Jackson Schools Give 5% Raise Across Board

The Jackson County School Board’s new budget includes a five percent raise for all employees.

Jackson County Director of Schools Jason Hardy said the district-wide raise is an important step in staying competitive with other counties. Hardy said the system will receive less money from the state’s TISA formula this year because of a decrease in enrollment.

“I think we finished the year at 1,338,” Hardy said. “And it was, so you’re looking at about 50 kids, it was about 50 kids down from the start of (the) year before that. Hopefully this year we’ll know here in the next couple weeks whether our enrollment’s kind of trending up. I mean there’s been a lot of people coming.”

Hardy said there are multiple causes for the decrease in enrollment including an increase in homeschooling and families moving to and from the area for various reasons.

“We hope that that trend is moving back upwards and we gain some students this year,” Hardy said. “That would be the ideal thing, but if not then, you know, we’ll adapt and adjust.”

Hardy said their TISA funding is calculated based on an average of the district’s enrollment throughout the year.

“What they do is they start out and and there are nine periods,” Hardy said. “And out of those nine, October 15 would be the first one, but really it’s September 15. So September 15 comes, whatever your enrollment numbers are. October 15, so on. At the end of the year, they take the average of what it was on those days.”

Hardy said their school nutrition budget has stayed consistent as the district was recently approved to use the Community Eligibility Provision to provide students with free lunch for four more years. He said their reserve funds have increased by some $2.4 million since last year.

The budget also includes money for the system’s new CTE facility. The School Board approved the budget Thursday night.