The developments come as a court monitor says in a recent report that the state has failed to meet most of the terms of an agreement that ended a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit over conditions at Oakley and Columbia training schools. Justice officials stepped in because of reports of violence and inadequate mental and medical health.

Don Taylor, executive director of the state Department of Human Services, stressed Thursday the state has made significant progress in some areas, and that major improvement will not be made overnight.

Taylor said under the terms of the agreement, DHS has three years to implement the changes.

"It took four years to get youth services into this abysmal state," said Taylor, whose department oversees the schools. "There's simply no magic bullet."

While it commends the work of Taylor and his staff and notes "some progress," the July 17 report by monitor Joyce Burrell says most of the agreement's conditions were not met by April 30, the end of the period covered.

"Some setbacks were caused by the inability to hire enough staff to provide coverage and numerous complaints (of) abuse by students at the Oakley Training School," she wrote.

Staffers do not agree on or understand what constitutes abusive behavior, and that there is a need to re-evaluate staffing numbers when dealing with mental health issues, she wrote.

"In April 2006, two-thirds of the population at Oakley Training School and one half of the girls at Columbia were on at least one medication for a psychological/psychiatric problem," she wrote.

Some of the 47 conditions in which the state is not in compliance concern mental health issues, but the state is recruiting more staff and training current staffers, Taylor said.

Sheila Bedi, a Mississippi Youth Justice Project attorney who represents Oakley juveniles, said many of the abuses cited are inherent in such large facilities and will persist if the state continues to invest in incarceration over community-based programs.

The report is significant because it points to a problem with the culture of caring for children, she said. "Staffers who put their hands on children do that because they don't value children, not because there's not enough of them," she said.

The positive development, she said, is the significant improvement at Columbia.

"But in terms of what is happening at Oakley, there certainly hasn't been an improvement and, in many cases, things have gotten worse," Bedi said.

House Juvenile Justice Committee chairman, George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, said the best the state can hope for in the near future is to reduce the number of students at the schools and convince the Legislature to appropriate more money for community-based programs.

"It should not go unnoticed that it's going to cost the state of Mississippi some additional money," he said.

Taylor said the state has partially complied with nine of the agreement's terms, and has fully complied with 65.

Taylor said the department has fired at least two dozen youth services staffers at the training schools for "inappropriate conduct." He would not explain.

The state overall has done a better job of steering mentally ill children toward appropriate services, and the training schools are ending up with fewer severely mentally disabled children, Taylor said.