Jackson Free Press

After voting last week to close one school and reorganize others, the Jackson Public Schools district is trying to explain the rationale for its decision.

"The administration won't just sit up and plan things to aggravate people," interim Superintendent Jayne Sargent said at a community meeting last night. "We're trying to think of what is the best for the students we serve, and that's the way that we started to have this conversation--what would be best for all of our children?"

Sargent spoke at Chastain Middle School, where JPS held one of several community meetings to address the rezoning plan. Under the plan, which will go into effect for the next school year, Academic and Performing Arts Complex students from Chastain will move to what is now Bailey Magnet High School, along with APAC students from Peeples and Powell middle schools.

The district has presented the rezoning plan as a way to account for population shifts around the city, as well as a way to make special programs, such as APAC, more efficient by consolidating them. Sargent said that each year the district loses teachers and staff who retire or leave for different reasons. Under the rezoning plan, the district can reorganize in such a way that it does not have to replace some of those staff members who leave.

The plan should help the district avoid "economic crisis," Sargent said, without firing teachers.

"We were trying to be good stewards (of taxpayer dollars)," she said. "We were not just dreaming of ways to see that children were not served well. Contrary to that thought, we were trying to dream of ways that students would be served very well."

At a school-board meeting Tuesday night, the district's administration and board members faced a standing-room-only crowd of angry parents and students who asked the board to reconsider its decision.

Board member Otha Burton asked Sargent to better explain the district's rationale for the rezoning in community meetings like the one last night, but did not back down from the plan itself.

"At the end of the day, all things considered, the decision has been made," he said.

A schedule of community meetings is on the district's website. The district will also post revised zone maps, beginning with those for Bailey Magnet High School.