As Tennessee’s largest district moves into the second half of the 2022-23 school year, Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) is seeking feedback from the community for what the district should prioritize in  the 2023-24 school year budget.

Memphis schools Hawkins Mill Elementary and Trezevant High have been on the state’s priority list since the list’s formation in the 2011-12 school year. This means their students are consistently in the bottom 5% of state tests or have less than 67% graduation rate.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools is cancelling events Friday evening and rescheduling Saturday’s School Choice Showcase as a safety precaution for expected protests in the community.Memphis is bracing for demonstrations Friday evening following the city’s planned release of graphic video involving the confrontation between Tyre Nichols and police.

Memphis-Shelby County School Board members received a clearer picture of the priorities parents want the next superintendent to have Wednesday night and two of the biggest are a focus on diversity and the ability to create change.The board held the second of three public input sessions this month to give parents and community members a chance to weigh in on the search that began when former Superintendent Joris Ray resigned last August.

The search for a new superintendent to lead Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) is seeing disagreement over whether the ideal candidate is already on the job.At last Thursday’s community input session on the superintendent search, some pushed for the permanent instatement of interim superintendent, Tutonial “Toni” Williams, rather than continue the nationwide search.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board is poised to choose a firm by the end of the month to lead its national search for a new superintendent.MSCS received applications from four search firms ahead of the board’s Dec. 21 deadline, Kenneth Walker, the district’s general counsel and chief legal officer, told board members during committee meetings Tuesday afternoon.

Plaintiffs behind two lawsuits challenging Tennessee’s private school voucher law plan to appeal a judicial panel’s dismissal of their remaining legal claims.Metropolitan Nashville and Shelby County governments, which jointly challenged the 2019 law that applies only to their counties, notified the Tennessee Court of Appeals late last month that they will appeal the latest ruling. Attorneys representing parents and taxpayers in a second lawsuit submitted a separate notice of appeal.

When schools closed abruptly in 2020, derailing education for students across Memphis and the country, Jairia Cathey, a teacher at Evans Elementary, scrambled to provide virtual learning any way she could think of.Plummeting enrollment in MSCS early childhood programs during the pandemic left just a handful of students in her class. When classrooms reopened in the spring, the families of Cathey’s four students decided to keep them learning remotely. And by the time students returned to her classroom after 18 months of distance learning, the few students who came arrived with a severely disrupted preschool experience or having attended no school at all, at risk of falling behind academically, socially, and emotionally.

Tennessee’s largest school district is asking parents to play a larger role in the process of picking its next leader.The Memphis-Shelby County School Board is encouraging parents to take a five-minute survey at MSCSSuperSearch.com and provide their thoughts on what qualifications the next MSCS Superintendent needs to have.

School districts across the state received 23 letters of intent this month for applications to open new public charter schools next year. That’s the first step potential charter operators must take before submitting their formal application by February 1, 2023.The letters of intent include proposed schools in four counties that do not currently have public charter schools and they’re coming from both existing charter operators in Tennessee and those who were rejected this year.

The decade-old dispute between Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the Germantown Municipal School District ended Thursday as the two districts’ school boards signed off on a deal that allows Germantown to take over two schools currently operated by MSCS.The resolution, spurred by a new state law, means that thousands of MSCS students who attend the Germantown Elementary, Middle and High schools — known collectively as the “three G’s” — will be able to remain in those schools as the buildings begin a transition to the Germantown district’s control.

The Shelby County Commission Wednesday moved closer to resolving a decade-old dispute over control of three schools in Germantown, approving a deal that would, among other things, provide funding for a new high school in Cordova.But their vote wasn’t a slam dunk. Five commissioners voted against the pact, some of them citing the cost to county taxpayers, and others objecting to the state law that put the future of the Germantown schools and their students in limbo.