It has been six months since the Jackson Public School District was declared by the State Board of Education to be in a state of extreme emergency and three months since the creation of the Better Together commission which was created to ensure that JPS would not be taken over by the state. Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent says that the MDE is working closely with JPS to improve the district.
“We did not take their plan for approval this month because we are continuing to work with them,” said Dr. Carey Wright state Superintendent of Education. “The one they have submitted is almost 400 pages and we wanted to make sure that it accurately reflected what was in the audit.”
Wright added that JPS has been cooperative with them and they are looking to work together with the MDE to ensure that JPS students receive the best education possible. While there has never been a deadline attached to getting JPS back in good standing with MDE, the MDE and members of the Better Together commission have said that the corrective action plan is not something that will happen overnight. However, Wright said that once the corrective action plan has been put together and approved, there would be a timeline in place.
“We are hoping to bring the corrective action plan to the board in March,” Wright. “Some things are going to take longer to clear. For example, the graduation piece, we know that they had 149 students that graduated last year that should not have graduated. The only way that we are going to know that is to wait until graduation occurs in the spring of 2018 and then we will have to go back in and examine all of those records to make sure that they have not graduated anybody that they were not supposed to graduate.”
Wright added that JPS can get to work immediately on getting the facilities in compliance with all of the MDE standards.
