On August 28, 2017, the Board of Commissioners voted 6-1 to direct staff to begin the process for selection of a consultant to conduct a feasibility study for creation of a Brentwood municipal school district. Subsequent to this action, staff issued a Request for Qualifications (see attached RFQ) seeking statements of qualifications from interested firms. Southern Educational Strategies, LLC (SES) was the only firm to submit a response to the RFQ.
SES is a Memphis based firm founded in 2011 comprised of three individuals - Dr. William Bozeman, Dr. Tim Fite, and Dr. James Mitchell. Both Dr. Fite and Dr. Mitchell have experience as superintendents in Tennessee county school districts. A feasibility study regarding the potential creation of a new municipal school district is a very specialized type of work, with the laws varying from state to state. Furthermore, in Tennessee, there is very little precedent for such studies given that prior to 2011, it had been several decades since the last municipal school district was created. Therefore, the fact that there was limited response to the City's RFQ is not surprising.
In 2011, SES was contracted as a consultant to develop feasibility studies for six Shelby County municipalities considering whether to create their own municipal school districts in response to action taken by the City of Memphis to transfer administration of its schools to Shelby County effective July 1, 2013. Following completion of the studies, the voters in all six of these cities passed referendums creating new municipal school districts and those districts are operational today.
The proposed SES study will be conducted based on existing state law and TN Department of Education regulations. It should be noted that the TN Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) is undertaking a study of several issues related to multiple school districts in the same county (study outline attached). This study will include an analysis of revenue sharing requirements between districts in the same county as well as the issue of existing county school facility ownership/transfer when a new municipal district is created. This latter issue is of particular importance since there is no state law or directly applicable court decisions that provide clear direction on this issue. As a result, the proposed study will not be able to provide a definitive answer on this very fundamental issue. The final TACIR study is currently scheduled to be released at the end of calendar year 2019 with any legislative action resulting from the TACIR effort occuring during the 2020 legislative session at the earliest.
The SES proposal includes the services of several sub-consultants as listed below:
- Budget Development - Ernest Carter, former Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, Shelby County Schools
- Insurance and Benefit Planning - Mark Morgan and Lisa Stamm, Sherill Morgan. Note that the Sherrill Morgan firm is the City's current health insurance consultant.
- Legal Issues - Stephen Shields, a partner in the firm of Jackson, Shields, Yeiser & Holt
- Basic Education Program (BEP) Funding - Jeff Springer, managing partner with Basis Policy Research, LLC.
The scope of work for the feasibility study includes the following focus areas:
Literature Review. A review of literature and research related to school district size and the benefits of local school district control by the City of Brentwood will be provided.
Tennessee School Finance. The study will provide an overview of the BEP, county property taxes for education, local option sales taxes, plus other local revenue sources. The processes required for the City of Brentwood to include municipal school district revenue and expenditure data within the annual City of Brentwood operating budget will be provided.
Legal Analysis. An expert review and analysis of current legal and regulatory requirements and issues reasonably expected to arise should the City of Brentwood choose to establish a municipal school district, including the issues related to ownership of existing county school facilities. The processes and procedures required to call a special municipal school district referendum, plus the structure of a municipal school district school board and school board elections will be provided in the study. An analysis of the fiscal impacts of past or future Rural School Bond issues by the Williamson County Commission also will be provided.
School Operations. An overview of the essential academic program and operational program requirements that the City of Brentwood could reasonably anticipate encountering should it choose to establish a school district, along with suggested courses of action to successfully meet those requirements such as:
- Central office staffing including human resources and employee benefits;
- Academic programs and instructional staffing;
- Transportation;
- Food services;
- Technology services and support;
- Facilities maintenance including custodial services.
This component presumes the development of a system comparable to the present Williamson County Schools operation. In other words, the curriculum, class sizes, staffing, services, student-teacher ratios, etc. would be essentially the same. This overview would address the requirements for the first year of a new municipal school district operation.
Fiscal Requirements. Given the requirements of a comparable school system, the study will include an analysis for the first year of municipal school district operation of the fiscal requirements of the total annual general operational revenues from the BEP and local government sources plus projected first year expenditures that Brentwood could expect to receive and incur should it choose to establish a municipal school district. Recommendations of procedures for the municipal school district to provide required employee benefits such as health insurance, life insurance, state retirement, and OPEB costs will be provided. Estimates of operational "start-up"costs from the first date of the employment of a school superintendent through the full operation of the municipal school district until the flow of BEP and local revenues is stable will be provided.
Summary and Considerations. SES will provide a comprehensive summary of the major study areas and identify additional considerations that should be considered by the City in making a determination of whether to proceed with the next steps in creation of a municipal school district.
One public meeting will be conducted with City staff and Board of Commissioners to report the findings of the study. One additional public meeting to report the findings of the study will be conducted with community members. Any additional meetings shall be mutually agreed upon by SES and the City of Brentwood. Compensation for additional meetings shall be based upon SES hourly or daily fees plus expenses.
The following is the projected study schedule based upon approval of the contract at the June 12, 2018 meeting.
- June 15, 2018 - Begin feasibility study activities
- June 17, 2019 - Deliver completed feasibility study to City of Brentwood
- July-August 2019 - Present study findings to City of Brentwood Board of Commissioners and to the community of the City of Brentwood.
The fee to Southern Educational Strategies, LLC for this study is $204,000, plus approved expenses. Note that staff is projecting a total cost of $220,000 to cover expenses and other unanticipated costs such as additional meetings requested by the City, etc. Payments to SES for the above described services shall be made in the amount of $51,000, plus all approved expenses, every three months during the course of the Agreement. |