Teachers at 17 Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky found out days before the school year began that their schools no longer qualify for the district's high-need stipend, leaving some facing thousands of dollars in lost pay they'd already planned around.
JCPS spent more than $19 million last year on Education Support Zone stipends, extra pay meant to attract and keep staff at schools serving students in poverty or learning English. In May, teachers were told the $8,000 stipend would phase out by $2,000 a year over four years, and many expected a new $2,000 stipend for all JCPS educators to cover the first cut. The math worked out to none or a very slight decrease in pay, then took the 17 schools off the list of eligibility altogether.
Kim Dykes, an art teacher at Semple Elementary, said nobody saw it coming. "A $6,000 loss without any notice when we were expecting to have that money for the upcoming year," Dykes said. "When you have to get that second job and have to spend time away from your family, you're not getting that self care that us as educators need."
The 17 schools enroll about 11,774 students combined, based on federal enrollment data. Twelve are elementary schools: Blake, Cane Run, Crums Lane, Greenwood, Hartstern, Indian Trail, Rangeland, Rutherford, Semple, Shacklette, Trunnell and Shelby Academy. The rest are Johnson Traditional Middle, Knight Middle, Marion C. Moore School, and two high schools, Doss and Fairdale.
Two explanations that don't match
JCPS says its own criteria never changed. The district says the stipend follows the Kentucky Department of Education's list of identified schools, and when the state removed certain schools from that list, they stopped qualifying. "Under state rules, any school identified by the Kentucky Department of Education received the stipend, reduced by 25%. Schools no longer identified by the state did not receive the stipend at all," the district said.
Superintendent Brian Yearwood went further, saying the schools were always supposed to lose it and the district just hadn't enforced its own rule. "That has always been the norm," he said. "Apparently, although that has been understood, that has not been the practice, and we are making sure that we are following through with our promise."
The Jefferson County Teachers Association says the opposite. "JCPS has changed their criteria for which schools are eligible to earn the additional stipend, resulting in less schools being eligible, despite the fact that more schools have been identified by the state for additional support and state supervision," the union said. It declined to say what it plans to do next.
If the state is identifying more schools for support while fewer JCPS schools qualify for the support stipend, both of those things can't follow from the same list. One of the two accounts is missing something, and the teachers at these 17 schools start the year not knowing which.
Sources
WDRB: Teachers at 17 JCPS schools unexpectedly lose thousands in stipend pay before school starts
Enrollment figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, SY 2024-25.
