In the wake of a decision by acting Circuit Judge Robert Childers to deny an immediate injunction sought by former Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) Superintendent Marie Feagins to restore her position, Feagins’ lawsuit continues.
And the larger controversies related to her January firing by the MSCS board continue as well.
The Feagins matter was central to Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, which had to deal with a riddle dumped on the commission by the Tennessee General Assembly.
This was the matter of a measure, passed in the 2025 legislative session, that requires Memphis-Shelby County School Board elections to be conducted in the same cycle and under similar term-limit requirements as county commission elections.
The assembly’s action was in some ways an outgrowth of the Feagins firing, which riled up state-government officials, caused partisan tensions, and further complicated the matter of ongoing state encroachment over local options.
The next commission election is scheduled for 2026, and the problem is that MSCS board terms have, up to this point, been staggered, with five members of the nine-member board having been elected in 2024, while the other four were elected in 2022.
The five elected last year would ordinarily not be up for reelection until 2028, but the new law has presented the county commission with the issue of how and when to alter the MSCS cycle so as to achieve alignment of the two bodies’ elections.
Commission members devoted most of their time on Monday to the issue and, after multiple amendments, substitute resolutions, and one formal reconsideration, managed to solve half the issue.
A resolution calling for the terms of the state law not to be implemented until 2030 was rejected after much debate, and it was resolved that anyone running for an MSCS position in 2026 would be subject to the same term-limit restrictions — a maximum of two four-year-terms — as are members of the county commission.
Left unresolved, however, was the main issue of alignment. Just how many school board members should be running in 2026, and at what point do the MSCS terms become synchronized with those of the county commission?
Audience members speaking to the issue before commission members tackled it were of two vehemently held and diametrically opposite opinions. One group, evidently consisting mainly of people outraged by the board’s firing of Feagins in January, wanted all MSCS elections to be held in 2026. This would have converted the terms of those board members elected in 2024 retroactively to two-year terms instead of four-year terms.
Two of those members, Natalie McKinney and Sable Otey — both of whom, coincidentally or otherwise, had voted for Feagins’ firing — were on hand Monday to speak against the contraction.
Sentiment on the matter was not only sharply divided; it was so intense that security officers were compelled to physically remove two audience members, one of whom, in his insistence that the commission act to his satisfaction, kept shouting over and over, “Do your fucking job!”
The commission itself was clearly divided on the matter of alignment, and the discussion — and the meeting — ended with a decision to kick the can further down then road. The commission voted to bifurcate the larger issue, deferring further action on the election-alignment question until the commission’s September 3rd committee-meeting date.
The commission’s Republican minority members, most of whom favored an immediate election-date realignment, got one concession from Monday’s meeting. For the first time in years, the body’s annual chairmanship vote resulted in the choice of a GOP member, David Bradford, to serve as vice chair.
Democrat Shante Avant was elected chair of the commission for the coming year and will oversee the next move on election-date realignment.
