Somewhat surprised by how bad some of these numbers are. Not surprising that JPS enrollment is cratering and some of these rural districts, but surprised that Ocean Springs hasn't grown. I guess they just aren't attracting families? Or are they losing that many to private schools?
Going to be interesting to see what happens in the Fall 27/Spring 28 school year, when the education freedom tax credit goes into effect. I would assume enough people will contribute $1,700 to that program that it will be a meaningful number of kids that are able to escape bad school districts (or just bad situations in otherwise decent school districts). Something like 35-40% of Mississippi households have a high enough net income tax liability to participate (which means you need to pay net $2,000 in taxes, which is insane that that is less than half the state). Let's say 10% of the eligible households participate, that'd be up to $60M (after the max 10% going to administrative expenses and overhead) to fund scholarships for elementary and high school students across the state. Not sure how those scholarships have to be prioritized (or are allowed to be prioritized), but that's probably 2% of the public school students in the state that could get the equivalent of a scholarship equal to the median Mississippi private school tuition. Or 4% if their goal was to do half the median tuition.
ETA: Also crazy how much Jackson Public schools lost. I assume some of that is to charter schools? But shows you just how bad of a deal Jackson public schools are, in that their enrollment is plummeting while the MSA population as a whole has been growing, if somewhat slowly.
| Jackson Public School District | 29,488 | 16,968 | −42.46% |
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