The last two years have seen some drastic shifts in the public school landscape of Shelby County.
In 2011, the Memphis City Schools Board voted to abandon their special district charter and have the administration of the city schools fall back to Shelby County Schools. The issue was put to a ballot, and voters agreed with MCS.
The merger brought all the schools in Tennessee’s largest county under one umbrella—and with it came a storm of cutbacks and layoffs.
Before the schools merger went into effect on July 2013, SCS and MCS laid off hundreds of teachers due to budget constraints.
After the merger, further cuts were made to teaching positions just days before the start of the 2013-2014 school year.
After a long legal battle, six area municipal school districts were created separately from SCS. With all school districts facing uncertain enrollment numbers, SCS overestimated the 2014-2015 numbers by thousands, forcing another round of lay-offs for teachers and other positions.
At the state level, the total number of teaching positions decreased from 64,849 in 2011 to 62,609 in 2012, according to the Tennessee Department of Education, despite student enrollment increasing by over 1,000 students.
In 2013 there was an increase in teaching positions, but also a large jump in student enrollment across the state. While student enrollment increased over 6 percent, teaching positions increased by less than 1 percent.
Dr. E. Sutton Flynt, Director of the Office of Teacher Education and Student Support Services in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences at the University of Memphis, said the trend downward for teachers has a lot to do with a program that is designed to help schools.
In 2011, Tennessee was awarded funding through the federal Race to the Top initiative. The program aims to improve the nation’s public education systems and have students more prepared to enter college. The state uses this program to evaluate its educators.
“They really made it a punishment/reward situation, so a lot of the teachers who could get out got out,” Flynt said. “It was very onerous, very early. That lightened a little bit.”
But Shelby County Schools faces other problems beyond the shrinking teacher positions, Flynt says.
“The problem we have right now is the state says it’s fine to have a salary schedule, which means every year you teach you get a bump in the pay scale,” Flynt said. “But our Shelby county system decided not to do that, but all the other districts in our area do, do that. They are more attractive to our candidates than Shelby county schools are.”
Flynt also said that SCS has made the choice not to recognize advanced degrees, while the other area districts do. The recognition of advanced degrees brings a stronger skill set to schools while enabling educators to earn more money.
Rebecca Quirarte is a senior at the U of M, working towards a Bachelor of Science in Education in Teaching All Learners. She plans to work in special education.
“It made me think about going into other institutions, just different kinds of programs, maybe not working in an actual Shelby County School, but doing something else,” she said.
Despite the concerns with schools in the Memphis area, she said being an educator is worth it “if it’s really something you want to do.”
