Coahoma Early College High School may be closed, but Coahoma Community College will continue to offer students living in the district the opportunity to take dual enrollment courses.
The Coahoma Community College board approved agreements with the Coahoma and Tunica county school districts for their students to take dual enrollment courses at CCC for the 2021-22 academic year at the September meeting. An agreement is already in place with the Quitman County School District.
“This has been done every year,” said CCC president Dr. Valmadge Towner. “We offer dual enrollment classes to those two high schools and these two districts are participating in dual enrollment.”
An agreement is not officially in place with the Clarksdale Municipal School District, but that is expected to happen in the future.
All courses are available, but Towner said students mainly take freshman classes such as English.
It is still not the same as having an Early College program.
“They won’t be able to take as many,” Towner said. “There’s a limit. At the Early College, they didn’t have a limit.”
He said 15 hours is the limit and most students who attended CECHS have exceeded that number.
Discussion about CECHS merchandise also came up during the meeting.
The school’s insurance is with Hub International Gulf South.
“The property has to be insured at replacement value,” said chief financial officer Deborah Valentine. “They go back and look at all of our buildings and the replacement value of the buildings.”
Valentine said the school buses needed to be insured until there is direction from the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE).
“As it relates to the high school, we’re in a mode of waiting for the Mississippi Department of Ed., which has already been mentioned,” Towner said. “In the meantime, we have to inventory everything over there from computers to everything over there.”
Towner said two of the four CECHS buildings are being used for CCC because of the displacement of people from Curry Hall and Whiteside Hall.
“Rest assured, we’re going to do whatever we can,” Towner said. “We don’t want MDE to contact us asking for stuff or computers and we don’t have it, so we’ll inventory everything.”
Towner said the CCC staff is asking for things, but he is still waiting for direction from the MDE.
“I don’t know what kind of guidance they’re going to give us,” Towner said. “That relates to money in the bank to inventory as well.”
Enrollment
Towner said CCC is still counting its students for the semester, but enrollment is down 7.2 percent.
Out of the 15 community colleges in Mississippi, Towner said 12 have a decreased enrollment. He added the statewide average is a 5.1 percent decrease.
Towner said Mississippi Delta Community College had a 5.8 percent increase, East Mississippi Community College had a 1.5 percent increase and Northeast Mississippi Community College had a 1.3 percent increase.
“You can play games with the numbers,” Towner said. “The positive five, which I would do the same thing if I had a positive five that was the highest in the state, but last year, the same school that had a positive five, they had a negative 21 just a year ago.
“Enrollment is a bugaboo. I’m not making excuses. We’re in our fourth year of it, I believe. We’ve got to really come out of it and we are working diligently to try to do just that.”
Towner said Southwest Mississippi Community College has the biggest decline of the community colleges in the state at 13 percent, Meridian Community College decreased 11 percent, East Central Community College decreased 7.2 percent and Northwest Mississippi Community College decreased 6.3 percent.
COVID shot payments
The COVID pandemic is still here and students are being paid $250 to take the vaccine.
Aaron E. Henry Community Health Center has come on campus to give the vaccine and the school is working on these issues with Dr. Mary Williams.
“I was against it,” said Towner of paying students to take the vaccine. “The group that came to me with recommendations, I was against it.”
Towner said other schools offered as much as $1,000 to students to take the vaccine and got the funds from the CARES Act.
There may be incentives for staff and faculty to take the vaccine.
“That has been tossed around,” said Towner, adding people on the school’s task force have given suggestions.
Towner still does not like having incentives to take the vaccine, but understands it is necessary.
“There are some real serious hesitancies from students and staff about it,” he said.
Towner talked about issues on campus.
“The numbers are higher now than they have ever been,” he said.
“We’re asking people to get vaccinated. We’re not mandating it. However, the President has passed some interesting decrees on that.”
Towner said he would have to talk with board attorney Steve Brandon about some of those issues.
“I don’t like to mandate anything because it creates problems, people starting to resist,” Towner said.
“Whenever we do have an occurrence of COVID and we know about it, we do inform our people, our staff.”
Towner said everyone in the office is told about COVID cases on campus and the school is doing its due diligence to sanitize everything.
“A lot of anxiety associated with that for obvious reasons, but we’re trying to move on as best as we can,” Towner said.
Alcorn State grant
The board approved CCC being one of the partners as Alcorn State is attempting to secure a grant that would benefit the health and sciences program.
“Our students can have a pipeline to their program as well,” Towner said.
