With a decrease in enrollment due to Lakeland’s new high school adding grades, Arlington Community Schools is waiving tuition for out-of-county students.

The district hopes the amended policy will avoid staffing or programming cuts as students transition from ACS to the Lakeland School System.

On Tuesday, Nov. 14, the ACS Board of Education unanimously approved the new policy beginning with the 2024-25 school year. The district has 122 out-of-county non-resident students, of which 120 are from Fayette County, across the Shelby County border to the east.

Bailey: The title is Shelby County clerk. Not exclusively Memphis clerk.

The current yearly tuition for out-of-county non-resident students is $5,411.

Traditionally, Arlington High would enroll about 200 students from Lakeland Preparatory School’s eighth-grade class. Lakeland Prep’s new high school wing opened two years ago and currently serves ninth and 10th graders, adding a grade each school year.

The transition resulted in Arlington losing 400 students since Lakeland Prep opened. The district will lose 400 more over the next two years as 11th and 12th grades are added in Lakeland.

“So one of the things that we’ve been brainstorming is how to do something that might help stabilize that out of the concern that we can keep the number of employees that we have,” ACS Superintendent Jeff Mayo said.

Board Chairman Dr. Dale Viox says the board is committed to keeping its teachers despite the recent decrease in enrollment.

“Part of that would’ve been if we didn’t have enough retirements, we would’ve come out of (our) general fund for that,” he said. “We wanted our teachers to be secure that they weren’t going to lose their positions.”

He sees the policy change as a way to bring high-performing students into the district.

“With BlueOval City coming, we’re going to have a lot of influx, and a lot of those people can’t buy houses in Arlington because the housing market’s nuts,” Viox said.

The change will also protect some of the successful programming the district has established and grown. He said the new policy should “take down barriers” that prevented honor students, fine-arts students and athletes outside Arlington from attending the town’s schools.

The overall tuition amount the district takes in each year from out-of-county students is typically less than 1% of its total revenues. Mayo thinks potentially gaining more students for enrollment and the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement funding could outweigh that lost revenue.

“I think this will be a positive move for the district because it will help us gain some of our numbers back, and it will help us retain teachers,” board member Lyle Conley said.

Mayo stressed that the district is not changing its stringent criteria for students who want to attend Arlington schools, including attendance, disciplinary and academic metrics.

Students from Shelby County who do not live in Arlington, of which there are currently 558, have not paid tuition for the past five years.

“We’re just looking at other ways to give students the opportunity to come to Arlington’s top-notch schools,” board member Scott Benjamin said.

The district will continue to charge tuition for out-of-state students, which is required by state law.