Ten years after legacy Memphis City Schools and the Shelby County Schools district merged — and it was the largest public system merger in American history — Tomeka Hart says, “I hurt today that Memphis City Schools no longer exists.” 

Hart served two terms on the elected Memphis City Schools Board of Education. In 2010, she was a leader in the 5-4 vote for the city school district to surrender its charter.

Amid suits and countersuits, the districts formally merged in 2013 — albeit for a year, as some 150,000 students and 230-plus schools went under one umbrella. Which was fitting, because people in both the city and the county feared the sky was falling.

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By 2014, the public education landscape was sprawling as six suburban municipal districts launched in Arlington, Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, Lakeland and Millington.

It was hardly what Hart and others on the city side were voting for, but then she says the vote to surrender the city district’s charter was the only move they had left: a public education shotgun wedding.

The problem for Memphis City Schools, Hart says, is that while it had responsibility for 70% of the students in Shelby County, it had only about 60% of the property tax base. So, as Hart watched people continue to leave Memphis and the city district, she knew the tax base was only going to further erode.

Shelby County leaders were seeking “special district” status. And with Republicans taking over control of the state legislature, Hart says Memphis City Schools’ long-term funding firewall — previously protected by a Democratic-controlled state body — was in peril.

To that point: A University of Memphis study done pre-merger, Hart notes, projected that special district status for the county would result in dire funding consequences for the city.

“At the time, the rough math was the (city district) would annually lose about $140 million” in tax revenue, Hart said, adding, “It was simply that. We surrendered the charter to ensure countywide district revenue, countywide tax.”

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Dorsey Hopson, former superintendent of the merged Memphis Shelby County School District and later what was known as Shelby County Schools after the “de-merger,” still speaks of what he wishes would have transpired: a “remaking” of the massive-sized district.

“We could have taken the best of each school system and used it,” Hopson said, “and flushed the bad of both down the toilet and created something new.”

In fact, even as Hopson remembers the “chaos” leading up to the merger and “a sense of fear mixed in with a sense of optimism,” he ultimately lands in a wistful place when considering what might have been.

“We missed an opportunity,” he said. “An opportunity that won’t come back around.”

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To no one’s surprise, David Pickler, who was chairman of the legacy Shelby County School Board at the time of the charter surrender, remembers things differently.

He will agree that the change in the state legislature was a key point. But he reminds that on the same night in the fall of 2010 when Republicans seized control of the state legislature, a measure that would have consolidated Memphis City and Shelby County governments overwhelmingly failed with voters beyond the city limits.

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For Pickler, this confirmed his belief that what suburban voters most feared was a merging of the city and county school districts. After all, Picker says, had the government consolidation passed, it would have had no impact on residents already under a separate municipal government in Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland, et al.

Voters, he says, believed the consolidation maneuver was actually a first step toward a permanent merging of the city and county schools.

“I have no doubt whatsoever that is why it failed,” Picker said of the consolidation vote in the county.

Additionally, he says the city’s aggressive annexation during Mayor Willie Herenton’s tenure had a “negative effect on both school districts.”

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Pickler, who is CEO of his own wealth advisement firm, says as of 2010 when Memphis City Schools voted to surrender its charter, the system was sitting on $500 million in deferred maintenance on its buildings. Simultaneously, he says, city annexation moving east meant the city district was taking buildings away, but sometimes leaving the students behind to still be educated by the county district.

“We were having to take on debt as a county to build new schools,” Pickler said.

He also pushes back on Hopson’s notion that an opportunity was missed had the two districts worked more cooperatively in 2013, saying that in the preceding two years of transition after the charter surrender, everything was “all about the effort of dismantling the administration and structure of what had been the former Shelby County School District.

“That undermined any chance at a successful merger,” Pickler said.

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Ted Horrell, who today is superintendent of the Lakeland School System, was principal of Germantown High School as the merger was happening and the option of multiple suburban districts forming was increasingly viewed as a fait accompli.

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“I had a sense Germantown High School wasn’t going to be part of the municipal district,” he said, adding that at the time he planned to remain where he was. He subsequently was offered and accepted the Lakeland position.

Wyatt Bunker, who served two terms on both the old Shelby County School Board and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners and later was Lakeland’s mayor, remembers the move to the municipal districts coming with conflicting emotions.

“For people in the suburbs, it was kind of bittersweet because we loved the school district that we were a part of,” Bunker said. “People were fearful of the merger with city schools. The city would have most of the representatives on that school board, and from time to time exhibited clownish behavior. And we weren’t going to let that impact the quality of children’s education.”

Had the merger lasted more than a year, Bunker says, “It would have been detrimental to suburban schools because of the lack of financial and academic accountability.”

David Stephens, who is superintendent of Bartlett City Schools and was deputy superintendent for the one year of the merged Memphis City-Shelby County district, did a dissertation on the merger while at the University of Memphis.

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His bottom line: “It was so big you really could not manage it.”

Said Stephens: “Something might happen out in the district, and I wouldn’t find out about it until a day later. We were determined to do the best job, but were their hiccups? Definitely.”

As sure as he was of that then, he is only more confident now. Bartlett has just 9,000 students spread across 11 schools. Which means on the first day of the new school year, Stephens could visit each school.

“I saw every principal and talked to teachers,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the so-called de-merger, the present Memphis Shelby County Schools were left with “a lot of inequities,” Hopson said.

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“We still have some raggedy half-filled schools in the inner-city and the suburbs have a bunch of new buildings,” said Hopson, who is now a partner in City Fund, which assists select public school systems. “But to me, the biggest disappointment is not having the opportunity to raise student achievement across the board.

“When we merged, we had diversity because of the demographics in the suburbs,” he continued. “Not just racial diversity, but socioeconomic diversity. The district today is not materially different than it was before.

“There are some exceptional people that I got to meet and know in the suburbs,” he said, recalling the days around the merger. “But there was an ugly side to it, too. Some of the pushback was rooted in socioeconomics and some of it was racial.”

A success for the suburbs

Although legacy Memphis City Schools surrendering its charter remains painful for Hart, she says she has learned the City of Memphis and its outlaying communities really are co-dependent on one another, and that this is a good thing.

She says this is true not just for public education, but for commerce. She cites the area being attractive to Ford for its BlueOval operations in Stanton, Tennessee, because of the proximity to Memphis, but also the nearness of several suburbs.

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Today, she says when people ask her about moving to Memphis and where to live, she offers a layered answer. Her personal favorite part of the city is Midtown, but she likes Downtown, too. And she tells people that if their children are in grade school, the current city system is a legitimate choice.

“Very competitive elementary offerings,” Hart said. “And then I’m honest and say that as your kids get older, it gets more challenging, and then really challenging in high school,” although she adds that the best high schools MSCS has to offer will stand up against the best in the suburbs.

“It has been a success for the suburbs,” Bunker said of establishing the six municipal districts. “The school systems are performing at a high level — academically, athletically, and with the arts and drama.”

Which doesn’t mean there haven’t been challenges along the way. Lakeland, for example, went from 820 students in one elementary school to also having a combined middle school/high school. This year it is a K-10 system with 2,190 students enroute to becoming a K-12 district.

“I won’t kid you, it’s been very challenging work,” Horrell said. “But it has been exciting. We’ve had the opportunity to build from scratch with the high school, do it our own way. We have the benefit of watching these students grow up in the system with some great teachers and coaches pouring into them.”

Of the Memphis Shelby County Schools of today, Horrell said: “I know some excellent people working in that system. I still know a lot of folks at Germantown High School and care about them and root for them. I hope for the best for everybody.”

Hart, who is founder and principal of a strategic partership firm called The Harwigg Group, speaks of “good people in the suburbs,” singling out David Stephens as a prime example.

“Super smart, amazing … it’s not about that,” she said.

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Rather, she says, it’s about helping people to understand why she and others voted as they did in 2010.

“The only thing we wanted was to keep what we have,” Hart said. “We never wanted to get rid of Memphis City Schools. But it was like people thought the Memphis City School Board just woke up and said, ‘The hell with being in education, we’ve decided to get out.’”

That everything played out the way it did, with the pursuit of “special district” status morphing into six separate municipal systems, meant suburban politicians and residents received “an even better deal than they were trying to get,” Hopson said.

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To this day, Hart puts the majority of the blame on Pickler for Memphis City Schools voting to surrender its charter.

“It’s unfair to him,” she said, “and, yes, David Pickler and I can see each other and have conversation. But I put the bulk of the blame on him. I like to call him the father of the merger.

“The truth is their goal was to be separate.”

Told that Hart had called him the “father of the merger,” Pickler paused a few seconds.

Finally, Pickler said if that means today he is the father of six strong suburban districts with high-achieving students, in communities with growing property values and commerce, “That’s a title I would accept — very, very honorably.”