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Southern Echo is a leadership development, education and training organization working to develop effective accountable grassroots leadership in the African-American communities in rural Mississippi and the surrounding region through comprehensive training and technical assistance programs. Our work has carried Southern Echo staff into 12 additional states across the south and southwest.

Southern Echo's underlying goal is to empower local communities through effective community organizing work, in order to create a process through which community people can build the broad-based organizations necessary to hold the political, economic, educational, and environmental systems accountable to the needs and interests of the African-American community.

“08/01/2010″ to “09/30/2010″ - Redistricting Public Hearings – Legislative Reapportionment Committee will hold public hearings to elicit public input concerning adoption of guidelines to redistrict the Congressional, Legislative and Judicial offices in 2011.

“08/14/2010″ - Convening on School Consolidation – Southern Echo and MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable will hold convening at MS Valley State Univ. regarding school consolidation as the wrong path in Mississippi and which strategies are preferable.

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News Archive

Echo and Roundtable submit recommendations to Search Committee for new State Supt. of Education

Jackson, MS – On Sept. 23 Southern Echo and the MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable submitted their views to the MS State Superintendent of Education search committee on what characteristics a new State Supt. of Education ought to have to meet the most pressing needs of Mississippi public school children and the school districts in which they attend.

MS School Board Association Director Mike Waldrop heads a 3-person MSBA team to which the State Board of Education has delegated the exclusive authority to conduct a nationwide search for the next Mississippi State Superintendent of Education.

On Sept. 18 Waldrop asked a gathering of professional educator and grassroots community organizations at MSBA offices to submit answers to a survey created to identify characteristics that would provide Mississippi public education with the leadership it needs. The Echo and Roundtable responses to the survey are posted on this website.

To prevent leaks of confidential information, Waldrop and MSBA search consultant Dr. E. H. Fisher told the assembled groups that only the three persons on the MSBA search team have access to applicant information. The team will eliminate candidates who clearly do not qualify for the job or who have not submitted their applications within the required time. Then the team will submit all remaining applications to the State Board of Education and will indicate which among the applications, perhaps 5 to 10, the team regards as most outstanding.

It was not immediately apparent how the survey responses are to be incorporated into the search process.

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