he wanted to just jump into a black hole, and that just killed my spirit. It really did something to me. It hurts as a mother to know that your child wants friends (or) your child wants to be what the world calls the norm.”
Doctors diagnosed Bradley with Asperger’s syndrome at 3 years old.
A Different Type of School
A teacher suggested that Mobley try a special school in Forrest County designed for high-functioning autistic students. Mobley applied for an Education Scholarship Account, a program that provides funds to help defray tuition costs for special-needs students who withdrew from public schools to attend private schools.
Bradley was in sixth grade when he started at the school. By then, Nancy New’s private for-profit company, New Learning Resources, had taken over the school. South New Summit School in Hattiesburg would operate from 2018 to 2021.
Sasha Barnes found herself in a similar situation. Her son Maeson also received an Asperger’s diagnosis, along with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder when he was 6.
He and Bradley have been friends since they met in the first grade. Like his friend, Maeson was not thriving in his public-school setting. His grades were low, he was unhappy, and Sasha was dissatisfied with the level of support he was receiving.
“I just felt like I was in a whole new environment, and one that I wasn’t familiar with,” Maeson said. “I felt myself being a lot more contained—you know, like keeping a lot of things to myself or just distancing myself from everyone else. Essentially, there just weren’t a lot of people that I really connected with, so I just kind of did my own thing while I was there. I had a few friends that I connected with, but other than that, it wasn’t exactly ideal.”
Maeson transferred to Hattiesburg’s South New Summit at the end of his sixth-grade year. Nancy New’s private for-profit company, New Learning Resources, owned New Summit. In February 2020, a grand jury indicted New and her son, Zach New, as part of a massive scheme to to misuse federal welfare funds. The pair faced a federal indictment in March 2021 for filing fraudulent claims with the Mississippi Department of Education to pay the salaries of teachers. The charges resulted in financial ruin for four schools New Learning Resources owned, including South New Summit.
Steven and Wendy Farrell purchased the school and reopened it under the name Innova Preparatory School in 2021 and moved into a new building. Their granddaughter was a student at South New Summit, and they saw the positive improvement the specialized school had on her.
“You’re gonna have to do something,” Wendy told her husband when news broke of the school’s closure. “(Our) grandbaby needs to be at that school.”
So, Steven Farrell, a doctor at Forrest General Hospital, purchased the school and secured a new property for it so that local students like his grandchild could continue to benefit from the school.
“We were so thankful because didn’t nobody know what we were going to do,” Mobley said. “We were nervous and scared.”
Executive Director Zach Murphy took over the school’s leadership in 2022. He and his wife, Trichi Murphy, have two children enrolled at the school. During his tenure, the school’s enrollment has nearly doubled.
Zach Murphy said Innova Prep is the state’s only K-12 dual-accredited special-purpose school offering a traditional high-school diploma. The school educates students with dyslexia, anxiety, behavioral needs and other special needs. Both Maeaon and Bradley attend the school using Education Scholarship accounts.
“Our counterparts stop at either fifth or sixth grade,” Murphy said. “One goes through eighth grade, but then beginning in ninth grade, they switch over to workforce development through the Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation. And so we’re just really unique in a sense of how we are college preparatory but also scaffold in a way to support learners with different needs toward that graduation path.”
Individualized Education
School staff develops individualized learning plans for each child that outline which methods will likely work best for each student and include targeted academic interventions. Cognia, the Mississippi Department of Education and the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools have all accredited the school, which is also a member school of the International Dyslexia Association and the Association of LD Schools. Last year, the school signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Pearl River Community College to create a middle-college partnership.
The school boasts smaller class sizes with flexible seating designed to amplify the unique ways these students learn. The school will introduce three new academies: the Dyslexia Academy, the Autism Academy and the College Prep Academy for the upcoming 2026-2027 school year.
On campus, students can join extracurriculars like art club, student council and yearbook, along with competitive sports.
“We have a fellowship with Pine Belt Spartans, where ages 13 and up can play sports right now,” Zach Murphy said. “They offer football and baseball for boys, and then they have cheerleading and volleyball for girls.”
“And our band will be playing at the home football games as well,” Trichi added. “That’s the partnership we have with them. Our kids can play sports, and then our band will play at the games.”
Murphy hand-selects each teacher to ensure that they are the right fit for the school and its student population. The school currently has 16 teachers, all subject-area certified. Several of them also hold certifications in special education.
“It’s really having the buy-in from people that are committed to this and the culture of belonging that exists here (that makes this work),” Zach Murphy said. “Every staff member here has a personal connection to neurodiversity. Either they have a child, which is mine and Trichi’s case, or they have a sibling that had learning needs growing up. I think when it’s really personal to you, you give it everything you’ve got.”
The school is currently located in a renovated Kmart building. Mobley said it has a large library, two gyms and a cafeteria.
“They really took that space and made it work for them,” she said.
In 2024, someone donated land to the school, and Innova planned to use a $3-million USDA federal HUD infrastructure grant to begin construction, the school’s executive director said. However, that funding was cut as part of President Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts.
“It’s a $7-million building. We went through all the process with an architect of literally having everything done,” Murphy said. “We’ve got the land. We’ve got the building plans. And (then) I got that call in March of—during Spring Break of last year—that our funding was cut.”
The plans for the build, which included a playground and classrooms with windows, are now on hold. Still, the small school is doing big things.
Bryson is graduating as valedictorian of the class. He plans to finish the associate’s degree that he started via dual enrollment at a community college before finishing at a four-year institution.
The Murphys’ son, Clark, will graduate as salutatorian. He earned a 31 on the ACT and will attend William Carey University as a Carey scholar with a full scholarship. Maeson earned the title of historian with the class’ third-highest GPA. He has decided to take a gap year before finishing at Pearl River Community College.
Mobley said the school has been instrumental in her son’s success.
“It gave him that sense of belonging that he had been searching for and that sense of regular school friendships in things of that nature,” she said. “I really saw him kind of start to come into himself and not be so shy.”
Sasha agrees.
“I think it gave Mason more confidence, not only … grade-wise, but also education-wise. And you know, school is such a big part of their day,” she said.
Aunjanue Ellis is a board member of the Mississippi Education and Journalism Group. She is the sister of Sasha Barnes.
