Every year, roughly 230 of the state’s most gifted students flock to Columbus, prepared to take on the challenge of succeeding at Mississippi’s most academically rigorous high school.
What they aren’t prepared for are the challenges that come with living in the facilities at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, like frequent plumbing issues, faulty heating and cooling and mold concerns that the school addressed over the summer.
The facilities weren’t what senior Claire Rizzo had expected when she was accepted to MSMS.
“I was a bit let down going into MSMS because you always hear so many slogans … like ‘it’s the best and the brightest,’” she said. “… But I’ve been very positively impressed by the way they work with what they have.”
Senior Kaela Carino, who is disabled, said the outdated facilities can make it difficult for disabled students to navigate campus. For others, like Nora Ruth Scott, the issues can be disruptive, but they don’t overwhelmingly affect her experience at MSMS.
“I never expected our facilities to be ultra modern and super comfortable,” she said. “Our conditions are livable, and I am pretty comfortable.”
The residential high school has been located on the Mississippi University for Women campus since its inception in 1987, but its aging infrastructure has sparked a debate about where MSMS students would be more successful. In Columbus or in Starkville?
Wherever they’re built, MSMS needs new facilities, Executive Director Ginger Tedder said.
“The growth potential is limited in our current facilities,” she wrote in an email to The Dispatch. “We will need larger academic and residential spaces to meet our future needs.”
On Thursday, the State Board of Education voted in an executive session to create a subcommittee to explore future growth at MSMS, Public Information Officer Shanderia Minor told The Dispatch.
Conversations to be had
MSMS entered the spotlight in February when a bill introduced by District 43 Sen. Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, proposed relocating the school to MSU.
DeBar, who also serves as chair for the Senate Education Committee, told The Dispatch on Tuesday he doesn’t intend to reintroduce the subject this session.
“I can’t speak for any of the other committees or the House,” he said. “But with all the other issues we’ve got coming up this year, I don’t think that’s high on the priority list.”
The Dispatch asked Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann if he expects the issue to come up in the 2025 session, but his office gave no comment.
District 15 Sen. Bart Williams, R-Starkville, said there should at least be conversations about a possible relocation given the current state of facilities.
“We want to provide the best environment we can for (MSMS), and we’re not right now,” he said. “… This is the moment that, if we’ve got all this capital investment that we’ve got to do, is the future best where it is or is the future best somewhere else?” he said.
District 43 Rep. Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, said he expects the topic of MSMS will come up in the upcoming session, which starts in January. Roberson said he toured the high school during an October legislative visit.
“(The facilities) are a lot better than they were two years ago, but they’re still not up to the standard I’d like to see,” he said. “They’re doing the best they can with what they’ve got.”
Creating a narrative
For Karen Clay, former general counsel for The W and an MSMS graduate, many of the concerns prompting these conversations are hyperbolic.
There’s no doubt the school needs new facilities, but the idea that MUW’s campus is an unfit host is inaccurate, she said.
“To make a case that they can’t get (what they need) here, that the campus is unsafe, those are false statements that are trying to create a narrative so that the school can be moved,” Clay said.
She admits the school doesn’t do a great job of marketing itself, which may create misunderstandings about what opportunities students have there, including a state-of-the-art library, a health center, sports and research opportunities with MUW faculty.
They’re also sharing a campus with college students who have always looked out for the high schoolers, Clay said.
“I just don’t think you can replicate what is available to them here somewhere else,” she said. “Sure, you could give them a new facility somewhere else, but you can also get them a new facility here.”
The real issue is, Clay said, the state hasn’t been investing in MSMS. To assume relocating the school will be a cure-all for all the issues that require funding is short-sighted, she said.
MSMS contracts with The W to use the buildings on its campus. The school, which receives funding from the Mississippi Department of Education through legislative appropriations, is responsible for maintenance.
MSMS requested $90 million from the legislature last session, with $40 million designated for renovations. The state allocated $1.5 million for renovations instead.
Clay and Tedder confirmed administrators from the schools met to discuss future facility needs, including the possibility of building a new residence hall on the MUW campus.
Why not start from scratch?
Roberson and Williams believe MSMS can find what it needs in Starkville, specifically within an educational complex on the edge of MSU’s campus housing a new Starkville High School and Partnership Middle School.
Records The Dispatch obtained found legislators, as well as leadership at MSU, MSMS and the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District were drawing preliminary plans for the campus before the 2024 legislative session.
If MSMS needs facilities regardless of its location, Williams said, why not start from scratch?
“If we could have a convergence of a school being built and moving MSMS there, I think there’s some economic savings that can be had, and we could design this from the ground up,” he said.
Roberson agrees folding a new MSMS into the new high school project would be cheaper than addressing the two separately due to shared facilities and economies of scale.
“We’re willing to incorporate that into a total package,” he said. “We’re actually putting something together that would facilitate that. But that being said, honestly, there has not been any major decisions toward one way or the other.”
Roberson said students could be a part of a bigger dynamic there, one where they can possibly be involved in SHS sports and other extracurriculars.
“I understand about 65 (MSMS) students come to Starkville to MSU now for part of their education,” Williams said. “(They) will have the opportunity to interact with MSU administration, faculty and people in training there, so I think it provides a tremendous upside to what it is today personally.”
Safety concerns
Former District 47 State Rep. Bruce Hanson, who worked on the original legislation that formed MSMS, said the key reason the school is better off at MUW is the safety the smaller campus offers.
“It’s a nice, easy environment where there’s a good history of these kids being well cared for in a small community, at a small university, where there is a more personal relationship,” he said.
Hanson is part of a Columbus committee made up of local elected officials and MSMS supporters, who are strategizing ways to ensure MSMS stays in Columbus, including finding alternative funding sources.
“We’re in discussions about some other options now as to how we can help get the proper funding that is needed there, so that they’re not relying strictly on state support,” Mayor Keith Gaskin said of the committee during a Thursday press conference.
As for the state board’s new committee, Hanson said it will be good for providing accurate, updated information for legislators to consult. But part of that should consider the actions of the board itself, he said.
“We have not had any input that I know of to this point. It seems like this is a decision out of nowhere,” he said. “They should examine their role they have played in the last (36) years and determine whether or not they have been intent upon acting as a school board for the school.”
MUW President Nora Miller said moving MSMS onto a campus with other public schools would defeat the purpose of why the school was created.
“Whether they’re talking colocated or comingled, I think that would be the death of the school of math and science because the whole idea is that they are with other like minded students who can challenge them,” she told The Dispatch in November. “If you’re going to be a part of just a regular school, then why are parents going to send their kids away for that?”
Clay said building a new dormitory where MSMS is already located would be more economical than building a new school from the ground up.
“I would imagine that what they need would be more cost effective to provide them here where they already have their infrastructure and they already have the other things that are working really well,” she said.
‘If the school was given the money, they would do what they could’
As for the MSMS students, each one who spoke to The Dispatch feels the school is better off where it is.
Scott said she feels the size of The W’s campus makes it a safer place for high school students.
“… I think (MSU’s campus) is really big, and keeping up with high school students over there would be horrible,” she said.
MSMS students aren’t allowed to interact with the MUW students. Monitoring that on a campus of more than 20,000 students would be complicated, Senior Claire Rizzo said of MSU.
“I cannot imagine what being surrounded by things like large campus drinking culture would do for young kids like high schoolers,” she said. “… A common issue that could arise would unfortunately be either State students not understanding that these are high school students or just overlooking it.”
Carino wishes more could be done when it comes to making the current MSMS facilities more accessible, but relocating wouldn’t serve students any better, she said, including in academics.
“I think that moving to MSU only provides convenience, but I feel like, fundamentally, the academics would not change if we were at MSU,” she said.
Despite their concerns, students said leadership at MSMS is making the best of what’s there. Rizzo feels the responsibility falls on lawmakers.
“It isn’t so much of what administration and the people at MSMS are doing … but rather what the people who are responsible for delegating the resources,” she said. “ I definitely think if the school was given the money, they would do what they could with the funding.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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