In a letter dated Dec. 5, 2024, the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees was notified it had been assigned an accreditation status of “probation” for the 2024-2025 school year.

The letter, which came from the Mississippi Department of Education’s Office of Accreditation, detailed deficiencies outlined in the district’s Accreditation Record Summary, including:

1. Personnel issues (Standard 2 and 2.2): Professional staff working without proper certification or outside their areas of endorsement.
2. Financial audit issues (Standard 4): Four consecutive years of failing to submit annual financial audit reports by the required deadlines (FY2019-2023).
3. Fixed asset accountability issues (Standard 4.1): Four consecutive years of not effectively tracking construction projects and capital assets.
4. Financial reporting accuracy issues (Standard 4.6): Four consecutive years of problems with bank reconciliations, unrecorded liabilities, and inaccurate financial reporting.
5. Graduation requirement issues (Standards 14, 14.1, 14.5): Self-reported violations regarding students being allowed to graduate and/or participate in graduation exercises without meeting all necessary requirements.

VWSD Superintendent Dr. Tori Holloway said he has been working with the district to “clean up a lot of processes,” and that the items that were self-reported were found during his own internal audit of the accreditation standards. Holloway said he asked directors who are responsible for the 32 accreditation standards to show him documentation that they are being followed. Holloway said he keeps that documentation on file.

“It is just a real proactive approach,” he said. “This is what I do. Every (school) district I have been in, I’ve had to clean up issues. This isn’t anything I haven’t encountered before. I am responsible for the community and we are going to make sure the district stays in compliance.

“This is a legacy issue, it is not a recent issue,” he continued. “The state board of education takes a great deal of care with procedural requirements. It is not uncommon for a school district to go on probation because they don’t have “x.” Essentially, (the office of accreditation) will complete their paperwork (once the CAP plan has been submitted) and it will clear the probationary status.

“It is not a failure of performance,” Holloway said. “It is essentially paperwork.”

The district was required to develop a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) within 60 days of receiving the Dec. 5 letter. The plan must stipulate how the deficiencies will be removed, include a timeline for correcting the deficiencies, be approved by the local school board, and be submitted to the State Board of Education for final approval.

The CAP was submitted on Feb. 14 and focuses on three financial deficiencies. The Director of Finance is listed as being responsible for correcting each item by June 2026, with audit reports serving as evaluation criteria.

1. 1.  Annual Financial Audits (Standard 4.0)
      1. Issue: Failure to submit timely financial audit reports
      2. Solution: Creating internal procedures to improve knowledge of audit guidelines
   2. Fixed Asset Accountability (Standard 4.1)
      1. Issue: Ineffective tracking of construction projects
      2. Solution: Modified hiring standards requiring accounting degrees for finance staff
   3. Financial Data Accuracy (Standard 4.6)
      1. Issues: Untimely bank reconciliations, unrecorded investments, and untracked construction payments
      2.  Solutions: Staff training on proper recording of payments and retainage and contracting external consultants for bank reconciliations

Holloway said the timeline is through June 2026 because of a relatively new staff in the district’s finance department and the amount of training required to get personnel up to speed. He said deficiencies related to personnel had already been cleared by the Office of Accreditation and graduation requirement issues were corrected at the time they were self reported, thus are not included in the plan.

Once submitted, MDE staff will review the CAP, and then submit approved CAPs to the State Board of Education (SBE) for approval.

“I have high expectations for this district,” Holloway said. “For me, the standard is the standard. I want this district to continue to be great.”

According to the Mississippi of Education website, the Office of Accreditation is a “regulatory office charged with the primary responsibility of administering the state’s performance-based accreditation system for public schools and the accreditation system for nonpublic schools electing to seek accreditation from the State Board of Education. The Office of Accreditation operates under the umbrella of the Mississippi State Board of Education and the Commission on School Accreditation.

Staff members in the Office of Accreditation continuously monitor school districts to verify compliance with applicable accreditation requirements through (1) investigative evaluations (complaints against school districts), (2) annual personnel data reports, and (3) reports from other state or federal programs.”