Muscle Shoals Schools & Non-Residents

A Guest Editorial:

Muscle Shoals City School Superintendent Dr. Brian Lindsey and his Brother in Law, golfing buddy, cohort Dr, Dennis Conner who is the Non-resident, Attendance and Instructional Support Coordinator have been throwing non-resident students out of their schools, many of which have been in the school system since Kindergarten. They are being thrown out for very minor infractions, basically any reason to boot them out. This is heartbreaking, demoralizing and devastating to the children. They being forcibly uprooted and made to leave their school and classmates behind.

The Muscle Shoals City Board of Education passed a new non-residency policy on May 20, 2013 giving the Superintendent the "right to revoke the enrollment status of an out-of-district student at any time for any misconduct that would warrant suspension under the Code of Student Conduct" 

Principles have been instructed to hold non-resident students to a much higher standard than other students. Any conduct that "is less than exemplary" is reason for probation that eventually leads to expulsion. If a parent attempts to appeal a decision made by Dennis Conner, they have no other recourse but to go to Dr. Lindsey, his brother in law.

The reason is that the school system is over capacity and they spent all of the money on the athletics program instead of building another school.

http://www.tnvalleynow.com/stories/Shoals-board-to-consider-athletic-upgrades-bid,117971

It is also rumored that talented football students have been recruited from outside the city to Muscle Shoals High School. It seems that non-residence athletes are encouraged at the some time that other non-resident students are being railroaded out of the school system.

Here is an excerpt from the Times Daily article about those apartments dated May 24, 2014

Muscle Shoals Superintendent Brian Lindsey said the school system could be impacted greatly if a large number of school-aged children move into the system that, at best, has limited space for growth.

"There are a lot of unknowns with it but we have to serve the students in our district so if it packs us up, we'd have to first look at our non-resident population," Lindsey said. The district currently has more than 400 non-resident students.

"The high school is pretty close to capacity now and kindergarten's enrollment is up for next year but if we have space issues we'll just deal with it," he said, "The complex will likely have kids, so we'll just deal with it as it comes."

http://www.timesdaily.com/news/article_6c7193aa-e3c0-11e3-899c-0017a43b2370.html

Another interesting tidbit:

Dr. Conner was selected to take over the Principle position at Webster Elementary, but Montgomery vetoed the appointment because of the appearance of “nepotism and conflict of interest.”

*****

We realize residency requirements can be tricky. If preferential treatment for certain athletes can be established, this would indeed be lawsuit material.

Currently, we're very interested in the projected update of the Muscle Shoals High School handbook including dress code. We've glanced at the current handbook and will offer an observation on the mission statement:

Providing opportunities for all students to obtain wisdom and to achieve their greatest potential.

Educators should realize that knowledge and wisdom are two different animals--apparently some don't. 

Shoalanda