On August 7th Shelby County residents will go to the polls to vote in the primary for federal and state candidates as well as participate in the County General elections. One of the less heralded but very important elections are those for the school board. This year the Shelby County School Board expands to 9 districts, a map of which can be found here. Several candidates are running unopposed by several elections will feature contention between multiple candidates. Here are the candidates for each district. I plan to follow up in the coming days with a brief profile of each candidate by race.
District 1: Downtown and parts of Midtown
- Chris Caldwell (incumbent)
- Freda Garner-Williams
District 3: Frayser and Northwest Shelby County
- Theodore King, Jr
- Anthony Lockhart
- Stephanie Love
District 5: Cordova and East Shelby County
- Scott McCormick
- David Winston
District 6: Whitehaven and Southwest Shelby County
- Shante Avant (incumbent)
- Jimmy Warren
District 7: South Memphis and South Central Shelby County
- Miska Clay Bibbs
District 8: East Memphis and Parts of Cordova
- Billy Orgel (incumbent)
District 9: Parts of Midtown and East Memphis
- Roshun Austin
- Michael Kernell
- Damon Morris
Districts 2 and 4 are not up for election
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With reference to Theodore King, Jr., isn’t it a conflict of interest for an executive of the Achievement School District to run for an Shelby Co. Schools school board seat? They’re separate and competing entities and there is common discussion and compromise on school closures and turn-overs to the ASD by SCS and the board. Will Teddy King, the Director of Community Engagement, relinquish his job with the ASD in order to work for SCS? This sounds like a way to get an inside man on the board to sway the inner workings of SCS in the ASD’s favor. While it may technically be legal for Mr. King to work for the state’s district and sit on the board of the local district, it’s certainly not ethical.
I’ve looked this up before, legally its permissible to run for school board as long as you live in shelby county. However, you CAN NOT run for school board if you work for shelby county schools (teachers, administrators, district jobs), and must leave the organization if you get elected.
I mean are there any munis executives running for a school board seat? Something smells fishy.
And technically the municipal executives could run for the school board (according my reading of the statutes) if they wanted to. Might be time for a rewrite of the statutes