More than a dozen school districts have to address problems ranging from poor recordkeeping and significant debt to dysfunctional leadership — issues that might otherwise fly under the radar of local communities until they become too severe to ignore.
The districts each have a downgraded accreditation status, and they must act on plans to resolve the violations state education officials cited. The state Board of Education approved those corrective action plans earlier this month.
Most of the district’s violations stem from late financial audits, poor recordkeeping and fiscal mismanagement. Some districts, including Hazlehurst, North Bolivar and Jackson Public Schools, have been on probation for nearly a decade for failing to clear accreditation violations.
Two of the districts, North Bolivar and Hazlehurst, face a possible state takeover or an unannounced investigative audit of all district records if they can’t clear accreditation violations by the end of the year. State department officials found that the districts didn’t make meaningful progress toward clearing outstanding violations.
The Mississippi Department of Education will monitor the other 12 districts on probation for compliance with agency policies as well as state and federal law.
Education Department officials have been dissatisfied with the districts’ progress toward ensuring student safety, complying with federal civil rights law, complying with graduation requirements outlined in state law and record management, among other findings.
Regulators also took issue with past dysfunctional leadership in Hazlehurst, North Bolivar and Jackson Public Schools. In 2025, the agency took issue with governance violations by Greenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District, where board members hired a superintendent without properly advertising the position. Agency inspectors also noted testing irregularities at Moorhead Central School and A.W. James Elementary, two schools in the Sunflower County Consolidated School District based out of Indianola.
The school board of the North Bolivar Consolidated School District met at I.T. Montgomery Elementary School in Mound Bayou on March 23, 2026. Credit: Leonardo Bevilacqua/Mississippi TodayThe agency has also received confidential complaints from JPS teachers and administrators accusing school board members of getting involved in the district’s day-to-day operations, including student discipline. An inspection of Hazlehurst’s board found that board policies weren’t regularly reviewed, with inconsistencies in student handbooks regarding promotion and retention of students.
Other findings can sometimes be bellwethers for future state takeovers.
The accreditation status for Okolona Separate School District, which the state took over in November, has been probation for two years over the past decade because of poorly run special education and gifted programs. Officials cited Wilkinson County School District, which the state took over in January, for violations stemming from unlicensed teachers and poor school board governance in six years over the past 10 prior to its 2025 takeover because of students’ persistent low performance on state tests.
North Bolivar alternative school students get shorted on instructional time
Besides citations for poor recordkeeping, not tracking staffs’ work hours and fiscal management, the Education Department also cited North Bolivar schools over the quality of its alternative school.
An inspector from the Education Department noted that a paraprofessional, and not a licensed teacher, was supervising an alternative school class in 2024. The class met in a room of Northside High that includes a kitchen, which district officials implied was not conducive to learning. State department officials found that no instruction had transpired during one visit and during another, students received 10 minutes or less of instruction.
State department inspectors couldn’t find progress reports for some alternative school students. Disciplinary histories and other documents that track student behavior were missing from files, too. Inspectors also could not locate documentation that outlined due process hearings for students.
North Bolivar Consolidated School District enrolls students from Mound Bayou, Shelby, Duncan and surrounding communities. None of those communities have more than 2,000 residents. They all lost at least a tenth of their population in the last decade.It’s hard to recruit enough teachers to fully staff every department, Superintendent Jeremiah Burks said. It’s particularly difficult to recruit teachers for the alternative school, he said.
I.T. Montgomery Elementary School in Mound Bayou is pictured on March 23, 2026. The North Bolivar Consolidated School District is one of 14 districts on probation because of accreditation violations. Credit: Leonardo Bevilacqua/Mississippi TodayBurks is pushing for a contract with Grade Results, a company that sells online courses.
Burks said he plans to move the alternative school to a better location in the district, one that complies with agency standards and provides adequate separation from general education students. He said he has assembled record review teams tasked with checking student records for missing reports or other documentation.
With future inspections, state officials will observe a more organized school district with significant progress made to reform its alternative school, Burks said.
“We took to heart (MDE’s) suggestions, and we have been implementing new plans,” Burks said. “I feel good about where we are with addressing the standards. It’s just a matter of putting everything together and formalizing it, so that we can review where we are.”
Greenville and Natchez-Adams school districts struggle to budget
Education Department regulators found bad budgeting in Greenville and Natchez-Adams school districts Millions of dollars were unaccounted for in district ledgers maintained by the two school districts.
With Greenville, district ledgers left out more obscure funds like the Quality School Construction Bond sinking fund, which is devoted to construction projects and requires regular payments by school districts.
Greenville owed vendors $79,737 and declared they had $869,692 more in their account than they did.
The Greenville school board hired Ilean Richards as superintendent in January 2025. Local leaders say they are optimistic about better fiscal management in subsequent years.
“The district is committed to and currently working to ensure that these deficiencies are corrected from previous years of past administrations,” district spokesperson Everett Chinn said in a statement.
Chinn did not respond to additional questions about what specific steps district leaders have taken to improve accounting practices. He also did not answer whether the district has mandated supplementary or requested technical assistance from the Education Department or another agency.
Natchez-Adams School District’s main operating fund reached an over $1.3 million deficit, according to its fiscal year 2022 audit. State law forbids school district officials from spending more resources than are available. Natchez-Adams also failed to submit its fiscal year 2024 audit within nine months of the end of the fiscal year.
In the Carroll County School District and in Natchez-Adams, a fund that set money aside for special education services had a negative balance. From fiscal year 2018-22, Carroll County struggled to balance its budget, pay down loans and correctly account for each fund’s balance. Its accounting paperwork was also missing the correct amounts for money owed.
Other districts, including North Bolivar, struggled to reconcile spending with purchasing and account for fixed assets like copiers, printers and other on-site technology in reports. Vicksburg-Warren School District, Greenwood-Leflore and East Tallahatchie had balance funds that were improperly stated.
In January, the state Department of Education’s Office of School Financial Services agreed to increase its availability to school districts that need technical assistance.
“There is such a profound lack of skilled persons to do that work,” said Kym Wiggins, chief operating officer at the state Department of Education, at a January state Board of Education meeting. “There’s a tremendous need for capable assistance, and so we’re trying to figure out here in office how we can build the infrastructure here to provide the support at the district level.”
More districts have already reached out for assistance, Wiggins said at the March board meeting.
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