Brentwood Picks School Secession Study Firm

BRENTWOOD, TN — A Memphis firm submitted the only bid to conduct a feasibility study on the creation of local school district for Brentwood and, thus, was awarded the contract.

Southern Educational Strategies will help Brentwood determine if the city wants to secede from Williamson County Schools. SES conducted similar studies for some Memphis suburbs when those cities left the Shelby County system in 2014.

The City Commission will have to determine what, exactly, they want from the study, though City Manager Kirk Bednar noted that SES won't be able to tell them if they'll end up in court regarding the ownership of school buildings within the city should Brent-xit become a reality.

"If the county takes a different opinion on the legal issue of that ... then the only resolution I'm aware of is, you've got to file a lawsuit to get a declaratory judgment about who owns the school," Bednar told the commission, according to The Tennessean.

Bednar also said that the city will have to add about 15 cents on the dollar to its taxes to fund a district.

The Brent-xit idea was first floated by long-time city commissioner Grady Little in April, but picked up steam as the county continues its struggle to find a long-term funding solution for its rapidly growing and immensely successful school district.

At a July meeting of the commission, residents expressed concern that the county would have no choice but to raise property taxes to fund schools, which they argued would disproportionately hit Brentwood residents harder because of the city's higher property values and that there's a gap between what Brentwood pays in property taxes and what it receives from Williamson County Schools.

Williamson County Schools are regularly ranked the top public school district in Tennessee and at the top or near the top of rankings of school districts its size nationally. The two high schools in the city, Brentwood and Ravenwood, were ranked as the fifth and sixth best high schools in Tennessee, respectively, in the latest US News rankings, behind only academic magnets. Williamson County has the lowest county property tax in Middle Tennessee and the lowest of any county in the state of 100,000 people or more.

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