Noxubee County School District Leaders and Residents React To The Possible State Takeover

NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – The Noxubee County School District is one of the districts in Mississippi facing a possible takeover by the state.

A panel recommended the takeover on Wednesday, due to the district’s poor academic performance

If the states decides to take it over, this would be the first takeover for the district.

For the second year in a row, the Noxubee County School District comes in as a failing ranked district.

Back to back F’s, lead to the possibility of the district being state controlled instead of local controlled.

Superintendent Roger Liddell says previous years, along with changing leadership during the middle of the 2015-2016 school year, are some reasons behind the bad grades.

“What we tried to do was keep the good things going and make minimum changes to other things, but at the end of that year is when we received that F. I could not own that F completely because I wasn’t here at the beginning of the school year.”

Liddell says the district has been making great progress since then, by doing a number of things, including moving principals around.

“Finding alternative ways to keep students in school, rather than suspending them out of school. We have boosted our college readiness by increasing our ACT scores over a time period.”

The superintendent believes the possible takeover is unfair because of the progress made by the district over the past year.

“The numbers show that we are progressing and heading in the right direction and we have the right systems in place to really make an impact.”

Long-time Noxubee County resident Montrell Rucker says he’s not shocked the state might take over.

He says several things still need to be addressed and wants whatever it takes for overall improvement.

“If we can address those issues and make everybody accountable from the school board, all the way down, if we can make those people accountable that we’ve elected to represent us to make sure that our children have a quality education, if we can fix that, I think that this will put us on the right path.”

The state board will make its decision next month.