By Eleanor Boudreau
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkno/local-wkno-943564.mp3
Memphis, TN – Memphis Mayor A C Wharton and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell met in city hall today to discuss the possible swallowing of Memphis City Schools by Shelby County schools.
The day before the mayors met, a gloomy Shelby County School Board Chairman David Pickler predicted chaos were a deluge of 105,000 Memphis students to be dumped onto the much smaller Shelby County Schools system.
"Unfortunately, at this point, there is no transition plan," Pickler said.
Wharton and Luttrell said that is no longer true. They promised no chaos should Memphis residents vote to give up their schools' charter and consolidate with Shelby County Schools; and they unveiled a draft plan for what they call an "orderly" transition.
But the nuts and bolts of the transition mechanism are still largely unknown.
In the coming days Wharton said both the city of Memphis and the Shelby County government websites will be used to solicit and answer questions about merger.
"Where we don't know the answers," Wharton said, "we will say so."
In order for any transition plan to be legally binding it has to be passed into law by the state legislature, but even more immediately--in order for any transition plan to be necessary the Shelby County Election Commission must put a referendum on school charter surrender to the citizens of Memphis. The commission will discuss if--and possibly when--they will hold that referendum vote in a special meeting Wednesday at 4:30 pm.