Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. called on local officials to work together and figure out how to cover the remaining costs needed to construct a new STEM education lab at Whitehaven High School at Wednesday’s Shelby County Education Committee meeting.

Memphis-Shelby County School Board member Frank Johnson announced on Facebook that he’s officially dropping out of the District 7 school board race, citing health issues and the recent death of a family member.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board of Education voted 8-1 Tuesday night to approve Superintendent Marie Feagins’ plans to cut over 1,000 district positions and a $1.8 billion budget for the 2024-25 school year at Tuesday's special meeting.

Voters in the Memphis-Shelby County school district got a chance to hear from several school board candidates about their thoughts on student literacy, capital projects, and school funding considerations at a candidate forum hosted last week by the education publication Chalkbeat.

Dr. Alexis Gwin-Miller grew up in Memphis facing the same challenges that she hopes to help children overcome with the Blueprint College and Career Prep public charter school.

The ongoing search for a new leader of the state’s largest school district is once again seeing another key date moved back.At Tuesday night’s Memphis-Shelby County School Board meeting, Vice Chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman told board members the search process now aims to have five to eight candidates to interview by early December. Originally, the goal was to start board interviews in November.Dorse-Coleman says the process is targeting having a new superintendent ready to start by July 1, 2024.The district has been searching for a new superintendent since former superintendent Joris Ray resigned in July 2022.

The ongoing Memphis-Shelby County Schools superintendent search is receiving helpful information from an unlikely source.At Tuesday’s Memphis-Shelby County School Board meeting, the district revealed it has received around 60 comments on the search at high school sporting events as part of the district’s “Tailgate Talks.”The district has held two Tailgate Talks this month, including one last week at Kirby Stadium that included a large number of comments from younger Memphis residents.“We are doing our due diligence to find a superintendent, but we're taking the time, getting out in the community. Somebody said why are we doing this, this is why we're doing this. Because these young people at Kirby…told us that they felt like they actually had a voice because we stopped, we listened, and we talk with them. Not to them, there's a difference,” said board vice chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman.

Members of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) Board of Education voted to deny four out of five applications Tuesday night from public charter schools vying to transition from the state’s Achievement School District (ASD) and into MSCS.The vote means an uncertain future for Humes Middle School, Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School, Cornerstone Prep Lester, and Fairley High School in the 2024/2025 school year. Each school could face closure, a merger into the district’s Izone turnaround school model, or potentially even remain open as public charter schools if leaders successfully appeal to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.Each of the five schools applying for transition to MSCS is doing so because the school is in the last year of a ten-year term with the Achievement School District. The ASD is an intervention run by the state to serve schools that are in the lowest five percent of schools, or a low achieving school across the state.

Shelby County Commissioners chose non-profit leader Mauricio Calvo to fill a vacant spot on the Memphis-Shelby County School Board.District 5 has been without representation since former Board Vice Chair Sheleah Harris’ abrupt resignation last month.At Monday’s meeting, commissioners voted 7 to 4 to confirm Calvo to serve as interim board member until the end of Harris’ term in September 2024. Calvo beat out three other candidates for the appointment.

Shelby County Commissioners chose non-profit leader Mauricio Calvo to fill a vacant spot on the Memphis-Shelby County School Board.District 5 has been without representation since former Board Vice Chair Sheleah Harris’ abrupt resignation last month.At Monday’s meeting, commissioners voted 7 to 4 to confirm Calvo to serve as interim board member until the end of Harris’ term in September 2024. Calvo beat out three other candidates for the appointment.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) superintendent search is officially on hold, much to the frustration of some residents in Memphis.MSCS school board members called a special meeting to discuss the budget on Tuesday and towards the end of the meeting, the board announced that it will be pausing the superintendent search..