7/30/20 - School Restart Concerns | Center for Medically Fragile Children | Book Club: The River

Mississippi Edition

Schools near the deadline to submit their plans for a safe return

Then, how a state agency with a director arrested for embezzlement got tangled up in a project involving the former First Lady.

Plus, in today’s book club, two friends take a wilderness canoe trip and find themselves tested by fire, white water and violence.

Segment 1:

Mississippi school districts have one more day to submit their reopening plans for the fall as rates of the coronavirus remain high. Governor Tate Reeves, who has been echoing the White House message for students to return to in-person learning, says his team is in the process of reviewing the restart plans of the state's public school districts. As schools prepare for the restart, education advocates worry about the number of challenges administrators and teachers face to accommodate guidelines during period of high community transmission. We talk to Ronnie McGehee, Executive Director of the Mississippi Association of School Administrators, and Nancy Loome of the Parents Campaign.

Segment 2:

The Mississippi Center for Medically Fragile Children was a passion project for Deborah Bryant. The center, presented as the first pediatric skilled nursing facility in the state of Mississippi, ceremoniously broke ground in December - with Bryant in attendance. Now the former first lady is cutting formal ties with the long-planned home as a non-profit affiliated with the project is quietly dissolving. Jack Bolonga is an investigative reporter with the Clarion Ledger. He shares more with our Karen Brown about the center, a church, and a dream derailed.

Segment 3:

A longtime contributor to NPR and bestselling author, Peter Heller writes “The River.” In it is a canoe trip, a woman who vanishes, white water, violence and a friendship tested. As Heller tells us, the impetus for the book came from a conversation he had many years ago with someone he’d just met.

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