Jackson should close or consolidate 16 schools, Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Errick Greene suggested as he presented a draft optimization plan at a school board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 3. His recommendation would consolidate the student populations for 13 elementary, two middle and one high school.
“There’s an opportunity for our programs to be more competitive and to provide for even greater opportunities to show up and really dominate across the board,” Greene said. “There’s no reason why Jackson Public Schools in the City of Jackson shouldn’t be dominating the board.”
Greene said the district’s declining enrollment and facility issues present financial concerns but also decrease opportunities for competitive academic programs. He displayed a graph showing that between the 2015-16 school year and the current year, JPS enrollment has declined by 8,494 students, or an average of 4% or more per year. This proposal is designed to maximize district resources, he said.
The plan would leave JPS with six high schools, most of which are located in the northern part of the city. The district’s International Baccalaureate and APAC programs would be consolidated into K-8 schools and student populations of the buildings slated for closure would merge into other schools. Screenshot courtesy JPS
“When you have less students in a school, you spend more per school,” Greene told the board. “This optimization or right-sizing is a way of ensuring that we have the optimal resources, classrooms, teachers, technology, restrooms, HVAC (and) all the things that we in many places don’t even blink or think about because they’re right there.”
The Jackson school district has 465 staff vacancies, including 178 certified employees, the superintendent said. There are also about 80 teachers on special non-renewable licenses.
“This issue of stabilizing our staff is very real to us,” Greene said. “With fewer people going into the field of education or getting licensed to be teachers, we are competing across the board with other districts, let alone other fields of work in other industries.”
The proposal makes significant changes in the South Jackson and West Jackson areas of the district. Greene said that although
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