A complaint filed with the Mississippi Department of Education alleges Lowndes County School District is willfully enrolling students who live within the Columbus Municipal School District boundaries.
CMSD filed the complaint against LCSD in August 2018, claiming LCSD had improperly enrolled 41 students that rightfully should be attending the city schools. Since Mississippi Adequate Education Program funding is awarded to schools based on average daily attendance at a rate of roughly $6,000 per student, the enrollment slight potentially cost CMSD $246,000 this school year.
The complaint was filed in the Office of Accreditation. The Dispatch received a copy of the complaint from MDE on Monday.
“We request that the Mississippi Department of Education Office of Accreditation kindly look in these matters and determine if any student that should be attending the CMSD is in fact attending the Lowndes County School District,” Superintendent Cherie Labat wrote in the complaint. “We believe there may have been a deliberate and systematic effort by the LCSD to increase its enrollment by allowing students living within the CMSD school boundary to enroll in and attend the Lowndes County School District.”
LCSD officials last week admitted to sending 32 rightful CMSD students back to city schools after conducting residency checks where it was determined they lived outside county school district boundaries. However, those students were not sent back to Columbus schools until after LCSD had received MAEP funding credit for them.
It is unclear whether those 32 students are counted among the number in the complaint to MDE.
The complaint does specifically address an LCSD effort in 2018 to get children living at Palmer Home — a residential foster care facility in Columbus — to attend county schools.
LCSD Board Attorney Jeff Smith and Superintendent Lynn Wright contacted CMSD officials and proposed an agreement, on behalf of Palmer Home, to allow those children to attend county schools. CMSD’s board took no formal action on the proposal, citing the request was illegal.
Another incident highlighted in CMSD’s complaint described the actions of a parent who lived outside of the city limits, but within CMSD’s district lines. According to the complaint, Labat denied the parent’s request to have the student transferred to LCSD. The parent then approached CMSD Board President Jason Spears at his private business with the same request, claiming Smith had sent the parent there.
Smith would not comment this morning when contacted by The Dispatch, other than to say he would discuss the matter with the county school board when it meets Friday.
Neither Labat nor Spears would comment further on the complaint. However, enrollment woes and their financial impact was thematic during a CMSD board meeting Monday night.
CMSD’s enrollment has dropped by nearly 1,000 students since the 2013-14 school year. That student loss, according to Chief Financial Officer Tammie Holmes, has cost the district $5.2 million over the last five years.
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