NEWBERN, Ala. — On a quiet, sunny morning, Gabrielle Cook and her 20-year-old son Mark Cabil walked into their town hall to cast their ballots in an election that would decide the future of their rural Alabama town.

For the first time in Newbern’s history, the citizens of this majority-Black town got to participate directly in the democratic process. The incumbent Mayor Patrick Braxton defeated his opponent Laird Cole 66 to 27. Braxton was Cook and Cabil’s top choice.

“Newbern hasn’t really had a mayor in a long time … so it feels good to have something happening here, to have somebody that can actually lead us in a good direction,” Cabil said before the results were in.

Cook and the 177 other registered voters were choosing between incumbent Braxton, who is Black and Cole, who is a white. The second race on the ballot is for council seat 1 between two Black women, Patricia A. Jackson and Voncille Brown Thomas. Jackson defeated Brown Thomas 64 to 27. Brown Thomas was the only Black woman who served on the majority-white council prior to Braxton’s election in 2020.

Shortly after Tuesday night’s win, Braxton told Capital B: “It feels good now. It takes all the doubt out. The judge gave it me [last year]. The people gave it to me this time.”

Five years ago, Braxton, a volunteer firefighter, won the election after being the only person to file his statement of candidacy and statement of economic interest.  

Yet, he never got to serve until last year. After he won in 2020, he says he was harassed and faced intimidation by the former, majority-white Town Council. He finally got to serve as a result of a settlement reached in federal court in July 2024. 

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Read More: After Years of Litigation, First Black Mayor in Rural Alabama Town Gets to Serve

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Earlier in the day, Cook said she knew she had to get out and vote because finally, “we have a voice in who becomes mayor.”

She grew up seeing her mom, a Newbern resident, vote in elections in neighboring Perry County. Newbern is in Hale County. Cook, a mother of seven, had never known or seen any mayor in her hometown prior to 2020. 

Her son hopes through Braxton’s leadership, the town will “get more stores and maybe even renew our park for the kids. Maybe we could even get a police department here, because right now we only get sheriffs and state troopers who rarely come down.”

Before the election, the Alabama Conference of Black Mayors said in a statement, no matter who won, this is an era where “monarchy ends” and that marks the beginning of a new chapter for the town.

“This transformation is a testament to the enduring power of hope, perseverance, and collective action,” the statement read. “As we gather here, let us remember that the right to vote is both a privilege and a duty. May this day stand as a beacon of hope, not only for Newbern but for communities everywhere that strive for freedom, fairness, and democracy.”

“What the people want” 

After leaving the town hall, Cook dropped off a family member, Byron Cook, 41, to cast his vote in the election. For him, the responsibility has never felt more important, after “how they did Patrick” a few years ago, he said. 

After Braxton was sworn in as the Newbern’s first Black mayor, council members, which included Brown Thomas, locked him out of the town hall and reappointed themselves to their positions after ordering a special election that no one knew about, according to court documents. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing town officials of conspiring to deny his civil rights and his position because of his race.

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Read More: Newbern’s First Black Mayor Won in the Courts, but the Fight Is Far From Over

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Now, Braxton is ready to hear from the people and not the courts and hopes to serve a full term this time.

“I’ll know the people put me there this time, not the court,” he told Capital B hours before the results were in. “That’s the main thing the people — what the people want.”

With Braxton only serving one year, Byron Cook said he wanted to give him a chance to show what he can really do for the community.

“He’s someone who has always been around, very grassroots, talking to everybody, checking on people, making sure they’re OK. When you find people like that in life, you want to do something to show that you appreciate them,” Byron Cook said. “I would love to see the community come together like he’s always done. He’s been bringing people together long before he became mayor, and now is the chance to really do that.” 

On Tuesday morning, Braxton sat across the street from the town hall in his straw hat, campaign T-shirt and blue jeans. He didn’t have any campaign signs. He was calm and quiet in between taking phone calls, waving as people drive by or stopping to make conversation after they leave the polls.

Over the past few months, Braxton had knocked on doors, made speeches at church, and placed a few campaign signs in the yards. He’s shared the progress he and his council Braxton have made.

They partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to bring a mobile grocery truck to the town, which does not have a grocery store. The only store in town, the Mercantile, closed in 2024. This effort with EJI helped bring fresh produce and groceries to dozens of residents at discounted prices.

Under the Braxton administration, the council has also started working with the University of Alabama, Auburn University, and a host of other universities and organizations to design a modern sewer system to address the town’s decades-long wastewater and sanitation issues.

This has caused some tension with mostly white residents.

Cole, his opponent in this mayoral race, is suing the town of Newbern and others, alleging the project is illegally dumping untreated sewage onto his residential property. He didn’t respond to Capital B’s questions about the lawsuit.  

On Election Day, Cole sat only a few feet away from Braxton, relaxing in his lounge chair near his truck and also waving to people as they drove by. He was surrounded by campaign signs and played popular hip-hop songs such as “Swag Surfing” and “My Hitta” on speaker.

Although he was hesitant to speak to Capital B, he did make it clear that he was ready to lead Newbern. He mentioned his decades of experiences as a businessman and his service, such as providing equipment to help maintain the nearby baseball field. He also recently purchased Sunshine High School, which closed in 2016, which he hopes to use to provide athletics for students who are homeschooled.

Whether he won or not, he said he was still committed to the betterment of the town.

Brown Thomas, who has served on the Town Council for over 25 years, was once again vying for a council seat. Even though she was named in Braxton’s lawsuit alleging harassment, she said those “allegations were not against me, however, the law determined that he was right.” 

The retired school teacher, who now works for the county sheriff’s office, said she also went door to door and spoke to citizens to let them know her intentions. She said she hopes to see the park improved and create a space for people to come together. 

Patricia Jackson, the candidate who ran against Brown Thomas, said she was running because she loves Newbern and wants to see the town grow. She also wants everyone across racial lines to work together. 

At a July 7, town council meeting, white residents and Black residents sat opposite one another. A couple of white residents made loud outbursts and made disruptions throughout the meeting, Capital B observed. Jackson referenced other town hall meetings where the sheriff’s office had to be called to conduct business.

“We stay here together. It ain’t but one race, and that’s the human race,” she said. “We got a long way to go. But with Braxton, me, it can happen. It really can.”

Regardless of the election outcome, many voters that Capital B spoke with shared their excitement about having an election at all.

“I really smile about it. It’s something that should have been happening way back. I’ve been in Newbern for over 50 years, and this is my first time ever voting for mayor,” said Barbara Carlisle, an elder in the community. “I think it’s great, really tremendous. I’m happy to do it.”

The post Black Alabama Mayor Once Blocked by White Town Leaders Wins Reelection appeared first on Capital B News.

Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: An employer-first approach

02: Roadside Attractions: DOGE’s impact

01: Postcards

Wallace State Community College, wedged an hour between Birmingham and Huntsville, faced the same challenges as many rural colleges.

Finding great instructors. Adjusting curriculums to fit employer needs. Reaching working students whose education paths aren’t always linear, and showing them the value of a degree.

Yet the Hanceville college has invested in ways that have led to outsize results, including …

• $61,000 average wages for manufacturing and health care certificate earners, significantly more than the area’s median incomes around 40,000.
• 51% graduation rate, compared to the 35% national average
• 90% employment and licensure rates, also well above national averages

How did this college serving 8,000 students in Hanceville, Ala. get here?

An employer-first model

One key breakthrough has been putting employers at the center of nearly everything the college does, says Vicki Karolewics, President at Wallace State.

“Now, the focus is industry first,” Karolewics said. “Industry presents to us what skills they need, what areas of curriculum would be better suited.”

Take Wallace State’s massive welding center, which had its grand opening in 2023 and includes 81 welding and 20 grinding booths, as well as nine virtual welding simulators and other state-of-the-art equipment.

The college estimated the center would create nearly 100 new jobs and approximately $25 million in payroll revenue to the community in its first eight years — numbers that helped them get both local government and employer buy-in.

Including those stakeholders in the discussion was intentional. In fact, the college created a dedicated role for employer engagement and strategic partnerships.

That person acts as a full-time connector between faculty and local companies, keeping a continuous feedback loop that has helped shape curriculum content and course structures.

When manufacturers flagged upcoming labor shortages, Wallace invited companies to co-invest in the equipment and facilities.

Its led Wallace State to offer one of the most robust welding programs in the state, including becoming the only community college to offer robotic welding courses.

Preparing for Aerospace, and More

Wallace State now serves around 8,000 students a year through academic, technical, and workforce programs, and the college is looking to expansion toward the jobs of the future.

Huntsville city officials expect Space Command to relocate its headquarters to Alabama, which would lead to more aerospace opportunities.

In addition to more aerospace jobs, Karolewics says the college expects growth in engineering, education and healthcare as well.

Like many rural areas, a growing teaching shortage is emerging across the region, which has led Wallace State to launch new apprenticeship programs in nearby K-12 classrooms.

It’s offered similar partnerships with hospitals, to help add to medical support services across north Alabama.

“Stackable Credentials” to Reflect Real-Life Complexities

Rural students often face education journeys interrupted by unsteady income and families that may need their financial or emotional support.

Wallace recognized that, and responded by creating hundreds of stackable credentials that allow students to earn meaningful certifications at any point in their educational path.

“A lot of students stop in and out. It’s not a smooth progression,” Karolewics says. “Now, even if they leave, they leave with value.”

Reducing Wasted Time and Money for Students

The college also worked to transform its academic advising through a Pathways initiative that creates clearer course maps for every program.

“What that has done, it’s allowed students to plan their future and it’s also eliminated additional hours that they were taking,” Karolewics says.

Before, the average student had completed 101 hours at graduation — despite the fact that a typical associate degree only requires a minimum of 60-64 credit hours.

With better advising and clearer transparency around course pathways, that number is now in the low 70s, representing significant savings for students.

Next, the college will be working to create four-year plans that map out not just courses at Wallace State, but also additional two-way pathways that extend to bachelor’s degree programs at transfer institutions.

Still, Wallace State hopes that even those students will invest back in Hanceville.

“Our students have a strong sense of community, and many of them don’t want to move to New York or Nashville,” Karolewics says.

By creating pathways to middle-class wages without requiring relocation, Wallace State is helping local students have a real alternative to leaving.

02: Roadside Attractions

• DOGE threatens essential rural services. After DOGE cut over $400 million worth of AmeriCorps grants across the country, rural nonprofits will struggle to survive, according to the Daily Yonder, which took a deep look at the impacts on social services in rural Colorado.
• California struggles to provide mental health. This CalMatters piece by Open Campus local reporter Adam Echelman looks into the challenges rural areas have in finding therapists, with a recent report finding that one-third of California’s residents live in an area with an insufficient ratio of providers to patients.

To sponsor a future newsletter, please email sales@opencampusmedia.org, or check out our advertising information page. Support my work with a donation to Open Campus. You can also help by sharing this newsletter with your friends. They can sign up for their own copy here.

The post A Workforce Training Standard in Rural Alabama appeared first on Open Campus.

Patrick Braxton is overwhelmed with gratitude.

He’s been juggling a yearslong legal battle to serve as the lawful mayor of his hometown, Newbern, Alabama. After years of harassment, his rural town enters a new chapter: Its first Black mayor will finally get to serve. 

Braxton will be reinstated as mayor of Newbern, according to a proposed settlement reached on June 21. The settlement awaits the signature of U.S. District Judge Kristi K. DuBose. After 60 years of no elections, residents will get to exercise their right to vote. The town has also pledged to hold regular municipal elections beginning in 2025.

In nearly a year since Capital B was among the first to report on Braxton’s fight, he has garnered support locally and nationally.

On a recent morning in May, he traveled nearly three hours from his hometown to Mobile for a preliminary injunction hearing, asking the courts to demand the town hold regular elections in November.

When he and his council members arrived, they were met by a busload of more than 30 residents who also traveled nearly three hours to showcase their support.

In 2020, Braxton became the first Black mayor in Newbern and experienced harassment and intimidation for doing so. However, the previous majority-white town council blocked him from the post.

He and his council filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against them in 2022 for conspiring to deny his civil rights and position because of his race, challenging the racially discriminatory voting and electoral practices in Newbern in the process, Capital B previously reported. 

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Read More: A Black Man Was Elected Mayor in Rural Alabama, but the White Town Leaders Won’t Let Him Serve

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For at least 60 years, there’s been no elections in this 80% Black town of fewer than 200 people, which Braxton’s attorneys argued is a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Act provides an avenue to challenge states and jurisdictions using racially discriminatory voting policies.

Since 2020, when Braxton ran for mayor, he says some white residents have moved away.

Though the court denied the request to hold an election in November, Braxton didn’t feel defeated. In fact, he felt optimistic.

“I knew I was gonna be able to serve again, you know,” he told Capital B in a phone call last week. “It’s just how long it was gonna take for us to get some kind of resolution first for this.”

This week, that long overdue resolution came.

When he received the news that he’d get reinstated, Braxton shared it with his pastor, who exclaimed, “Finally. It’s been a long time coming. You know if you pray, change will come.”

This win in Newbern is important because it shows citizens nationwide can still use the courts to be heard, despite the attacks on the Voting Rights Act, said Morenike Fajana, co-counsel on the case and senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc. 

“It’s important just to highlight Mayor Braxton’s tenacity, and the fact that this is a four-year battle that he’s had to fight in different courts and at different levels — and now finally, a court is going to say, ‘Yes, we agree. You were wronged. And you were the mayor,’” Fajana told Capital B. “I think that is very inspirational and important. And it’s also very sobering, just the amount of work that it takes and time that it takes to have your rights vindicated.” 

Setbacks, frustration, and the will to keep fighting

For the past few years, it’s been a heap of long nights and early mornings for Braxton, a volunteer firefighter for years.

Not only was he locked out of the town hall and forced to fight fires alone, but he was also followed by a drone and denied access to the town’s mail and financial accounts, he told Capital B last year. Rather than concede, Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, the former white mayor, and his council members reappointed themselves to their positions after ordering a special election that no one knew about. 

“It hurt my heart because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” Braxton said. “We had some plans to do some work in Newbern. … It might not have been the time for us to do it.”

The setback didn’t stop him, he said. He’s hosted several community events for the youth and the town’s elders. Two months ago, he used his personal funds to feed more than 125 people at his church, First Baptist. This week, he helped plan a Fun Day Out, a type of summer reading program, at the local library. 

He’s also been working overtime to build a racially diverse city council amid the lawsuit. He wakes up early in the morning, knocking on doors and “running down people” to talk to him. In 2020, no white person seemed interested. 

That has changed. 

He will submit his list of interim council members to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey for confirmation. If the governor does not affirm the positions, she must notify the Hale County probate judge to declare a special election, which Braxton will administer, the settlement states.

One of those people: his “ride or die” Janice Quarles, a Newbern native and plaintiff who volunteered to serve on Braxton’s council in 2020.

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Read More: How Some States Are Responding to the Worst Attack on Voting Rights in Decades

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The most stressful part of this journey for Quarles has been finding adequate legal representation and a listening ear to hear their concerns. 

“It seemed as if we weren’t moving. It seemed to me as if we weren’t being heard,” Quarles said. “By being from such a small little town, I kind of felt like we weren’t getting enough attention. But eventually, we kept pushing and got into the courts.”

With the recent news, she is beyond “elated” and hopeful it will bring together the community across racial lines.

“We don’t do a lot of integrating. We don’t do too many things together. But I just feel that it’s gonna be a change because sometimes it has to work on both sides,” Quarles said. “I’m just filled with joy because … there always comes a time for change — everywhere in every country, every state, every city. And now the time has come for us here in Newbern.”

While this chapter is closed, the fight is not over, Braxton said. He’s hoping his journey will inspire others.

“Like I told the pastor, I’m not fighting for myself,” Braxton said. “I’m fighting for all the younger generations coming up behind me. They can do the same thing and be successful in this town. You don’t have to move away from your hometown just to accomplish something. We finally got the door open for me, so y’all can come in. I don’t want to hold this seat forever.”

The post After Years of Litigation, First Black Mayor in Rural Alabama Town Gets to Serve appeared first on Capital B News.

This is the second story in Capital B’s “Disconnected: Rural Black America and the Digital Divide” project, which explores the disparate effects of broadband accessibility on Black Americans in the rural South. This project is made possible by a grant from The Center for Rural Strategies and Grist. You can read our first story, “Digital Redlining and the Black Rural South,” here.

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SELMA, Ala. — On a warm afternoon in September, residents sit outside the Selma Dallas County Library, or in the parking lot in their cars, to connect their mobile phones to the library’s hotspot.

It’s rather quiet except for the sounds of muddled conversations and car engines in this Alabama town that became an epicenter for a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Less than a mile away from the library is the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of “Bloody Sunday” where 600 people were brutally battered and beaten by police officers for marching to secure voting rights. Nearly 60 years later, residents in the 84% Black town say they still struggle to obtain a basic service: adequate internet access.

Crystal Drye, who has worked at the library since the days of typewriters, says this is the norm. For some, it’s too costly to subscribe to internet service, the speeds are too slow, or they lack the skills to navigate an online landscape. As a solution, they stop by the library, said Drye, who serves as the technology director.

She knew the service became critical when residents came to watch funeral services, hop on Zoom calls, or watch graduation ceremonies. Even homeschooled students often utilize the resources. The library also purchased laptops and mobile hotspots to assist older residents and people with disabilities at their residences.

“I’ve taken our laptops to the nursing home so that a person can stream [church] service on Sunday,” Drye told Capital B. “I’ve taken it to a person to use to order their groceries when they need to because maybe they can’t drive to get it. … It’s nice that we can be a one-stop shop.”

This is a similar reality for millions of residents living without high-speed internet — especially Black folks in the rural South, where the digital divide is the greatest. In this region, about 38% of Black households don’t have home internet, a higher percentage than white people in the same region and the national average, a 2021 report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found. In Dallas County, where Selma is located, 17% of households do not have internet access, the same percentage statewide.

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Read more: Digital Redlining and the Black Rural South 

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Over four months, I made several trips across Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi and spoke to about 30 residents, experts, and advocates. Here’s how the digital divide is disrupting their everyday lives.

The high costs of low speeds

When Hans Hageman moved from New York to the Mississippi Delta to lead the Tutwiler Community Education Center last year, he didn’t anticipate his internet would affect his productivity. On a daily basis, he juggles between whether his home in Rome, an unincorporated community, or the education center in Tutwiler would be better suited for Zoom or phone calls.

He’s missed out on potential funding opportunities because he can’t upload grant applications online due to slow speeds.

“It’s always top three on the list of, ‘Is this going to work today?’” Hageman said. “I have a meeting this weekend and I have to be prepared to close my stuff and drive real fast to see if I get a better connection to make a $25,000 ask to a foundation. I could be much more productive if I wasn’t doing that.”

He’s also noticed how the inadequate service limits opportunities for the youth to participate in virtual or global activities. Hageman signed up his students for a digital sports tournament to compete with youth nationwide. During a Zoom training ahead of the tournament, his students kept “dropping off of the call” due to bad internet connections, which forced them to miss out.

Some of the kids in the 79% Black town of 3,000, want to pursue careers in content creation, media, and photography. They have dreams of being fashion designers, chefs, and entrepreneurs. He’s also working to put together a robotics program and a drone pilot program. In the back of his mind, Hageman knows they “don’t have the bandwidth to pull this off” because of the challenges with broadband.

Unfortunately, it adds to the many reasons why they want to leave their town — a place described as a food, job, and medical desert. The only place to get food is the Double Quick gas station.

“When you’re talking to the kids, none of them want to stay, and some of it is because of their access,” Hageman told Capital B. “It breaks my heart because when they go off, they are having to play catch up.”

Despite the barriers, Hageman is on a mission to figure it out.

At the height of the pandemic, nonprofit leader Gloria Dickerson learned that many families in her hometown of Drew, Mississippi — which is about 16 miles from Tutwiler and 11 miles from Rome — didn’t have access to computers or internet at home due to affordability.

The Sunflower County School District provided one mobile hotspot per household and one tablet per child. The costs of insurance — $5 for hotspot and $25 per tablet — rested on families. In households with multiple children, the fees were too costly, and one hotspot was simply not enough. Some children could not complete schoolwork at home, which caused some students to fall further behind, she said.

“Every child needs a computer at home. I see these computers as for information, but I also see it as a learning tool for the younger generation … to keep up with what’s going on in the world. Keep up with their homework. It’s just a necessity,” Dickerson said. “We can’t do it and expect these kids to thrive.”

Dickerson, who runs We2gether Creating Change in downtown Drew, opened her doors for children to use computers, and purchased iPads for every student in her program. At her building, she had a stable internet connection. About five minutes away at her home, her internet service was poor.

“It got so bad that I couldn’t watch TV. Every 10 minutes, it would go off and say it couldn’t connect. I’d call, and they’ll say, ‘Well, we can’t find anything wrong with it, maybe you need to just hit the reset button,’” Dickerson said. “You just get so disconnected. Every time you start to send an email, all of sudden it goes down in the middle of sending an email. Did that email send? Should I resend the email? It’s a mess.”

The service, which costs $75 monthly, should be better for how expensive it is, she told Capital B in September. A month before, she says, a technician finally came out, after a year and a half of calls.

Community resources aren’t available to all

In Devereux, Georgia, where Gloria Simmons has lived for over 50 years, there’s not much except a Dollar General and a few churches. She often travels for basic services, but this year, she decided the internet could help cut down on trips, specifically to pay bills and access bank statements.

One of the reasons she held out on getting the service was her lack of digital skills. Instead of relying on her daughter, who works full time, Simmons wanted to learn how to navigate the internet herself.

“We get complacent and dependent upon others. I like to try to set it up where I can at least do it and do some things on my own,” Simmons told Capital B at her home.

But, as a retiree on a fixed income, it’s too expensive, she says. She pays $60 a month for fixed wireless internet with AT&T. But some months, if she goes over her data usage, it’s $10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data. If it increases, she says she’ll cancel the service, despite its convenience.

Back in Alabama, Henry Hall Jr. has switched back and forth between AT&T and Spectrum, formerly Charter, for years. They are two of the largest internet companies worldwide and the only options available to him. He lives in a remote area in the countryside of Selma, surrounded by trees, and his service is always “buffering,” he said. He walks nearly 20 minutes to the Selma library to use the computer and printer. Drye calls him a regular because he’s there so much.

The Selma library and the nonprofits led by Dickerson and Hageman help to provide resources to their communities to access the internet. However, many communities don’t have those resources.

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized $65 billion to fix broadband issues, including infrastructure, affordability, and digital literacy. Of that, $42.5 billion goes to states through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Currently, each state is planning how to disperse the funds, but the rollout will happen over the next four years or so. Given the history of neglect to Black communities, residents question whether the billions of dollars from the feds for broadband will reach their area.

While Hall enjoys his library visits, he hopes the federal government’s initiatives will result in better service for residents.

“It’s unfortunate that when you use the internet, it’s buffering, or if there’s too many people trying to get in on it at one time, the internet … it becomes stagnant,” he added. “As long as I get the quality,  I can use the internet when I need to use it, and that’s what I would like.”

The post How Black Rural Americans Navigate Internet Issues appeared first on Capital B News.

MORGAN CITY, La. — Jenna Gros jangles as she walks the halls of Wyandotte Elementary School in St Mary’s Parish, Louisiana. The dozens of keys she carries while she sweeps, sprays, shelves and sorts make a loud sound, and when children hear her coming, they call out, “Miss Jenna!” 

Gros is head custodian at Wyandotte, in this small town in southern Louisiana. She’s also a teacher-in-training.  

In August 2020, she signed up for a new program designed to provide people working in school settings the chance to turn their job into an undergraduate degree in education, at a low cost. There’s untapped potential among people who work in schools right now, as classroom aides, lunchroom workers, afterschool staff and more, the thinking goes, and helping them become teachers could ease the shortage that’s dire in some districts around the country, particularly in rural areas like this one. 

In two and a half years, the teacher training program, run by nonprofit Reach University, has grown from 50 applicants to about 1,000, with most coming from rural areas of Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and California. The “apprenticeship degree” model costs students $75 dollars a month. The rest of the funding comes from Pell Grants and philanthropic donations. The classes, which are online, are taught by award-winning teachers, and districts must agree to have students work in the classroom for 15 hours a week as part of their training.

“We have overlooked a talent pool to our detriment,” said Joe Ross, president of Reach University. “These people have heart and they have the grit and they have the intelligence. There’s a piece of paper standing in the way.” 

Efforts to recruit teacher candidates from the local community date back to the 1990s, but programs have “exploded” in number over the past five years, said Danielle Edwards, assistant professor  of educational leadership, policy and workforce development at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Some of these “grow your own” programs, like Reach’s, recruit school employees who don’t have college degrees or degrees in education, while others focus on retired professionals, military veterans, college students, and even K12 students, with some starting as young as middle school.

“‘Grow your own’ has really caught on fire,” said Edwards, in part because of research showing that about 85 percent of teachers teach within 40 miles of where they grew up. But while these programs are increasingly popular, she says it isn’t clear what the teacher outcomes are in terms of effectiveness or retention. 

Related: Teacher shortages are real, but not for the reasons you’ve heard

Nationwide, there are at least 36,500 teacher vacancies, along with approximately 163,000 positions held by underqualified teachers, according to estimates by Tuan Nguyen, anassociate professor of education at Kansas State University. At Wyandotte, Principal Celeste Pipes has three uncertified teachers out of 26. 

“We are pulling people literally off the streets to fill spots in a classroom,” she said. Surrounding parishes in this part of Louisiana, 85 miles west of New Orleans, pay more than the starting salary of $46,000 she can offer; some even cover the full cost of health insurance. 

Data suggests not having qualified teachers can worsen student achievement and increase costs for districts. An unstable workforce also affects the school culture, said Pipes: “Once we have people here that are years and years and years in, we know how things are run.”

As Gros walks the hallways, she stops to swat a fly for a scared child, ties a first grader’s shoelaces and asks a third about their math homework. Her colleagues had long noticed her calm, encouraging manner, and so, when a teacher’s aide at Wyandotte heard about Reach, she urged Gros to sign up with her. 

Gros grew up in this town — her father worked as a mechanic in the oil rigs — and always wanted to be a teacher. But with three children and a salary of $22,000 a year, she couldn’t afford to do so. The low cost and logistics of Reach’s program suddenly made it possible: Her district agreed to her spending 15 hours of her work week in the classroom, mentoring or tutoring students. She takes her online classes at night or on weekends.

Current employees are also in the retirement system, meaning the years they’ve already worked count toward their pension. For Gros, who has worked for 18 years in her school system, that was an important consideration, she said. 

Pipes said people like Gros understand the vibe of this rural community — the importance of family, the focus on church, the love of hunting. And people with community roots are also less likely to leave, said Chandler Smith, the superintendent in West Baton Rouge Parish School System, a few hours’ drive away. 

His district is the second-highest paying in the state but still struggles to attract and retain teachers: It saw a 15 percent teacher turnover rate last year. Now, it has 29 teacher candidates through Reach. 

Related: Uncertified teachers filling holes across the South 

In West Baton Rouge Parish, Jackie Noble is walking back into the Brusly Elementary school building at 6:45 p.m. She’d finished her workday as a special education teacher’s aide around 3:30 p.m., then babysat her granddaughter for a few hours, spent time with her husband, and picked up a McDonald’s order of chicken nuggets, a large coffee and a Coke to get her through her evening classes. Some Reach classes go until 11 p.m. 

Noble was a bus driver in this area for five years, but she longed to be a teacher. When she mustered the courage to research options for joining the profession, she learned it would cost somewhere between $5,000 to $15,000 a year over at least four years. “I wasn’t even financially able to pay for my transcript because it was going to cost me almost $100,” she said. 

When Noble heard about Reach and the monthly tuition of $75 a month, she said, “My mouth hit the floor.”

Ross, of Reach University, said he often hears some variation of: “I had to choose between a job and a degree.” 

“What if we eliminate the question?” he said. “Let’s turn jobs into degrees.”

Brusly Elementary is quiet as Noble settles down in a classroom. She moves her food strategically off camera and ensures she has multiple devices logged in: her phone, laptop and desktop. Sometimes the internet here is spotty, and she doesn’t want to take any chances. 

It’s the night of the final class of her course, “Children with Special Needs: History and Practice.” Her 24 classmates smile and wave as they log on from different states. They’ve been taking turns presenting on disabilities such as dyslexia, brain injuries and deafness; Noble gave hers, on assistive technologies for children with physical disabilities, last week. 

Reach began in 2006 as a certification program for entry-level teachers who had a degree but still needed a credential. It then expanded to offer credentials to teachers who wanted to move into administration as well as graduate degrees in teaching and leadership. In 2020, Reach University started the program focused on school employees without a degree.

Kim Eckert, a former Louisiana teacher of the year and Reach’s dean, says she was drawn to the program because, as a high school special education teacher, she saw how little opportunity there was for classroom aides in her school to boost their skills. She started monthly workshops specifically for them.  

In growing the Reach program, Eckert drew from her teacher-of-the-year class, hiring people who understood the realities of classroom management and could model what it’s like to be a great teacher. She shied away from those who haven’t proven themselves in the classroom, even if they have degrees from top universities. “Everybody thinks they can be a teacher because they’ve had a teacher,” she said, but that’s not true. 

The 15 hours a week of “in-class training,” which can include observing a teacher, tutoring students or helping write lessons, is designed to allow students to test out what they’re learning almost immediately, without having to wait months or years to put their studies into practice. Michelle Cottrell Williams, a Reach administrator and Virginia’s 2018 teacher of the year, recalls discussing an exercise in class about Disney’s portrayal of historical events versus the reality. One of her students, a classroom aide, shared it with the fifth graders she was working with the next day. 

Noble says she’ll carry lessons about managing students from the bus to her classroom. She was responsible for up to 70 students while driving 45 miles an hour — so 20 in a classroom seems doable, she said. 

She can’t wait to have her own classroom where she is responsible for everything. “Being with the students approximately eight hours a day, you make a very, very larger impression on their lives,” she said. 

Related: In one giant classroom, four teachers manage 135 kids — and love it 

In May, Reach graduated its first class of teachers, a group of 13 students from Louisiana who had prior credits. The organization’s first full cohort will walk across the stage in spring 2024. 

There are promising signs. Nationwide, about half of teacher candidates pass their state’s teaching licensure exam; more than 60 percent of the 13 Reach graduates did. All of them had a job waiting for them, not only in their local community, but in the building where they’d been working. 

But Roddy Theobald, deputy director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research and researcher at the American Institutes for Research, says far more research is needed on “grow your own” programs. “There’s very, very little empirical evidence about the effectiveness of these pathways,” he said. 

One of the challenges is that the programs rarely target the specific needs of schools, he said. Some states have staffing shortages only in specific areas, like special education, STEM or elementary ed. “Sometimes they result in even more teachers with the right credentials to teach courses that the state doesn’t actually need,” he said. 

Edwards, one of the first researchers to study “grow your own” programs, is investigating whether teachers who complete them are effective in the classroom and stay employed in the field long term, as well as how diverse these educators are and whether they actually end up in hard-to-staff schools. 

“States are investing millions of dollars into this strategy, and we don’t know anything about its effectiveness,” she said. “We could be putting all this money into something that may or may not work.” 

Ross, of Reach University, says his group plans to research whether its new teachers are effective and stay in their jobs. In terms of meeting schools’ specific labor needs, Reach has agreements with other organizations such as TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project) and the University of West Alabama to help people take higher-level courses in hard-to-fill specialties such as high school math. But while Reach staff look at information on teacher vacancies before partnering with a school district, they don’t focus on matching the district’s exact staffing needs said Ross: “Our hope is the numbers work themselves out.”

In Louisiana, Ross said he believes the organization could put a serious dent in the teacher vacancy numbers statewide. Some 84 percent of all parishes have signed on for Reach trainees, he said, and 650 teachers-in-training are enrolled. That amounts to more than a quarter of the teacher vacancy numbers statewide, 2,500.

“We’re getting pretty close to being a material contribution to the solution in that state,” he said. 

His group is also looking to partner with states, including Louisiana, to use Department of Labor money for teacher apprenticeships. At least 16 states have such programs. Under a Labor Department rule last year, teacher apprenticeships can now access millions in federal job-training funds. Reach is in talks to use some of that money, which Ross says would allow it to make the programs free to students and rely less on philanthropy.  

A straight-A student since her first semester, head custodian Jenna Gros expects to graduate without any debt in May 2024. She expects to teach at this same elementary school. At that point, her salary will almost double.

She said she loves how a teacher can shape a child’s future for the better. “That’s what a teacher is — a nurturer trying to provide them with the resources that they are going to need for later on in life. 

I think I can be that person,” she said. She pauses. “I know I can.” 

This story about grow your own programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post To fight teacher shortages, schools turn to custodians, bus drivers and aides  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For the first time in U.S. history, the Justice Department has concluded an environmental justice inquiry through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, determining that the state of Alabama and Lowndes County discriminated against Black residents for decades.  The findings from the investigation have led to an agreement involving the Alabama Department of Public Health […]

The post Alabama Discriminated Against Black Residents, Feds Confirm appeared first on Capital B.

For as long as anyone can remember, the lack of a sanitation system in Lowndes County, Alabama, and resulting reliance on piping human waste directly into septic tanks and local creeks, has made life in the community miserable. After years of organizing and calls to action by the residents of this rural, low-income, and largely Black community, Earthjustice and Alabama grassroots leaders submitted a civil rights complaint, alleging racist neglect by Alabama public health officials. In response, federal authorities launched an investigation. 

The 18-month inquiry found the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department acted with neglect and discrimination toward the county’s residents by not only denying them access to basic sanitation, but imposing fines and even liens against them while ignoring the grave health impacts the situation created.

“Today starts a new chapter for Black residents of Lowndes County, Alabama, who have endured health dangers, indignities, and racial injustice for far too long,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said Thursday in a statement announcing the agreement. “Our work in Lowndes County should send a strong message regarding our firm commitment to advancing environmental justice, promoting accountability, and confronting the array of barriers that deny Black communities and communities of color access to clean air, clean water, and equitable infrastructure across our nation.”

Residents of this county in central Alabama have long lived without basic sanitation services and have watched raw sewage from failing septic tanks flow into their yards. Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and a 2017 Grist 50 honoree, brought the issue to public attention in her book Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. It describes shocking scenes of raw sewage on the ground, overflowing toilets, and repeated calls in vain to the city to pump effluent from yards. In a county where almost one in three residents live in poverty, very few could do much about the problem, leaving almost half the county’s homes without access to wastewater infrastructure. A study in 2017 found that rare intestinal parasites persisted in over 30 percent of the Lowndes county residents surveyed, and all of them were Black.

After years of community organizing led by Flowers and others, the federal Justice and Health and Human Services departments launched an investigation in November 2021. They focused on Title IV of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin in federally funded programs and activities. They also considered the Affordable Care Act, which explicitly prohibits the exclusion of any individual from services provided by a public health program. 

The investigation found that not only did the Alabama Department of Public Health fail to provide basic sanitation to the residents of Lowndes County, but the Lowndes County Health Department actively enforced sanitation laws. It often levied charges on residents who had no control over the sanitary conditions in their community and who often could not afford upgrades. 

According to the agreement, the state health department is working alongside federal agencies to correct the situation. The Department of Justice has ordered the agency to immediately stop prosecuting Lowndes County residents for sanitation law violations and take meaningful steps to assess the county’s wastewater needs, develop a plan to address them, and collaborate with the residents to do so. The state health department must provide people with “critical health and safety information” and work with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess health risks to the population. It must also develop a plan within a year to improve public health in the county. Federal agencies may reopen the investigation if officials feel the agreements are not being followed.

“The work is just getting started,” Flowers said. “We have, over the years, been working to shed light on the problem. Now we’re at the point where we’re working on a solution. I think that [state health officials] will cooperate, because now the nation is watching.”

The federal investigation and resulting agreement mark the first time an environmental justice inquiry has fallen under the Civil Rights Act. Justice Department officials indicated that it would not be the last — something Flowers applauded.

 “There are numerous communities across the United States, especially rural communities, that have these issues,” she said. “So yes, we hope that this will be an example for others to follow. Or people can decide to not wait for the Justice Department to get involved, but to go to work on solutions.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A landmark investigation brings environmental justice to rural Alabama on May 8, 2023.