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As the leader of the consultants helping Shelby County's school-merger team, J. Puckett brought an end to Boston Consulting Group's first full meeting with the Transition Planning Commission on Thursday night by asking what everyone thought of a draft of "guiding principles."
The list led with the statement "Students first: The success and well-being of students is our first and primary consideration." It eventually grew to include 10 key points that would, Puckett suggested, "provide a compass, a true north" for the commission as it creates a plan for merging Memphis City Schools with Shelby County Schools.
The list was based on interviews with the 21 transition commissioners.
Tommy Hart, a Collierville real estate developer and former county commissioner, said Puckett should "call me back about 9 o'clock on the 10th," referring to a community forum the transition commission plans to hold in Collierville on Jan. 10.
"We'll either have a lot of happy people or we'll need some nets to catch tomatoes," Hart said.
Thursday's meeting ran for three-and-a-half hours and included an hour of breakout sessions with discussions about aspirations, concerns and priorities.
Common threads connected many of the sessions, with aspirations such as "breaking the mold on public education" and "culture of high expectations for all students."
Some priorities included "curricula and programs that meet students unique needs" and "focus on quality teaching and strong school leadership."
As for concerns, former county commissioner Joyce Avery of Arlington tried putting a positive spin on one of the overriding issues the commission faces: "I hope we have a plan that is so good people choose to stay in the system."
But Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald, in Avery's group, was blunt in saying that the commission should prepare for some suburbs trying to opt out by forming their own municipal school districts.
That concern influenced real debate when the commission discussed the draft of guiding principles, with one potential statement being, "We do not advocate large-scale mandatory movement of teachers and principals."
Stand For Children Tennessee executive director Kenya Bradshaw objected to potentially "tying" hands of district leaders.
But Katie Stanton, a Memphis resident whose career was spent working with suburban teachers and leaders, said many suburban teachers are "very, very terrified" they will be moved to inner-city schools.
Richard Holden, the recently-retired SCS chief of operations, pointed out teachers actually don't have that guarantee currently.
McDonald said municipalities themselves could not promise similar "large-scale" changes in faculty and staff would not occur in municipal systems.
He said: "There is no way to ensure those teachers that have been in a system with their pensions and rights guaranteed, that those teachers would want to go into this new system with new pension and new health insurance and all those things that would have to be decided by that new municipal school board.
"In terms of teachers and principals, you don't have the stability there."
