Town schedules special meeting to prepare for school referendum | Collierville IndependentCollierville Independent

The Collierville Board of Mayor and Aldermen will take the first steps Monday night toward creating the town’s own school district.
Board members will hold a special meeting at 6 p.m. to repeal an existing referendum that was created in 2012 when the city and several other Shelby County municipalities attempted to create their own districts.
Once repealed, the board will propose a new referendum to create a special election that will allow citizens to vote on whether or not they want to create and fund a new district.
Mayor Stan Joyner said the town hopes that election will be on July 16. The efforts to move forward with a special election now will allow an appointed education committee time to begin creating a new district while school board members run for office.
The goal is to have the district up and running by the 2014-15 school year.
The developments scheduled for the next couple of weeks were made possible by two new state laws that Gov. Bill Haslam signed April 25.
The laws allows municipalities that fall into certain criteria to establish new districts if people within that municipality wish to do so. It also repealed a 1998 law that prohibited cities from creating any new districts.
Shelby County state representatives proposed the law after a federal judge said several new districts created in Shelby County were unconstitutional, and the municipalities would be able to create the districts only if the laws were changed.