Back to School
For much of the summer, the biggest stories surrounding Memphis-Shelby County Schools have focused on adults: who should control the district, who should be held accountable for its financial failures and whether state intervention will improve Tennessee’s largest public school system.
Meanwhile, students kept moving toward another first day of school.
Classes begin Monday, Aug. 3, and students will return to a district still wrestling with low proficiency, chronic absenteeism and aging facilities — but also one that recorded academic gains, took enrollment help into neighborhoods and expanded funding for students who need specialized services.
Here are five MSCS developments families may have missed while the forensic audit, oversight board and court fight commanded most of the attention.
1. Test scores moved in the right direction
Preliminary 2026 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program results show increased proficiency in English language arts, math and social studies.
Districtwide ELA proficiency rose from 24.6% to 25.7%, while math increased from 21.2% to 22.3%. Social studies showed the largest gain, rising from 26.1% to 28.7%.
The numbers offer both encouragement and a reminder of how much work remains. Most MSCS students are still not meeting grade-level expectations on state assessments.
The district also says it has earned TVAAS Level 5 — Tennessee’s highest student-growth designation — for four consecutive years. Superintendent Dr. Roderick Richmond said 68 schools now have an A or B state rating, while 67% received a C or better. The district’s Ready Graduate rate has more than doubled during the past four years.
Growth and proficiency measure different things. Proficiency asks whether students have met grade-level standards. Growth measures how much progress they made from where they began.
That means a student or district can show strong growth while still falling short of proficiency. For families, both measures matter.
2. MSCS went looking for families who did not know their school had changed
The district did not rely entirely on websites, robocalls and social media to prepare families for the new year.
MSCS employees and school board members conducted a neighborhood door-knocking campaign and found families who did not know their attendance zones had changed.
Staff later provided registration help at Woodstock K-8 and other schools. School Board Member Towanna Murphy said registration appeared to be moving smoothly at campuses she visited and thanked principals and staff for their preparation.
MSCS also operated multilingual summer support hubs where families could receive assistance with enrollment, transfers, English-language services, attendance, transportation and immunizations.
The door-to-door effort illustrates the challenge beneath those instructions: Not every parent receives digital notices, understands a zone change or knows returning students must register again.
3. The district increased funding for specialized student services
Days before schools opened, the school board increased the amount available for occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, audiology and interpreters for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
The board raised the budget for those services from $11 million to $14 million and authorized agreements with multiple providers for the 2026-27 school year.
Board Member Amber Huett-Garcia asked whether removing predetermined limits for each vendor would give administrators greater flexibility to shift money according to student needs.
Her board colleague Stephanie Love asked a more immediate question: Would the administrative correction interrupt services?
The board unanimously approved the revised arrangement after administrators responded.
The increase came as Board Member Tamarques Porter raised broader questions about staffing in the district’s Mental Health and Exceptional Children departments.
Porter said he had received reports that 20 school psychologists had resigned. Langston said that was the first he had heard of the figure and promised to investigate.
Superintendent Dr. Roderick Richmond said MSCS employs psychologists through two departments and supplements its own staff with contracted providers. Some positions previously supported by expiring grants were moved into vacant general-fund positions, administrators said.
The district had not provided a confirmed psychologist-vacancy count by the end of Tuesday’s meeting.
4. Mental-health professionals are already working inside the district
Several public commenters identified themselves as members of the district’s Mental Health Center.
Stephanie Nelson, a school social worker, said she provides individual, group and family therapy, along with social-emotional and attendance support.
Anita Ryan House identified herself as a school psychologist within the center.
Natasha Anderson, a mental-health clinician, used her speaking time to address educators preparing for another year.
“As we begin a new school year, I want to remind educators: Please, take care of your mental health,” Anderson said. “Take care of your mental health so you’re able to pour into our children.”
The message matters in a district where chronic absenteeism remains one of the most persistent barriers to learning.
MSCS has reported improvement in chronic absenteeism, but more than one in four students was still projected to miss at least 10% of the school year. The district is increasingly connecting attendance intervention with social-emotional and family support.
Mental-health staff can help families address anxiety, trauma, grief, behavior and other concerns that may appear first as attendance or academic problems.
5. Teachers and principals received new back-to-school preparation
Southwind High School Principal John Bush appeared before the board in clothing more suited for a long registration day than a formal meeting.
“Sorry I’m dressed like this, but it’s registration day,” Bush said. “I had an auditorium full of kids, and this is what you got.”
Bush praised the district’s leadership and operations institutes, saying the sessions connected Richmond and central-office leaders directly with principals’ instructional and operational concerns.
“He thinks a lot about principals and what we need and the conversations that we have,” Bush said. “Sometimes he stretches us on the things that he wants, but he has passion for the kids, for the schools, and he’s also building leaders.”
United Education Association representative Liz Marable briefly set aside her prepared comments about state intervention to praise the district’s new-teacher orientation.
“It was amazing PD,” Marable said, using the abbreviation for professional development.
Richmond later thanked the orientation team and said seeing new teachers excited to join the district “did my heart proud.”
The preparation does not answer the unresolved question of how many vacancies remain. Porter requested an updated teacher-vacancy count before students return.
But the comments offered a glimpse of work that received considerably less attention than the controversies surrounding the district: preparing new teachers, developing school leaders and helping principals get buildings ready for students.
Beyond the headlines
None of those developments cancels the serious questions raised by the state-ordered forensic audit. Nor do modest academic gains mean MSCS is where students and families need it to be.
The board and administration still must account for vacancies, uneven academic outcomes, persistent absenteeism and the condition of school buildings.
But the fuller picture includes more than audits, lawsuits and leadership turmoil. It also includes students making progress, employees finding families one door at a time, additional support for children with disabilities and teachers preparing to begin again.
The adults will continue debating who should run Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
On Monday, students will return expecting everyone involved to make it work.
