Top-heavy is the verdict Steve Wilson gave for JPS over at Mississippi Matters. He reported:
According to the audit report by the Mississippi Department of Education that was released in August 2017, the MDE said there were 959 staff members at the JPS central office. The district says that the MDE counted employees not assigned to a particular school, such as bus drivers and mechanics, as part of the central office. The JPS says its central office has 265 employees...
Using a spreadsheet of employee salaries obtained through a records request, the JPS central office payroll adds up $11,539,999.61 annually. Six employees make more than $100,000 annually, while 29 make at least $70,000 per year or more.
JPS has more than 25,000 students.
For those keeping score at home, that's one central office employee for every 96 students. According to the last available budget from the JPS for the 2018 school year, the system spends only 46.7 percent of its money on instruction.
Mr. Wilson compares these statistics to those of other large school districts in Mississippi. The picture is not pretty.
However, Mr. Wilson also delves into the maintenance budget at JPS since many of the projects for the proposed JPS bond issue consist of deferred maintenance:
The reason for the bond issue is deferred maintenance. Last year, the JPS proposed spending only $500,000 or 0.38 percent of its budget on maintenance on more than $152 million worth in buildings and facilities. The year before, the district spend $800,000, again only 0.38 percent of its budget.
In comparison, Rankin County spent 16.7 percent of its $257,789,671 budget on maintenance for its more than $131 million in buildings and facilities.
DeSoto County spent 10.6 percent of its $300,131,031 budget in 2016 on maintenance on its more than $369 million worth of buildings and other facilities.
Read the rest of the article and do it please, for the children. Someone needs to look out for their interests.
34 comments:
Thank you Mr. Fish -- You are absolutely right, we have to do this for the children. It takes a lot of dedicated hard-working administrators to bring this together and mold it into something workable. Somebody has to look out for their interests. I'm sure this isn't about money. It's all about the children.
Da link be broke.
Thank you, Governor Bryant. You had the only chance these kids will ever have in cleaning JPS up...and you choked.
you should never fund maintenance with one-time money. It has to be a decent amount of the budget. The state for all of its flaws does this well. They use one-time monies for upgrades and budgeted money to maintain roofs, mechanical, etc. That is why Jackson is in the toilet. There is no excuse.
How many dozens of these jobs are "no show" positions?
Agreed 2:16. LEAD
Taking over JPS had no upside for Governor Bryant.
The potentially explosive "community" reaction to a state takeover, just wasn't worth it.
Meanwhile, students pay the ultimate price for a public education best described as all "public" and no "education".
I am not a Phil Bryant fan at all but one look under the umbrella of JPS showed him and his staff it could not be fixed. Bryant and his team would have been crucified by the media, civil rights groups, JPS management and anyone else profiting off this scam. One look and they said let it sink, ain’t worth the publicity.
Again 3:29, that’s not leadership. It’s cowardice and those kids deserve better from state leadership. Yes, some of them are worthless pieces of shit that will never out to anything. However, many do want to better themselves. The current system is doomed, I’ll concede that much, by t will never sink . It’ll stay afloat just like it is until the state of MS steps in. I would argue that the lack of interest in Phil’s part is blatant racism. He didn’t give a damn enough to help...just doesn’t care about those poor brown kids.
JPS dug this hole years ago when incompetent leadership found out they could hire and expand unnecessary administration without accounting to anybody. The parents then and now, are not familiar with the concept of questioning authority, so the school boards could add fluff jobs to the payroll and hand out favors at will without having to justify the spending. They never figured on the complete academic collapse of the district and the scrutiny that follows. Now, the new board being of the same ilk, cannot see a way out without paying the same ole bills and paying the same ole salaries. A takeover will come inevitably, but it will not be enough. The hole deepens.
Leadership is about doing the right things in spite of polls. When Reagan was told by his staff in the early 80s that he needed to change economic policies because they weren’t popular and working , he replied “Be patient. I’m not changing because this is the right thing to do. It’s your job to change the public’s perception of our policies.”
Also keep in mind, Reagan could not have cared less about perception and fired all the air traffic controllers after he warned them not to strike. They did and they lost their job.
Now, that’s leadership. Remember those events, Pathetic Phil???
This from incompetent Democrats doing it their way. Pure ignorance of realism, budgeting and work ethic. So sad for the kids that want to excel.
Jackson is s deep state of lost.
Phil needs a set!!! I've heard his wife keeps them in her purse.
None of you have a clue. If Phil would have signed the order, on Day One a Conservator would have been appointed to clean house by reducing administrative positions and shutting down schools. Day One. He is not in charge of widely squat. He signs it and gets out of the way and yet here we are 9 months later and they are still studying the problem and asking for a bond bill. Oh good grief. WAKE UP!
Feel is a coward.
It was the only important item on his plate last year and he turned into the cowardly lion.
He doesn't care one flip about the black kids.
If Phil had acted in accordance with the role of a leader, he would have felt his own petard sliding up his backside, as he would have been skewered by those who make livings off the democrat plantation.
And that notoriety would have dashed his hopes for a federal appointment to some meaningless, traveling position.
But, alas....he might as well put his boots in the closet and get out the sandals. He's toast anyway.
Spending less than one-half of one percent on building maintenance is reckless malfeasance.
Where is that big mouth pompous ass Bardwell now?
Does anyone REMOTELY believe that a Gov Jim Hood wouldn't have punted EXACTLY as Bryant did?
Both MSU and Ole Miss have 1 employee for each 4 students.
Clearly, most of you would rather have JPS as an poster child for how bad "the others" are than to do the right thing.
I expect leadership, if they have an ounce of patriotism, to do the right thing, not act in their political self-interest.
I'm sick of " we're not as bad as they are" politics.
That's no defense, that's a lame excuse.
What is the right think to do @9:25?
Spending less than one-half of one percent on building maintenance is reckless malfeasance.
Does anyone get the numbers that Wilson is reporting?
RCSD spends $43 MILLION on maintenance.
Desoto County spends $31 MILLION on maintenance.
JPS spends between $500,000 and $800,000.
That should outrage every single constituent of every single constituency inside of Jackson.
That is intellectual corruption (pay attention Antar Lumumba and Robert Blaine and Donna Ladd and Othor Cain and Sam R Hall and Melvin Priester) of the highest order. It SHOULD BE A CRIMINAL OFFENSE.
Why aren't all the do-gooders, cheerleaders, foundations, civil rights leaders, elected officials and Bennie F'ing Thompson flooding the media with demands for change and marching on JPS HQ right this very minute?
So, JPS administration uses the poor conditions in schools and classrooms to beg for more money... then when they get it, they promptly spend it on THEMSELVES.
Less than half of their budget makes it to the classroom, and almost NONE to maintenance.
VOTE 'NO' TO THE SCHOOL BOND!
Giving more money to JPS is like giving a drunk more liquor!
Clean house at JPS and get rid of the parasites who are gobbling up all the money for themselves!
Canto is just as bad. It’s a jobs program and they have Nissan money to spend. Pitiful schools though.
SPOONER FOR SUPERINTENDENT!!!!!!
The MS Lottery is the answer to our Educational problems. Below are 2017 LA funded State Treasury. DO YOU THINK MS COULD USE THIS........
As of fiscal year 2017, the Lottery has transferred more than $3.4 billion to the state treasury. More than $159 million was transferred from sales in fiscal year 2017. The Louisiana Lottery ranks second among other U.S. jurisdictional lotteries in percentage of revenue transferred to its government.
DO YOU THINK THIS WORKS??????
Lottery money tends to migrate into pet projects regardless of what the law says. The money grabbers get very creative.
Lottery would be redirected like casino funds to general "Slush"(for lack of a better word) fund. Management by consolidation and cutting wasteful spending and fraud would solve most government funding challenges. But it does take work and strong leadership.
Vote hell no
Put the jps criminals behind bars.
4:19 Of course it works. New Orleans schools which were among the worst in the country are now among the best. Lottery money has meant dramatic improvement in the quality of education throughout the state of Louisiana and the taxpayers have a virtual holiday. And if you'll send me just $99.95 I'll send you a prayer cloth that was taken from the napkin used by St. Peter at the last supper. IT WORKS.
Honestly, it is going to take someone from the AA community to right the ship. A white man/woman could not step in & set things straight at JPS. It is going to take a well respected someone that doesn't care what people think to get it done. Someone is going to have to step in & make budget cuts in the right places & frankly, tick some folks off. Does that person or even that group of people exist? So far....no.
Look, I think JPS is poorly run, but Wilson’s figures on the maintenance budget may be off.
Linked below is the proposed budget he cites for the 0.38% figure. The category he’s talking about is listed on page 16 beside the description “Building Improvement Services” and is said to encompass expenditures on “district-wide facility improvements and maintenance.” There’s another category for “Operations/Maintenance of Plant Services” for which $29,043,709.15 is budgeted. It’s said to include spending on”facilities,” among other items.
I don’t know but suspect that the former category is limited to facilities all schools in the district use, whereas maintenance on all other facilities is encompassed by the latter category.
https://www.jackson.k12.ms.us/cms/lib/MS01910533/Centricity/Domain/133//business/budget_proposed.pdf
JPS should probably be more specific in the budget document. Wilson should probably try to talk to someone at JPS before writing.
Fair enough.
This maintenance deficiency is the same problem that the city of Jackson has. Hmmmm....what a coincidence.
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