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Student safety concerns took center stage at a Memphis school closure hearing Monday as parents pushed back on a district proposal to merge a local middle and high school.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools leaders want to close Chickasaw Middle School at the end of the school year due to chronic underenrollment. Sending those grade 6-8 students to neighboring Westwood High School would fill empty classrooms and usher in new staff supports, MSCS leaders said Monday.
School board members are expected to vote on the proposals in February. But in Monday’s meeting, parents and local residents said it feels like the decision to close Chickasaw has already been made without sufficient community input.
“They asked how many parents were here, and four people raised their hands,” Joseph Cox, who runs the neighborhood nonprofit Youth of Westwood. “They’re good about making decisions about us without us. This is just a small fraction of the community, and most of these people are school employees.”
Parents present during Monday’s meeting said they worry that putting 12-year-olds and 18-year-olds in the same building could cause safety issues.
“I feel like those schools already have their own separate behavioral issues,” said Brianna Kraft, parent of a sixth grader at Chickasaw. “Putting them together would be catastrophic.”
Westwood would become only the third combination middle and high school in the district. According to state discipline data from the 2023-2024 school year, just under one-third of Westwood students and over half of Chickasaw Middle students were subject to disciplinary action like suspensions compared to 13% of students district-wide.
MSCS leaders faced similar backlash from parents last week about a proposed elementary and middle school merger. Both are part of a September recommendation from interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond to close four schools and transfer control of a fifth at the end of this year to combat rising maintenance costs and enrollment challenges.
Angela Whitelaw, who leads the district’s academics team, said the ongoing community meetings are meant to gather feedback ahead of the board’s February vote.
District policy mandates proposing closures to board members first and then seeking community input, she said. Details such as school safety plans will be fleshed out after an official decision is made.
“We’re constantly looking at our data and how we support schools when we merge them together,” Whitelaw said. Safety is “one of the first concerns” district leaders will talk about with school principals, she added.
There are only two other MSCS schools that combine middle and high schoolers. But Michelle Stuart, MSCS’ facilities manager, said there aren’t any other feasible merger options given the neighborhood’s transportation challenges.
“There are 51 rooms at Westwood [High] and it’s only half full,” she said. “So there is plenty of room for this merger.”
Right now, only half of the seats at Chickasaw Middle and less than half of those at Westwood High are filled. Combining the two schools would fill more than three-fourths of the Westwood building.
Westwood High has a significantly lower chronic absenteeism rate than Chickasaw, MSCS leaders shared Monday. Almost half of Chickasaw students miss more than 18 days of school in a year, compared to 7.5% at Westwood. And 14.5% of Westwood students tested as proficient on state reading tests, compared to 7.5% at Chickasaw.
But Kraft, parent of the Chickasaw sixth grader, said that’s not enough of an improvement to justify the shuffle.
“The fact that we’re considering 14% of students passing as a win is unacceptable,” she said. “Coming from a home school perspective, y’all would have ripped my kid away from me if he was only passing 14% of his class.”
Board Chair Natalie McKinney, who was present at Monday’s meeting, said the Chickasaw closure is not a “foregone conclusion.” She encouraged families to reach out to board members with their concerns ahead of the Feb. 24 vote.
“The administration is just proposing this to us, and we’re going to look at the data they provide,” McKinney said. “That data includes the qualitative part, which is more voices.”
MSCS will host another meeting about the recommendation to close Chickasaw Middle at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10 at Westwood High School.
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
