Examining the (De)Merger of the Memphis City and Shelby County School Systems

• In Event: 65.027 - Places, Boundaries, and Changing Racial Politics

Abstract

On August 5, 2013, roughly 150,000 students began their first day of class in Tennessee’s recently merged Memphis City and Shelby County school system. This August, a subset of students will bypass the consolidated district and enroll in one of the six new suburban school systems created in the aftermath of the merger. This paper explores what happened in the intervening year—in addition to how the initial merger came about—as a means of understanding the role school district boundary lines play in structuring educational inequality.
District boundaries help give shape to widespread patterns of school segregation; indeed most segregation today is between districts (Clotfelter, 2004; Reardon & Yun, 2005). Most metropolitan areas are characterized by multiple school systems that differ widely in their racial and socioeconomic makeup, as well as their students’ access to educational resources. Political boundaries separating school districts communicate crucial information to families and stakeholders about the related domains of school quality, property taxes and housing prices (Holme & Finnigan, 2013; Rothwell, 2012; Ryan, 2010). As a result, the decision to either define school communities broadly or narrowly has extremely important implications for the distribution of equal educational opportunities.
This analysis grows out of a larger, mixed methods case study of consolidation and fragmentation in the Memphis metro. Relying on approximately 20 semi-structured qualitative interviews with education stakeholders in the area, including members of the Shelby County Transition Planning Commission and Shelby County Schools Board of Education, along with superintendents, attorneys, central office personnel, civil rights activists, local policymakers, representatives of parents’ groups, and community organizations, we examine the political process behind the city-suburban merger, subsequent decisions about student assignment and resource distribution and the motivation for the swift creation of six breakaway districts on the fringe of the metro area. All interviews are audio recorded and transcribed directly after they occur. We utilize NVivo to code our interview data and other documents collected using codes derived from the literature on school district consolidation, fragmentation, segregation, and political processes, as well as additional codes that emerge from the data. Findings are checked and re-checked utilizing member checking with participants and our research team to ensure that interpretations of data are consistent with the data and that the conclusions are authentic (Miles & Huberman, 1994). This iterative process of data analysis allows us to engage in a reflexive process that is inductive and open-ended (Miles & Huberman, 1994).
Unpacking the politics surrounding the merger and fragmentation of districts in the Memphis area is critical to advancing our understanding of precisely how decisions about school-related boundary lines are made. In a time of rising inequality and rapid racial diversification, providing all students with equal educational opportunities is increasingly urgent. This study of the political process and early impact of a recent, wide-scale district consolidation, along with the subsequent fragmentation of several outlying suburban communities, will inform education policymakers and practitioners in Memphis and elsewhere.

Authors

• Genevieve Parker Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Sarah Diem, University of Missouri

• Erica Frankenberg, The Pennsylvania State University