Jackson Community School will remain in current location
The Helene recovery dashboard provides a number of useful statistics. State Auditor’s Office photo
After weeks of consideration and input from public, students and staff, the Jackson County Board of Education has decided to keep Jackson Community School in its current location and has committed to recruiting more students to the school and revamping campus offerings.
“Overwhelmingly, the responses that I read and heard were to not move the community school to the high school campus,” said Chairman Wes Jamison during the Feb. 25 school board meeting.
Jackson Community School is Jackson County’s alternative learning center and is the most expensive school to run in the district, per pupil. Late last year, the school board decided to investigate whether it was fiscally responsible to keep operating the school as is. Together with staff at both Jackson Community and Smoky Mountain High School, JCPS administration had come up with a plan to relocate the community school to the high school’s campus as an option for the school board to consider.
The conversation around Jackson Community School came about in part because the building, which was constructed in the mid 1950s, is in need of a new HVAC system. The whole repair will cost the school system around $450,000.
Enrollment at the school is currently at the lowest point it has ever been, according to Superintendent Dana Ayers, with 48 students enrolled at the end of last semester. Of those, 44 were high school students and four were middle school students. Ten years ago, the school was serving 102 students.
“That number has declined over time and we collectively as a curriculum team and a leadership team are trying to figure out why or what we can do to address that,” said Ayers. “Our board also has an obligation to consider the cost and financial benefit to operate a school with less than 50 students.”
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Low enrollment has caused a reduction in the array of classes offered at Jackson Community School, especially within the Career and Technical Education Department.
The goal of Jackson Community School is to serve students who learn better in an alternate setting, or those that have been suspended or expelled from other schools.
While most middle school students attending JCS are placed there by either their Individualized Education Program (IEP) team or the superintendent, high school students can choose to attend the school.
There are currently 17 full-time staff members and three part-time staff members working at Jackson Community School, some of whom work shared positions with other schools in the system.
In addition to its regular board meeting in February, the Board of Education also held a community listening session at Jackson Community School in order to give staff and students a chance to weigh in on the issue.
Overwhelmingly, students, staff and the public were in favor of keeping Jackson Community School in its current, separate location and not integrating the school onto the high school campus.
Emily Moore, a 10th grader at JCS said she often felt overlooked in middle school and struggled with attendance.
“Before I started at JCS, I had little hope for my future. But JCS provided the resources, structure and support I had been missing for so long, helping me grow in ways I never thought possible,” said Moore. “It’s not just about having access to resources, it’s about making sure they remain effective through individualized attention and quality support. If the system that helped us grow becomes too stretched, will it still be able to create real change for the students who need it most?”
Becca Bailey is the school social worker at Jackson Community School. During the listening session she told board members that 85% of the student body at JCS lives in at-risk households. That means they’re at risk of homelessness or are living with food insecurities.
“That’s something I’ve really been focusing on this year is trying to bridge that gap with our students,” said Bailey. “We can see it every day that these students are food insecure and some of them are at fear of not having food the next day.”
In addition to normal school operations and alternative learning styles, Jackson Community School offers a host of important resources to its students — fully stocked support closet with food and supplies that is available to both students and their families, laundry and showers. Staff at the school expressed concerned about whether and how these resources could be transferred into a larger school setting.
Students and staff also addressed misconceptions around the alternative learning center in the broader community as a hurdle to recruiting more students who could benefit from what the school has to offer.
“Whenever I was first going to come over here, I was told that this school was for all bad kids, so I was scared to come,” said Pagan Bradley. “I think that’s also a reason why there are not that many more students here is because they’re told that this is for bad children.”
The listening session involved dozens of heartfelt testimonials from current and former students about how their lives were changed by the support they received at Jackson Community School.
“We appreciate all of the feedback we received,” said Board Member Abbigail Clayton.
When the time came for the board to make a decision about the school at its Feb. 25 meeting, every board member was in favor of keeping the school where it is and making an effort to revitalize the campus.
“If the school was moved to Smoky Mountain High, there isn’t really room for growth, and the goal is for growth,” said Board Member Kim Moore. “We need to step back and maybe table this and just work on the school and the growth.”
Two board members mentioned an idea they’d heard in discussion with the community about alternative learning centers in other counties that are located on their community college campuses, and therefore have expanded access to different course offerings.
“Obviously that’s not something that would take place immediately, it’s something that would have to be looked into,” said Jamison.
Ultimately, board members did not feel like they could put JCS students back on the campus that many of them chose to leave because it was not working for them.
“It is a school of choice,” said Clayton. “We heard from several students that went there [JCS] because Smoky Mountain High School was overwhelming, so we can’t put those kids back on that campus.”
Board members did not lay out a specific plan for paying for needed upgrades to the school but expressed willingness to allocate the funds.
“Any time you have a smaller school your student expenditure goes up,” said Board Member Gayle Woody. “I think we have to be realistic and when we’re going to really meet the needs of those students who need that separate environment it will cost more, but the cost will be worth it.”
While working in Jackson County Public Schools, Board Member Lynn Dillard was part of the team that originally wrote the grant for Jackson Community School. She said that the goal from the outset was to be different from a typical school.
“We wanted to be totally different. We didn’t want it to smell like, taste like, dress like a school, we wanted it to be a loving culture with a very supportive staff,” said Dillard. “I am so impressed with those students and with the leadership in that school because today it is exactly the culture that we wanted to have in an alternative school. It’s not about discipline, it’s about supporting kids.”
