Jackson Jambalaya

A whopping 1.2 Internet viewers, eh, Councilman?

Education. Holy cow! Where else could you make $140,000 for ruling over a complete failure? I should have gone into Education. I do pretty well for myself and I'm still pulling down less than the Superintendent of Failure County Schools. Plus, no matter how poorly I did, Derrick and Errick would be there to attack anyone who dared suggest that my failure wasn't wonderful!!!

I don't blame them for complaining. Why would you want someone responsible for leading the schools, who has no "skin in the game?" Someone who doesn't really care if the schools improve, because he has the resources to send his own kids elsewhere?

People who lead school systems should have their own kids in those schools. Teachers as well. Mayors, governors, and presidents should be required to send their kids to public schools. It sends a horrible message when you're willing to run the system and take compensation from a system, but not participate in that system.

Looks like Simmons is a product of the educational system in Greenville. He can't even proof read his own release. Hopefully they had more than "1.2 internet viewers" that are business owners.

Mayor's don't lead schools. They fund them...

In order to correct a problem, you have to admit there is a problem. Mayor Cox did just that by saying the schools were not performing - we have a problem. The good senator and councilman are more interested in politics than in improving the schools - everything is fine with the schools!!!

By the way, the Greenville City Council appoints the school board. It is the school superintendent and the school board that lead the schools. And yes, the mayor has an interest in good schools because it's much harder to attract people and industry to a city with lousy schools.

Instead of trying to change mayors, the senator and councilman should be trying to change the community so that education is seen as being important as a place of learning instead of just being a place to get free food.

Mayors don't fund schools either

Will one you "show me the money Jerry" FUND MAEP blow hards please walk we through the following numbers in an intelligent and logical manner, I'm open minded and willing to put my kids in another school if you are successful:
Average private school tuition in Mississippi = $5,600 per year (sorry for all you JA and St A folks driving that up)
Average public school per pupil expenditure = $8,500

Avg ACT score of private school graduate = 22 (approximate regional average)
Public school average = 17

Drop out rates? Let's not even go there.

In the business world, we call this ROI. Return on investment. In the political world, they call this a problem that needs more money...

1:47pm, of the top of my head I can think of two expenses that publish schools are forced to pay, which private schools don't.

Busing and Special Ed.

Since JA and St Andrews don't send buses around to pick up and drop off their kids, the parents eat that expense. I encourage you to suggest to JPS that they do away with their buses.

Kids with behavioral problems, autism, slight retardation, all are mainstreamed into the public schools. They have to hire special teachers just for them, and there are a lot of them in the city and suburbs. Private schools simply don't admit those kids and can therefore shrug off the expense.

The mayor saved the city $17,000.00 a year by not sending them to public school. He sent them to a school which does not discriminate by race, creed, religion, or gender. They opted to not go to a school which is 98% segregated(98% black). This Simmons guy needs to think(hopefully better than he writes)before making knee jerk reactions. Simmons, you are the problem, not the solution!

Private schools simply don't admit those kids ...

Not categorically true.

C'mon, guys. It's just politics. You know that.

The Mayor should have just feigned support for the public schools. That is what the bleeding hearts in Fondren do while packing up their kiddies every school day morning for a trip to one of the local privates. Got a veritable Who's Who of public school supporting black Democrats doing the exact same thing.

Ive been a public employee for years. I sent my kid to private school because, as part of my employment, I was exposed to what was going on in public schools i.e. drugs, weapons, no discipline, crappy teachers; I could go on and on. If any of my employers had questioned our choice of schools, I would have told them exactly why. May have had to look for another job, but my child was NOT going to public school.

Greenville is very fortunate to have John Cox as its Mayor. He is telling the truth. imagine that for a politician

The median income in Mississippi is $37,000 a year. The superintendent makes 378% above that. And he is unwilling to take a pay cut to put money back into his failing schools!

Greed indeed

/a1%'er if there ever was one

"The mayor saved the city $17,000.00 a year by not sending them to public school. "

Not true.

1) Either the money was approiated already anyway, or

2) If the school's budget was dependent on the daily census he actually cost them $17,000 per year.

Either way, I'd do the same thing if I was in his situation. The salaries for superintendents of failing school districts are an obscenity, especially in such a poor state.

Amen, Derrick! We're with you!
Your Friends,
Dem. Minority Leader Bobby Moak & Rep. Robert Johnson

I would like my children to have every chance to have the best education possible. My taxes go to these failing programs and I will not let my children be apart of a failing educational system that America has endorsed. My kids are going to private school.

Horseshit. The mayor of a town has no responsibility whatever for 'leading the public schools'.

John Cox nor any other citizen has an obligation to sacrifice his children at the alter of public schools. Being a public servant and earning a salary derived from tax dollars does not require that you trade off the lives and futures of your children.

Greenville Public Schools have been a failure for at least forty years. Where a family chooses to have their children educated is NOT the publics business.

Attn 8:19 pm. You are either a product of the Greenville Public School system, or a speech writer for barack Obama.

[... says Fat Bobby who sent his two sons to Jackson Academy ...]

Not that it makes much difference, but Cox's daughters both graduated from high school 20 + years ago and both moved away from Greenville afterward.

6:48; It's not that it doesn't make 'much difference'....it actually makes NO difference.

The LAST full-term mayor of Greenville, a Delta Democrat Product, spent four years sitting in the office of Bennie Thompson begging for grant money and has now been appointed by Barack Obama to lead an agency division with which she has zero familiarity. Is this what the harpies feel will best serve Greenville?

Dumbass at 6:32 Reading comprehension problem? Read my words again:

"Either way, I'd do the same thing if I was in his situation. The salaries for superintendents of failing school districts are an obscenity, especially in such a poor state. "

As to how MS funds its public schools, neither Obama (whom I despise) nor his speechwriters have any say in the matter.

My kids went/go to SA because it is the best school in the state, and gives my kids the best chances to get out of Mississippi. We passed over the best public school in the state to do this, and the financial pain was worth it. I totally understand how the mayor up there feels about his kids and their future.

Dumbass.

How disingenuous, to bone-headedly posit that a public official is somehow (how?) morally obligated to use the deficient public offerings, or else be denounced as a hypocrite (at best) or dirty rotten scoundrel (at worst)?

Let's look at parents at the very top of the public-servant pyramid---especially the rabid liberal ones. JFK---kids went to Catholic schools, obviously. Fast-forward to Bill Clinton---a pious leftie wanker iffen ever there was one---did he send little Chelsea to the DC public schools? Of course not! It was Sidwell Friends, the same place that the Odious Obama chose for his two lil' darlin's. Does this mean, *ipso facto*, that these men weren't supportive of public education, didn't care about it, were not willing to do what they could for the problems in many public systems? No; much as I dislike the presidents *supra*, I would never, ever fault any parent for choosing the best he could afford over the rotten-to-the-core public offerings, any more than I would blame him for choosing Johns Hopkins over the local charity hospital, should his child fall seriously ill.

I went to a public school (not in Jackson, though) and did all right, but that was long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Post-desegregation, but shortly enough afterwards that most of the really fine teachers from "the old days" had not retired nor quit in disgust.

8:36
Why are you still living here if you want your kids to get out of the state? Why are you still here if it's such a bad place? SA is really proud of the fact they send lots of grads to college out of state. In the last few years a lot of them have gone to college in state but that's either because of the economy or they want their children to hopefully stay in MS after college and make a contribution to society. Let me guess, you're the parent of a couple of ivy leaguers?

Top 2 SA destinations annually are UM, and MSU. 65-70% of their grads go there year in and year out. Not just the last few years. For decades.

Attn 8:36 am.
Now now 8:36 am. When you make an idiot out of yourself on a web site you must either live with it or delete it. If you don't know how to delete it, contact your children, they went to St. Andrews and can probably help you. After all you paid for their education, you might as well get something out of it.

Oh, 10:35, simmer down. Eight thirty-six may not be the politest of commenters, but s/he does have a point.

I am acquainted, via their parents, with many young SA grads who, yes, went to college/grad school out of state (Ivy or not) and (*mirabile dictu*!) actually decided to return and plant roots for their young families here. Out of CHOICE, not desperation.

Ah, the magic word, "choice". Mississippi will thrive or wither, depending on which way this worm turns for the best and brightest of the next generation. Some will leave, some will stay, some will leave and return. It hardly seems to matter where they were educated---fancy private, crappy public, good public, home-schooled.

As long as options exist, no parent should be sneered at for making the choice that works best.

Attn May 21,2014at 10:44 AM I checked the latest St. Andrews
college destinations available(2011) 26 went to Ole Miss, 10 went to Miss. St. There were 89 graduates. what you do is add 26 (OM) and 10 (MSU)on your adding machine. the answer should be somewhere around 36 (plus or minus)If you use your calculator, divide this number 36 by 89 (the total number of graduates in 2011). You will come up with a number of 40.4. This number 40.4 represents 40.4%. You might recheck your 65-70% number or at least document where you got this figure.

I think that Derrick (or 'Errick') Simmons next needs to head up to Washington, to make sure that all the prominent Democrats have their kids in public schools. If they don't, then he should get up in their grilles, and demand, publicly, that they resign. Then, if he is still alive (and hasn't fallen victim to a sudden mysterious heart attack), he should head to Chicago, and make trouble for the politicians there.

And if some 'totally accidental' but fatal mishap should not 'randomly' remove him from this Earthly Realm while he's trouble-making among the career-criminal Democrats of Chicago, then he should go make trouble for the Kennedy clan, and insist that THEY send THEIR kids to public schools.

Or, he can just come down here to Jacktown, and make trouble for all the prominent blacks who have their offspring in private schools.

Is this 10;24 guy above an uneducated idiot or not. I think he is the one who " he educated his children at St. Andrews.claims"

Speaking of educated, what "10.24 guy"?

2:36 - good call. Looks like 8:24 doesn't have a clue on how to put together a proper sentence, or proof his/her work. I love it when these losers out smart themselves.

Just like here in Jackson, it's damn near certain that the white areas of Greenville pay a lot more property taxes than the black areas of town (per capita, per property, per square mile, whichever way you slice it). Somehow tho, its "inequality" when the white folks pay for a school system they don't even use while paying their own kids' way in private school, too.
What shall the whites do to right this "wrong", NBC? Are they expected to hire, schedule and pay tutors for minority children out of their own pockets? Would you have them babysit these poor, neglected children themselves so that they can experience how an actual FAMILY works? Where does the white guilt end and the black responsibility begin?

So, the mayor told the truth about your D/F school district, and you are mad because he would not sacrifice his children to your poor ass school system? What the hell is wrong with some of you people? Good parents shutter at sending their kids to slaughter - are you serious? People have broken laws to get their kids into good schools districts, doesn't that tell you something? Does it matter that a white guy is telling you that? Hmmmmmmm, I guess it does!I say to those of you who take issue with what the Mayor said, I say leave you to your own damn devices!You are a complete bull-shitter! "Let it burn," as Usher says!

As a product of the local public/ private schools and a young AfAm, I am not offended by the Mayor of Gvilles statement. It's the truth, I was in special programs throughout my matriculation so while i wouldn't equate that to complete private education I fared well with my mixed education and have progressed further in life. But in the real scheme of things many children of the public sector do not do as well especially in impoverished, urban areas. If my parents could have afforded for me to go to private school k-12 they probably would have rather than k-4. What people should realize is yes racism exists but no, just because you sent your child to a once "segregationist academy" does not mean you are a racist nor does that apply to every private school. In a few years if I still live in Jackson I will not send my children to a failing school, it seems idiotic to set a child up for a higher possibility of not being successful if you have the money to really invest in their education. Sometimes people get their panties in a wad over the truth and it hurts, granted we have a torrid past here which has affected a large portion of Mississippians but i also think its time for many people to stop playing the blame game and start being held to some standard of responsibility.