Jason Patterson Editor & PublisherMuch of the blame for the failure of our city’s public schools has been placed on irresponsible parents.
That’s certainly a major factor in the sad state of affairs that currently exists, but last week’s report from the State Commission on School Accreditation suggests that there are numerous problems with the local educational structure as well.
The district’s accreditation status will be placed on probation following numerous problems discovered by state education officials during an unannounced visit, something students might recognize as a “pop quiz.”
Like a student who had been snoozing through class, our district didn’t fare so well on this surprise examination. That didn’t come as any surprise to observers who have seen the district hire a superintendent and then release him before his contract expired, witnessed violence in our schools or seen the recent reports that as many as 80 seniors were in danger of not graduating after failing required tests.
A common response to our reporting on this subject is to shoot the messenger. This newspaper is frequently accused of dwelling on negative subjects while ignoring positive news when it comes to Yazoo City Public Schools. I strongly disagree with that statement. There is
some good news, and we enthusiastically report it. Our Profile edition comes out Saturday, and Yazoo City High senior Stephen Diew may be the most successful student we interviewed.
We’d prefer to tell good news all the time, but this is probably the most significant issue facing our community. We wouldn’t be much of a newspaper if we avoided the issue just because it might upset some of our friends and neighbors.
We’ve never suggested that there aren’t good people working in the district, but the indisputable fact is that the system is broken. We’re constantly assured that progress is being made. There have been some notable successes, but the district as a whole is sinking.
The problems are complex, and that means the solution won’t be simple. There are some simple steps to take in the right direction, however:
1. Enforce the rules consistently. One of the report’s most troubling items is the district’s failure to follow its expulsion  policy for a student bringing a weapon on campus. We’ve been given countless other examples from frustrated teachers.
One example is a student being sent to the office for talking on a cell phone during class and returning to class with the cell phone and continuing the conversation with no consequences. Another teacher reported that he was asked to refer to a group of students causing
fights as a “club” rather than a gang so that the trouble makers wouldn’t have to be expelled.
2. Don’t let disruptive students ruin things for those trying to learn.
The district has an alternative school for a reason. It’s understandable that school officials aren’t eager to remove problem students from the traditional learning environment, but they shouldn’t be allowed to hinder the efforts of those who are actually trying to take advantage of the opportunities being provided.
Our actions have consequences. That’s a lesson some of our youth need to learn.
3. Hire the most qualified
employees.
Former Superintendent Shannon Sudbury once told us that he was sometimes unable to replace an ineffective employee because they were connected to a school board official or other local politician. That’s not hard to believe. I’ve seen it at all levels of our city government.
Our aldermen will create a job for a political supporter in a heartbeat. 
One of the most telling quotes from the report is “...it is the perception that appointments are not made on the basis of individual qualifications, but rather appointments are made based on an individual’s long-term involvement in and connections with local politics.”
This issue has been raised many times by frustrated educators. The response is often, “That’s just politics.” A more accurate description would be, “That’s just stupid.”

Jamie Patterson Managing EditorI felt so ridiculous with that gigantic blue bow on top of my head.
It was picture day at my elementary school, and my mother had dressed me that morning. Needless to say, I wasn’t really excited about her outfit selection.
I had on an itchy, wool white sweater with a pastel blue trim. The look was completed with some tan slacks and the largest, neon blue bow this side of the Mississippi.
And Momma didn’t put the bow toward the back of my head. She didn’t even try to blend it in within my brown locks.
No, she put it smack-dab on top of my head. It gave me an additional six inches in height.
I wasn’t the only one made to suffer that day. When I walked into my classroom, all my friends were subjected to Sunday-best attire.
Chris had a button-up shirt that was too tight for his husky frame. The top button had about three extension things, and his clip-on tie was digging into his skin. When he talked to you, he had to turn his body completely around because he couldn’t move his neck.
Stephanie’s mother made her bring an actual bouquet of flowers that she was to hold up to her face when it came time to snap her photo. She had a long brown dress with a miniature bouquet, complete with ribbons.
Paul’s daddy put a giant Woodmen of the World pin on his breast pocket because he said he dropped jelly on it during the morning car ride.
Ricky had a multi-color sweater vest that he kept informing the teacher he had to swap with his older brother in the third grade. Apparently, they were both going to utilize the sweater.
And then there was me. The only kid with a giant, blue ribbon on top of my head. The bow craze hadn’t hit yet, so I was alone...with my giant bow.
“Move your head,” Chris whispered to me as the teacher put our vocabulary words on the board. “I can’t see nothing because of that silly bow.”
“Hush up,” I snapped back. “You can’t even turn your head cause your button will pop off.”
I gloated to myself as Chris eased back into his seat. I had won that battle. I noticed he kept adjusting his tie after I said that remark.
For some unknown reason, the school photographer wasn’t going to arrive until right before lunch. The younger kids, including my class, were to go first so that we wouldn’t get any food on our clothes before the picture.
That worked well for Tom. You can only put so many Woodmen of the World pins on a six-year-old kid.
But the bright idea really came when we were allowed to have morning recess. Looking back, I never understood why they let a class full of first graders head off into a recess filled with dirt, grass and other mess right before pictures.
But they did.
I forgot all about picture day. I hit the swings, slide and monkey bars all within 60 seconds. A great game of hide and seek was held with the girls. No one found me underneath the giant pirate ship.
I was clotheslined during a rough game of Red Rover.
And I managed to break the school record of jumping out of my swing and landing almost to the slide.
By the time my class returned to their classroom, we looked like returning soliders from a battle. The teacher’s assistant thought we had already taken our pictures and let us run wild.
When Mrs. Coleman saw us, she immediately went into panic mode. Grabbing wet washcloths and a hairbrush, she went to work, trying to save picture day.
That top button on Chris’ shirt finally popped. But Mrs. Coleman fixed it with a safety pin and covered it up with the clip-on tie.
“But it’s digging into my skin,” he moaned.
“Let him go first before he passes out,” Mrs. Coleman ordered to the photographer.
Stephanie’s bouquet needed a little “fluffing.”
Tom got an additional pin for his shirt. A silver cross covered up a dirt stain.
Ricky’s multi-colored sweater looked more like a brown blob from all the dust. He was taken outside and shaken like a rag doll until hints of red, blue and green began to shine through the muck.
And my bow had moved from the top of my head to the side. My white sweater had a giant grass stain from the Red Rover game.
Grabbing an extra sweater from the “spare clothes” closet, Mrs. Coleman yanked a pretty pink sweater over my head. She took the blue bow out and replaced it with a light pink ribbon, and she brushed my hair out.
To be honest, I felt better in my replacement outfit.
When Momma picked me up from school that day, she had a confused look on her face.
“I didn’t send you to school in that,” she said.
Mrs. Coleman explained to her what had happened and apologized for the teacher assistant letting us go crazy on the playground. She assured Momma that the picture was perfect.
A few weeks later, Momma got the picture package.  She was actually very happy with the picture. The pink sweater looked good against the background, and my hair looked fine with the pink ribbon.
“Pretty in pink,” she even said.
I am just glad she didn’t notice the piece of grass sticking out from behind my ear.

Tim Kalich Guest ColumnistDuring the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Georgetown University was joining the nation’s college basketball elite, its coach, John Thompson, had a rule.
Freshmen players were not allowed to be interviewed by the media.
Sports reporters bristled at Thompson’s gag order on freshmen at my alma mater, particularly after he landed Patrick Ewing, a highly prized recruit who ended up leading the Hoyas to three national championship games.
Thompson felt that freshmen needed time to adjust to college and the exposure that playing on a big stage would bring. He wanted them to learn from the upperclassmen how to handle themselves when a tape recorder or microphone was thrust in front of their mouth. It seems like a quaint idea now, with 18-year-old phenoms going straight to the NBA and even some high school programs getting face time on ESPN.
But Thompson wouldn’t budge. When pressed whether he was being fair to his younger players by shielding them and thus hindering their national exposure, he said, “I’m not running a democracy here.”
That memory struck me last week after our veterinarian began quizzing me about the election of the new pope.
The vet is a Methodist who, after marrying a Baptist, is now attending a Baptist church. He was curious about the papal selection process, questioning why 115 cardinals got to decide in secret who among them would be the next spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
“Why don’t all of you get a vote?” asked the vet, knowing that I am a Catholic.
“Because the Catholic Church is not a democracy,” I told him.
The election of a pope is not the only thing about the Catholic Church that throws non-Catholics for a loop here. At times in the past, our theological differences with Protestantism and our relatively small numbers in all of Mississippi except the Gulf Coast have caused Catholics to be maligned in this state. These days, anti-Catholicism has largely disappeared, or at least it seems to me it has. But there is still a lot we do that non-Catholics find strange.
We are fond of rules, for one thing. No meat on Friday during Lent. No eating anything an hour before communion. Attendance at Mass on Sunday (or Saturday evening) is obligatory.
We are restless worshippers. We stand, we sit, we kneel — all according to verbal or visual cues from the priest or other ministers that seem like a secret code to the uninitiated.
We are high on authority. If you don’t particularly care for the priest who has been assigned to your parish, tough. The congregation doesn’t get to hire him, and it doesn’t get to fire him.
As far as the new pope, I like what I have seen so far.
The former archbishop of Buenos Aires appears to be a humble, godly man with a special connection to the poor. His history is one of being uncomfortable with the trappings of privilege, prefering more to follow the model of Jesus Christ as a servant rather than one being served.
It was time for the Catholic Church to break out from its European domination of the papacy. The selection of the first Latin American as pope firmly acknowledges that the population center of Catholicism has moved far away from Rome.
The former cardinal of Buenos Aires demonstrated, though, a respectful sensitivity to the transition. He picked Francis, also a first, as his papal name, in honor of the patron saint of Italy, St. Francis of Assisi. It also didn’t hurt that the Argentine is the son of Italian immigrants and is fluent in Italian.
I’m also partial to Jesuits. Francis is the first from that religious order to become a pope. The Jesuits are big on social justice and on education. They run more than 100 colleges around the world, including Georgetown. They also operate more than 50 high schools in the United States alone, one from which I also graduated.
The American press has focused on the troubles that Francis has inherited, from financial scandals at the Vatican to the continued fallout over the sexual abuse of minors by a small percentage of priests.
One of his biggest challenges, though, is the declining number of priests in the developed world. There is a reason most of those cardinals look so old. For decades now, the pipeline of new priests has been shrinking in places where wealth has been rising. Mississippi feels the shortage as acutely as any. The two Franciscan priests in Greenwood are spread thin, caring for two churches and an elementary school here, a church in Lexington and another one in Winona.
I might have preferred a younger pope. At 76 and despite being in apparent good health, Francis does not seem ideally suited to inspiring young men and women to enter the religious life.
As Catholics, though, we are asked to trust that the right choice was made. Although the cardinals cast the votes at the conclave, we believe it was the Holy Spirit who actually did the choosing.

Jamie Patterson Managing EditorThis past week really showed me some of the great things that we have going on in Yazoo County.
It’s easy to dwell on the negative side of things or to complain about what is not being done right. But I am a firm believer in trying to focus in on the positive things. I have my bad moments, but I try my best to stay on the sunny side of the street.
My work week starting with a notepad of notes I had scribbled down from a visit I had with the newspaper students at Woolfolk Middle School.
I instantly began to smile when I thought about the future journalists, editors and photographers we have at our local middle school. Those students really impressed me with their genuine interest, detailed questions and overall excitement about the business.
All complaints that I may have encountered over the week seemed to disappear when I saw the smiling faces of those Woolfolk students. Not only were they possible future Herald employees, but they are the future of Yazoo City.
Despite the way it seems things are going sometimes, I saw hope in the small faces of those students that day. They were eager, smart, polite and ready to learn. I hope their enthusiasm continues when life begins to really come their way.
The positive things Yazoo has going for it didn’t stop there.
I had the privilege of formally meeting Rev. Joe Freeman and his wife this week. Along with five other local pastors, a community-wide revival was held this week in an effort to unite the community together, crossing social, racial and other lines.
After publishing the information in The Herald, my husband and I decided to attend as many of the services as we could. That was the most uplifting experience I have had in quite some time.
It was so refreshing to see the most diverse group of people coming together under one roof for prayer, fellowship and worship. I pray that the unity felt within those walls this week will flourish over into the community.
I started to look at Yazoo a little different this week. I am well aware of the negative things that are going on in our community. There are concerns about education, crime and other quality of life issues.
But there are some great and positive things going on here as well. You just have to take the time to notice them, or better yet, appreciate them.
Take the time to mingle with a few local students. Even if it is just a simple greeting or hug, those children will remember it. They are the future of our community, and they are about to embark on a journey into the real world. Help them out by giving them that dose of kindness and love. Looking back over my own life, I remember those people who took the time to reach out to me. I never forgot them.
Take a moment to pray and fellowship with others outside your normal circle. It can be easy to stay trapped in your comfort zone. But when you close your eyes in prayer, you can’t tell the difference with whose hand you are holding. You are united in faith.
Stop and talk to people you meet within the community. I had more handshakes this week with various meetings, ceremonies and other community events. It really is a special moment to realize that we live in such a small yet tight-knit community. You know your neighbors. You work alongside each other. You are all in this thing together.
Take a stroll downtown. Stop in on a local ball game. Take a ride out in the country. Visit one of our local farmer’s markets. Sign up for an art class in town.
Simply experience Yazoo.
I am aware that negative stories will come my way. It’s my job to cover all the bases.
But I have to look at the good things we have going on in Yazoo. They are out there, you just have to be open to see them.
I may not be a native Yazooan. But it’s those positive things that keep me here. I’m am not going anywhere.
This is home, and I hope that more people take the time to realize why.