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Memphis students return to class Monday as the question of who will lead district operations this year continues to play out in federal court.
Tennessee Republicans are fighting to establish a state-appointed oversight board to take control of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which could bring significant changes to the district curriculum and budget. The board would be tasked with improving key district metrics including chronic absenteeism and state reading and math test proficiency.
MSCS leaders have also committed to addressing those two issues, while likely ushering in a new wave of school closures and responding to a state-ordered forensic audit. The final results found $53 million of potential waste or abuse spending from 2021 to 2024.
Here are five important storylines to watch as the 2026-27 school year begins.
The MSCS state takeover saga continues
At the end of June, a federal judge temporarily blocked the state takeover of MSCS the day before nine oversight board members were set to take office.
It was an early win for the Memphis schools and local government officials who filed a lawsuit challenging the takeover as unconstitutional and against the federal Civil Rights Act. But there isn’t a court date, so MSCS’ leadership remains in limbo going into the school year.
Two local parent advocacy groups, Memphis Lift and the new Together4Students, are pushing for MSCS to drop the lawsuit and spend the $200,000 allocated by the Shelby County Commission for legal counsel on students instead.
If reinstated, the oversight board would gain sweeping authority over the district, stripping power from the local school board. State members would have final say over charter school approvals and school closures and could appoint a new superintendent. They would also need to approve any district spending over $50,000.
Takeover advocates and oversight members have long upheld Houston’s 2023 school intervention as a model for Memphis. There, teachers had to reapply for their jobs, and students faced a new curriculum. Test scores and school performance improved slightly, though some Memphis experts argue Houston’s metrics for success are not the same as in Memphis.
More school closures are likely
Some MSCS students will report to new schools next week after the district shuttered five buildings at the end of last school year: Frayser-Corning, Georgian Hills, and Lucy Elementary; Chickasaw Middle; and Ida B. Wells Academy.
Those decisions were met with backlash from Memphis families and educators, which caused the district to transfer Ida B. Wells programming into a different building instead of getting rid of it entirely.
District leaders cited chronic underenrollment and high facility repair costs as reasons for closing those schools. But the problems are far more pervasive than a handful of specific schools. In the past decade, MSCS enrollment has dropped by more than 9%. The district’s building repair costs are estimated at over $1.6 billion for the next 10 years.
In December, Superintendent Roderick Richmond said he plans to close up to 10 more schools in the next two years. It’s unclear which schools will be shut down, and the district hasn’t responded to questions about how this year’s closures have affected displaced teachers and staff.
State takeovers have historically meant more school closures. Dorsey Hopson, a former MSCS superintendent and current oversight board member, closed 17 schools during his six year tenure, and proposed 28 more the month before leaving his position in 2019.
How will MSCS respond to state forensic audit results?
Superintendent Richmond has until late August to present a corrective action plan responding to the state forensic audit results, according to a policy adopted by MSCS board members this spring.
The final results from outside firm CliftonLarsonAllen, or CLA, identified over $54 million in MSCS spending as evidence of potential fraud, waste, or abuse. Most of that spending is related to a single custodial contract in 2022 that the district has since canceled.
After looking into claims that a former chief of business operations accepted “kickbacks” from the contract decision, MSCS leaders forwarded the case to the FBI. CLA couldn’t verify the results from that investigation but did say the district officer resigned shortly after a whistleblower came forward.
CLA also identified more than $65 million in spending that violated district policies while highlighting fragmented recordkeeping systems and internal control deficiencies across multiple departments.
In April, Richmond pledged to strengthen district accountability measures and modernize document systems. According to a live tracking website, most of his goals are in progress or haven’t been started yet.
During a July 21 presentation, Richmond told board members that the district has sent a letter with expectations to each vendor identified in the audit and hosted principal training to ensure consistency in district practices.
“We welcome this scrutiny,” he said. “We intend to use every page of (the audit) to make this district stronger.”
Low reading and math scores bring double state intervention
MSCS is facing state intervention from a new law that requires accountability hearings for schools earning a D or F on the state’s report card for two or more years in a row. Under the law, districts with repeated underperformance have to implement corrective measures approved by the Tennessee Department of Education.
This spring, Memphis had 14 schools on that list. In March, MSCS leaders testified to the Tennessee State Board of Education that more than half of the teachers at those schools are working on conditional or emergency licenses.
State board members were supposed to approve corrective actions for the underperforming schools in May, triggering a collaboration with the Tennessee Department of Education to implement recommended changes. It’s unclear what those recommendations are.
But the district informed the State Board in March it had begun implementing standardized, scripted lesson plans at those schools and sending regional superintendents to do classroom checks on whether curriculum is being followed.
MSCS students are improving on standardized reading tests year over year, but continue to fall behind statewide proficiency rates. And the district struggles with math, especially in middle school. Last year, only 15.7% of MSCS sixth graders passed the math TCAP.
Chief Academics Officer Angela Whitelaw said the district will spread techniques it used to boost high school math rates to lower grades this year. That includes creating standardized lesson plans, investing in teacher training, and concentrating academic coaches in struggling schools.
Those are similar strategies used by local charter schools, which have seen significant gains in math achievement since the COVID-19 pandemic.
MSCS absenteeism is down, but the work isn’t done
Alongside academic underperformance, MSCS’ history of high chronic absenteeism is one of four criteria that triggered the controversial state takeover. Just over 30% of MSCS students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, meaning they missed 18 or more days of school. Statewide, 18.3% of students hit that mark.
But Memphis school leaders say they’re confident that chronic absenteeism rates dropped last year for the first time since 2017. Stacey Davis, MSCS’ attendance officer, attributes that success to a neighborhood door-knocking campaign that allows staff to speak directly to parents.
She also said attendance liaisons are key to that success, making daily phone calls when a student is absent and tracking attendance data. This year, MSCS’ 69 attendance specialists will be sent to low-performing schools full-time, she said, instead of being split among multiple buildings.
Davis said she hopes that targeted support will reduce absenteeism in schools with particularly high rates, especially high school, where 40% of students were on track to be chronically absent in February.
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
Bri Hatch 2026-07-30 12:00:00
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