Meet the Tupelo Public School District’s new CFO, Rachel Mitchell

By: Addie Davis, Daily Journal

Rachel Mitchell has always been a math person.

“I love numbers,” Tupelo Public School District’s new chief financial officer told the Daily Journal. “I like the concreteness of them.”

Now, in her new position, the Smithville native is putting that affinity for arithmetic to work for the community’s schools.

As a junior at Mississippi University for Women, Mitchell declared as an accountancy major after having taken every math class available. She knew she was going to go into some math-involved field, so she took some accounting classes and found that she loved them.

In accounting, the math itself is fairly straightforward, Mitchell said.

“It’s more (about) understanding how to read the numbers, and what are the numbers telling you?” she said. “Looking at a balance sheet, I mean, anybody can add the numbers up and make sure they balance. But what does it mean if you’ve got way more liability than you do equity, and all those things? That’s the part I like.”

Mitchell graduated from The W in 2000 and went straight into an accountancy master’s program at Mississippi State University; she graduated from that program in 2001. She’d signed a contract for ExxonMobil and was planning to move to Houston, Texas. But the week she and her husband were going to look at apartments, she found out she was expecting their first child.

“(It) changed everything,” Mitchell said.

Instead of moving to Texas, Mitchell took a job as an auditor for J.E. Vance & Co. in Tupelo, a job she kept until 2015. And she lives in her hometown of Smithville to this day.

Mitchell loved the job at Vance. She got to do a little of everything, from monthly bookkeeping to auditing for-profit companies, nonprofits, counties and school districts. And she didn’t just work for Vance; she also ran her own business: In 2006, Mitchell bought Little Angels Child Care in Amory.

“I was expecting my third, and we just decided that it’s cheaper to buy a daycare than to pay daycare for three kids,” Mitchell joked.

In truth, it gave her greater flexibility to spend time with her children. She switched from full- to part-time accounting work and took on the daycare business.

“It allowed me a lot more time with my kids when they were little,” Mitchell said. “I’m a mom first.”

She owned the business for 18 years, and is currently in the process of selling it.

In 2015, the TPSD reached out to Mitchell, and she joined their team as the assistant finance director. Getting to share school holidays with her kids was a big perk, she said. She stayed in that role, with a few changes to the job title, until she became interim CFO in January 2024, right before budget season began.

She was officially named CFO shortly before the budget proposal hearing on Aug. 6.

Mitchell had never built a budget from the ground up — much less such a massive one — but she was ready for the challenge. The people around her supported her through the entire process, she said.

“We really went back to the basics this year,” Mitchell said. She and her team went through the budget line by line, department by department, making sure money was being put to good use and was of real benefit to the kids of the TPSD.

“Everybody was willing … to go through their budget and, you know, really get rid of any fluff that may have kind of built up over time and really look at what our priorities were,” Mitchell said. “I’m proud of how it turned out.”

Mitchell has loved working for the school district. She’s getting to work with numbers, which she loves, but she’s also working behind the scenes to support the children of Tupelo.

“I have a heart for kids,” Mitchell said. She has four of her own; she poured her heart and soul into a daycare for almost two decades; and now she’s helping ensure that Tupelo’s youngsters have the best education and opportunities available.