Come here to chat tonight during the schools consolidation debate

There are many issues to consider when thinking about consolidating 2 school districts which MCS is trying to force with the County by surrendering its charter. With everything involved it should take at least a year to come up with a solid business plan to make the transition run smoothly. I was hoping to hear that there was ,at least, more of a plan than the Memphis City School Board decided all of a sudden to give up and let the County take care of everything. Too many mistakes are going to be made this way and all the kids will suffer. After listening to the first part of the debate, I have made up my mind to vote, "No" on March 8th. No business plan=No consideration for the kids.

Bottomline - MCS FAILED! Note to MCS: STOP acting selfish and STOP acting like you should still have a HUGE say in a joint school system....YOU FAILED!!!!!! STOP with the us VS them mentality. You are turning over your charter - Time to trust someone else now. YOU FAILED! STOP acting innocent.

In my opinion, Memphis parents who can't afford private school, and are able, should home school during this transition. The school system receives Federal Funding per head for each student, just as if they were cattle. Thin the herd, put a giant hole in their budget, and gain their attention. I home schooled two of my own during public school problems. Both during Junior and Senior years. I felt overwhelmed at first, but found that the path was well defined. The courses had teachers behind them who were available by phone and internet. In our experience, more available and interested than most of our public school teachers. The first student was in the bottom 25% of his class his Sophmore year. After graduating from home school, he attended Vanderbilt and finished in the top 10% of his Economics class. The second student is achieving equally impressive results. None of their accomplishments would have been possible had they stayed in our failing public school system. I am not a college graduate. We used tutors for science and math. A parent can be more of an administrator than a teacher when setting up to home school. Knowing this should empower any parent who is thinking of home school to move forward. I believe that the education most parents can direct would be better than those achieved by the administrators of our public schools. In other words, any idiot can administrate. A google search for "Independent High School" will bring up many accredited schools. We used "North Dakota Center for Distance Education". We supplemented courses from "Nebraska Independent Study" which the North Dakota school happily added to their transcript. We started by ordering the materials only for two of the courses we thought would be the most difficult. Once we looked the courses over, we realized that we could learn much more by educating this way. We then payed the tuition and pulled out of public school. Parents should be proactive. It is the action each parent takes that will determine the outcome for their own student.