school systems merger – Memphis Flyer

The unified 23-member Shelby County Board of Education met for five hours and 15 minutes Tuesday but accomplished little if anything.

The board accepted — which is not the same as approved — the sweeping and potentially monumental 200-page report of the Transition Planning Commission for the 2013 merger of the Memphis and Shelby County school systems, the biggest school system merger in American history.

Following that, for the second week in a row, the board engaged in tedious, fruitless discussions of procedural details that gave strong evidence that this body is incapable of implementing any of the controversial recommendations in the TPC plan, including, most of all, the selection of a superintendent by this fall.

Hour after hour, motion after motion, a handful of members led by Martavius Jones and Jeff Warren engaged in a baffling series of discussions. They were aimed not at selecting a superintendent, only at the nature of the selection process. Near the end of the meeting, members agreed to appoint a committee to work out details of the process. Meanwhile, superintendents John Aitken and Kriner Cash sat side-by-side watching the show, occasionally making what appeared to be friendly comments to each other. Cash also introduced several new principals for Memphis City Schools next year. Otherwise, they were spectators.

The do-nothing option appears to favor Aitken, who has a contract until 2015, over Cash, whose contract ends next year. But guesses are just that — guesses — where this board is concerned. If Aitken does get the job, it could just as likely be through board inaction as action.

At least half a dozen times during the session, members voted on procedural matters that served only to get them back to where they had been several minutes earlier. By the end of the evening, the board had essentially undone the work it had done in a similar marathon meeting last week that seemed to force the question. At one point, there was a long discussion, led by Jones, on whether the “ad hoc” committee to start the selection process (not MAKE the selection) should have 5 members or 23 members, which Jones favored. It only took five MCS members to surrender the MCS charter in 2010, but that point did not come up.

As it now stands, the board will do some sort of superintendent search ending some time later this year, but only if the committee can agree on the conditions of the search itself. Warren, author of one of the evening’s motions to have such a search, lamented at one point that it could be January before a selection is made. Board member Betty Mallott, who had offered a resolution to begin the transfer of administration of the schools to Shelby County for the sake of expedience, withdrew her motion after the five-hour mark.

The show could run a while longer. The 23-member board will serve until August of 2013, when it will be replaced by a seven-member board elected this year but installed next year.

Bottom line: two superintendents, neither one out of the running, and still the possibility that neither one will get the job. As for the TPC plan, the recommendations for school closings and personnel cuts and privatization and overcoming a starting deficit of $57 million (assuming costs can be cut, which appears unlikely) appear to be lacking anything resembling consensus on a board that looks impossibly divided and at sea on matters both small and large.

UPDATED: Wednesday morning.
With a nod of gratitude to my former colleague Jimmie Covington, an elaboration on the move to the seven-member school board in 2013: The seven members who are elected Aug. 2 will take office after the election results are certified. A complicating factor is that four members of the old city and county boards are among the candidates, including David Pickler and Kenneth Whalum. If any of these old board members are elected to the new positions, vacancies will be created on the old boards on the 23-member board. The County Commission will fill those by appointment. Then on Sept. 1, 2013, the old board members will go away leaving the seven-member board. However, County Commission members have announced plans to create a 13-member board. They would do this by appointing six additional members, who would run for the posts either in November 2013 or in 2014.

Sharon Goldsworthy

The votes have not yet been taken, but the road map is pretty clear. Barring court intervention, Shelby County suburbs including Germantown, Bartlett, Arlington, and Collierville aim to have their own municipal school systems in place by 2013 and will stake a claim on their current buildings and sports facilities lock stock and barrel at no charge.

On Tuesday the Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BMA) met to receive a feasibility study in a one-hour meeting that drew a small crowd of about 40 people. There was no public comment and no vote by the board. There will be a public meeting on February 1st at the Germantown Performing Arts Center that is likely to draw hundreds of residents. After that, the BMA will go on a two-day retreat to decide its next move.

Which, Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy indicated, is apt to be this: A referendum in May and, assuming a “go-for-it” vote, a school board election in November and employment of a superintendent next January. That person would hire everyone else, which consultants estimated at 776 other certified and classified employees.

Total projected enrollment: 8,142 students in eight schools. Projected expenditures, $60,921,144 from projected revenues of $62,483,135. The revenue would come from several sources including at least 15 cents on the municipal tax rate — either a new levy or an equal sum taken from the current rate of $1.48. Alternately, the city could levy an extra half cent on the sales tax, which, of course, is paid by locals and non-locals alike.

A similar proposal was unveiled in Bartlett on Monday, and Collierville is on deck for Wednesday.

The 15 cents on the tax rate, said consultant Jim Mitchell — a former Shelby County Schools superintendent — is required by state law. Muni’s must spend it, but they don’t necessarily have to raise it in the form of additional taxes. Even if they do, the gap between the Memphis tax rate of $3.19 and the suburban rates of $1.43 to $1.49 is so wide that 15 cents seems a pittance by comparison. All Shelby County property owners also pay $4.02 in county taxes. School board member David Pickler said the referendum might not be a lay-down because many of Germantown’s young folk go to private schools and the general population is aging into the golden years. But noone on the BMA appeared alarmed in the least at the consultants’ recipe.

The sweetest caramel in Mitchell’s box was the opinion that the ‘burbs can get their schools at no charge. Precedent, he said, dictates as much. He said that Shelby County since 1965 has given 44 schools to Memphis City Schools, via annexation, at no charge. The reasonableness, much less the legality of this charming argument, will certainly be tested.

Board members asked if Germantown could perhaps partner with its wealthy neighbor to the east, Collierville, in a common school system. No, said Mitchell. Each must go its own way, although they can “cooperate” all they want.

“You’re going to have to create your own district,” he said.

Mitchell was among friends. At one point, he reminded alderman Ernest Chism that they go way back and invited him to call him with any questions. The meeting was business-like all the way, with no citizen input this time around. Mitchell noted that Germantown’s school population is 25 percent black, but there are no blacks on the BMA. Nor were there any on the 2011 edition of the Shelby County school board which has merged with the Memphis board. The Shelby County system did not elect board members until 1998.

The full consultants’ report can be seen on the Germantown web site. Check page 122 for a summary.

A picture is emerging. The picture looks like this: As many as half a dozen municipal school districts, the strongest of which would have 8,000-10,000 students. And a county system of roughly 110,000 students that would look a lot like the current MCS system with a new name, new board, and different boundaries. Many’s the slip, but that’s the outline.

Mitchell’s final word of advice: This will not be easy, but should Germantown decide on such a course of separation, “you’ve got adequate time.”

Some years ago I was an MCS parent, and my children competed against Germantown and Collierville in soccer and baseball. We were pretty good but simply could not beat them, ever, in those sports. Basketball, the city game, was another story, thanks to the likes of Dane Bradshaw and J.P. Prince. But soccer and baseball, no way, although there were a couple of close calls with overwhelming evidence of divine intervention. My young athletes would go off to college and become teammates and friends with their former rivals, but to this parent, at least, the takeway was: We ain’t gonna beat the ‘burbs at their own game. I haven’t forgotten it.