Calkins: Linda Sklar ran the MSCS optional programs for 13 superintendents. Yes, 13! That’s lucky for us.
Linda Sklar retired after spending nearly five decades of leading the optional schools and advanced academic programs for what is now Memphis-Shelby County Schools. (Ziggy Mack/Special to The Daily Memphian)
Geoff Calkins
Geoff Calkins has been chronicling Memphis and Memphis sports for more than two decades. He is host of "The Geoff Calkins Show" from 9-11 a.m. M-F on 92.9 FM. Calkins has been named the best sports columnist in the country five times by the Associated Press sports editors, but still figures his best columns are about the people who make Memphis what it is.
On Linda Sklar’s final day of work — after nearly five decades of leading the optional schools and advanced academic programs for what is now Memphis-Shelby County Schools — a woman came to visit her.
“She comes into my office and she says, ‘Mrs. Sklar, I sat at that table,’” Sklar said. “This was back when she was a high school student.”
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The woman’s name was Christian West-Coleman. In the early 2000s, when she was a sophomore at White Station High School, West-Coleman ran into some academic issues.
“I was in the optional program but had some trouble with my Algebra 2 grades,” West-Coleman told me. “I was going to have to return to my home school. I had a meeting with Mrs. Sklar and explained why staying at White Station was so important to me. She let me cry a little. She listened to me and gave me a second chance. And the things she taught me — the tools she suggested — helped me with everything I accomplished after that.”
West-Coleman wound up graduating from White Station. She went on to get an undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee and a law degree at the University of Memphis.
And now?
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