Jackson County board holds work session to explain why per-pupil figures vary widely across district

Jackson County Public Schools held a special-called budget work session May 6 to explain why per-pupil spending numbers published earlier this school year vary so widely among district schools and what the figures do — and do not — represent.

Board member Dr. Harris opened the meeting by stressing the format: "This is a call to work session. There's no action gonna be taken this evening," and said the goal was to help the board and the public understand how the district calculates school allotments.

Chief Finance Officer Christy Walker told the board the district begins school allotments with a base allotment and then layers formulas tied to enrollment and other multipliers. "We start with a base allotment of $5,000 per school," she said, and then staff apply an allotted average daily membership (ADM), a poverty multiplier and a small-school multiplier to calculate each school's annual allocation for instructional supplies and some discretionary spending.

The presenters emphasized ADM — the count of students enrolled on specific state-funded days — as the primary driver of state-funded positions and dollar allotments. State funding for positions is determined by set ratios (for example, one teacher per a given number of students at each grade band) and a separate class-size requirement for early grades that further shapes how many state-funded teachers a district receives.

To illustrate the multipliers, staff used a sample calculation for a 135-student school with a per-pupil allotment (PPA) of $3,250. Applying the poverty and small‑school multipliers (each 1.3 in the district's formula) produces an example per‑pupil instructional‑supply allocation of roughly $7,414.88 in that simplified model. The board was told the multipliers affect material allocations only and do not directly create additional state‑funded teacher positions.

District staff also reviewed how state, federal and local pots of money are used differently. Christy Walker and other staff explained that state position allotments cover many classroom teacher salaries, while federal funds account for about 11% of the district's total funding in the presenters' estimate and are often restricted by program rules. Board members and staff pointed out that many services provided by outside nonprofits — including clinicians placed through programs such as Heights and Blue Ridge Health — are not district employees and therefore were not included in the per‑pupil spending figures the district shared earlier.

Laura (program director, multilingual services) described services for multilingual learners and the lag between rising student counts and state funding: "The state funding is the average of the last 3 years of students identified as multilingual learners," she said, and explained that the district currently uses about 2.6 state‑funded positions for ESL work plus two additional positions the budget committee funds locally. Staff said federal funding for multilingual services remains relatively small and that the district has added locally funded positions and considered bilingual teacher‑assistant roles to accelerate language acquisition for students arriving with little or no English.

Board members pressed staff on equity perceptions sparked by the December per‑pupil report, calling out Jackson Community School as an extreme example (district staff said the December figure for that school was about $37,000 per pupil). District leaders said that some of the apparent inflation stems from fixed costs and certification requirements that do not scale down in very small programs and from services and positions required to operate specialty programs (for example, ensuring certified teachers for specific high‑school courses).

District leaders said they have already repurposed positions at Jackson Community School for the coming school year. Staff said the school will have "four or fewer" fewer positions than it has this year; two of those reductions result from moving the school's small middle‑school program to Smoky Mountain Elementary (staff said the move will shift a teacher, a teacher assistant and about five or six students). Board members and staff emphasized the change is a reallocation, not a removal of services for students districtwide.

The presentation also included two broader financing notes the board asked staff to emphasize: first, the district passes through state funding for students who live in Jackson County but attend charter schools; presenters said last year that pass‑through totaled nearly $1 million and that about 460 district residents currently attend charter schools. Second, the largest share of the district's budget pays people — presenters said roughly 70% of expenses are salaries.

No formal actions or votes were taken at the work session. Staff and board members said the intent of the session was to provide context for public questions about the per‑pupil numbers and to inform future budget discussions, including the board's work on middle‑school reconfigurations and the superintendent's upcoming funding request to county commissioners.

The meeting closed after board members thanked staff for the presentation and asked that district leaders continue explaining the numbers to the public in accessible terms.