Original Research by School Decision on City University School of Liberal Arts
City University School Of Liberal Arts is a charter high school in Memphis, part of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools district. It serves grades nine through twelve and its enrollment is small for a high school. The student body is predominantly Black, with a small number of Hispanic students and a tiny share of white students or students of two or more races. The school does not report the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, nor does it report special education or English learner counts, so a family looking at who gets served here will want to ask the school directly about those supports and populations.
State testing data and a graduation rate were not available for this school in the data provided. That is a significant gap for a high school. Given that the school is a regular public charter, one would ordinarily expect state assessment results for high school students in English, math, and possibly science, as well as a cohort graduation rate. The absence means a parent comparing pathways or outcomes cannot rely on typical metrics and would need to request the school’s own data or consult the state’s report card directly.
City University School Of Liberal Arts sits in Memphis, a large city with a number of prominent civic and cultural anchors, including the Mississippi River, the National Civil Rights Museum, Beale Street, Graceland, and the Stax Museum. The city’s parks include Tom Lee Park, recently renovated with walkable trails and ballcourts, and the expansive Shelby Farms Park. Overton Park is home to the Memphis Zoo. Public transit is available through the Memphis Area Transit Authority. These are features of the city as a whole, not specific to the school’s immediate neighborhood.
On the housing side, the area around the school shows home values that are well below the state and national medians, and rents are also modest. The zip code has seen a notable decline in home values over the past year. This suggests a lower-cost part of the Memphis market, one where affordability is less of a barrier. A family exploring this area would find a housing stock considerably cheaper than the Tennessee average, though the value drop may reflect broader neighborhood conditions worth investigating.
The school is a charter, which means it operates with some autonomy from the district but remains publicly funded. Its name emphasizes liberal arts, a signal about a focus that could appeal to families interested in a humanities-oriented curriculum. But without program offerings listed in the data, it is unclear what specific courses, Advanced Placement options, or career and dual-credit pathways are available. The district itself, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, has been active in recent years with school closures and a master facilities plan known as Reimagining 901, and it also held a property tax referendum. These district-level moves could affect this charter school in terms of facilities, funding, or enrollment patterns.
A parent reading this profile will notice that the most basic accountability benchmarks are missing. That alone makes this a school that requires a lot of direct inquiry: ask for test scores, ask for graduation rates, ask for college-going records, ask about how many students take AP or dual-enrollment courses. The school is small, which may mean more individualized attention, but it also means thin program offerings if they are not actively built out. For a family that values a small, liberal-arts-oriented high school in Memphis and is willing to do the homework of verifying outcomes directly, this could be a fit. For a family that wants to compare schools on transparent state data, the lack of it here is a real limitation.
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