On Wednesday an increasingly impatient group of Memphis media people cooled their heels outside the 4th floor conference room of the Shelby County Commission. The reporters were being conspicuously excluded from an “executive session” in which the commissioners inside were deliberating with lawyer Leo Bearman and a colleague on possible legal strategies relating to their creation of provisional districts for an all-county school board.
It was all too much for Commissioner Terry Roland of Millington, a representative from suburban District 4 and a fierce opponent of the county commission’s plans to manage a transition to an all-county school board. So, executive session or no executive session, Roland let all the cats out of the bag and decided to tell the excluded media what was going on.
Ultimately the commission would open its doors to the media and proceed to discuss a provisional plan for a 25-district school board encompassing all of Shelby County. With Roland and Heidi Shafer voting No, the commission voted its approval.
