And honestly, why should any serious candidate for superintendent look at Memphis with all these struggles? Superintendents want to work in as stable an environment as possible and everything we’ve done in the last two years has sent us in the opposite direction towards more chaos.  The merger.  The municipal districts.  Funding issues with Memphis and the County.  Transportation issues.  The list goes on.  The sense I got from the article cited above is that the board is tired of the drama.  It wants to take actions to bring as much stability as possible to the system and is ready to move on to other issues.  I’m just sorry that they decided they needed to move on at the expense of conducting a national search to find the best candidate we could and bring them to Memphis.

I wish Mr. Hopson the best as he embarks on his role as the official superintendent. But I will always be wondering what might have been if collectively our county had fully committed to an education system that addressed all the children in Shelby county instead devoting our time and resources to a system characterized today by fragmentation, decentralization and disorder.

UPDATE: another local blogger, schooling memphis, had some great thoughts on this issue that I wanted to quote here:

The reality is that the Board has not been treating Interim Supt. Dorsey Hopson as an interim superintendent.  They’ve already deemed him worth only $5,000 less than former (academically-credentialed, career educator) Supt. Kriner Cash.  They seem not to mind being scolded by him in public.  But abandon a national search with all of its input-seeking meetings from the community and various high-powered stakeholders who with privatizing interests?  They might give all that up?  Odd.

They’ve already got him committed for the school year.  And yes, they should be ramping up their national search in short order – unlike last year when they waited until the last possible second to start the search after the start of the new calendar year, against the advice of their high-priced headhunters and well, everyone else.  It took them much longer, earlier this year, to abandon their national search.  It seems awfully early in this version of the national search to end it.

Smart City Memphis: Great breakdown of the realities and myths surrounding municipal school districts

EdWeek: Will Tennessee’s new teacher compensation plan reward effectiveness or perpetuate reliance on test data?

EdWeekTeacher: discussion from around the country on the best way to reform teacher compensation.  Very relevant for what is going on here in Tennessee

Commercial Appeal: Who gets the school buildings in the new municipal school districts?  Should the cities have to pay for them or did Memphis get them for free originally? Overview of the situation from the commercial appeal.

Commercial Appeal: regardless of the outcome of the property tax vote today at the County Commission, the Unified District is already guaranteed its $20 million.

Memphis Daily News: Summary of municipal election outcomes.  Districts approved overwhelmingly.

Commercial Appeal: coverage of the County Commission’s failure to approve a 6 cent property tax that had already been included in the budget.  Editorial by the ed board on why we need to stop playing politics with our children’s future.  I don’t usually include quotes in these links, but I thought this was a wonderful gem of rationality in an often irrational political world:

“Good, responsible Republicans” balance the necessities of the community against cost, Luttrell said to the commissioners last week, introducing political affiliations into the conversation.

“I don’t like to raise taxes. I’ve never been a proponent of taxes, but there comes a time when taxes are necessary,” he said.

Commercial Appeal Editorial Board: KIPP’s high expectations in Memphis are transforming lives.

Educationnext: Tennessee gets high marks for improved rigor in state standards compared to other states around the country (ranks #2).

WSMV Nashville: Governor’s Children’s Cabinet launches two new initiatives designed to help Tennessee students enter the classroom prepared to learn by connecting to state provided resources.

Hechinger Report: Jonah Edelman on the impact common core standards can have on educational outcomes for students that move frequently and the importance of national standards.

Schooling Memphis: Another local blogger’s analysis of campaign spending on the school board race between Dr. Whalum and Kevin Woods.

Looking back at the absentee votes, the only city that saw a significant change from its early/absentee voting was Lakeland.  Regardless, the change was negligible (92 to 87 percent really isn’t that significant).

A brief impact analysis of how this vote will impact our county’s kids. 

Now that separation is legal at the state level, is it possible that we will see the argument that the suburbs voted to break away for race-based reasons revived?

When this vote is finally certified and organization around the split begins, we are likely to see legal fights over who owns the rights to the buildings.  Either way, money will (or will not) change hands, the end result being less resources for students.

We are also likely to see a significant increase in county property tax once the true cost of the merger comes home to roost in the county.  Commissioner Ritz estimated back in May of 2012 that across all 6 municipalities that voted to form their own district, an average of a $1 property tax increase would be needed to fund the schools (remember: our county commission just failed to pass a 6 CENT property tax increase). This represents well over a 100 percent raise in all cities that just voted to separate.  And if these tax increases don’t go through, this represents just another way that our kids will be disadvantaged when cuts are the end result.

This vote is also likely to further damage the SCS unified district’s efforts to find a strong school leader to take over where Dr. Cash left off.   In my opinion, no quality superintendent in their right mind would want to step into this mess and try to lead a school system who’s boundaries are about to be radically altered.  And even at best, this puts a huge burden on both the SCS unified district’s search and any search conducted by the new school districts.  As a teacher, I want a strong school leader, not an interim leader put in place because we can’t get anyone better.

This vote will also further perpetuate the existing real and perceived separation between county and city residents to the detriment of regional integration.  The inaccurate myth of Memphis as a problem has been perpetuated for entirely too long.  The merger had the potential to move us towards regionalism and working to improve both Memphis and the county, but this represents a huge step backwards.

At the end of the day, the real losers are kids.  As I outlined in my previous post, when adults fight, kids lose.  The turmoil caused by this vote will likely continue to echo around the county for some time, drawing attention away from where our true focus should be; on our children.  At a time when around 5 percent of city school and 20 percent of county students are graduating college ready, we can’t afford to be devoting time and resources anything else.

Interesting to note that voter turnout is down considerably from the 2012 early voting.  Might this be attributable to the fact that we’ve merged the districts and the sky hasn’t fallen yet?  More likely is the fact that the initial wave of fear over the merger has worn off.  I notice in the commercial appeal article that all the mayors are quick to explain away the drop in voter turnout as anything but a drop in enthusiasm for the merger…

That not withstanding, I can’t say I expect these vote totals to change much.  Expect a repost with official numbers from all voting later.

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.

News Channel 3: Shelby County Suburbs discuss operating separate districts, but under the same leadership.

Smart City Memphis: Among one of many, this post challenges the perception that Memphis teachers are no good

Edweek Teacher Beat: Discussion of Tennessee’s new teacher pay regulations. Underhanded effort to undermining teacher salaries or honest attempt to give control to local districts?  And where’s the discussion of student impact?

Edweek: North Carolina moving away from traditional Algebra I-Geometry-Algebra II track to integrated math.  Makes sense from a student perspective to teach these concepts together instead of isolation (full disclosure: I am a math teacher).  Can we do this in Tennessee?

Edweek: Teachers from around the country discuss how much they spend on their classrooms each year.