The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors has approved a resolution asking state legislators to name a bridge after late Mississippi Senator Terry Brown.
Supervisors unanimously approved the request brought to them by board attorney Tim Hudson during their meeting Friday. The resolution seeks to have the four-lane bridge that goes over the Tombigbee River on Highway 82 named after the state senator.
Brown, who represented District 17 in Lowndes County from 2003 until his cancer-related death in September, had also been elected President Pro Tempore of the Senate in 2012 and was a state representative from 1988 to 2000. He was 64.
A run-off election between Bobby Patrick and Chuck Younger to fill the one year remaining in Brown’s term will be held Nov. 25.
The next regular session for state senators and representatives begins in January.
Supervisors support charter school effort
In other business, supervisors approved a request from charter school advocate Darren Leach to support the development of a public charter school in Columbus. Leach would be the executive director of the proposed Inspire Charter School if the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board grants it a charter.
“We do realize that in Columbus Municipal School District, we may be having a few challenges with getting education done exactly like we want it to be done,” Leach said. “The problem we saw was that parents don’t have very many options…we have some brilliant children here. I have met them, and I believe that if we work to offer some other alternatives in terms of how we educate the children, we’ll be able to bring out the brilliance that our children have.”
Leach added that the proposed school, which would serve children of kindergarten through third grade age initially, would have an emphasis on a STEM curriculum, or science, technology, engineering and math.
“Lowndes County is one of those great industrial areas and what we’ve heard complaints of continuously is finding employees that are capable of taking some of these great high-paying jobs that we have here,” Leach said. “If we’re going to fully take advantage of the opportunities that are being brought to the city, we’ve got to develop an educated workforce. We will get them by age 5 to understand gears and pulleys, inclined planes, programmable object controllers, all of those things manufacturing companies hope that our children learn how to use.”
District 3 Supervisor John Holliman made a motion to approve Leach’s request. District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith seconded the motion.
District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks said he’d heard concerns from several of his constituents regarding charter schools.
“I’m a strong proponent of public schools,” Brooks said. “I don’t want this to be viewed as me taking a slap at public schools.”
Leach reminded Brooks that the charter school would run partially through public funds and, as such, is a public school.
“The best analogy I can make of what this school would be like is it would be similar to a parent saying, ‘I want to take my child and go to New Hope,'” Leach said. “The only thing is, they don’t have to move to do it. They’ll be able to choose another public school right inside their district.”
Brooks said he would support the motion if it were amended to include language noting that the charter school would be an alternative to traditional public and private education.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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