Masson tapped merger master
Ex-memphis CAO to speed up process
In an order that could have farreaching implications for how Memphis and suburban schools are combined this summer, U.S. Dist. Judge Samuel “Hardy” Mays on Tuesday assigned former city of Memphis chief administrative officer Rick Masson as “special master” overseeing schools merger.
Mays enumerated at least eight specific duties for Masson, who spent much of his career rising through Memphis’ bureaucracy but since leaving Mayor Willie Herenton’s administration in 2003 has developed a reputation as an administrative f ixer in roles ranging from executive director for the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy to interim president of Memphis, Light, Gas and Water Division to strategic planner for Memphis-Shelby County Port Commission.
Masson will serve as liaison between Mays and the unified Shelby County Board of Education, which according to the court’s 2011 consent decree is tasked with implementing a merger plan finalized last summer by the county’s merger Transition Planning Commission. Other candidates for the special master role included key TPC members Barbara Prescott (chairwoman) and Chistine Richards (TPC human resources chairwoman).
Prescott, a business consultant and former Memphis schools board member, was at Tuesday’s
special school board merger meeting and said, “He’ll be good.”
School board chairman Billy Orgel, who had recommended Masson to the port commission, said that “Rick is a positive force in this community, and I believe he will be beneficial to the process.”
In what was the 500th filing in the landmark federal case guiding the merger of Memphis City Schools with suburban Shelby County Schools, Mays ultimately determined the school board was moving too slowly to ensure merger would be completed by July 1, and has given Masson broad authority to press for action.
“The Court’s purpose in entering this order is not to assume the management of the two school systems or to make decisions about the transition,” Mays wrote. But, should decisions remain unmade, Mays wrote he is “prepared to expand the duties of the special master and to make such decisions as may be necessary to enforce the Consent Decree.”
“At a minimum,” Mays wrote, “that means that, in adequate time before the beginning of the school year in 2013, students will know the school they will attend and how they will get there, have a safe and clean place to learn, have teachers prepared to teach them, and have an established curriculum.”
Some of the language in the order indicates Mays could, on Masson’s recommendation, issue orders to others who are a party to the consent decree, like the County Commission. Key members of that body have rejected school board requests to fully fund a budget largely designed around the TPC merger recommendations.
Mays called for a “practical budget for the combined school systems” that must be “adequately funded.”
County Commission chairman Mike Ritz welcomed Masson’s appointment.
“Excellent choice,” he wrote in an e-mail. “He is a no-nonsense guy and a Memphis resident. I hope to visit with him soon.”
Mays, in his order, again emphasized his impatience with the board in naming a leader.
“As soon as practicable,” Mays wrote, the board must “appoint a single superintendent with strong educational credentials, even if on an interim basis.”
The merged system is following a search for superintendent that calls for naming one in May.
Suburban SCS Supt. John Aitken’s contract pays him through 2015, even if he is not named leader of the merged district; MCS is being run by interim Supt. Dorsey Hopson, the system’s general counsel.
Masson, a University of Memphis graduate in accounting, resigned in 2003 as CAO to serve as executive director to the Plough Foundation, was executive director 20082010 for Shelby Farms and most recently joined the local government lobbying group Caissa Public Strategy as its senior director.
Herenton, whose charter school organization must gain approvals from the school board, called it an “excellent decision” and said that “Rick is a task master who will stay on top of whatever he is assigned and make sure implementation takes places in an orderly and expedi- tious fashion.”
Masson, who will be paid $250 per hour, should not be confused with Ricks Mason, a former MCS executive who resigned in 2002 after the state fined MCS $1.5 million for incomplete reporting of teacher certifications.
School board member David Pickler of Germantown said of the appointment’s effect on the school board in the merger: “I certainly think it is a reflection of the inability of the board to take care of its business and the people’s business and move this process forward in an effective and efficient manner.”
Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald texted that Masson “would probably do a good job. He will have a sharp learning curve.”
For the schools’ “special master” duties, see commercialappeal.com