JMCSS makes a few more decisions before new board members join

The Jackson-Madison County School Board met one final time in its current form on Thursday and approved the reassembling of a student advisory council.

The council met for a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic as a liaison committee between the Board and the students.

It consisted of four students, but the Board discussed this week to increase that number to include a student from each high school.

This would increase the committee number to seven students with one each representing Early College High, Jackson Academic STEAM Academy, Jackson Central-Merry, Liberty Tech, Madison Academic, North Side and South Side.

There was discussion about including middle schools in that as well, but the discussion progressed to possibly forming essentially student subcommittees at the middle school level that might report to the high school committee.

The Board also approved the auction sale of buses once they’ve been stripped of usable parts. They’d been scheduled for an auction earlier this month but that was postponed once there were concerns about if there’d been adequate notice for the auction.

There was also an issue regarding a case that had been brought before the disciplinary hearing board. Without discussing any particulars of the matter publicly because of privacy concerns for the student, the Board voted to back the decision in the matter made by Superintendent Marlon King.

During the work session three days earlier, there had been discussion about the disciplinary hearing board, and King would like to revamp that.

In years past, the board has been made of five administrators that have to meet every week to hear complaints brought before them. King would like all administrators in the district to be members of the board and they rotate who attends the meetings each week so it’s not such a burden on five of them.

The three outgoing members of the Board – Sherry Franks, Janice Hampton and Kenneth Newman – were honored in their final Board meeting as well.

After the meeting, Board member Jason Compton met with local media to discuss goals for the district this year.

One of the things he discussed was how the metrics for the district are slowly trending upward over the last couple years and how big that is.

“Our school district is so big that moving three or four percentage points upward is a big deal,” Compton said. “In a smaller district, it doesn’t take that much to move up that much, but for us it does.

“And if you continue to see this upward movement, that says nothing but good things about how the district and everyone in it are working hard for the educational purposes of the children of Jackson and Madison County. So once the public can see the numbers that are under embargo for now about how schools that were already improving are continuing to improve, I think more people will get more excited about the direction this district is going in.”

Attendance report: Every member of the Board was present for the meeting.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news