JMCSS Board honored with plaque; tables Title IX vote

The Jackson-Madison County School Board held its monthly meeting on June 13, and in addition to honoring the students involved with the recent production of “Annie Jr.,” the Board itself received some recognition.

Bobby Henderson, the chair of the Hardeman County Board of Education, was on hand to award the Board a plaque for their classification as a Board of Distinction in addition to them having won School Board of the Year in November.

“The Board of Distinction isn’t an award that gets handed out easily,” Henderson said. “Only four boards in our southwest region have ever won it – Haywood, Hardeman, Hardin and now Jackson-Madison County.”

As far as business of the Board went, Board member Harvey Walden moved to have a resolution regarding Title IX and the changes recently made by the administration of President Joe Biden in which allowances are being made for transgender students to have freedom of choice in which restroom and locker room.

The Board discussed different resolutions being made regarding Title IX, one that originated with Walden himself and another being generated by Tennessee School Board Association (TSBA).

“This says a lot about how we’re going above and beyond the state’s requirements for professional development,” said Board member Jason Compton. “We’ve worked as a group to do what we can to learn as much as we can about this job, what we can and can’t do and get training and ideas for things we could possibly do here that works for other school districts.”

When discussing the two resolutions during the work session on June 10, many of the comments among Board members and JMCSS Attorney Dale Thomas, the resolutions are very similar with a few differences, the main one being Walden’s resolution mentioned the Biden administration.

Walden submitted a revised resolution between Monday and Thursday that not all Board members had read. When it came time to vote, Walden, Marcia Moss and Debbie Gaugh voted for it while the other five present Board members abstained from voting because of a lack of knowledge of what’s in the resolutions.

They expressed a desire to table the vote until at least July because there could be injunctions at the state and federal level that could affect the changes, which happened on June 17 in Texas.

Here’s a look at other business conducted by the Board:

• The Board approved its first official policy regarding artificial intelligence, but they acknowledged that this policy will probably change fairly regularly because artificial intelligence is an ever-changing concept.
• They approved 46 candidates for tenure throughout the District, which is a noticeably higher number than the number of candidates they’ve had in recent years.
• Superintendent Marlon King gave a report on summer learning camp. He said regarding the third-grade retention law that was passed last year that there are 390 third-graders at summer learning camp, a number larger than last year. But of those 390, 144 students are required to attend, which is a smaller number than last year. “Parents see the value in allowing their children to participate in summer learning camp,” King said.
• The District has 75 positions to fill in faculty and staff before the start of school with 12 of them being special education positions.
• Attendance report: Eight of nine Board members were present with Janice Hampton being the absentee.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news