FAYETTEVILLE — The ninth-ranked Arkansas baseball offense was tamed Sunday by Stetson junior right-hander Trace Hartman.
Hartman allowed a run in the first inning but held down the Razorbacks for the rest of his 6 2/3-inning start, and the Hatters won 4-1 at Baum-Walker Stadium. Arkansas (12-4) had a five-game winning streak snapped.
The Razorbacks had chances against Hartman. They put the leadoff batter on base against him in the first, second, third, fifth and seventh innings, but they could not come through with the big hit. Arkansas finished the game 1 for 16 with runners on base and 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position.
“Hartman just kept finding a way,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “He’d get behind in the count and he’d come back — 3-2, 3-1 and he’d get you out. He just pitched. Give credit to him. He did a good job.”
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Stetson (6-10) snapped its three-game losing streak and gave itself a chance to split the series with a win in Monday’s series finale. First pitch is scheduled for noon.
Hartman, a former NCAA Division II standout at University of Charleston (W. Va.) who entered the game with a 1.29 ERA and 0.71 WHIP, scattered 5 hits and 4 walks, and struck out 3 during his 101-pitch outing.
“I was getting the fastball across the plate,” Hartman said, “really just challenging the hitters and making them get themselves out.”
MORE FROM WHOLEHOGSPORTS: Notes, observations from 4-1 loss to Stetson
Stetson homered twice against Arkansas starting pitcher Colin Fisher in the fourth inning to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 4-1 lead. Left fielder Foster Apple led off the inning with a home run to left field to tie the game 1-1.
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After a throwing error by Arkansas shortstop Carson Brumbaugh and a 1-out double by Stetson shortstop Landon Russell, right fielder Jayden Hylton hit a 3-run homer to left to give the Hatters the lead for good.
Stetson players celebrate with right fielder Jayden Hylton (17) after he hit a home run during a game against Arkansas on Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Fayetteville. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)
It was the third home run of the season for the 6-foot-5, 225-pound Hylton, who Stetson coach Steve Trimper said before the series was likely the team’s best pro prospect.
“When Jayden gets hot he can be really good,” Trimper said. “He’s had kind of a roller coaster start to this [season]. He’s one of our better players and he just hung a breaking ball to him on that.
“Foster, he just hit a good pitch. That was a ball that the pitcher was doing a great job and he just got his hands inside the ball and was able to turn on it enough to where the wind — the only place the wind was out today, I think, was kind of down that left-field line.”
Three of the runs were earned against Fisher, who had not allowed an earned run in 22 innings prior to the fourth. It was the second-longest stretch without an earned run during Van Horn’s 24-year tenure. Barrett Astin threw 22 2/3 innings without an earned run to begin the 2012 season during the dead-bat era.
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Van Horn said Fisher was not as sharp as his recent outings. He gave up leadoff singles to Juan De La Cruz in the first inning and Paul Napolitano in the third, but he worked out of the jams.
Fisher struck out Yohann Dessureault with three consecutive curveballs in the first inning, and Renzo Gonzalez hit into an inning-ending double play in the third.
“You could kind of tell early that he was either going to have to get better [and] he was going to have to recover,” Van Horn said. “We were hoping after maybe the second inning he would like make a jump and start pitching better, but it really just kind of stayed the same.”
Fisher allowed 4 runs (3 earned) and 6 hits and struck out 4 during his 4-inning, 69-pitch start.
The Razorbacks plated a run quickly against Hartman in the first inning when Damian Ruiz led off with a double and scored on Camden Kozeal’s 1-out double.
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But there was little pressure on Hartman from that time until he left the game with runners on the corners in the seventh. Right-hander Andrew Lepine replaced Hartman and got Ruiz to ground into a force play at second base to end the seventh.
Arkansas second baseman Camden Kozeal (8) flips to shortstop Carson Brumbaugh to start a double play during a game against Stetson on Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Fayetteville. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)
Kozeal said the Razorbacks should have been more aggressive offensively.
“Maybe guys [were] taking it off a little bit 1 through 9,” Kozeal said. “We’ve got to have an aggressive lineup 1 through 9, trying to hit the ball hard.”
Lepine worked around a leadoff walk by Ryder Helfrick in the eighth and a 2-out walk by Carter Rutenbar in the ninth. His 2 1/3 innings of scoreless work Sunday followed 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief against the Razorbacks on Friday.
Trimper called Lepine “a really tricky guy” and a true submariner.
“We got our little sinker baller, sidearmer to come in and get ground balls,” Trimper said.
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Stetson out-hit Arkansas 7-5. De La Cruz and Russell both had 2 hits for the Hatters, and Ruiz and Maika Niu both had 2 hits for the Razorbacks.
Cole Gibler did not allow a hit and worked around 2 walks and Brumbaugh’s second throwing error in 3 scoreless innings. Ethan McElvain pitched scoreless eighth and ninth innings.
Join us for an exclusive interview with Reed Llewellyn, organizer of the Rock City Margarita Festival and the Great Arkansas Beer Festival. Discover what to expect at this year’s event, including a ‘midway’ experience, over 100 breweries, 25+ restaurants, and unique margarita creations. Learn how to get your tickets before they sell out and hear about the long-standing partnership with Ronald McDonald House. The event is held indoors at the State House Convention Center.
Private School Abuse: At an Arkansas school, a boy was hit by the school’s founder and attacked by classmates in a group session the founder led, prompting a complaint and her arrest.
State Money Still Flows: Despite a jail term for the school’s founder, The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain continues to operate and Arkansas still sends it public funds.
Unregulated and Growing: By design, private schools get little oversight in Arkansas even as new opportunities to receive state money have spurred a boom in openings since 2023.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
At her private school just beyond the city limits of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Mary “Tracy” Morrison demanded the attention of the 19 students seated on the floor in a circle. She then directed a skinny 13-year-old boy wearing a cartoon Mario shirt to sit in the center.
“Raise your hand if he’s ever been mean to you — ever,” Morrison, the owner, prompted the other middle schoolers, and some hands shot up.
“Most people don’t think you’re a nice kid. You lie. You lie all the time,” she told the boy. She encouraged his classmates to name things they don’t like about him.
Morrison’s voice got louder. She knelt inside the circle just inches from the boy and swatted him. On the head. On the neck. At first he flinched and started to raise his hands to block her. But she snapped at him to keep his arms down: “You don’t have the right!”
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“Come over here and put your hands on him, however you want,” Morrison told the students.
A boy volunteered. “I’ll do it,” he said, and the other students cheered and clapped.
That student entered the circle, looped his arm around the boy’s neck and choked him. Morrison gave him a high-five. The boy in the center cowered. Then other students took turns slapping, pinching and punching the boy. Morrison picked up a footlong plastic cylinder — it resembled a pipe — and thwacked him over and over, calling him a liar.
The attack went on for nearly 40 minutes. At the end, Morrison made the boy apologize to his classmates for mistreating them. Three other school employees were in the room that day in April 2025 but didn’t intervene. The whole thing was captured on video.
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An occupational therapist named Mary “Tracy” Morrison opened a private school just outside Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 2024, after the state made public money available for families to spend on private school tuition. A “group discussion” that Morrison led, in which she encouraged other students to assault a 13-year-old boy, resulted in criminal charges and jail time.Excerpts of video from The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain obtained by ProPublica. Faces blurred in original video.
Morrison had founded her school, The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, the year before, soon after Arkansas legislators decided to allow families to use public money for private school tuition through its Education Freedom Account program.
Delta Institute joined a surge of new private schools in Arkansas, mirroring a national proliferation. New schools are opening at a fast clip as state legislatures set aside more public money for parents to spend at private schools, without meaningful oversight.
There were about 100 private schools in Arkansas in 2023, state records show. Now there are about 220. That doesn’t count the 100 or so microschools in the mix — a version of the one-room schoolhouse that wasn’t tracked or publicly funded previously.
But even with that boom, Arkansas largely has chosen not to regulate private or microschools or monitor what’s happening inside them. Arkansas is so hands-off that the state only requires that private schools conduct regular fire drills, keep immunization records and have an American flag and a flagpole. It doesn’t review schools’ curriculum or the backgrounds and capabilities of their operators. Anyone is free to open one, including Morrison.
Known to parents and students as Dr. Tracy, she wasn’t a licensed educator and had never run a school before. Her resume says she has a doctorate in occupational therapy and cognitive neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis. The university said that degree is only in occupational therapy.
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The Delta Institute didn’t look much like a school — it operated in a white colonial house set down a gravel driveway off a country road, its bedrooms transformed into classrooms. But it had seemed like the answer that parents of students with disabilities, including autism, were desperately seeking. Families said they put their faith in Morrison, who presented herself as an expert in autism and ADHD. “I am the best,” she texted one parent.
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If your child has disabilities and you’ve used — or were unable to use — school voucher programs, we’d like to hear about your experience.
Haley Clark/ProPublica
Morrison did not respond to interview requests and questions from ProPublica.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has said she wants to be known as the education governor, and state education officials didn’t respond to specific questions from ProPublica about the state’s oversight of private schools or how it responded to revelations about the Delta Institute. Her spokesperson said the governor championed the state’s Education Freedom Accounts because they give students more and different educational opportunities.
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Both the governor’s office and the Arkansas Department of Education emphasized that the state intervenes to ensure students are safe and taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly. “Student safety is ADE’s number one priority,” Education Department spokesperson Kaelin Clay wrote in an email.
The day after Morrison and the children assaulted her son, the boy’s mother walked into the Craighead County Sheriff’s Office to write out a report in neat, looping cursive. It was not the first report about Morrison’s treatment of children at the Delta Institute that the sheriff’s office took.
Another mother had reported abuse about three weeks earlier.
More Money Fuels Growth
Before Arkansas’ LEARNS Act passed in 2023, creating its voucher-style program, state schools secretary Jacob Oliva promised that “there is going to be accountability for the schools that participate.”
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But the oversight role his department gave itself was related primarily to finances. The department has the power to conduct random financial audits of private schools, mandate that the schools report their tuition and fees and require schools to measure student achievement with tests of their choosing, but little else.
Under pressure to tweak the rules this spring, the department again declined to monitor school quality and tinkered only with how parents can use the funds on items other than tuition, banning them from paying for travel sports teams, for instance. Even that was controversial; some lawmakers argued there should be less government interference. They argue the onus is on parents to decide whether their children are safe and learning, and if they’re not, the families can go somewhere else.
This upcoming school year, Arkansas expects that nearly 55,000 students will use their Education Freedom Accounts for tuition and other expenses.
With most students getting about $7,000 each, the program cost about $310 million in taxpayer funds this past school year. Most of the students who used EFA money in Arkansas the prior year were already attending private school or being homeschooled, or were just starting kindergarten. Only 12% of participants reported that they’d previously attended a public school.
When the program began, the department set up a hotline and an email address for people to report suspected fraud or misuse of the EFA funds. About a dozen emails raised concerns about student well-being.
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Do you have a tip about a school? A story about using — or not being able to use — vouchers? We need your help to understand how voucher-style programs are affecting families across the country.
But several complainants told ProPublica that they did not hear from state officials after sharing their concerns. One teacher said she got no response after she emailed in April that students who transferred to her school had been deprived of a “basic education” at the microschool they previously attended, according to state records. She said first and second graders reported that they had spent the majority of their time playing.
Contacted by a ProPublica reporter, she said: “I don’t mind that you are reaching out but it is very concerning and in a way aggravating that I have an investigative reporter reaching out instead of my own state.” She requested that her name not be made public because she works at a different microschool.
Jazzmin Little said she hasn’t heard back from state officials either, after telling them in February that the school where she sent her two children might be misusing state funds. The department told her it would review the information, according to emails, but she said she heard nothing more.
“All kinds of red flags I sent to them and they never got back to me,” Little said. “I don’t even know if anyone has looked at it.” The school’s founder confirmed that the Education Department did not reach out to her after receiving the parent’s complaint, which she described as a billing discrepancy. She said the issue would have been resolved sooner if the state had intervened.
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In order to accept EFA money, private schools have to agree to meet some requirements, including that they have or are seeking accreditation, have operated for a year and promise to perform background checks and fingerprinting on all employees. (There’s no requirement that employees have no criminal history.) Schools affirm they’ll teach English, math, science and social studies and administer a standardized test of their choosing once a year. There’s no requirement to report students’ individual test scores to the state or to parents.
The bar is lower for microschools, some of which operate like smaller versions of private schools while others provide programs for homeschoolers. They don’t need to be accredited or wait until they’ve been open for a year to get funding.
The contrast with what is required for public schools is striking. Arkansas’ Education Department monitors public schools, and state law regulates nearly every aspect of them, from teacher qualifications to what’s on district websites. Every district is required to post a tranche of “state-required information” online that must include breakdowns of monthly expenses and even a list of every dyslexia intervention program used.
State Sen. Bryan King, a Republican, said he supports school choice but said he voted against the LEARNS Act because there wasn’t enough accountability given the amount of public spending. He proposed legislation this spring that would have required all schools receiving EFA funds to administer the same standardized test — and for funding to be tied to student performance on that exam.
“We can’t afford this and my concerns were about financial responsibility, accountability, transparency, everything about it,” he said.
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The proposal did not advance. King was attacked in the primary this year for being against “education freedom,” and Sanders backed his opponent. King still prevailed.
None of the legislators who were the lead sponsors of the LEARNS Act responded to questions from ProPublica about how the state is overseeing student achievement and safety.
Several Arkansas groups recently tried to get an amendment on the November ballot that would require all schools that accept EFA funds to follow the same rules and minimum academic requirements as public schools. The groups, however, failed to gather enough signatures.
“If you are going to take public money, then you should meet public standards and be publicly accountable for how that money is spent,” said Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, a nonprofit that was formed in the 1960s and focuses on social justice.
He said the state’s recent voucher expansion has led to “this whole new industry of pop-up, subprime private schools that have almost no regulation. They go into shopping malls or the basements of churches,” he said.
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In the three years of the EFA program, the state has only intervened at two schools, records show. And it’s never permanently blocked a school from taking public money, including at the Delta Institute — even after it became clear that terrible things had happened there.
“You Are in the Biggest Trouble”
Craighead County Sheriff’s Detective David Bailey, a Jonesboro native who patrolled the area often, didn’t even know there was a school set back off the country road.
He discovered the Delta Institute in the winter of 2025 after a student ran off and the school asked for help finding him. He didn’t know it at the time, but police and child-welfare records show the boy had allegedly fled after Morrison sprayed him in the face with water and held his legs down. He jumped out a window, barefoot, to get away.
The Craighead County Sheriff’s Office encountered the school again in March 2025 when Renee Johns, whose children Jacob and Addison went to the Delta Institute, reported abuse there.
Johns had moved her family to Jonesboro from about an hour away to attend the school. But things had unraveled. Jacob wasn’t getting the therapy he needed, and he and his sister were falling behind academically. But Johns said she was most troubled by a video Morrison had texted her one day to explain why Jacob was being kept after school.
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It showed Jacob, a 10-year-old with autism, and two other boys scrubbing the floor and walls inside the school with rags. Morrison berated them: “This doesn’t get to be about fun. Go!”
“Both hands, cleaning!” she barked like a drill sergeant to one boy on his hands and knees. “You’re working like a slug! Get at it! Get at it! You are in the biggest trouble.”
The owner of an Arkansas private school is heard berating students while they scrub floors and walls. The owner sent the video to a student’s mother to explain why the boy was being kept after school.Obtained and redacted by ProPublica. Two of the children’s names and faces are redacted to protect their identities.
The sheriff’s office alerted child-welfare authorities. Then, three weeks later, a second mother walked in to report her son’s assault within the circle at school. Bailey got a warrant for that video.
Teacher and counselor Ashley Williams was standing by while another employee copied the footage of Morrison berating, hitting and directing other students to assault the 13-year-old boy. Horrified, she excused herself, hustled down the stairs of the house, out to the gravel parking area, and vomited.
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Less than 12 hours earlier, Williams had filed a detailed report with welfare authorities based on what some students had told her about Morrison’s “circle time.” She had written, “This is not the first time abuse like this has happened.” Months earlier, she continued, Morrison had taped two children together by their arms.
More came out in Bailey’s interviews with parents and current and former employees and in interviews that child advocates conducted with the students, documents show: allegations of “waterboarding” a child and cutting another’s hair as punishment. Slapping a student. A wooden paddle named Fred.
Some parents, meanwhile, defended Morrison and praised her “unorthodox methods,” according to interviews and police records.
Morrison worked to keep parents on her side. She texted a large group of staff members, some whose children attended the school, to say she had made a mistake during the “group discussion” but blamed the violence on the students.
She warned that the floor-scrubbing video she had sent Johns would likely be made public and that she and the other employees would be arrested. “You can expect our mug shots on social media,” Morrison said, and apologized for letting everyone down. But she also called it a “witch hunt.”
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“My mug shot will have me with a middle finger,” she wrote.
Flimsy Investigations
Within days of the April 2025 incident that the prosecutor called a “makeshift ‘Fight Club,’” Morrison was charged with 11 felony counts of permitting child abuse and other related crimes. Three other employees were charged with permitting child abuse and failure to report child maltreatment.
The day news broke about Morrison’s arrest, the state Education Department stopped EFA payments to the Delta Institute. Nearly half the students there were using the EFA program to pay tuition, and the school had collected more than $300,000 so far.
There are no records of a visit to the school or an investigation by the state Department of Education. When asked if the department had gone to The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, officials did not answer. Instead, a spokesperson said that complaints or suspicious activity triggers a review and “often results in a site visit,” though they declined to say how often that has happened.
Reporters again asked the department directly if it had visited the school. The spokesperson responded: “We have addressed the Developing Brain’s suspension from the EFA program multiple times, including in statements sent to your outlet.”
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At Delta, public money flowed again two days after it was stopped. An assistant education commissioner who oversees the EFA program told a colleague he was convinced that the school had implemented “appropriate safeguards,” according to an email. He wrote that Morrison had resigned as the head of the school and a new school board had been formed.
In the three school years of the EFA program, records show, state education officials have temporarily suspended funding to one other school, a Christian-based microschool called Homestead Academy that focuses on outdoor and individualized education. It rents space from a church near Hot Springs. Outside, there’s a playground and hammocks, as well as a red-and-white striped shed painted with “In God we trust” where fireworks are sold in the summer.
Over a month last fall, the state got a series of concerning calls and emails from parents and at least one former teacher, records show.
Some shared safety concerns or described children playing unsupervised in a wooded area. Others shared concerns about insufficient academic instruction. One caller said Homestead felt more like a daycare than an organized school. In the first few months of the school year, 13 of the 46 students withdrew, state records show.
“Please stop” funding the school, one parent pleaded.
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Homestead Academy, a microschool in Pearcy, Arkansas. Despite complaints from parents and a former teacher, the school still receives state funding.Katie Adkins for ProPublica
Oliva, the state education secretary, heard directly from a Homestead parent who said the school did not follow a curriculum and had not adhered to the education plan for her daughter.
“Why are there not stronger regulations and accountability measures for EFA-funded programs?” she wrote in bold letters. (The parent asked that her name not be used because she works in education and fears retaliation.)
“This sounds like a serious and dire situation,” Oliva wrote back to her. “We will review immediately.”
A state education employee reached out to Homestead’s owner in late October and told her that the department would be stopping by the next day for a “brief visit.”
While there, Education Department employees watched students say the Pledge of Allegiance and then observed 10 to 15 minutes of instruction before meeting with owner Lindsey McCollum.
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When asked for student work, progress reports and discipline policies, McCollum said she would send them later. “In hindsight, we should have said we were happy to wait while they made copies for us, but we did not,” according to an employee’s written report about the visit.
Afterward, the state suspended EFA funding to the school. Oliva told McCollum in a letter: “Your actions have jeopardized the welfare of students and the responsible use of public funds.”
It took 10 weeks for EFA funds to flow again. The state required that McCollum provide certain documentation and was satisfied by her response: a financial review of the school, policies on student supervision, curriculum plans and student worksheets. Several parents also sent letters in support of the school, describing it as a nurturing environment where their students enjoyed learning.
“We were compliant and transparent,” McCollum said in an interview. She noted that both she and the other teacher at the school are certified educators and stressed that “student safety is of utmost importance and our school has procedures in place.”
The school, she said, is almost entirely funded through the EFA program, with about 30 students from kindergarten to ninth grade. She said almost all students have returned year after year. “Families have the option to choose and still are choosing us,” she said.
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“We have families who know that their kids who hated learning are now loving to read and write and loving to learn,” McCollum said. “That is our heartbeat.”
The state Education Department said it “wastes no time” in suspending private schools from receiving public money, and that both Homestead and Delta convinced the state that they were worthy of being reinstated. “In both instances, we worked vigorously to ensure operations were flipped in the right direction before families were allowed to spend taxpayer dollars on either school,” according to the department’s statement to ProPublica.
The parent who emailed Oliva said that she had enrolled her 10-year-old daughter at Homestead hoping for something different than the public school. But she said her daughter fell behind academically. Last fall, she pulled her from the school and reenrolled her in public school.
She didn’t know that the state had restored funding to Homestead until told by a reporter.
“No way,” she said. “This has to be happening with other microschools. That upsets me for the children of Arkansas.”
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Still Open for Business
The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain. The founder, Mary “Tracy” Morrison, was jailed for permitting child abuse.Houston Cofield for ProPublica
Enrollment at the Delta school dropped to about 60 students for last school year, about half the size it was the year before.
“There was a lot of loss because of the negative media,” Adrian Sportsman, who has worked closely with Morrison at the school, said when a ProPublica reporter visited this spring. “I feel like it was blown way out of proportion.”
Some students came back, she said: “They’d say, ‘There’s no school like this school.’”
In March, the mother of the boy who was assaulted in the circle at school sued Morrison, her school, her therapy business and her insurance companies seeking compensatory and punitive damages for what happened to her son. In court filings, Morrison’s attorney denied the allegations and said “the video speaks for itself.”
The criminal cases were set to go to trial in May and June. None did. Charges were dismissed for two employees who authorities felt were less culpable as they’d been in the classroom only briefly. The two employees did not respond to a reporter’s outreach.
A third staffer, Kathrine Lipscomb, who is an Arkansas-licensed teacher, interjected at times to direct the children to listen to Morrison and raise their hands to speak. In response to a reporter’s question about her role in the incident, she explained in an email: “For part of the time, I was off behind the teachers desk planning for another class and not paying attention to the circle.”
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The prosecutor and Lipscomb agreed to a pre-trial diversion program in which Lipscomb would serve six months of probation. She must do 40 hours of community service with disabled children and complete anger management classes to avoid a conviction.
She is now director of education at the school.
Morrison pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, 120 days on house arrest and five years of probation. She had to surrender her Arkansas occupational therapy license. And she agreed to not work with kids in any professional capacity during her probation.
Nobody seemed happy with Morrison’s punishment. But the prosecutor said the state decided the plea deal was the best option to make sure Morrison was held accountable. Under Arkansas law, the state would have to prove substantial physical harm to the victim in order to convict on a charge of permitting abuse to a minor, and juries can judge that differently, said Sonia Hagood, who prosecuted the case for the state. For instance, she said, a recent jury decided not to convict a defendant because the victim did not suffer serious physical injury.
As part of her deal, Morrison got to pick where she served her time — the Greene County Detention Center, which is newer than Craighead County’s jail and gave her a private cell. And she’s serving house arrest on her boyfriend’s Missouri ranch, where she can ride horses.
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She passed the time while incarcerated on the phone and on video calls from a personal tablet. It’s standard for all communication from jail to be recorded, and ProPublica obtained more than 500 recordings. They show she was still involved with the administration of the school while jailed.
She spoke frequently to Sportsman about school finances, including telling her to make sure the EFA money still was coming in. Sportsman, who owns Delta Therapy Group, the occupational therapy practice that works with Delta Institute students, said that the jail conversations were “informal conversations between friends” and disputed the idea that Morrison was running the school while incarcerated.
Morrison chatted for hours with her new board members and school employees and gave them to-do lists. She asked how some kids were doing. In a call with the teacher who also entered a plea deal, she called the victim’s mother “evil” for going to the police.
She also spoke with a documentary filmmaker who is interested in the school’s story and plans to pitch a project to a big streamer, like Netflix or HBO. In one call with the documentarian, Morrison described the abuse she’d been jailed for as a “restorative” technique to try to help the children treat one another more respectfully.
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Mary “Tracy” Morrison was jailed for permitting child abuse at her school, The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain. In a video call with documentary filmmaker Alysia Sofios from jail, Morrison explained her goal in conducting the “group discussion” with students.Obtained by ProPublica
“It was never about, like, ‘Go hit him,’ right?’’ she said. “And the concept is so sophisticated that it’s like, if the prosecuting attorney wanted to know my story, if the detective — they would’ve interviewed me. They would have couched it like, ‘Oh, this is an intervention of individuals who are high risk, who will end up in prison themselves if they behave this way.’ They didn’t do that.”
Both the prosecutor and detective tried to interview Morrison during the investigation but she refused to speak with them.
Morrison was released from jail June 1.
“I think she should be prevented from teaching anywhere in the United States of America and having children around if she’s going to try to influence them the way she did,” Bailey, the detective on the case, said. “If we can’t protect our kids, who can we protect?
The Latest Complaint
There’s nothing in state law that prevents Morrison from still owning Delta or another private school and benefiting from public funding.
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Records still list Morrison’s family business as the owner of the Delta Institute property. State business records also show that she still is the registered agent for a private school at the same address. The school recently took a new name: North Star Academy.
Lipscomb said the school’s board changed the name “as part of the process of healing for our community of families and students that are here and still trying to make sense of the world as we know it now.” Lipscomb said Morrison has “zero involvement” with the school right now.
She said she expects as many as 35 students to attend this upcoming school year.
Renee Johns said Jacob has never recovered from his traumatic time at the Delta school. He has grown increasingly aggressive. He’s used martial arts moves that the school taught children in lieu of P.E. to punch holes in the wall of her home and lash out at her.
Her daughter, Addison, returned to public school. She loves her new school, but was so far behind that she needed to repeat third grade. “School is for helping, not for hurting,” the 10-year-old recently told a ProPublica reporter.
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Johns said parents who chose Morrison’s school and went along with her methods were sold lies. “We honestly thought we were doing the best for our children.”
Renee Johns says she regrets sending her two children to Morrison’s school.Houston Cofield for ProPublica
The public keeps filing complaints about private and microschools with the Education Department. In late March it received a new request to investigate The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain. It came from a woman who had heard concerning reports from a family with a child at the school.
“Given the population served by this program, ensuring a safe, structured, and educationally appropriate environment is especially important. I would greatly appreciate your office’s attention to reviewing these concerns,” the woman wrote to the state’s hotline.
Lipscomb said she’s not aware of any active complaints. The state won’t comment on whether it’s investigating.
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Governor Sarah Sanders and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission announced more than $12.52 million in funding for Arkansas cities, counties, and communities.
Eight-eight (88) grants, totaling $12,522,736, were awarded during the latest grant cycle. The funding was provided through the General Assistance and Rural Services Block Grant set-asides of the State Small Cities Community Development Block Grant, and State Rural Community Grant programs.
“Arkansas’ success starts with our local communities,” said Governor Sanders. “The places that shape our towns and cities are often the ones that define them – a park, walking trail, community center, safer street. These funds help local leaders build those places that bring neighbors together, improve quality of life, and build on what Arkansans already know: there is no better place in America to live, work, and raise a family than the Natural State.”
State CDBG funds are utilized for a variety of public facility and infrastructure projects, including senior centers; childcare centers; public health facilities; youth centers; residential water and wastewater; street, curb, gutter, sidewalk, or storm sewer; and flood control and drainage projects; as well as towards economic development grants incentivizing the location or expansion of jobs in the state. Funds are awarded on an annual basis with counties and municipalities also allocating resources to meet urgent needs and to benefit low- and moderate-income persons.
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The Rural Services Block Grant program funds new construction or renovation of community centers, fire stations, or multi-purpose buildings, as well as the purchase of fire trucks and fire equipment. Applicants from incorporated towns of less than 3,000 in population and unincorporated rural areas with low to moderate incomes of 51 percent or higher are eligible for up to $100,000 in funds under the program with a 10 percent match.
The Rural Community Grant Program is used to fund projects such as fire trucks, fire protection equipment, community centers, storm sirens, community parks, and walking trails. Applicants from incorporated towns of less than 3,000 in population and unincorporated rural areas are eligible for up to $15,000 in 50/50 matching funds under the program.
“The Division of Rural Services and the Rural Development Commission are proud to present recipients of the Rural Community Grant and the Rural Services Block Grant for fiscal year 2026,” said Becca Caldwell, director of AEDC’s Division of Rural Services. “These grant programs are essential for the development of rural Arkansas as they help communities improve their quality of life, address safety concerns, and improve infrastructure. The Division of Rural Services is committed to help set up our rural communities to thrive.”
View the full list of recipients and awards below:
Rural Community Grant Program Altus Fire Department $15,000.00
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Atkins Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Bradley Fire Department $15,000.00
Carlisle Fire Department $15,000.00
Cato Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Charleston Fire Department $7,500.00
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City Of Bay $15,000.00
City of Cedarville $5,094.29
City Of Cherry Valley $15,000.00
City Of Chidester $10,990.50
City Of Diamond City $15,000.00
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City Of Hampton $15,000.00
City Of Harrisburg $15,000.00
City Of Hazen $15,000.00
City Of Hughes $8,012.32
City of McCrory $15,000.00
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City Of Mulberry $15,000.00
City Of Ogden $7,401.95
City of Pangburn $15,000.00
City Of Sparkman $15,000.00
Community of Compton $1,500.00
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Community of Rover $7,300.00
Cotter Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Drew County $13,495.50
Enola Fire Department $6,111.52
Fouke Fire Department $15,000.00
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Hackett Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Hackett Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Harmon Fire Department $15,000.00
Highfill Volunteer Fire Department $12,151.42
Imboden Fire Department $12,376.45
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Izard County $15,000.00
Junction City Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Lake City Fire Department $15,000.00
Landis Volunteer Fire Department $15,000.00
Lincoln Fire Department $15,000.00
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Marshall Fire Department $15,000.00
Mineral Springs Fire Department $15,000.00
Mount Holly Volunteer Fire Department $12,705.00
Oakland Promise Land Fire Protection District $15,000.00
Poyen Fire Department $15,000.00
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Prim Fire Department $5,203.00
Star City Fire Department $7,259.00
Strawberry Volunteer Fire Department $14,974.40
Town Of Bergman $15,000.00
Town Of Big Flat $15,000.00
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Town Of Caulksville $15,000.00
Town Of Emerson $14,986.26
Town Of Guy $15,000.00
Town Of Letona $4,984.00
Town Of Oak Grove $15,000.00
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Town Of Prattsville $9,345.00
Town Of Shirley $15,000.00
Town of St. Joe $7,488.24
Welcome Home Community $9,000.00
Woodlawn Volunteer Fire Department $6,758.75
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Rural Services Block Grant Program Ashley County $89,999.74