- Okolona, Yazoo City Municipal, and Humphreys County school districts are on a path toward improved educational and financial performance standards.
Interim superintendents for three of the six school districts currently under state intervention through the Mississippi Department of Education’s Office of School and District of Transformation provided updates to the Board of Education on Thursday about their efforts to reestablish local control.
In Mississippi, school districts that fail to maintain sufficient academic performance, fiscal viability and/or show signs of other deficiencies in operation over extended periods are moved under state intervention until those issues are resolved.
The process involves the dissolution of the current school board and removal of the existing superintendent. The State Board of Education then appoints an interim superintendent to oversee efforts to correct deficiencies before returning the district to local control.
Interim superintendents from the Okolona School District (Chad Spence), Humphreys County School District (Dr. Stanley Ellis) and Yazoo City Municipal School District (Dr. Earl Watkins) provided updates on those efforts during Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Education.
While Okolona is currently a district of transformation for fiscal deficiencies, the other two districts were put under state control for failure to maintain academic standards.
Yazoo City Municipal School District and the Humphreys County School District have been a district of transformation since April 2019 after consistently receiving F assessment ratings, Interim Superintendent Dr. Earl Watkins explained. Prior to 2025, the two districts were part of the same intervention district, but the State Board of Education mandated they separate in 2024.
All three interim superintendents described how they are using high-quality instructional materials and educator professional development to ensure student success as they move forward. However, other issues specific to each district are also presenting hurdles.
While efforts are underway to address the fiscal and educational deficiencies for the districts, larger problems continue to exist such as crime in one district, which is affecting student attendance. When a student is not in class, they cannot receive quality instruction and support.
Attendance
Watkins said chronic absenteeism in his district is one of the major focus areas. District wide the absenteeism rate is at 37%, but it is much higher at the high school.
“So that has been very difficult in terms to overcome because the chronic absenteeism rate at the high school in Yazoo City was about 62%,” Watkins described.
When Board members asked him to repeat that statistic, he repeated the 62% rate, adding it is not the highest in the state.
“Attendance is a major area of concern for us, and so we are doing a great deal more work around that,” Watkins said.
A contributing factor to the absenteeism rate at the high school is the “culture and climate” in the community.
Since becoming the interim superintendent in 2022, Watkins said he has noted a need to strengthen student/teacher and student/student engagement and connectivity to address those concerns, in part to ensure students know they have adult support, and will not be bullied by fellow students.
There is also the need to address the crime in the community.
“They’re afraid to come to school because of what they have seen their classmates do out in the local community,” Watkins said. “That was my school where we had the staff member shot coming out of her doorway last school year. And her senior son pulled her back into the house. So those are the kinds of things that are occurring in the community that the families, that the children, are dealing with.”
In the Humphreys County School District, average daily attendance is 93%, Ellis said.
Future academic achievement plans
With Humphreys County School District and Yazoo Municipal under transformation for academic deficiencies, both outlined their plans to address those issues.
During their updates, Watkins and Ellis said efforts are underway to create better systems of instruction through high-quality instructional materials, ensure stronger support systems and create better partnerships with the community.
“Within the district there were inconsistent instructional systems related to curriculum, instruction, intervention, and monitoring,” Watkins said.
Since the split of the two districts, or “divorce” as Ellis put it, the high school has increased its assessment ranking to a B and increased the graduation rate from 72% to 80%. Ellis added the number of F rated schools has also decreased.
“As far as the district, we’re making data driven decisions, we’re looking at attendance, we’re looking at grades, we’re looking at those leading and lagging indicators in regard to teacher attendance and student attendance,” Ellis explained.
Efforts are also being made in his district to decrease the number of students being identified as needing individualized education programs, or IEPs.
Ellis’ district, like many others, is also dealing with declining student enrollment. He said when he came on as the interim superintendent for the 2025-2026 school year, there were about 1,100 students enrolled. While enrollment has declined, students within the special education program continue to make up a large percentage of that total.
“Of 980 students [we have now], as of this morning I have 200 students with IEPs,” Ellis described.
Teacher recruitment, retention
All three districts noted that they are dealing with the hurdles of recruiting and retaining educators.
“In a place like Humphreys, it’s very difficult to recruit and retain teachers,” Ellis told the Board. “Sometimes when you get the teachers there and you recruit them, you build capacity in them and they leave.”
He added that the district especially needs more qualified reading and math teachers.
At the Yazoo City Municipal School District, Watkins said while staffing has been an area of concern, the number of vacancies at the start the school year is declining, going from 26 vacancies during the 2022 school year to five vacancies this year.
However, the issue for Yazoo is getting those teachers the proper certifications. Watkins said 57% of the teachers in the district have a standard license, while 52% of the educational staff in the middle and elementary campuses have either a one-year or three-year license. He is addressing that matter through more professional development.
Spence also noted issues with staffing, even after merging all grades from 7 through 12 into one campus.
Okolona’s efforts
Since financial deficiencies were a driving factor in Okolona’s move to a district of transformation, Interim Superintendent Spence has focused on those issues.
The district was added to the list back in November 2025, after MDE was alerted that the district could not make payroll.
In response, MDE provided $1.5 million, which will need to be repaid by the district. Spence said repayment of that loan is expected to start in the spring of 2027 and take five years.
Efforts to get the district’s finances in line include cutting $1.1 million in expenses, catching up on audits that have been behind starting with fiscal years 2022 through 2024, and partnering with financial consultants to ensure expenses are in line.
“We’re currently in steady progress right now for recovery,” Spence said.
