Countywide school board members meet Thursday, Aug. 16, to take another step toward the selection of a single superintendent to oversee the schools merger process.

The board meets at 5 p.m. at Overton High School before the latest in a series of public forums at the school on the proposed schools consolidation blueprint.

The board is to vote on selecting six people to serve with seven school board members on the ad hoc committee that is to come up with a method for selecting the merger superintendent.

The committee is to recommend a process to the full board for its approval by the end of this month. And the board’s overall goal is to have a superintendent selected by the end of the fall.

The six positions to be filled are slotted for one person from the city and another from the county outside the city in three categories – parents, business leaders and the faith-based community.

With the positions filled, the ad hoc committee will hold its first meeting Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, noon Thursday is the filing deadline for candidates in the set of suburban municipal school board races on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Each of the six suburban towns and cities would have an elected school board that would take office as soon as the vote count from November is certified by the Shelby County Election Commission. Each of the six boards is made up of citywide positions instead of districts.

Whether the school board races go on the ballot depends on a ruling to come from Memphis federal Judge Hardy Mays. The Shelby County Commission filed a third-party motion in June challenging the constitutionality of the state laws passed in 2011 and earlier this year that set the rules for the establishment of the municipal school districts.

Through Tuesday, 76 potential candidates had qualifying petitions for the school board races and 36 had filed their petitions.

The busiest set of school board races so far is in Collierville where 18 potential candidates had petitions out or had filed petitions.

Nine potential candidates had petitions pulled in Millington and only one of them had filed through Tuesday.

Millington leaders are awaiting a certified vote count from the Aug. 2 elections to come Monday from the Election Commission to determine their next course of action in pursuit of a municipal school district. By the unofficial vote count, Millington voters rejected a proposed half-cent sales tax hike by three votes while approving the municipal school district question.

Those with either petitions out or petitions filed included former Arlington Alderman Hugh Lamar, former Bartlett Alderman Rick Faith, Collierville Alderman Tony Sarwar, former county school board member Anne Edmiston, Ken Hoover of Germantown, and Karen Woodward of Lakeland.