University of Memphis will operate its own school district. An inside look at its plans.

For years, the University of Memphis has received praise for the success of its precollege school system, University Schools.

In the 2022-23 academic year, University Schools had the highest overall pass rate of any school system in the state, despite not having any academic requirements for admission. And Campus School, University Middle, and University High – its elementary, middle, and high schools – earned “A” letter grades from the Tennessee Department of Education.

University Schools, however, does have an issue. It hasn’t been able to accommodate high levels of demand from families who want to enroll their children in the system, as it has a contract with Memphis-Shelby County Schools with enrollment limits. Currently, University Schools serves 1,247 students, from infants through 11th graders.

The number of students on its waitlist?

1,491.

“At some point, it felt irresponsible to have this high quality, and highly sought after model, and not be able to meet the community demand because we were constrained on the number of students we could serve,” Sally Parish, associate VP for educational initiatives at U of M, said in an email. “That has made for some truly heartbreaking phone calls with parents desperate to get their kids into a University School.”

Those parents, however, could have better luck in the future, as University Schools is starting its own independent school district, which will help it grow and potentially spread throughout Memphis.

Here’s how U of M plans to grow University Schools, and what its plans are for the new district.

Why is the University of Memphis getting its own school district?

U of M got the greenlight to run its own school district this spring.

In April, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Innovative School District Act, which allows the Tennessee Education Commissioner to approve University-led school districts, if those universities meet specific requirements – like training schools that offer clinical teaching opportunities for future educators.

State Sen. Brent Taylor and State Rep. Mark White, who represent parts of Memphis and its suburbs, created the legislation to allow U of M to replicate and expand its model. And now, the institution is set to run the state’s first Innovative School District, with the U of M Board of Trustees serving as its board of education, and its governmental affairs and public policy committee carrying out the functions of a local school board.

“As our state partners saw the success coming out of our model, they asked us to consider ways in which we could scale that model to serve more students,” Parish said. “While our schools currently serve a diverse population of students from every zip code in Shelby County, our new status as a school district provides us with a greater opportunity to serve more students as we expand our model throughout Shelby County.”

Recent growth

The news comes at a time when University Schools has grown significantly.

Two of its schools, Campus School and Barbara K. Lipman Early Learning and Research Center, are longtime staples of the system. Campus School’s origins go back to U of M’s inception in 1912.

But recently, University Schools has expanded its offerings. In the last five years, it has added a Kindergarten program at Campus School, and opened University Middle and University High. It has forged a partnership with Porter-Leath, to operate an early childhood academy in the Orange Mound area. And it works with the Harwood Center, which offers services to young children who have developmental disabilities or are struggling with their behavior.

These schools also don’t follow a traditional model.

They are training and laboratory schools, which means they serve as training sites for prospective teachers. They also tend to serve as a basis for university research, focus on hands-on learning, and offer new instructional methodologies. University Middle, for example, uses a project-based learning approach. And University High – which has ninth-through-eleventh graders and is adding a twelfth grade in the 2025-2026 academic year – uses a college preparatory model.

New possibilities

But University Schools has been limited by how many students it can serve. It runs Campus School, University Middle, and University High – which are all located on U of M’s campus – through a contract with MSCS.

And per that contract, it’s limited to 1,050 students across those three schools.

As a separate district, however, it can open new schools and grow enrollment – even if it doesn’t plan to do so overnight.

“We are excited to now be able to scale our model to meet that demand, while also working with industry partners to ensure the model meets the needs of our workforce,” Parish said. “But it will be a slow process, as we want to ensure we are doing this in the right way, and in the way that is best for our students and for our community.”

University Schools doesn’t have any plans to expand the class sizes at its current schools. Instead, it expects to launch new schools, and form new partnerships, through what Parish described as a “slow-growth and community-informed model.”

The district doesn’t plan to open any new schools in the 2024-2025 academic year. But it is set to launch an expansion team, comprised of community leaders, which will help lead feasibility studies that determine a growth plan. This plan is expected to provide a layout for how University Schools can serve more students, and show what specific academic experiences the district needs to provide.

For example, Parish noted, amid the news that the Elon Musk-founded xAI is slated to build the world's largest supercomputer in Memphis, there could be a need for an AI-focused high school program. Already, U of M has committed to injecting $1 million into academics and research focused on artificial intelligence.

“A hallmark of the laboratory school education we provide is that we can be responsive to those local needs and identify innovative educational pathways for all students to thrive,” Parish said. “Our goal, as always, is to ensure that we are providing a high quality and innovative education to each of our students, and a meaningful and impactful employment experience for our faculty and staff.”

John Klyce covers education and children's issues for The Commercial Appeal. You can reach him at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: University of Memphis will operate its own school district. See plans