Possible State of Emergency looms over Noxubee County School District

JACKSON, Miss. (WCBI)- The Noxubee County School District has gone from preparing for the first day of school in August, to facing a potential takeover by the State Department of Education.

An emergency meeting was held Wednesday in Jackson.

Noxubee County School District representatives went to Jackson to respond to a near, 200 page list of grievances by the State Department of Education.

Parties from both the Commission on School Accreditation and the school district presented their cases for the fate of Noxubee County’s schools.

It took nearly an hour for the list of grievances to be listed by Chief Accountability Officer Paula Vanderford.

“The agency found the district to be non-compliant with 26 out of 32 standards that were evaluated, in addition to policy 2.1,” representatives read in the meeting.

Policy 2.1 being data reporting, where the Superintendent has been accused of falsifying documents.

Noxubee School District leaders presented shortly after, claiming they do not think a state takeover is necessary.

“Allow us time to clear up the violations of this audit report. Allow us to borrow the appropriate funds to allow us to move forward. If we can get those two things done, we can certainly show you that we are not in any state of emergency,” Superintendent Roger Liddell said in the meeting.

After a brief executive session, the Commission on School Accreditation was unanimous in moving the motion forward of declaring a state of emergency for Noxubee County Schools.

“Now therefore, the Commission on School Accreditation fines the following. The commission finds that there is sufficient cause to believe that an extreme emergency situation exists in the Noxubee County School District,” representatives stated in the meeting.

“We could ask the commission of school accreditation to downgrade the district to probation or withdraw or, in the most serious of circumstances, ask the commission to consider a declaration of a state of emergency, which is what we did today,” said Paula Vanderford, the Chief Accountability Officer.

That resolution was moved and will now go before the Board of Education, where we will see if there is sufficient evidence for a State of Emergency in Noxubee County Schools.