JCPS board OKs revised student-assignment plan

This from the Courier-Journal:

About 2,000 more elementary students in Jefferson County Public Schools will be allowed to attend schools closer to their homes this fall, as the school board voted unanimously Monday night to adopt a number of changes to its controversial student-assignment plan.

Under the proposal, the district will still have six clusters of elementary schools from which parents can choose — rather than doubling them to 12 as a previous plan proposed — yet give schools more credit for diversity within their enrollment areas.

Limited-English students also will be added in the diversity index for the first time, and kindergartners will not have to reapply to their same school for first grade — a previous requirement that upset many parents.

Though not as sweeping as earlier proposals, the changes will maintain integrated schools while reducing bus-ride times for some students and avoiding disruptions to school choice, district officials said...

Audit calls for overhaul of JCPS central office

Outside experts' report assails favoritism, 

biased hiring, unqualified personnel

This from the The Courier-Journal:

Jefferson County Public Schools’ administration is riddled with favoritism, biased hiring and unqualified personnel and should be overhauled, according to a disparaging report released Tuesday by two outside experts hired to examine the district’s central office.

The 70-page report — the result of an organizational review ordered by the school board this summer — also states that in some cases, administrators are overpaid based on the current marketplace and when compared to other school districts.

“We see this report as a start of a conversation that the superintendent will need to have with the school board and the community in Jefferson County about the future of the central-office staffing,” said the report’s co-author, Fenwick English, a professor of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The bottom line, English said, is that JCPS must realign its central office — retooling 31 positions to establish better support to its 155 schools and eliminating five other positions that the auditors say are unnecessary...

Thousands of JCPS students' test scores go to wrong addresses

This from the Courier-Journal:

Test scores for thousands of Jefferson County Public Schools students were delivered to the wrong addresses and the district is urging parents who received an incorrect report in the mail to return it to the sender or destroy it.

The error involved the eighth-grade EXPLORE test, which was administered this fall to all of the district’s eighth graders, said Lauren Roberts, a JCPS spokeswoman.

The district learned about the error late Wednesday, when parents began calling the district to say they had received test scores for a child other than their own.

Roberts said 6,500 to 7,000 student scores may have been involved. “We regret the inconvenience this has caused to parents,” she said.