Tennessee has awarded the Jackson-Madison County School System (JMCSS) with the highest score for academic growth (Level 5) on the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System (TVAAS), a recent announcement said.

Members of the Jackson-Madison County School Board voted unanimously Thursday to withdraw a lawsuit they approved less than a year ago, in hopes of stopping the county’s first public charter school.

That lawsuit would have challenged a decision last year by the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission to approve American Classical Academy Jackson-Madison.

Jackson Madison County School System Superintendent Dr. Marlon King was named the 2025 Southwest Tennessee Regional Superintendent of the Year by the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents (TOSS) at Thursday’s regular school board meeting. The board also issued a proclamation making September 2024 Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in the district.

The Jackson-Madison County School System Board of Education celebrated four schools that participated in the Greenpower USA Regional Talladega Competition that took place earlier this month placing in the top five, with one school winning overall.

Jackson-Madison County School System (JMCSS) leaders celebrated the district’s surge in graduation rates outpacing the state’s improvement.From 2021, the district’s graduation rates grew from 85.7 percent to 90.5 percent. This 4.8 percent gain surpasses Tennessee’s gain of 1.9 percent by nearly three percentage points during the same period of time.That growth places JMCSS’s graduation rate just .1 percent lower than the state average.

The Jackson-Madison School Board is considering court action to prevent the county’s first public charter school from opening.Board members voted Monday morning to pursue a legal challenge of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission’s decision to approve an appeal from American Classical Education (ACE) earlier this month.  That decision overturned the district’s denial of ACE’s application in July.“This has been a long, frustrating process. We were crystal clear and very deliberate in following the state’s guidelines and rules during the entire process. So, we stand behind our decision,” said School Board Chairman James “Pete” Johnson.ACE first gained attention last year when Governor Bill Lee expressed support for the organization in his State of the State address, but the group faced criticism over its connections to Michigan based Hillsdale College and controversial statements Hillsdale President Larry Arnn made about teachers on video.