After they went after each other in a big way last week, Shelby County Commission members had a private attorney-client meeting with their attorneys in the federal schools consolidation lawsuit of 2011.

The commission in its bitter internal fight over a redistricting plan for itself is also overdue with a set of new district lines for the seven countywide school board members to be elected on the Aug. 2 ballot. The school board district lines also have to be reviewed and approved by Federal Judge Hardy Mays.

Because the Shelby County Election Commission wasn’t a party in the lawsuit and there are no new district lines, the commission can’t issue petitions as it has been for other nonpartisan municipal and county elections since Jan. 6.

“We have not been officially provided with the district lines for the seven school board positions,” said Robert Meyers, chairman of the election commission. “We have to know what those lines are to know who is eligible to be a candidate, who is eligible to sign a (qualifying) petition and who is eligible to vote.”

Election commission attorney John Ryder contacted the court and, as a result, attorneys for the county commission held the private session with their clients last week.

“Until we have those final district lines, the election commission can’t really issue the petitions. I think what everybody is hoping to do is to have that information in final form prior to Feb. 6,” Ryder said. “The election commission can only schedule elections based on statute or court order. Somebody has to present us with a court order saying you have to have this election. Until (last) week, we really didn’t have that.”

Feb. 6 is when the election commission begins issuing petitions for candidates in the state legislative and congressional races on the Aug. 6 ballot as primaries.

The county commission drew up a set of district lines last year for a countywide school board of seven single-member districts. The commission then appointed citizens to each of the positions. That board, the former Memphis City Schools board and the former Shelby County Schools board have been merged into a 23-member countywide school board. The countywide school board serves until the merger of the two school systems at the start of the 2013-2014 school year.

The seven school board members to be elected in August take their places as part of the 23-member body on Sept. 1. When the school systems merge in August 2013, those seven remain the countywide school board as the other 16 school board positions that survived for the transition are abolished.

The county commission delayed drawing the school board district lines until it completed its own. That was because some commissioners hoped they had the votes to change the county commission to a set of 13 single-member districts. They would have then used the same set of district lines for the school board and expanded it to a 13-member school board – an expansion that is permitted in the terms of the court settlement and the court order in the schools consolidation case.

The end of 2011 was the deadline for the commission to finish its own redistricting. It is still not completed, with the commission starting over on the process with a special meeting last month to approve a tweaking of current district lines on the first of three readings.