Impending SCS Split: What’s the Student Impact?

Tomorrow Shelby County residents in six suburbs will go to the polls to vote on whether to form new municipal school districts.  While early voter turnout has been low compared to last year, I’ve heard little to suggest that we should expect a different outcome from the previous vote where all municipalities voted to create their own individual districts.

This story has been picked up by national news sources because of the political fighting surrounding the merger and the fact that this vote will likely result in the breakup of the 14th largest school district in the country.

There is a lot of fear on both sides. Fear from the new unified district that the loss of the municipalities will cause even more chaos.  Fear from county residents who, for some reason, believe that a merger with Memphis threatens the quality education received by county residents.  And fear from Memphians who believe that this will only perpetuate the racial divide between the county and the city.

In reality, the merger would change very little in the way of student achievement in the short run.  The budget has been slashed to the bone already, but in the end, urban students will not be moving en mass to enroll in the old county schools, nor is busing likely to occur.  The most likely outcome in a unified system is that students continue to attend their same school with few changes.

In the long run, merging our county and city schools will also have the added benefit of pushing us towards a more regional outlook that places value on collectively addressing the challenges we all face and putting student achievement, rather than merger politics, at the forefront.

On the other hand, a vote to split by the municipalities has the potential to greatly harm ALL county students in several ways:

First, by failing to solidify the merger, SCS will have a harder time recruiting top quality candidates to lead the new unified school system.  As a teacher, I’m a firm believer that leadership is a prerequisite for results in education.  Given the challenges facing the new unified system, even without a merger, we cannot afford to go even one day without quality leadership

Second, the problems created by a split WILL distract from any districts ability to deliver a quality education to its students.  It will suck away time, energy and money away from more crucial issues facing our county.  We will be embroiled in legal battles about district lines, fighting over possible charges of racism and how to allocate the school buildings in the municipalities. This all comes at the expense of focusing on educating our children.

Third, a vote to split fails to recognize that our children’s future, both economically and educationally, hinges on regional cooperation. We’ve already seen this take away so much time in the last year at the city, county and state levels, which has resulted in numerous implementation difficulties, most visibly in the failure to name a superintendent selected from a national search.  Imagine where we would be with the merger if all parties had decided at the beginning to push forward together.

If we aren’t working together to collectively address the challenges throughout our region, we will continue to stagnate and fail to reach our full potential as a region.