(Jackson) Dr. Mike Neubeck was hired as the interim Superintendent for JCC schools in July of 2025 and says he is excited that he gets to drop the interim out of his title.
“Truthfully that was a big relief because I really liked being at JCC. And, you know, I understand the board going out for the due diligence and doing the search, but I was really hoping that I would still be here. And I met great people. And so when they said they wanted to suspend the search and offer me a contract, I was very happy about that.”
Dr. Neubeck and the JCC School board had the tough task of cutting a little over $700,000 from their current budget. The school board approved a little over $600,000 in budget adjustments at their last meeting but Dr. Neubeck says the work is just getting started.
“But now we have to kind of move that forward and take a look at our finances, prepare for upcoming years. Ari started talking about in April, May. Do we want to go back out for another referendum like we did last year and really try to understand those finances? For me, it’s really continuing to get to know the district, get to know the people, the community, what makes them tick. I think I have a pretty good idea, but you know, and how do we move that forward to really help our students.”
Dr. Neubeck says it’s never easy to have the adjustments come at the expense of staff.
“It’s probably the worst part of my job, but it’s a necessary part of my job to be able to work with the board and our admin team and so forth. Uh, you know, because we’re seventy percent of our budget is staffing. And so we made a little over five hundred thousand dollars in and budget adjustments that affected staff. And, um, some of it has to do with decreased enrollment, some of it has to, you know, going down in one section and grade level. So your class sizes will go up a little bit, you know? Um, that’ll make it more difficult on our teachers. That’s the hard part. But we’re people organization. We hired the best people. And you hate to, you know, ask people or have to have people not be here anymore. That’s, that’s the tough part of it. But at the same time, you have to make sure you are financially strong and stable.”
The adjustments that have been made so far include $560,000 in staff reductions, close to $25,000 in athletics and activities and a little under $47,000 in other expenses. These adjustments do not include cutting the Speech Team which was originally on the list of adjustments to be made. The JCC school board approved a three year contract with Dr. Neubeck and it will go into effect on July 1st. Dr. Neubeck was formerly the Superintendent at Bryon Schools since 2021 before taking the interim position at JCC on July 1st, 2025.
