In light of Germantown’s offer to buy the schools inside its town limits that are now operated by Shelby County Schools, it seems a good time to remember the racially-based gerrymandering of school attendance zones that was integral to the district’s needs for these schools.
It was the old Shelby County Schools district that, in response to Germantown officials’ concerns about too many African-American students coming into the town for their education, created attendance zones that blatantly created all black schools in Southeast Shelby County. The decision was built on a foundation of fictions about the overcrowding of the county district’s schools, a fact unchallenged by the news media although clearly untrue.
It was a strange fact of life about the former county district: although Shelby County Government was its major funding source, the dominant influence on its agenda, actions, and decisions were the small town mayors.
We wrote often about this issue, the attendance zones and their racial factors, and decisions about schools that were made to directly profit favored developers.
Here’s a post from February 28, 2006, followed by one from August 2, 2007 :
Why are these people smiling?
While Memphis City Schools is developing a national reputation for innovative school reform, Shelby County Schools’ board members are mired in a business as usual approach to public education.
This means that in the near future, the county school system will once again try to stampede approval of another questionable new school proposal despite its political drawbacks and racial overtones.
It’s “Southeast Shelby County High School Redux,” set to begin in a couple of weeks. Look for the manufactured sense of urgency that always accompanies a county school proposal, the near hysterical demands for immediate action and the political machinations designed to paint Memphis City Schools into a corner.
Perhaps, this time around, some people will have had enough. While Memphis City Schools ultimately went along with its county counterpart’s single-minded attitude on the selection of the single worst high school location in this community, it was not without some bruised feelings and battered political sensibilities. That’s why the fractious debate about the high school location may in time look tame when compared to the controversy to come.
Once again, Shelby County Schools (whose board is pictured here) will propose a questionable location – a vacant Schnuck’s store – with connections to a developer whose name has a familiar ring to it – Hyneman.
Once again, Shelby County Schools will push the proposed school despite any real need for it at this time. Like the southeast Shelby County high school, the number of students needed to justify a new school will not occur for five to 10 years.
Once again, there is little reason for this new school at this time and even less reason for Shelby County Schools to be making these decisions. By the time increased enrollment justifies a new school, the area will have been annexed into the City of Memphis.
The Shelby County Schools’ Board has set a town hall meeting in early February to discuss the proposal for the Schnucks school, but it seems an exercise in window dressing. The board has already voted to lease the grocery store at Riverdale and Holmes for $339,130 a year. Unaddressed is the cost of renovating the grocery store into a school, but even without this piece of the financial puzzle, Shelby County Schools is determined to proceed.
So what is the impact of these schools and why is the county district so determined to open them? While we hope that the answer to both questions is not the same, it’s hard to see any motivation except one – to move African-American students out of Germantown schools.
School board members and Germantown elected officials have acknowledged as much in their planning meetings and in terms that are anything but politically correct. When the Schnucks School opens, it will be more than 90 per cent African-American, returning the percentage of black students in Germantown schools to a level that officials can accept.
Just look at the facts about the new high school. The severe overcrowding cited by school officials to justify the new school amounts to a grand total of 79 students. In fact, with the new high school, the capacity of Germantown High School will drop below 50 percent. It will be 2012 before the growth in enrollment would justify a 1,200-student high school, much less the 2,000 warehouse being built by Shelby County Schools.
The county’s persistence on these new schools speaks volumes about the peculiar relationship that has existed for decades between Shelby County Schools and the mayors of the small towns of Shelby County. Although none of the towns dedicate a percentage of their property tax rates to the public schools which they tout so proudly, the opinions of their mayors are given more clout over county school decisions than officials of Shelby County Government, which foots the bill for the schools in the towns.
When Shelby County Government reinvented itself in 1976, it was to convert the sleepy, rural government into an active, urban one. It was a culture shift that has never been completely successful, but remains a work in progress. The Shelby County Schools, meanwhile, never budged, stuck in time and in a rural world view that produces ideas like these two new southeast Shelby County schools.
Most disturbing of all, this insular thinking runs the risk of being the spark that ignites an ugly controversy with racial overtones. Despite the political tinder box that is local politics, the board seems hellbent on pushing through its schools, whatever the cost to the overall peace of our community.
The answer this time is the same as it was last time. Shelby County Schools should bow out, and give the decision over to Memphis City Schools. After all, southeast Shelby County should be annexed into Memphis within five years, so why not just allow the city school district to make these decisions on future schools?
As short-term tenants of the schools, it makes little sense for the county schools’ policies to guide these decisions. In addition to the impending annexation, there are at least three other reasons Memphis City Schools should make these decisions.
One, Memphis City Schools does not share Shelby County Schools’ penchant for warehousing students in oversized schools. Two, Memphis City Schools does in fact build better schools, not the minimum security prisons erected by the county system. Three, there’s Superintendent Carol Johnson, whose leadership and new thinking are our best educational assets.
In the end, the new county schools’ proposal shouldn’t be called the Schnucks School as much as it should be considered the Snuckered School.
Here’s the post from August 2, 2007:
U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald was wrong in her ruling about Shelby County Schools.
She criticized the county school district for not taking race into consideration when it created its school attendance zones.
The truth is: That’s exactly what Shelby County Schools did, and that’s why, on balance, her ruling last week was the right one.
Solomon
Judge Donald, meting out the judicial equivalent of “half a loaf is better than none,” refused to dissolve the 44-year-old desegregation order for Shelby County Schools but approved this year’s attendance zones.
Typically, the county schools board members, particularly the master of the disingenuous justification, Chairman David Pickler, now seem as willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions as Paris Hilton.
In the face of a noticeably stern judicial rebuff, county school officials trotted out their favorite, old rhetorical warhorses. Achieving racial balance would mean busing students, breaking up neighborhood schools and costing the district extra money, they warned.
Heckuva Job, Brownie
Superintendent Bobby Webb, who essentially acts as lackey to the board’s micro-management, said: “It’s a heck of a dilemma for me.”
Well, too bad. If you don’t want someone to shoot you, you really shouldn’t hand him a loaded pistol.
The loaded pistol for the county schools – and poster child for its racially-conscious decisions – ended up being Southwind High School. That’s why if county school officials want to see who’s responsible for this dilemma, they need only to look in the mirror. All it really would have taken to avoid the current dilemma was to make smarter decisions about the location of new county schools.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
In the wake of the ruling, the county system also mounted one of its favorites – a disinformation campaign. Mr. Webb said that 95 percent of the people in the southeast area are African-Americans, suggesting that because of that fact the Southwind High School would of course be predominantly black.
To suggest that southeast Shelby County is 95 percent African-American is spin at best and a lie at worst. That’s because Mr. Webb’s statement is based conveniently on the county district’s own opinion of what constitutes southeast Shelby County.
In the world of county schools, southeast Shelby County mysteriously stops when it reached Hacks Cross Road, which forms the easternmost border for the attendance zone for Southwind High Schools. What the superintendent really is saying is: “When we count the African-American students, we’re only counting kids south of Lowrance and west of Hacks Cross. My gosh, it’s 95 percent African-American.”
Gross
What he doesn’t say is that if you take off your blinders and ignore race, the Shelby County School Board could have located the new high school a couple of miles to the east, and voila, southeast Shelby County isn’t 95 percent any more. In fact, the new county high school would probably be racially balanced enough to impress a federal judge.
But there was no way that the county district was going to move the school east of Hacks Cross Road. If they had done that, they could move some white kids attending school in Collierville to the new high school. And in spite of what some county school officials say, that more eastward location would still be in the Memphis annexation reserve area and therefore, it would meet the criteria of being a school developed jointly by Memphis and Shelby County school systems.
Incredibly enough, the news media continue to accept the county schools’ justifications with an undiscerning eye. As The Commercial Appeal reported without attribution yesterday: “With less than two weeks till the first day of school, some feared the district would have to go back to last year’s grossly overcrowded high schools, leaving the new Southwind High School unused.”
Journalism 101
Apparently, our daily paper relied on the county schools’ version of what’s “grossly overcrowded,” because on balance, the county system doesn’t really have a crisis of overcrowding. As we’ve said before, the county district uses a different formula for determining school capacity, and because of it, its capacity ratings tend to overstate crowding. If Memphis City Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson used the same method of calculating capacities, no school in the city would have been recommended for closure last year.
But misleading calculations aside, the county system sidesteps the question of why they are willing to crowd all of these African-American students into Southwind High School and allow capacities of Germantown schools to drop to levels that suggest that parts of Germantown High School should be shut down.
While it might seem that Judge Donald’s ruling will accelerate the out-migration into neighboring counties, if the county district actually did what she suggests, there would be no schools that are “racially identifiable” as African-American schools (if that’s the sort of thing that motivates you to pack your moving crates in the first place).
When we hear Chairman Pickler say that “my personal opinion is that the ruling, if allowed to stand, would create grave damage to the community,” we’re tempted to say that in the interest of accuracy, The Commercial Appeal should print it like this: “create grave damage to the (white) community.” It’s another craven attempt by the county district to enflame the passions of white parents, and there certainly is nothing in the history of the district to suggest that the black community’s needs and interests ever factor into decisions like attendance zones.
Mapping It Out
You don’t need to be a federal judge to see it. All you need is a map and a magnifying glass. The Southwind High School attendance zone goes directly down Hacks Cross Road, walling off the largely African-American area west of the road. Meanwhile, the Germantown High School attendance zone meanders around like a drunk on Beale Street, seemingly picking up specific subdivisions and houses inhabited largely by white residents.
Looking at the attendance zones, it’s hard to imagine how Shelby County Schools officials can defend them with a straight face. They clearly are set up to keep black kids out of Germantown High School and to make sure white kids do.
As Judge Donald wisely concluded, the burden of proof is on the county district, and it simply failed. While her 62-page opinion sifted through her thinking, all that’s really needed is to consider the arrogance reflected on the attendance zone map.
Five More Years
As we have warned for more than a year, the county board’s decisions on Southwind High School were racially motivated from the beginning. While school officials can beat the drum and chant racial code words like busing and neighborhood schools, this time it will largely fall on deaf ears.
This time around, they’re not trying to intimidate county politicians into silence. They’re trying to pressure a federal judge, and in the end, it’s senseless, self-defeating behavior.
But then again, it’s that kind of behavior that got the board in this position in the first place. Rather than complain about Judge Donald’s decision, the board should take out a map of the district that shows where the students live and without regard to race, draw the attendance zone boundaries.
When you don’t pay attention to race, it’s pretty easy to come up with attendance zones that are more logical, and along the way, they’d be amazed at what they could come up – a district whose schools pass muster in a federal court. As a result of its recent decisions, the district now has five more years to prove that it can manage a district that treats all children fairly and equally.
This could have all been so much simpler.
