With just days to go before students are due back in class in Memphis, parents and community members are still trying to figure out who gets to attend East High School — and what happens to students who are left out.
They’re holding a meeting Friday evening to try to understand long-planned changes that are nonetheless catching some families by surprise.
East High is transitioning into the district’s first all-optional school, meaning students must apply and be accepted — effectively closing the school to most neighborhood students, who will now be sent to two other high schools. The changes have been a long time coming but have created last-minute confusion for parents who didn’t hear the news or are new to the neighborhood.
They include Jackie Webb, a retired Shelby County Schools teacher whose son went to private school last year but hoped to go to East, the school in their neighborhood, this fall. Instead, her son will be among the local students sent instead to Douglass High School, four miles away, or Melrose High School, nearly three miles away.
“I decided to enroll my son into Shelby County Schools earlier this summer, believing he could go to East,” said Webb, who lives in what has been East High’s zone. “Come to find out, I can’t enroll him in East. He has to get bused to Melrose or Douglass.”
Webb plans to attend the meeting 6 p.m. Friday at Lester Community Center, where Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland will listen to parents and try to answer their questions.
It’s not clear whether a representative from the school district would be on hand to answer questions. A Shelby County Schools spokeswoman said the district had not heard such complaints from parents and had in fact been thorough in communicating with families and the community.
“From community meetings to phone calls and even extensive media coverage, we certainly have made it a priority to make families aware of the change,” said the spokeswoman, Kristin Tallent.
District leaders have said that major disruption needed to happen at East to keep the school open. In recent decades, the school’s enrollment has decreased to 500 in a school built for 2,000 students. And last spring, East made the list of the state’s 10 percent of lowest-performing schools, making it potentially vulnerable to state intervention.
Starting with this year’s incoming freshman class, East will shift to a “T-STEM” program focusing on transportation, science, technology, engineering and math. It will also choose students based on their academic performance, attendance, and discipline records — likely keeping out struggling students in the neighborhood.
The change drew pushback from alumni and community members concerned that the shift will hurt neighborhood students. Neighborhood students who were already attending East can stay through graduation but won’t be enrolled in the new program, and in the future, students in the neighborhood will have to meet admissions criteria to get in.
“I just moved back to the neighborhood and they are trying to send my daughter to Douglass,” Trina LaShawn said on a Facebook post. “But the way my work hours are set up I won’t be able to pick her up when school get out. She can walk from East but not Douglass.”