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- Growing up in Claiborne County, Nancy Disharoon Loome attended a private school. Today, she and her Southern Poverty Law Center-funded advocacy organization, are the leading opponents of other Mississippi families having that same option.
On March 4th, on official state letterhead, Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann wrote a letter to Nancy Loome soliciting her help in a public relations war with the Mississippi House of Representatives. The two chambers have been at an embarrassing loggerhead over who can deliver the largest teachers’ pay raise — math or market data be damned — and Hosemann wanted Loome to identify the Senate as the “good boy” in the room for her “members.”
Loome runs the inaptly named “The Parents Campaign,” an advocacy organization that operates as a de facto superintendents’ union, one that has positioned itself as the chief opponent of parents having any voice in how their children are educated. Public records request show her at the center of a constellation — engaging “friendly” media, supplying talking points to superintendents and coordinating lines of attack.
With the financial backing of former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, Loome teamed with Barksdale’s brother, Claiborne, and former Democratic Secretary of State Dick Molpus to form the organization amid Mississippi’s political realignment away from the Democratic Party. In recent years, Loome has pulled down big dollars from the Southern Poverty Law Center, with the ultra-progressive organization announcing $330,000 in grant support for her work in 2024.
Still, when the Senate Education Committee killed a package of school choice reforms supported by President Donald Trump and the Mississippi Republican Party earlier this year — an execution that came in 84 seconds with no debate or discussion — Loome could be seen jocularly engaging with Republican leaders on the committee in a real “attaboy” moment.
School Choice for Me, but not for Thee
There is a degree of irony in the “Parents Campaign” becoming the most vocal opposition in Mississippi to school choice, one that goes beyond the Orwellian name. For starters, Loome, who hails from Claiborne County, attended a private school. Born Nancy Disharoon, her family history in Claiborne County is interesting. The Disharoon Plantation was occupied as a staging ground by Union soldiers prior to the Battle of Vicksburg during the Civil War.
Loome’s original benefactor, Barksdale, also sent his own children to private school in Memphis. Indeed, many of the politicians who claim school choice would be bad for Mississippi’s families did the exact same thing.
It is always peculiar that people who availed themselves of the benefit of private schools are so vehemently opposed to others having the same opportunity. But, at a minimum, it is an admission that the public school closest to where a child happens to live is not always the best option for the child.
There are, in fact, times when children would be better served in other schools.
I guess if you can afford it, great. If not, tough.
A Track Record of Wrong
There is also a degree of irony in Hosemann and Republican senators kowtowing to an organization funded heavily by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That befuddlement is compounded when you look at the full breadth of Loome’s track record.
Loome opposed the 2013 Literacy Based Promotion Act, legislation nationally credited as the starting point of Mississippi’s historic education gains. As it was being fully implemented in 2015, Loome told the Clarion Ledger, “we are setting these kids up for failure.” Her warning came alongside dire predictions from Mississippi’s superintendents that the LBPA would result in 28 percent of all third-graders being held back.
Nothing of the sort happened. Loome and other doomsayers were wrong. In the first year of the program, the actual retention rate for third-graders in Mississippi was roughly 8 percent.
That same year, so distraught by the actions of the Legislature, Loome pushed feverishly for a ballot measure that would have wrested control of education policy away from the elected Mississippi Legislature and given it to a Hinds County chancery court.
This effort, “Initiative 42,” was again funded by Barksdale and Molpus. Mississippi voters saw through their play to circumvent their elected representatives and defeated the ballot measure.
The following year, Barksdale joined forces with former NBC Universal Chairman Andy Lack to co-found the news outlet Mississippi Today, with Molpus, again, supporting the outlet financially. (Lack was subsequently ousted from NBC amid accusations from Ronan Farrow that Lack covered for Matt Lauer’s sexual impropriety at NBC and buried investigative journalism into convicted sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.)
Mississippi Today became, and continues to be, a staging ground for arguments against Republican education initiatives, and more particularly, school choice.
Meanwhile, Loome fought Republican attempts to modernize Mississippi’s education funding formula. Eventually a new funding formula was passed that has yielded hundreds of millions in additional funds to Mississippi schools.
When COVID happened, as Mississippi’s school children suffered learning loss, Loome was among those raising concern about re-opening classrooms.
She’s been wrong a lot. She’s been antagonistic even more. Still, Hosemann and others want her approval.
Source of Power
When the Superintendent of Madison County Public Schools, Dr. Ted Poore, passed out cards at a PTO meeting last year arguing that school choice would impact “school culture” and diminish “property values,” language eerily reminiscent of the messaging used by white supremacists to avoid school integration, he and one other administrator at the meeting identified The Parents Campaign as the source of the arguments.
Handouts given at subsequent PTO meetings deleted these arguments and Loome has denied the claim that they originated with her.
But a subsequent public records request on Madison County Public Schools provided insight into the influence she exercises over both “friendly” media and superintendents.
In an email to former MCPS superintendent Ronnie McGehee, on which Dr. Poore was copied, Loome relayed that Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison was working on a story arguing school choice states performed more poorly than non-school choice states on national testing. Four days later, Mississippi Today published Harrison’s article. The analysis was predictably dubious, but that’s beside the point here.
Loome, a private citizen, was included on emails with a laundry list of superintendents, including the current State Superintendent of Education, Lance Evans, outlining potential lines of argument against school choice. She shared pages of talking points with Dr. Poore ranging from narrative creation around teacher shortages and compensation to the dangers of education choice. She sent emails to all superintendents offering her assistance to ensure people elected to local school boards were against giving Mississippi parents school choice.
To her credit as an advocate, Loome exerts unique influence and control over superintendents, who in turn, exert influence and control over teachers who repeat Loome’s erroneous talking points.
And let’s face it, some (many) politicians are scared of teachers and would rather pander than respectfully tell them the truth. It’s how someone funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center gets to the point of running the education policy of an entire chamber of the Mississippi Legislature in a “Deep Red” state.
It’s why Mississippi remains the only southern state to not implement school choice policies.
Russ Latino
