Tunica County School District

The Tunica County School District is a public school district based in Tunica, Mississippi (USA). The district's boundaries parallel that of Tunica County.

After the rise of the gambling industry in the county in the 1990s, an influx of tax revenue went into the school system. By 2007 the district built a new middle school between the casinos and the town of Tunica. Stephanie N. Mehta of Fortune said that because of the influx, the Tunica district pays "good teacher salaries by Mississippi standards".

In 1990, according to a Fortune article about Tunica, one in three students at Tunica's high school graduated from high school. In 1991 no agency tracked graduation rates. Mehta said that therefore that while "[m]ore kids are graduating from high school - there's no way to know for sure" whether a significant improvement had been made in the year 2007. In 1997 the State of Mississippi took over the school district after the district did not meet basic performance standards. As of 2007 the high school graduation rate was 87%. Mehta that despite the influx of tax revenue, Rosa Fort High School in 2007 was "a stubborn underperformer." That year, it was ranked a "two" or "underperforming" in the State of Mississippi's five point scale, and about 60% of Rosa Fort's graduates have further schooling. Mehta concluded that "Rosa Fort students aren't a whole lot better off academically than before the casinos arrived." Ronald Love, who had been hired by the state in 1997 to supervise the Tunica school system, said "It is like Tunica suffers from a hangover from 100 years of poverty. There are vestiges of it everywhere: in education, in local politics, in the housing. And when you have been the poorest of the poor, well, an infusion of resources might lighten your load, but you still have the hangover."

In July 2015, the Mississippi Board of Education requested that Governor Phil Bryant take over the Tunica County School District. The Board stated that the school district was violating 22 of 31 state accrediting standards. The Board was critical both of Tunica County's elected superintendent, Stephen Chandler, and of the district's special education program. Bryant signed an emergency declaration enabling the Mississippi Department of Education to take over the school district.

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