This post was originally published on June 29.
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.
29 comments:
If it weren’t for KF reporting the facts of this fiasco, there would be nothing but cricket chirps from the media outlets. The taxpayers are being duped!!!!!!!
Thanks Phil for doing nothing when you had the opportunity.
Why doesn’t anyone else in the media report on this? Incompetence? Laziness? Fear of being called racist?
@ 2:02
You don't understand the "pushback" a state takeover would have induced.
The parents, teachers, community leaders, city councilmen and the large majority of citizens would fight a state takeover. It would only be viewed through a lens of racial injustice. JPS has no interest in any "outsiders" telling it what to do. It and the community it serves only want more money. They have an excuse for every failure and always point to "resources" as the causation of its problems.
JPS cannot and will never provide a decent education for its students due to the fact the community is happy with things the way they are.
Just keep sending money. We'll tell you when to stop.
The State of Mississippi (Governor Phil Bryant) was NEVER going to issue a takeover order for JPS. The deliberation period was just for appearances.
The raw unvarnished truth is that no mortal can save JPS. Failure is built into the system and the handful of folks that really do care are powerless and they are quickly marginalized when they raise objections to the way things are done.
The Newark, New Jersey, schools have been under State auspices for over 20 years and no (as in zero) progress has been made. They are actually worse off because everybody who can move has moved. Only the dregs and the unteachables are left.
Until JPS fires the staff and administrators, bulldozes the buildings, burns the files and the textbooks, and salts the Earth that the students trod, and start all over, no learning will take place.
So this means we are supposed to keep our mouths shut? We are taxed by these buffoons who can’t run a district! Yet when we voice ourselves we are called racists! Ignorance, corruption and belief that we owe them a handout truly runs amuck at JPS
The JPS class of administrators gets paid until the kids reach the age of 18, then the MDOC class of administrators gets theirs.
So this means we are supposed to keep our mouths shut?
It means vote No Tuesday.
It was racist not to take over JPS and doom those children to the status quo of failure.
Spirited conversation on Nextdoor going on right now about the election.......they referenced this blog with a link.
3:08, 3:06 A wise man once said,"Take no counsel from those who would tell you what others cannot do." JPS is a deep dark hole allowed to deepen by people who have been misled and told not to question their incompetent leadership. Accountability has been practically nonexistent because these people are not versed in self government being raised on the idea that "they" and not "us" control everything anyway. But if you pay close attention and do not be so quick to condemn these human beings you will find that they are slowly beginning to realize that they can question leadership and that they don't have to be victims if they don't want to be. This bond issue will be a first step towards accountability and perhaps the rebirth of JPS. Some of us haven't given up.
Just shut up and give us your money you racists white people!
Tom Head the Nextdoor Bully:
I wish folks would stop quoting Jackson Jambalaya’s inaccurate sound bites on this issue and just tell the truth.
~~~~~
Kingfish is a talented guy (and I’ve probably known him a lot longer than you have), but he gets too worked up over this stuff and sometimes as a result of this he fails to represent the data in an accurate way.
4:45, you could always flee. We lived in Jackson and got tired of having stuff stolen, horrible roads, local government only concerned with self enrichment (Preister may be the exception), unspeakably bad schools, law enforcement hamstrung by local government, and high taxes.
Fine. Refute the numbers. I've put them all up here as well as all the JPS documents. use numbers to refute them, not logical labyrinths.
A commenter in the previously posted thread pointed out to you that Steve Wilson was slinging sloppy nonsense against the wall when he claimed that only 0.38% of the district budget went to maintenance. On page 13 of the linked document, Function 2600 indicates that the correct percentage is substantially higher than that.
http://www.jacksonms.gov/DocumentCenter/View/3391
I see that neither Wilson nor you have looked into that in the interim. Telling.
The war is coming. Peggy Noonan's "Protected Class" versus all of us.
I'm taking the $500,000 figure from either a JPS or City Council discussion. Have to go back and look it up. However, the real point is the extra fees for that refinance were highway robbery.
The goal of every soul working at JPS is PERS retirement, not educating children. Most with kids in the system either don't understand that or don't care that it's a fact.
That's the root of the problem. Everything else is just irrelevant chatter.
Item 5600 on the above linked budget states $500,000 or .38% for building maintenance and facility improvements.
August 5 @11:29:
As with any business or institution, there are people in positions who are employed for the wrong reasons and should not be in the system and JPS is no different.
As the husband of a JPS principal,I can assure you that PERS retirement is not the goal of every JPS employee and that there are more JPS teachers and individual school principals and assistant principals who truly want to teach and educate students than you realize.
JPS definitely has issues that need to be addressed. JPS needs to cull out the people who are there only for a paycheck and have the means to attract and hire teachers who want to teach.Is more money the answer? Probably not, unless we can change the culture, environment and family values of the communities where the students come from.
"As the husband of a JPS principal,I can assure you that PERS retirement is not the goal of every JPS employee and that there are more JPS teachers and individual school principals and assistant principals who truly want to teach and educate students than you realize."
Then, since we can NOT change the culture, environment and family values of communities, I assume you and your wife are willing to admit hers is a lost cause? And that leaves what? Frustration and PERS retirement.
The problem is our put of touch mayor is a lap dog for JPS... they own him and pull the strings. How else could you explain it. He has absolutely no backbone and just bends over. He's there little b!t@h... yep... that's the one... sad excuse for a man. He's a little boy and daddy is JPS.
Why not give families vouchers and allow competition among schools. I live in NE Jackson and send my 3 kids to St. Andrews. There is no reason my kids should have that right over a kid from a poorer zip code. It's a real shame that people don't understand this. It's all to do with unions and politics. If you really want equality then do as Trump suggested allowing 13k per child and let them choose a school. JPS would oppose this as they would loose money due to lack of demand.
"Then, since we can NOT change the culture, environment and family values of communities, I assume you and your wife are willing to admit hers is a lost cause? And that leaves what? Frustration and PERS retirement."
There are plenty of days where she is frustrated, but when I see her former students and parents of former students see her away from school and talk about their accomplishments, I can see the frustration change quickly to a smile on her face. She may not be able to change the family values of every student's family that attends her school, or the culture of the community, but she is making a positive impact on the lives of her students, which will hopefully provide the seeds for change.
"To help yourself, help others. Whatever good you do travels a circle and returns to you many times over- but remember, life isn't about what you get, it's about what you become." Dennis Gaskill
A voucher won't come close to paying the freight at St. Andrews.
@5:45 "It was racist NOT to take over JPS and doom those children to the status quo of failure." Ahem, that's what the power structure wants didn't you know? For example, the Oxford plantation COULD step up and provide some leadership....especially with their heritage of hate that led to a $600 million endowment they have at present. They could turn that district into a model for the nation, AND redeem their unholy legacy as THE University of Mississippi, but NEVER! they cry. But keep those federal dollars rolling in they say, because for every other contract and income stream they're making $$$ and making deals that even the judges look the other way for. If this was proposed to the board of trustees, I could see Giuseppe Zaluchi straight out of the Godfather sitting on the board of Old Miss and say, "They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls."
Wait. I thought JPS was an employment agency for Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Close JPS.
Close the zoo.
Hire and train more cops.
Fix the streets.
5:45 needs to take medicine.
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