Back in 1996, when the Shelby County Commission’s seven-member white Republican majority forced through its version of a voting plan for the soon-to-be elected county school board, we were skeptical about the prospects.
Our primary doubt was whether the plan – which prevented residents of Memphis from voting for board members – would exacerbate existing social and political divisions that had already begun to threaten public harmony. Our second doubt concerned the legality of the plan; since it was indisputable that city residents would be contributing taxes toward the maintenance of what is in effect a suburban school system, wouldn’t their constitutional rights be abridged by denying them a role in the guidance of that system? Taxation-without-representation was, after all, a phrase that had a certain resonance in American history.
Bill Gibbons, now District Attorney General and then a leading member of the commission majority backing the plan, cited an East Tennessee legal precedent and argued that the courts would rule the other way – that allowing city residents a vote in constituting the board would unconstitutionally dilute the involvement of suburban residents in the affairs of a school system that served them exclusively. In successive judgments – by U.S. District Judge Jerome Turner, by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, and, as of this week, by the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear an appeal – Gibbons and his colleagues have been vindicated on the legal point.
Our first concern still remains, however. The state mandate for elected county school boards had its origin in former Governor Ned McWherter’s 1991 Better Education Plan (BEP) reforms, which continue to be pursued by the successor Sundquist administration. And the whole point of the BEP, after all, has been to end the radical unevenness in quality – system by system, district by district – which historically has characterized the state’s educational structure. The effect of the Supreme Court’s action this week, as in the promulgation of the commission majority’s voting plan, is to codify the permanent division of Shelby County’s schools into racially distinct spheres of influence.
Inside Memphis, a black school-board majority oversees a majority-black school system. In the suburbs, at least for the short while, an elected white majority will direct the affairs of a majority-white school system. It would appear that an election for the new county school board will be set for this August, and, under the district lines approved by the commission majority in 1996, the fact is that any minority representation at all could be a chancy thing.
What the commission actually did in 1996 was consistent with the de facto two-population theory of local government. Unable to agree on a board election plan, the commission submitted to Judge Turner two plans side by side – the one which has now prevailed and an alternate provided by the six-member black Democratic minority. The latter plan (disallowed by Turner) would have guaranteed city representation – but not dominance – on the county board. Given current trends in out-migration, a goodly number of current Memphis residents will shortly be residents of the suburbs, and that fact alone, we thought, provided a good case for the Democrats’ plan.
Be that as it may, the judicial process of review is now complete. The only wiggle room left for the commission is that of adjusting the provisional outer-county voting districts so as to maximize the election prospects for all sectors of the population. It is not too late for compromise. n