Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. JPS Interim Superintendent Freddrick Murray told the JPS Board of Trustees Thursday night that more than 2,000 students in the district's system have not registered for the 2017-2018 school year.
2. The Mississippi Children's Museum, Mississippi Agriculture & Forestry Museum, Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame & Museum are collaborating on the Mississippi Science Festival, which will celebrate science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
3. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Jackson Police Department Chief Lee Vance are working to increase the number of JPD police officers as well as implementing additional solutions to crime in the capital city.
4. The USS Fitzgerald, a U.S. Navy destroyer damaged in a June collision that killed seven sailors, will be repaired at a Mississippi shipyard.
5. Deloris Suel wants child-care providers to get more advance notice if parents in their centers are potentially eligible to be kicked out of the Child Care Payment Program.
6. The Mississippi Board of Education has approved a new baseline for state test scores that will affect what grade the schools and districts earn in the school's accountability ranking system.
7. Actor and activist Aunjanue Ellis talked back to Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant Tuesday to denounce his refusal to back changing the state flag to one without a symbol of the Confederacy.
8. LGBT men have limited access to quality sexual health care, a new report finds. In the capital city, it is an especially serious problem: The Jackson metro has the fourth-highest rate of HIV diagnosis per 100,000 residents among the nation's metropolitan areas, with about 40 percent of LGBT men infected with HIV here in 2014.
9. The current state flag only perpetuates division and discord rather than unity and understanding. Emblems and flags matter. They signify what is important to a citizenry and cause us to reflect on our history.
10. Defenders of the Confederate battle emblem on the Mississippi flag have a ready-made argument that was handed to them nearly a generation ago by lawmakers who didn't want to deal with the politically volatile issue of redesigning the banner.

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