City school board opposes line freeze

Attorney predicts bill will die in House

By Ruma Banerji Kumar for The Commercial Appeal

May 17, 2005

The Memphis school board plans to aggressively oppose a legislative bill that would make it easier for the Shelby County school system to freeze its boundaries against Memphis annexation.

Memphis schools' opposition comes despite promising negotiations just three months ago when both districts planned to work together to support the bill.

The bill passed the state Senate 31-0 last week and goes before the House Education Committee's K-12 subcommittee today. Memphis schools lobbyist and board attorney Percy Harvey said he does not expect the subcommittee to approve the bill.

Memphis school board president Wanda Halbert has asked Harvey to lobby against the measure because it would allow the county schools to freeze boundaries. "Freezing a boundary would mean that as the city goes on annexing parts of the county, the county system could have a school in the middle of a city neighborhood that the children in that neighborhood wouldn't be allowed to attend," Halbert said at a school board meeting Monday night.

Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, filed the bill after both school systems said they needed protection from sudden threats such as the one posed when Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton threatened to pull school funding. The bill was intended to help iron out problems financing the two systems' capital needs.

In other matters Monday:

The school board got an update on the progress of a districtwide behavior program that has replaced paddling.

The Blue Ribbon Initiative calls for fewer out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, and a new approach to discipline that involves more counseling and intervention through alternative schools and in-school suspension. Memphis school officials found the district had 127 different programs addressing behavior and discipline. The scattered, piecemeal approach was making it difficult to address school safety issues, said Blue Ribbon lead coordinator Brenda Cassellius. Cassellius has put together teams of educators and administrators to help devise one approach.

The 91 schools relying more on counseling and personal intervention with students who had discipline problems saw a drop in office referrals by roughly 30,000, and suspensions dropped by nearly 20,000 in 104 schools.

The school board took a preliminary look at two policy changes expected to be voted on June 6. One change would allow high school students to use cell phones before or after school. Current policy doesn't allow cell phones. The other policy change would require the board to listen to citizens' concerns at school board meetings by 7 p.m.