Bracey Harris

Clarion Ledger

Ericka M. Wheeler, the first African-American woman from Mississippi to be named a Rhodes Scholar, views the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science as a gateway to success for students in the state who are economically, locationally and educationally disadvantaged.

“MSMS was one of the first lights outside of my family that shined over the pathway to greater possibilities that had been in the shadows during my time in rural Mississippi,” the Carrollton native wrote to The Clarion-Ledger.

Noting that the improvement of Mississippi begins with education, she continued, “MSMS had dedicated itself to providing this to the best of its ability, and I hope that it can continue to thrive, shine lights and provide opportunities to many more Mississippi children.”

Changing the trajectory for students like Wheeler, who grew up in a Delta town divided by race, is at the core of why MSMS was established.

Despite Mississippi's low ranking in public education, MSMS has been listed as one of the nation's best public high schools in The Daily Beast.

The 113 members of the MSMS class of 2016 were offered more than $21 million in scholarships with an average ACT score of 28.5, nearly 10 points higher than the state's average ACT score of 19. Sixty percent of the graduates will attend college in Mississippi, while 40 percent will enroll in out-of-state schools, including Boston College, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But school officials say flat funding has forced the public boarding school, housed on the campus of the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus and dedicated to academically gifted students, to reduce its enrollment numbers.

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The last time MSMS was near its full capacity of 275-300 students was five years ago.

Wade Leonard, a spokesman for MSMS, said enrollment has been scaled back by 12 percent from 271 students during the 2011-12 school year to 238 students for the 2016-17 school year.

If more funding is not received, the school’s class size is expected to drop to 220 by the 2017-18 year, an all-time low.

“Right now we have an acceptance rate right at 50 percent,” executive director Germain McConnell told The Clarion-Ledger. “Three or four years ago, those on the alternate list could have easily gotten into the school.”

Students are eligible to apply to the STEM school their sophomore year of high school with an expected 300 applications submitted each year, Leonard said.

Historically, at least a third of the school’s student body has qualified for reduced or free lunches. McConnell expressed concerns about applicants on a wait list who might come from lower-performing and high-poverty districts with limited curricula.

“It’s really detrimental that some of them won’t have access to pre-calculus,” he said.

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The upcoming class of 2017 would have been trimmed by four students if not for donations from Chad Edmonson, a 1999 graduate, and the MSMS Foundation.

Edmonson’s gift of roughly $60,000 allowed MSMS to accept three more students, while an additional $36,000 raised by the foundation made it possible for a fourth student to attend the school.

Edmonson, a Hattiesburg native, said as a sophomore he had already taken the majority of junior and senior classes offered at Forrest County Agricultural High School, prior to transferring to MSMS.

A graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he worked on Wall Street before returning home to Mississippi last year.

Active in the MSMS Foundation, Edmonson recalled how his jaw dropped when he learned of the decrease in enrollment.

“It was shocking because it was more on the side of 280-290 students when I was in school. That’s such a dramatic drop in that it was a directional change. (I started thinking) about the school not being open anymore. After the board meeting, I agreed to make a donation.”

Within the past year, much attention has been paid to funding for public education after a failed ballot measure that would have required the Legislature to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. Lost in the debate were specialty schools including, MSMS, the Mississippi School of the Arts and schools for the blind and deaf, which do not have an ad valorem tax base to draw funds from and are therefore excluded from the formula.

Instead, they rely on allocations from the Mississippi Department of Education. With MDE subject to state budget cuts, these schools are particularly vulnerable.

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According to MDE, MSMS has operated with a static budget of $4.495 million for the past two years.

McConnell said despite MSMS being spared from budget cuts, leaders have had to withdraw from the school’s plant fund, earmarked for capital improvement initiatives and emergencies, to support the general budget.

He posited that a minimum of $1.5 million is needed in order to restore full capacity. He added the funds also would go toward advancing distance-learning initiatives. In March, the school received a grant from the USDA for a STEM-based distance education network, but the funds were allocated for technology only, not staffing.

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Alumni such as Wheeler, who plans to follow in the footsteps of three of her four siblings who attended MSMS and are currently enrolled in medical school, are representative of the STEM pipeline that leaders such as McConnell have envisioned MSMS would contribute to. Cindy Henderson of the MSMS Foundation said a study of past graduates found white females who attend MSMS are almost twice as likely to go into a STEM career, black females about 25 times more likely and black males about 10 times more likely when compared to the U.S. census Bureau figures of people in those career fields.

But the budget struggles have clashed with MSMS' goal of combating the state's shortage of STEM graduates. For example, McConnell said he would like to make computer programming, for which an estimated shortage of 1 million jobs is expected in the U.S. by 2020, mandatory, but the school is unable to hire another instructor. An engineering position was also slashed. As a result, the school has partnered with Mississippi State University to fill two engineering courses.

The MSMS Foundation has also stepped in to make contributions toward replacing or upgrading technological equipment.

"When you're a technology school, (budget concerns) really start to hurt," said Henderson, who noted Mississippi tends to spend less per student in comparison to other STEM consortium schools across the nation.

Leena El-Saldek, a 2011 graduate of MSMS, enrolled shortly after a room and board fee that school leaders feared would be a deterrent was enacted in 2008 by the Legislature. A graduate of Duke University and now a research analyst in Raleigh, North Carolina, El-Saldek is disappointed in the situation the school faces now.

"It really tugs at the deepest levels of my emotions. If I could dedicate my entire salary so one more child could have the experience I was blessed with, I would do it in a flash," she said. "Mississippi has a lot of problems, but Mississippi should actively be fighting toward our struggles and education is at the forefront at that battle."

Contact Bracey Harris at bharris2@gannett.com or 601-961-7248. Follow @braceyharris on Twitter.