In one of the more anonymous efforts in an interesting legislative session in Nashville, there is apparently some discussion of requiring school systems to charge nothing less than fair market value if they rent or sell a school building to a charter school.

Meanwhile, suburban leaders considering forming their own municipal school districts have been told by their consultants that they shouldn’t have to pay anything to get existing school buildings from Shelby County within the footprints of their municipal school districts. The legal opinion is based on court cases rooted in annexations by cities in the past in which such buildings have been transferred to the city at no cost.

As if on cue, bills turned up in the hopper in Nashville that would take the unprecedented action of removing territory in the city of Memphis annexation reserve area from the city of Memphis.

It is territory that is critical to the formation of at least several municipal school districts because none of the proposed school districts are simply children living within the boundaries of a city or town attending schools within that city or town.

There almost certainly will have to be agreements among the municipal school districts that allow Collierville children to continue attending Houston High School and Bartlett children to continue attending Arlington High School.

But take Grays Creek out of the Memphis annexation reserve and City Hall is once again a spectator in a process whose outcome is vitally important to the city.

Cordova and the southeast Shelby County area is so key to both schools consolidation and the municipal school districts because it is part city of Memphis and part unincorporated county with city schools and county schools on each side of the boundary.

If there are changes in the schools students from an area now attend, this is where those changes will be in the countywide school system to come in August 2013.

What is needed is an “immediate peace” of sorts for this particular area that could lead the way to a broader consensus countywide.

The goal should be a relative stability for parents that doesn’t undercut the desire to create a school system – consolidated or municipal – that is more than the sum of its parts.

All of the cards should be on the table including the reality that the municipal school districts need students from outside their borders and the funding that follows them. And if those municipal school systems should grow to fill their buildings only with students who live within the city or town limits the boundaries would change again.

Just as Memphis leaders have reached agreements before to temporarily freeze school district boundaries, it seems reasonable to hope the rush to form municipal school districts can include the same quick moves to relative stability some advocates of municipal school districts want from those forming the consolidated school system.