Merger, Undone: An Intergovernmental Perspective on School District Consolidation and Fragmentation in Memphis, Tennessee

• In Event: Educational Equity and Local Politics

Abstract

In December 2010, a closely divided Memphis City Schools (MCS) Board voted to relinquish its chartering document and fold into the surrounding county school system. The vote set off two nearly simultaneous processes, a merger and a de-merger, which would wend their way through multiple sets of local governing bodies, the state legislature and the federal court system. Understanding how local actors worked the machinery of government at all levels to advance an agenda that ultimately fractured a two-school system county into seven distinct systems—despite the MCS Board’s initial effort to become one—offers crucial insight into the dynamics of consolidation and fragmentation, the contemporary state of urban-suburban politics and the interplay between local, state and federal government.

Authors

• Erica Frankenberg, The Pennsylvania State University

• Genevieve Parker Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Sarah Diem, University of Missouri