Brittany Jones told members of the Memphis-Shelby County School Board her 13-year-old son has seen real change at the Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory Charter School.She says her son is autistic and she enrolled him there two years ago hoping the all-boys public charter school would be a good fit. Jones says the change has been so positive she’s supporting the school’s plan to offer a similar school for girls.

The Memphis-Shelby County School Board unanimously approved an agreement Tuesday night to spend $28 million increasing teacher salaries.The historic investment will raise the average teacher with a bachelor’s degree’s salary by more than $4,800 in the 20224/2025 school year. Teachers with a master’s degree will average nearly $4,800 more, education specialists will see more than $6,300 more, and those with a doctorate will average more than a $9,900 increase.

Empower Memphis Career and College Prep will begin serving Orange Mound and South Memphis students a year later than planned.Chief Executive Officer Muna Olaniyi announced to supporters this week that the public charter school’s opening has been postponed until August 2025 because of facility-related challenges.

New Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins is planning to listen to a diverse set of voices as she charts the path forward for the state’s largest school district.Last week Feagins announced the transition team that will help craft and execute the district’s next strategic plan and over the weekend she joined the co-chairs of that team at a retreat involving education leaders from across the country.

Three proposed new public charter schools in Memphis may have a challenging road finding approval from school board members next week.Tuesday night the Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ (MSCS) charter review team recommended a denial for all three including Blueprint College and Career Prep, Journey Northeast Academy, and the Memphis Grizzlies Prep STEAM School for Girls.Board members are scheduled to vote on each application at its meeting next Tuesday.

For more than a decade the Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory Charter School has provided middle-school aged boys with a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) focused education in Memphis and last year school leaders proposed creating a similar school for girls.The Memphis-Shelby County School Board denied that application in 2023 but the proposal is back with some changes to address the concerns board members had.

As the job market in the greater Memphis area continues to expand, more schools that focus on career and technical education (CTE) and college prep will be in demand. This is especially true for low-income neighborhoods where students face barriers entering the workforce.It’s one reason why the founders of Blueprint College and Career Prep (BCCP) chose the Southeast Memphis communities of Oakhaven and Parkway Village as the location for their proposed public charter school. They say families there want a high-quality public education option that addresses each community’s needs.

Humes Middle School in North Memphis will close at the end of this school year as it returns to the Memphis Shelby-County district’s control after a decade in Tennessee’s failed turnaround district for low-performing schools.The last-minute decision to shutter the nearly 100-year-old building, where a young Elvis Presley attended high school, is a change in plans since the fall, when teachers were told the school would stay open, said Bobby White, head of Frayser Community Schools, the charter company that runs Humes for the state’s Achievement School District.

New Memphis schools leader Marie Feagins plans to rely on a group of former and current superintendents for support during her transition to the role by working with the Council of the Great City Schools, a national coalition of big-city districts.The council’s work in Memphis could serve as a pilot project for future educators new to the superintendency.

At 12:39 p.m., as the moon took its first bite of the sun, a group of Craigmont High School students looked up at the dome of the school’s planetarium to watch a video showing them exactly what would happen over the course of the day’s solar eclipse.This time, it wasn’t the “missed opportunity” school staff sensed during the last solar eclipse in 2017, when Craigmont’s planetarium was still in disrepair.Following a successful fundraising campaign several years ago, the Raleigh community jewel has become operational again, allowing students to visualize the perfect alignment of the sun, Earth, and moon that makes a solar eclipse happen.

When Lawrence Blackwell moved his family to Tennessee in 2010 to work for the University of Memphis, he chose to send his son to a unique Pre-K program operated by his new employer.The experience was so positive Blackwell kept his son on the university campus and enrolled him in its elementary school.

By every measurement, the three public schools the University of Memphis operates on its campus are producing academic results.The university has been operating a public school for more than 100 years as a training site for teaching candidates and today that effort serves 1000 students at Campus School, University Middle School, and University High School.

Toni Williams spent part of her last school board meeting as the leader of Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) looking back at everything she’s accomplished since her first meeting.Board members appointed Williams as interim superintendent in 2022 following the resignation of former superintendent Joris Ray. New superintendent Dr. Marie N. Feagins will officially take over the position on April 1.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools board members say the contract being finalized for incoming Superintendent Marie Feagins reflects the lessons learned after former Superintendent Joris Ray departed the district in scandal.For starters, the proposed contract includes a new ethical conduct clause, board members say. The board voted unanimously to approve terms of the four-year contract on Tuesday.

This year nine potential charter operators met the February 1 deadline to file an application to open a new public charter school.School board members in Memphis, Nashville, and Rutherford County will vote on those applications later this spring, and any parents who are interested in them now have access to an independent evaluation of the proposed schools.Education advocacy organization Tennesseans for Student Success (TSS) launched this year’s edition of the Quality Charter Review on Monday with an evaluation of each application’s academic, operations, and financial plans. The review also provides an outline of each proposed school's strengths and needed improvements.

Members of the Memphis-Shelby County School Board are expected to approve a plan later this month to spend more than $12 million upgrading school security.During Tuesday’s work session, the board moved approval of those funds to the consent agenda for next board meeting. 

Each school day more than a thousand children and teenagers travel from across Shelby County to the University of Memphis for a reason you may not expect.Those school-aged students aren’t there for a tour, but are instead attending one of three public schools the university operates.

Memphis parent advocate Sarah Carpenter is among those blasting President Biden’s proposed FY 2025 budget for potentially cutting valuable support for public charter schools.The president’s budget plan includes a $40 million cut to the Charter School Program (CSP) that provides grants to support the startup of new public charter schools and the replication and expansion of existing public charter schools.

The timeline for Memphis-Shelby County School’s new superintendent to get to work is officially moving up.Members of the Memphis-Shelby County School board voted Tuesday afternoon to move Dr. Marie Feagins’ start date to April 1. Previously Feagins was scheduled to start after the end of this school year.

Incoming Superintendent Marie Feagins has started working with Memphis-Shelby County Schools under a per diem agreement, allowing her to begin a transition to the superintendent role while the school board hammers out her contract.Feagins’ temporary employment took effect March 1, according to a press release from school board Chair Althea Greene. Greene said she expects Feagins, a Detroit public school district administrator, to begin officially as MSCS superintendent on April 1, months ahead of the July 1 start that board members had targeted during the search process.