Jackson Free Press

The Rankin County School District is under fire for one teacher's disparaging comments against atheism. The American Humanist Association's legal center sent the district a letter on Tuesday detailing a complaint from a student and her parent that said the student's history teacher, who is also a pastor at a Baptist Church, has made several jabs at atheism in comments made in class throughout the year.

Northwest Rankin High School, where this history teacher teaches, has had trouble with the First Amendment before. A few months ago, the district came to a settlement with a former student who sued and won after she was forced to attend a blatantly Christian assembly during school hours.

The letter is not a lawsuit, but it asks the district to comply with the Establishment Clause and provide written notices to all faculty reminding them to not make remarks "promoting religion and disparaging atheism." The American Humanist Association has asked for a response from the district within a week. The seven-page letter details parts of the Constitution and legal history that could be argued to prove the teacher's comments unconstitutional.

Monica Miller, an attorney at the association's legal center wrote, "Good faith is not a defense to contempt and you are court-ordered to ensure that your employees are complying with the Consent Decree and Establishment Clause."

The American Humanist Association provided counsel to Magdalene Bedi, the Northwest Rankin High School student who sued and won after being forced to attend a Christian assembly in 2013. The district must pay damages to Bedi for additional violations since they violated two consent decrees after she filed her original lawsuit.

This is full, verbatim release from City Hall:

The City of Jackson recently implemented Phase One of its new Customer Care & Billing System (CC&B). The system went live across the City on September 1 and we are currently in the verification process, which allows the City to ensure account accuracy and that all of the new system’s capabilities are fully functional.

The necessity to estimate bills is primarily due to the testing of the network in conjunction with moving to a monthly billing cycle. It is not unusual when implementing this type of system upgrade to go through a transitionary period when bills are estimated based on an average of actual consumption from prior billing periods. Estimated bills will be identified on the bill with the abbreviation (EST) immediately after the reading. Once the system is fully verified and implementation is complete, bills will begin moving to the monthly cycle and eventually will be based on actual meter reads/consumption each month. The City anticipates moving to actual billing in the coming months as the electronic meter reads are introduced into the billing system by geographic area. After the transitionary period concludes, the bills will only be estimated if a read cannot be reasonably obtained.

Key benefits of the new CC&B include increased efficiency of meter reading and water billing, eventual elimination of the need for estimated bills, and a reduced need for personnel to enter property. The system will also be able to track usage patterns, allowing the City to potentially detect leaks on a property through abnormal usage patterns. Implementation of the new system will occur in two phases. During Phase One, all customer accounts will be moved to the new system and reviewed to ensure that accounts were properly transitioned to the new platform before the CC&B’s broader capabilities are implemented.