Laura Meckler and Kate Rabinowitz:

The move by Memphis to merge with the suburbs, he says, was a power play gone bad. He supported the separation to preserve local control and property values, and to avoid being controlled by a district he considered bureaucratic and dysfunctional.

“It wasn’t like the primary agenda was a racial agenda. It was about autonomy and local control,” he said. “Some people say, ‘Look at the white people in Germantown [who] don’t want to be around black poor kids.’ That’s an oversimplification of biblical proportions.”

Madison taxpayers recently funded the expansion of our least diverse schools, despite space in nearby facilities.

Madison has not changed school boundaries in decades.