JCPS budgets for change
File photo
With a new middle school on the horizon, Jackson County Public Schools is budgeting for a changing school system. On May 6, JCPS made its official request for local funding from the Jackson County Commission.
The total ask from Jackson County Public Schools is $14.1 million, up about $1 million dollars for the 2025-26 school year as compared the 2024-25 school year. Most of that increase is attributed to a higher price for covering free school lunches, a larger sum moving through the JCPS budget to charter schools, funding the new JROTC program and a new HVAC and fire alarm system at Jackson Community School.
“Those are our large asks,” Ayers told commissioners.
For the first time last year commissioners funded JCPS to cover the cost of free breakfast and lunch for all students. Five schools in the district qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision, a non-pricing meal service option for schools in low-income areas, which means students at those schools already eat for free.
The CEP program through the United States Department of Agriculture allows schools to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications for free and reduced lunch. Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students categorically eligible for free meals based on their participation in other programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Family (TANF), or Medicaid benefits, as well as children who are certified for free meals without an application because they are homeless, migrant, enrolled in Head Start or in foster care.
Any district, group of schools in a district or individual school with 25% or more students participating in these programs qualifies for CEP.
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Once a certain school qualifies for the CEP program, thereby allowing all students at the school to access free breakfast and lunch, that school remains in the program and can continue offering no cost meals for a five-year period, after which the school is reassessed.
While those five schools in Jackson County currently qualify for the CEP program and students were set to receive no-cost meals, Ayers and her staff went to the commission last year to request funding to cover meal costs for students throughout the rest of the district. Commissioners agreed to cover the gap at a cost of $500,000.
This year, the price tag to cover free meals for all students in the district will be about $700,000, due to rising costs.
“If you’ve bought any groceries lately, or anything else, you will see that the cost is steadily rising for grocery items,” said Ayers. “I have to commend you as a county commission board that you did this for students. This is not happening across the state of North Carolina, so all students in JCPS and the Catamount School receive no cost breakfast and lunches every single day. You are the anomaly in our state and that is definitely something to be commended.”
According to Nutrition Director Laura Cabe, JCPS saw a 5% increase in meal participation over the course of the 2024-25 school year in providing free meals.
“We already had a pretty high participation rate before but implementing that has definitely helped,” Cabe said.
Jackson County Public Schools is also budgeting for an increase of up to 4% for all staff. This is based on what the state ultimately decides to do in its budget, which has not yet been passed.
“We don’t know what that will look like until they solidify their budget and pass it,” said Ayers. “We’ve heard 1.5% up to 4%.”
Last year JCPS received funds for a 2% increase for staff and then the state mandated a 3% raise for all non-certified support staff. The school system used money from its fund balance to cover the difference.
“We cannot continue in that path of using our fund balance because we will exhaust all of our fund balance,” said Ayers. “I do hope that the state gives our folks 4%; they all deserve it.”
The HVAC and fire alarm system will cost about $500,000 and are needed for the Jackson Community School building after the school board voted to keep the school in its current location following discussions about possibly moving it onto the campus of Smoky Mountain High School.
“The site is an old site as you’re well aware of and it needs a lot of work,” said Ayers. “The HVAC systems for both heating and air are, for lack of a better word, limping along. It is band-aided together… the fire alarm system is functioning, but it is very, very old and doesn’t communicate well with all of our other systems.”
JCPS is requesting an increase for its local supplements, one tool that public schools use to retain and recruit teachers.
“Us in the far west school districts don’t do a good job of offering supplements to our certified and non-certified employees,” said Ayers. “This is one way that we can retain staff over the long term.”
When Ayers first took over as superintendent, non-certified staff were not receiving any local supplement. That has steadily increased with one-time supplements of $200, $500 and $600 for the last two years in a row.
“We want to raise that to $1,500,” said Ayers.
Certified staff receive $2,000 supplements.
“Our neighboring counties, specifically two of them, are not offering anything, so we do see that as an advantage,” said Ayers. “Our team has talked recently over the last several weeks, we are getting more and more interest from our neighboring counties of staff that want to come and work here and I think that’s a testimony to what you all as a county commission and what we all do to honor our employees.”
JCPS is budgeting for the JROTC program that just started in January at Smoky Mountain High School. The program currently has 29 participants and is set to have 60 enrolled in the fall. Students at both Smoky Mountain and Jackson County Early College are eligible to participate. The current salary for both of the current JROTC instructors is $14,826 per months and the United States Army reimburses the school system for half of that amount, about $7,589 per month.
“We definitely need funds to continue the process of that as a recurring program that’s going to continue to grow,” said Ayers.
Like other school systems in the region, JCPS has seen declining enrollment over the last several years. At the conclusion of 2024 the school system had an Average Daily Membership (ADM) of 3,473. For the upcoming year JCPS is projected to be around 3,338.
“We’ll be down about 80 kids compared to the current year we sit in right now,” said Ayers.
Administration thinks that the decline in student population is due to students attending home school, charter schools and private schools.
As required by North Carolina law, JCPS pays charter schools a certain allotment for each student living in Jackson County who attends a charter school, regardless of whether that school is in Jackson County or not. For the coming school year that number is expected to be over $1 million, out of the $14.1 million-dollar local request.
“Any child that resides in Jackson County if they choose to go to a charter school, whether it’s in Jackson County or Buncombe County or Swain or Macon, they get the funds, that pass through to us,” said Ayers.
“When you look at how much money we pass through, I respect the right of any person to take their child where they choose to,” Ayers continued. “But I have also been a parent of a kid that went to other schools, and I paid for it out of my pocket. So, whether you believe or don’t believe, I think that me standing here and asking you for money every year that I then turn around and give to someone else, just doesn’t seem fair.”
Of the total budget request, about $8.2 million will go toward operations, $1.6 toward supplements, just under $600,000 toward counselor positions, $221,000 to JROTC personnel and equipment, just under $1 million for local supplements and costs that exceed state allotments, $700,000 to school nutrition for free school meals, up to $1.5 million for charter schools and $500,000 for repairs at Jackson Community School.
Over the coming year Jackson County Public Schools will continue planning for its new middle school. The county received a $52 million grant from the Department of Public Instruction for the project and the county recently purchased the parcel where the school will be built.
