Chalkbeat

A court order forced Fayette County schools to integrate. Will progress continue without it?

2024-05-17T21:17:49+00:00

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

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As in many school districts across the South, where segregation was once the law, it took protests and a court order to desegregate public schools in Fayette County, Tennessee.

That order came nearly a dozen years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared legally mandated racial segregation in schools unconstitutional.

Fayette County, a place where new homes are sprouting like spring grass in towns on its outskirts, is still operating under the 1965 order. The order has led to racially integrated schools, with Black and white students proportionally represented in most of the four elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. Growing numbers of Hispanic students are also enrolling, and the current superintendent, Versie Ray Hamlett, is Black.

That’s a vast change from what 78-year-old Myles Wilson, a former Fayette County school superintendent and now a school board member, faced in 1963, when he was reading hand-me-down books at all-Black Fayette County Training School.

“The textbooks were terrible,” Wilson recalled. “Sometimes, entire pages would be destroyed. I guess they were tearing pages out because they knew they would be passed down to us.”

But, Wilson added, “We’ve made some great strides. We’ve had seven Black superintendents since 1984.”

Yet Wilson said he and other members of the community are worried that progress, so hard won, could erode once a new consent decree that the Justice Department issued in 2023 is satisfied – and the 1965 court order is lifted.

“A lot of Blacks feel like we shouldn’t be released from the consent decree, because they’ll go back to the old way, because that’s what’s happened in the rest of the country,” he said.

Many school districts across the country still have racially segregated schools, and school segregation has increased in the last three decades.

Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University and Ann Owens, a University of Southern California sociologist, released a study this month showing how an increase in school segregation has been driven by two factors: school districts being released from court oversight and an expansion in school choice policies, particularly the spread of charter schools.

That follows what Reardon and researchers at Stanford found in a 2012 study. According to their analysis, school districts released from desegregation orders in the two decades after 1990 began to resegregate. Ones that continued to be under judicial oversight did not.

“These results suggest that court-ordered desegregation plans are effective in reducing racial school segregation, but that their effects fade over time in the absence of continued court oversight,” the abstract said.

Fayette County’s long fight for civil rights

In Fayette County, the original court order to desegregate the schools was part of a protracted battle for civil rights, one that the New York Times described in 1969 as the “longest sustained civil rights protest in the nation.”

It began in 1959, when John McFerren and Harpman Jameson, both farmers and World War II veterans, attended the trial of Burton Dodson, a Black man who was accused of murder and had escaped a lynch mob.

McFerren and Jameson learned that because few Blacks were registered to vote, it would be impossible for Dodson to get a jury that wasn’t all-white. At the urging of Dodson’s lawyer, James Estes, McFerren and Jameson began to register Black sharecroppers to vote – a move that resulted in many of them being evicted by their white landlords.

Evicted families pitched tents on the outskirts of Somerville, the Fayette County seat, and activists from around the nation joined them.

The tent city disbanded in 1962 after the Justice Department sued the landowners, and the courts ordered them to stop interfering in the rights of Black people to vote or run for office. But the fight for racial justice was far from over – as Wilson would learn.

Myles Wilson poses for a portrait outside the Somerville Elementary School on Thurs., May 16, 2024 in Fayette County, Tennessee.

After graduating from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1967, Wilson was hired as a teacher at Fayette County Training School, arriving two years after the court order. He later sued the school system when he and all the single, Black male teachers were fired to prevent them from teaching white girls, he said.

The teachers were reinstated, and Wilson would file other lawsuits over the years to fight racial injustice in the system.

With his own battles for racial justice and desegregation behind him, Wilson fears that without the court order, Fayette County could backslide.

While the school district has satisfied many of the requirements of the court order, the new consent decree requires, among other things, that school officials work with the Justice Department and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to “develop an effective and sustainable student assignment policy to further desegregation in its schools.”

More white families are moving from Memphis to Oakland, a town in Fayette County, and demands are growing for a new high school there – even though the county’s only high school, Fayette-Ware High School, is under capacity, he said.

The school can accommodate 1,300 students, Wilson said, but currently enrolls about 833. Of those, 61% are Black, and 30% are white. He fears that the addition of a new high school could drive segregation.

Wilson also fears that the recent push for universal vouchers by Republican lawmakers – a battle that Gov. Bill Lee has vowed to revive next year – could also erode desegregation progress in Fayette County by giving families public dollars to enroll children in private schools.

One private school in the county, Fayette Academy, was established as an all-white school in 1965, as the desegregation order was handed down. In 1971, U.S. District Judge Robert McRae, whose orders led to school desegregation in Memphis and later upheld busing, called the school “a beautiful building sitting on top of a hill as a monument against the black people.”

The private Christian school remains predominantly white.

Daphene McFerren, daughter of John McFerren and whose brother John McFerren Jr. was one of the original plaintiffs in the desegregation lawsuit, said that if the order is lifted, it doesn’t have to mean the end of progress.

“I don’t want to speculate on where this can end up, because who knows?” said McFerren, who is the executive director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis.

But, McFerren said, the fact that the school district is abiding by the consent decree means they are cooperating.

“That should be acknowledged,” she said. “But we should be vigilant in that the goal of this is to eradicate any form of discrimination where it exists in the education of our children.”

McFerren, however, described it as a “Catch-22″ situation. Satisfying the consent decree should mean that the district has met its desegregation goals. But will the district continue to maintain those goals once the mechanism forcing it to do so is gone?

“Well, as I always say, a case can always be reopened,” McFerren said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

‘Colorblind’ policies and vouchers could undermine impact of Brown desegregation ruling, professor says

2024-05-15T17:38:38+00:00

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

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When Daniel Kiel was a student at Grahamwood Elementary and White Station High School in the 1980s and 1990s, he knew he was getting a good education.

What he didn’t know was whether most of the Black students in his school were receiving the same.

“I was in the optional program at those schools, but it was a school within a school, which meant there was a traditional program alongside it,” said Kiel, now a constitutional law professor at the University of Memphis.

“While Grahamwood and White Station were extraordinarily diverse compared to many Memphis schools at the time, my classrooms were not. My classrooms were 80% to 90% white students, which meant that the other classes were 80% to 90% Black students.”

That experience, plus many others, set Kiel on a mission to explore why his classrooms looked the way they did, the history behind it all, and a system that continues to grapple with how to provide a quality education for all students.

The mission took him to Harvard Law School and to private law practice in Boston before he received a Fulbright scholarship and became a professor at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis. His scholarly work centers on race and education — work that led him to produce a documentary in 2011 titled “The Memphis 13,” chronicling the stories of the first Black students to attend all-white public elementary schools in Memphis in 1961.

That was seven years after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that declared that mandated school segregation was unconstitutional.

This month marks the 70th anniversary of that decision. In recognition of that milestone, Chalkbeat spoke with Kiel about how the ruling influenced his interest in educational equity, the current state of school desegregation, and how new laws and interpretations of racial justice are poised to undermine it.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did the Brown decision influence your life and decision to pursue constitutional law?

By the time I was graduating college and entering law school, I was a huge admirer of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Defense Fund, and the idea of lawyers forcing the country to grapple with injustice. So it was that idea that took me to law school.

When I was in law school, it was actually around the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, so there was some interesting coursework that I was allowed to take. We had studied Little Rock, Charlotte and Detroit … . I knew there was a connection to Memphis, and I knew from my experiences there wasn’t education justice in Memphis.

It was at that point that I started digging into the Memphis schools as part of a curiosity project as to why my schools looked like they did.

Describe what happened in the seven years between 1954, when Brown outlawed legal segregation, and 1961, when the first Black children were enrolled in Memphis’ all-white elementary schools.

For the first few years, and not just in Tennessee, there’s this thought (in Southern states) that they won’t have to abide by the ruling. Then the (Tennessee) legislature took race out of school assignments, with freedom of choice (a plan in which schools still had the discretion to deny Black student requests to enroll in all-white schools), but that still allowed local schools to maintain segregation.

That spurred the 1960 Memphis lawsuit Northcross v. Memphis City Schools, and led to the first Black students being allowed to attend white elementary schools in 1961. After the courts ordered desegregation efforts to be stepped up in the late 1960s, the process accelerated.

Still, in the 1970s, most students were still operating in segregated environments.

How do your students react to lessons about school segregation and how it was the law of the land before Brown?

They’re surprised. My students come with a range of familiarity with that story, so there’s definitely students who know that story well and aren’t surprised by it, and know how things unfolded afterward, but there also are those students who think that when the Supreme Court ruled, that was that, and all of a sudden segregation went away.

For some of my students, a lot of unlearning has to happen before they’re learning. In a particular course I teach, Education and Civil Rights, we use the Brown story and narrative as a case study to set up other kinds of pushes toward educational justice that have occurred in the United States, whether they are based on poverty, immigration status, or disability, or sex. It’s a touchstone case that the students enjoy grappling with methodically.

Recently, the Tennessee legislature tried to pass a voucher law permitting anyone, regardless of income, to use public money to pay for private school for their children. What are your thoughts on whether this universal voucher bill — which Gov. Bill Lee has vowed to reintroduce next year — will worsen school segregation?

Vouchers are hard to talk about, because the theory behind them is an attractive one, which is to give every student a chance at opportunity regardless of their circumstances. But there’s a risk involved in disabling the schools that are more likely to serve large numbers of disadvantaged students — especially in Shelby County, and in the state more broadly.

But I think about history and the way things pop up repeatedly in different guises, and in the 1950s, one of the first responses to Brown in Virginia, and one of the ways they resisted the court order, was for the school system to shut down and not have public education anymore. While that seemed awful and shortsighted, what made it worse was that they provided vouchers to students who wanted to attend private schools. But of course, the private schools were openly discriminatory and exclusive, so what vouchers were, in that instance, (was) a mechanism to maintain segregation.

Vouchers, in their 21st century form, aren’t those things precisely, but they are consistent with the idea that it’s not us, the people, the community, that is responsible for education, but that education is an individualized thing. You create an unequal playing field when you give an individual control of those things, because the way that those laws get passed, and the way vouchers typically show up, is that not every school has to take them. Students and families are often responsible for their own transportation, so that’s an access issue, and then the things that happen inside schools once they’re there can be hateful and hurtful and stigmatizing, and there’s no support for that within a voucher program.

I think the theory behind vouchers is an attractive one. It sort of draws me to the work of pushing for education equity more broadly, but in practice it has never served that goal.

What other developments do you believe can undermine the promise of Brown?

It’s not hard to look at the landscape of the way we do education and find disparities that look like the disparities from 70 years ago. They’re not the same in that the law doesn’t specifically mandate them, but it’s easy to find those disparities, and they’re discouraging.

In my space, I look at the way the U.S. Supreme Court has, in particular, transformed the Brown decision not into a decision about remedying historical injustices, but into a decision about colorblindness and government race-neutrality. I feel like neutrality didn’t get it done in 1955, and I don’t think neutrality is likely to get it done today.

The law is moving in a direction where it’s a little harder to see where you can push for the kinds of educational investments that are needed to produce equal education opportunities today. That’s one thing. But I think part of the reason why the disparities still exist is a broader lack of will from all of us that something should be done.

It’s easy to say equal opportunity should exist, but it’s harder to turn that into action and policy and results. It’s not impossible, but one thing I think is important is to lift up teachers and families and community groups and advocates who are pushing for this every day, and who are succeeding.

So, how should we view the Brown decision through today’s lens?

The story that most people want to tell about Brown is one of missed opportunities, and I think there’s something to that. But there’s been a huge increase in educational attainment in our society since 1954.

If we’re looking at high school graduation and college attendance and employment figures, achievements that were unthinkable in Black communities are now the norm. There has been a lot of progress.

I try not to lose sight of the fact that a lot has changed since 1954, and that a lot of people are still working on that.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

A young Memphis student’s letter on gun violence is featured in new Ruby Bridges book

2024-05-08T20:17:15+00:00

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If it wasn’t for Ruby Bridges, Ben Williams’ circle of friends would be smaller — and whiter.

That’s why, when the 11-year-old Grahamwood Elementary School student read about how Bridges endured death threats and racial slurs to attend all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960, he wrote a letter thanking her.

“You changed the world with your courage and your bravery,” Ben wrote. “Without you I might not have the same friends I have today… .”

Ben’s letter is now a work of children’s literature.

In 2022, Grahamwood’s third, fourth and fifth graders wrote letters to Bridges about how they wanted to change the world. After receiving more than 900 letters, a committee sent 10 of those letters to Bridges.

Ben, who was in third grade at the time, wrote about his dream for people to summon the courage to stop gun violence, just as Bridges, as a 6-year-old, summoned the courage to walk into an all-white school in spite of taunts and threats.

Bridges said Ben’s letter resonated with her because her oldest son, Craig Hall, was fatally shot in New Orleans in 2005. It was ultimately featured as one of 12 children’s letters in Bridges’ latest book, titled “Dear Ruby: Hear Our Hearts.”

On May 4, Ben got a chance to read his letter in the book on stage alongside Bridges, who was in Memphis for the Ruby Bridges Reading Festival at the National Civil Rights Museum, where hundreds of books by her and other authors were given away.

“I hope I can help to change gun violence,” Ben’s letter reads. “Even though you can try and change kids’ points of view about gun control, you still need to change adults’ points of view. It’s like some of them do not understand the importance of gun control.

“If everyone had the courage you had, then maybe my dream would come true,” Ben wrote.

Ben said he was excited to meet Bridges, and to have his voice heard— which was why Bridges wrote the book.

For decades, she said, she had been receiving thousands of letters from children who learned of her story, and she thought it was past time to find a way to use them.

“I went through them, and I found letters from kids such as a little girl who said she had to be brave and call 911, ‘because my father was hitting my mom,’” Bridges said.

Bridges said she decided to solicit more recent letters from children on issues that they wanted to fix.

“I can’t begin to tell you how many boxes of letters we got,” she said. “I thought that as parents and as adults, we should hear their hearts, because many times, we underestimate our kids.

“Even at 6, my parents underestimated my thoughts,” she said. “So this was a way of showing the world what our kids were thinking about.”

Ben said one of the reasons he wants to end gun violence is that his mother, a child welfare lawyer, deals with many children who are exposed to gun violence.

It’s a huge problem. Last year, gun violence was the leading external cause of death for children in Tennessee. And in Memphis, by the end of 2023, trauma physicians at LeBonheur Children’s Hospital had treated 165 children for gunshot wounds — a record for a year — according to a report in The Commercial Appeal.

Nonetheless, Ben said he believes that people can fix that — just as Bridges helped to end legal segregation in New Orleans.

“Her story was about how so many people said ‘no,’ but she said ‘yes,’” Ben said. “All it takes is one.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

This Tennessee teacher brings lessons from the ocean to her landlocked students

2024-04-18T16:56:08+00:00

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As a child in Panama City, Florida, the call of the ocean was always within earshot of Devon Jones.

“I spent the first seven years of my life living on a boat or around the water,” Jones said. “I always said, ‘I don’t have friends, I have fish.’

“I spent weekends and summers with my grandmother in Mexico Beach, [Florida], so water was my backyard.”

Marriage to a military spouse and family ultimately landed her in Fort Campbell, which sits on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. It was a move that took her away from the sea and away from her dream of becoming a marine biologist. But it didn’t stop Jones from finding another career that allowed her to share her love of the ocean with others: teaching sixth grade science.

Jones, who has been teaching for 15 years, works at Kirkwood Middle School in Clarksville, on the edge of rural Montgomery County, where many of her students haven’t seen much, if any, of an ocean.

This fall, though, she will get a unique chance to get her students excited about the sea. Ocean Exploration Trust, a nonprofit organization that aims to explore the ocean and apply discoveries to Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics education, selected her as a 2024 Lead Science Communications Fellow.

That means Jones will spend 26 days onboard Exploration Vessel Nautilus in late September and early October. The expedition — Jones’ second — will explore and map the seafloor around Howland and Baker islands in the Pacific. The journey begins in Pago Pago, American Samoa, and ends in Koror, Palau.

Once onboard Jones, who is among 13 fellows selected nationally this year, will coordinate live, daily audio commentary and question-and-answer sessions through the Nautilus Live website. While ashore, Jones will use Google Classroom and other learning tools to engage communities and students around the world.

Jones recently talked to Chalkbeat Tennessee about how she approaches her work.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How does teaching ocean science to middle schoolers excite you?

Tennessee is landlocked, so I get a chance to bring that part of the world to my students, a world that they are rarely familiar with and a world that is largely unknown to them. I love that I can get them hooked. I tie the curriculum back to the ocean because, in some way, we all are connected to it. I want the students to have the opportunity to learn what’s out there, and the only way they can do that is for me to keep learning about what’s out there.

Why sixth grade?

I started out teaching fourth and fifth grades, and I was feeling a bit of a burnout, but someone told me about the science curriculum in middle school. I looked into it, and I decided, ‘Hey, sixth grade science — this is some really relatable stuff. This is something that I can really make an impact with.’

So, I decided to make the jump. I love the age range, the kids, the curiosity that they have. They’re at that age where questions are abundant. I can show them how what they’re learning is impacting their lives on a daily basis.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach?

One of my favorite units is biodiversity and human impact. On the very first dive we took [on the 2023 expedition] on one of the reefs, we saw something that looked familiar, but we weren’t quite sure what it was. But when we got closer, we saw that it was trash. But because we were able to date it — it had a Pepsi can from 1980 — I was able to show the kids the impact of what trash does, and how long it remains in the environment.

It was horrible to see, but its relevance made it a teaching moment. Helping them understand how they impact the ecosystem and the environment around us is huge because I want them to see that while they have the ability to destroy something, I also want to show them that they have the ability to change something for the greater good.

Describe your role on the expedition this time.

I get to lead other teachers as this will be their first time out. They’ll reach out to schools all over the world via telecommunications. They’ll take the kids on a virtual tour of the boat, and connect them to what the ROVs [remotely operated vehicles] are exploring at the bottom of the ocean.

We’ll cross the International Date Line to do seafloor mapping on a part of the ocean that hasn’t been mapped before. This is all new exploration to learn what is lying beneath us. Are there more trenches? We know they exist, but how do they affect biodiversity levels? We’ll be doing the mapping, and we’ll be out there for 26 days.

So, it’s a great way to get science into the classroom, and to get the kids excited about things that most of them have never known existed.

How do you use what you learn to help students relate to their immediate environment?

Clarksville is booming. There’s a lot of development, and I want them to understand the impact it has on the ecosystem, like humans have on the ocean. I want them to understand that in a few years, they’re going to be in charge of that future, so they need to understand the biological factors involved [and]the importance of what those changes are bringing.

What’s the best advice that you abide by?

Never be afraid to put yourself in positions where you can still learn and grow. In my classroom, I always see myself as the lead learner. As far as teaching goes, it’s building relationships with your students, to show that they’re not investing in you, but they’re investing in themselves. Also, keep the alarm clock ready and make time for yourself because while teaching is a rewarding career, the burnout is real.

How do you spend your spare time?

I focus on my family. I have three children and 12 grandchildren. I’ve been married for 32 years. Making memories is everything. Family is everything. I love to travel, and I’ll travel to places that I know are going to bring me peace and happiness, and it’s always going to be back to the water.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

This Tennessee ESL teacher ensures that her students learn the language — and feel the love

2024-02-15T22:16:56+00:00

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Missy Testerman has been teaching at Rogersville City School for 32 years. But for the past few years, she’s been teaching more children who weren’t born in the rural Appalachian community where the school is nestled.

Some of the children are from Mexico and Honduras. Others are from India, China, and various Arabic-speaking nations. She heard stories about immigrant families braving dangerous routes to get to the United States.

“We’re very rural. We see cows every day,” said Testerman, 54, who also directs the ESL program at the school. “But what we’ve seen here is that [Spanish-speaking immigrants] aren’t settling close to the [southern] border anymore … they’re coming to towns like ours.”

To help these families acclimate, Testerman earned her license to teach English learners two years ago. What she’s learned is that the job requires more than helping children and families learn English and find their way. It means helping newcomer students fit in socially as well.

Sometimes, she said, the political climate can make that daunting.

“I try to make sure that my children and their families are assimilated here, that they’re participating in sports and everything, because if they assimilate, people will accept them more easily,” Testerman said.

She said it’s “heartbreaking” to hear people, particularly elected officials, make hurtful blanket statements about immigrants.

Last year, Testerman’s passion for her students and her work as an ESL teacher earned her the title of Tennessee’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. This year, the Council of Chief State School Officers selected her as one of four finalists for National Teacher of the Year.

The winner will be announced in April.

“It’s an amazing feeling,” she said. “I’m still a little baffled as to how and why, because there are so many awesome teachers in my state and community who pour their heart and soul into their work. To be named as a finalist is just incredibly humbling.”

Testerman recently talked to Chalkbeat Tennessee about how she approaches her work.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How do you go about teaching English to non-native speakers?

You just start small, using photo cards, and expanding their reach, just like you would with a baby, by trying to fill their world with language. In the beginning, it means very basic language that you build on.

I do a combination of push-in services, where I go in, plan with the teacher, work with the teacher, and help deliver English language development skills at the same time I’m delivering academic content, and I also do [55 minutes of] pull-out for kids who need it — new learners, students who struggle.

This year, I really tried to focus on my fourth graders, because they were kindergartners when the COVID shutdowns started. They were home during most of first grade, and they’re the ones who have had the most loss.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

I love everything about the reading process. My master’s degree is in education, so I love any lesson that has to do with the components of reading — whether that is breaking down themes, character development, contractions, antonyms, and synonyms.

What’s going on in your community that affects what happens in your classroom?

Unfortunately, there are [those], and they’re mainly politicians, who are on social media pushing out these untrue statements about immigrants, and a lot of times, that causes a bias to form against some of my students and their families, and that does affect their education.

Luckily, my school here is kind of insulated. We built this community inside our school, but outside our school, these are the things that my students and their families have to face. They want to fit in, but they also want to be proud of their heritage, and we want them to be proud of their heritage.

Also, something that is also very important to me is that they preserve their home language. It is a gift to have two languages, and I constantly work in examples of how they can use both of their languages in a career someday. I tell the story of my son’s girlfriend. [Her family is] Honduran. She was born and raised in Houston but she speaks both languages. They’re in supply chain management and real estate. She’s just incredibly talented because she’s able to talk to people in two different languages. I urge [students] to speak their home languages at home, so they don’t lose it. I can teach them English, but not Arabic or Spanish.

What inspired you to become a teacher?

I think I was always destined to be a teacher. I was always that typical kid who lined up the dolls taught the dolls, and forced my little sister to play school. I had so many incredible teachers when I was growing up, and I wanted to be like them, to emulate them. I wanted to dress like them. I remember when I was in the first grade, and I was so proud when my mom bought me a cardigan to wear with my Easter dress because my teacher wore a cardigan every day. I was so proud of that sweater.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I worked with the very best mentor. She’s no longer with us, but she was always that voice asking what’s best for kids and how something will impact students. That’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten: To keep kids as the focus and to ask yourself what’s best for students.

How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

This may sound weird, but my husband and I get up at about 5:30 every morning, and we run before school. That is my stress reliever; it helps me manage the stress of the job.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS leader wants to position schools as ‘pillars of hope’ to fight youth violence

2024-01-12T02:54:42+00:00

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After a year in which violence claimed the lives of 22 Memphis-Shelby County Schools students,, interim Superintendent Toni Williams pledged that the district would step up its efforts to fight crime.

Williams made the pledge Thursday, flanked by school board members, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy and two parents who lost children to that violence.

The district, she said, plans to play a role in tamping down youth crime through, among other things, its infrastructure plan, which looks at renovating aging schools, rather than just closing them, and expanding the role of schools as community centers.

Right now, for example, the district is on track to have nine schools that serve as community centers, she said, with some that include agriculture programs and other innovations.

In the past, she said, “we closed our schools in our blighted communities, but that isn’t what this plan is about. But the reality of that is: Could we have replaced that vacant building with housing to address some of these root cause issues?

“We have to position our schools as a pillar of our community,” she added. “We want our schools to not only represent an environment of education, but of hope.”

But the school district will need support from the broader community to be successful at preventing violence, she said.

“We must ask ourselves: ‘How can we impact the issue from our respective lanes? How can we all be crime fighters?”

Williams, whose term as interim superintendent will end this summer when a permanent leader takes over, said district officials planned to offer details in the coming weeks about how the community could work with the schools in preventing crime.

In the meantime, she called on the business and philanthropic communities to consider efforts such as adopting and volunteering at schools, as well as opening pantries at schools with food and other necessities, and offering internships and mentoring students.

Williams also asked them to prioritize long-term solutions to violence and crime that deal with housing, mental health, and other challenges.

Community violence has long been a problem that plagues youths in Memphis. The Commercial Appeal reported last month that, LeBonheur Children’s Hospital had treated 165 gunshot victims that year. It was a record number that doesn’t include children who were treated elsewhere or died before reaching the hospital.

Mulroy, the district attorney, said his office plans to aid MSCS’ efforts. It also has been examining ways to battle youth violence and crime with approaches that are less punitive.

He said he’s been talking to businesspeople about contributions for a data-sharing lab and after-school programs.

“Some of it requires locking people up, but some of it also requires intervening in their lives so that they don’t become repeat offenders,” Mulroy said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Six big storylines that defined Tennessee education in 2023

2023-12-20T22:25:19+00:00

For a third straight year, many Tennessee students strived to climb back from academic and mental health challenges after COVID-19 forced them into remote learning.

But it was the unexpected events that dominated education news in Tennessee in 2023 and exposed new fault lines: A deadly shooting at a Nashville private school sparked protests and a backlash at the state Capitol. A superintendent search in the state’s largest school district unraveled just as it was about to wrap up. And the state ordered an 11th-hour overhaul of school accountability measures that will fall hardest on schools that serve students from low-income families.

Beyond that, some of the biggest headlines were about the ripple effects of Tennessee laws that put new pressure on public schools, including the rapid spread of private-school vouchers, the anxiety around high-stakes testing for third graders, and restrictions on what teachers can say in their classrooms about race and bias.

Chalkbeat Tennessee’s Marta W. Aldrich, our senior correspondent in Nashville, and Laura Testino, our Memphis-Shelby County Schools reporter, covered all those issues like honeysuckle covers the South. They connected with experts and advocates, sought out documents and data, and, most of all, showcased the voices of students, parents, and educators to bring you closer to the big stories driving education in the Volunteer State.

Here are some of the 2023 stories that resonated most with you — and with us.

Nashville students walked out of school April 3, 2023, and gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol for a demonstration against gun violence, organized by the youth group March for Our Lives.

Nashville students protest the state’s lax gun laws

On March 27, an intruder armed with legally obtained, high-powered guns entered The Covenant School in Nashville and killed three adults and three 9-year-olds. The school was private, but the impact quickly spread to the public sphere when thousands of students and educators responded with days of protests against the state’s lax gun laws.

A story by Marta about the students protesting at the state Capitol in Nashville was the most-read story of 2023.

Among other things, it called attention to the disconnect between public support for tighter gun safety laws and a legislature that has moved in the other direction, eliminating many requirements for permits, safety training and waiting periods, and allowing purchases of some of the most deadly weapons.

Marta’s coverage that day showcased the voices — and faces — of the students who are coming of age in an era of escalating gun violence and turning their anger and anxiety into activism.

“We all want to live through high school,” said a 17-year-old student Marta spoke with, “and that’s why we’re here today.”

In her continuing coverage, Marta focused on how Tennessee lawmakers continued to push for broader access to guns, even as Nashville teachers were struggling to cope mentally and emotionally with the aftermath of the Covenant shooting.

A special legislative session on gun safety yielded no new restrictions, angering parents, students, and gun control activists.

“Today is a difficult day,” said David Teague, a father of two children at Covenant. “A tremendous opportunity to make our children safer and create brighter tomorrow’s has been missed. And I am saddened for all Tennesseans.”

(From left) Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville, Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, and Justin Pearson of Memphis speak at a press conference on April 4, 2023, about GOP-sponsored resolutions to kick the three Democrats out of office. The House voted to oust Jones and Pearson, but not Johnson.

Lawmaker expulsions: When a teachable moment becomes taboo

The gun safety protests roiled the state Capitol, culminating in the expulsion of two lawmakers who led the protests on the House floor. They also created confusion in Tennessee classrooms about how to discuss what happened.

In all, three Democratic lawmakers faced expulsion resolutions over their role in the protests, but only two of them — Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, both young Black men — were actually voted out by the GOP-dominated chamber. The House spared the third lawmaker, Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, who is a white woman.

The incident drew national attention, and scorn, as an example of racism and white privilege in the halls of power. But because of a state law that restricts teaching about race, many teachers struggled with how to answer students’ questions or engage them in conversations about it. While tracking the expulsion story, Marta and Laura also explored what happens when state policies collide with learning and engagement in the classroom, and what students lose when they do.

“I think these conversations would go much deeper if our teachers didn’t have the fear of these new laws hanging over them,” one high school senior in Nashville told them.

The same themes resurfaced in Laura’s coverage of a book event at Whitehaven H.S. in Memphis, featuring authors of “His Name Is George Floyd.”

Laura discovered a social media exchange that revealed how the authors faced restrictions on presenting their book to students because of concerns about the state laws governing library books and “age appropriate” materials. Tennessee’s laws restricting classroom discussions of race also loomed in the background.

Laura resolved to tell the story of how the restrictions came to be, and how they were communicated to the organizers of the book event and the authors. But the state law is a touchy subject for educators trying to steer clear of trouble, and Laura found it challenging to get the full story from the school district.

According to the authors of the book, journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, students at Whitehaven didn’t get the full story about George Floyd either. Samuels wrote an essay about the experience in The New Yorker.

Memphis superintendent search moves in fits and starts

It was just over a year ago that Memphis-Shelby County Schools announced an accelerated process for selecting a permanent successor to Joris Ray, who resigned in August 2022 amid charges that he abused his power and violated district policies.

But the superintendent post is still vacant, and the search continues.

What was supposed to be a grand unveiling of finalists in April devolved into an argument about process when some board members decided they didn’t like the slate of candidates selected by the search firm.

Toni Williams, interim superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, addresses the board during a special-called meeting on June 13, 2023.

A big sticking point was the selection of the interim superintendent, Toni Williams, as a finalist. She had once pledged not to apply for the permanent post. And Chalkbeat Tennessee reported that the search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, didn’t enforce board policies on minimum qualifications for the job in screening candidates.

Chalkbeat Tennessee has closely tracked the ensuing drama, including the resignation of the board’s vice chair, the banning of several activists from district property, and big questions about whether the public display of board dysfunction would repel top national candidates.

A rebooted search is now reaching its final stages, with a target of having the next superintendent on the job by summer. Whoever emerges as the leader will have a heavy workload: navigating tough budget decisions, coordinating a massive facilities overhaul, and driving academic recovery in a district where nearly 80% of students aren’t proficient in reading.

Accountability measures add to pressure on districts — and children

In a sign of continuing recovery from the pandemic, students’ proficiency rates in math and language arts improved in most districts across the state, according to results from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP test. The gains in Memphis-Shelby County schools were more muted than in past years.

Along with Thomas Wilburn, Chalkbeat’s senior data editor, Marta provided a comprehensive report on the results and a data tool to help readers look up how students in each district performed.

Beyond the scores, Chalkbeat’s coverage zeroed in on last year’s class of third-graders, and the outsized burden they carried. These students were kindergartners when the pandemic struck in March 2020, sent home to learn remotely just as their formal education was beginning.

Statewide, this was also the first cohort of third-graders who faced the threat of being held back if they couldn’t demonstrate proficiency on the TCAP language arts test. Statewide, about 60% of third-graders did not meet the standard for proficiency. In MSCS alone, more than 6,000 students missed the mark.

Laura focused on one of them: 8-year-old Kamryn, an anxious third-grader who chose to walk out of her school rather than face the results of a state test that could cause her to remain in the third grade.

“She told me that she was tired of school,” her mother told Laura.

Kamryn’s tale reflected the human toll of testing and accountability measures in a school district where children were, long before the disruption of COVID-19, already facing many challenges.

Lizzette Reynolds takes her oath during her swearing in ceremony as Tennessee’s newest education commissioner. She ordered a revamp of the state's grading system for schools, stressing proficiency over growth.

School district leaders and administrators now face another set of accountability pressures: the start of a new letter-grading system for all public schools, mandated by a 2016 state law.

They had been waiting for these A-F grades for years, thinking they understood what the criteria would be. But the state education department decided to change the criteria late this year to stress proficiency over growth, mostly ignoring the feedback it received from town halls and public comments. That means more schools in struggling areas are likely to receive D’s or F’s.

The grades are due out Thursday.

Laura and Marta’s coverage adds to the discourse of how Tennessee continues to apply new scrutiny to public schools with no guarantees of helping them to improve.

Tennessee legislature looks at rejecting billions of dollars in federal education funds

To many observers, it seemed like just political posturing when Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested that the state reject billions of dollars in federal education funds so it could free itself from federal regulations.

But Marta knew that such a potentially sweeping idea needed to be treated seriously, because Tennessee receives about $1.8 billion in federal aid — and because no state had ever rejected federal funding before.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton in the Tennessee State House chamber in 2022. Sexton suggested this year that Tennessee forgo federal education funding.

She went to work on a Q&A for readers to show what giving up federal funds would mean for families and the state’s most vulnerable students. In particular, Marta noted, without the conditions that come with federal funding, there’s no guarantee that Tennessee law would work as well as federal laws designed to protect students with disabilities.

Sure enough, Sexton was serious enough about his suggestion to order a full-blown legislative study, with hearings featuring testimony from school district leaders and conservative think tanks — but not parents.

The panel considering the idea is still doing its research, but its co-chair says it’s unlikely the state will follow through.

Tennessee governor proposes to make private-school vouchers available to all

One by one, obstacles to Gov. Bill Lee’s private-school voucher program have fallen away.

A program once billed as a pilot project for two counties has expanded to a third under a law passed this year. And Lee now wants to make it universal, available to all students statewide.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on November 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

Marta’s coverage of the proposal delivered needed context about Lee’s continuing effort to persuade more parents to sign on to the program, which has attracted only about 2,000 students so far, well below capacity.

The story also looks ahead to the obstacles Lee will face in getting his bill through the legislature. Already, leaders of many rural and suburban school districts have announced their opposition to the bill based on the same concern that urban districts have: that it will divert more money away from public schools.

It’s a story that we’ll be following closely when the legislature convenes next month and the full language of the bill becomes available. Stay tuned.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee needs more students to finish higher education to meet job needs, report says

2023-12-13T01:36:41+00:00

Tennessee’s education system must do more to help minority and economically disadvantaged students earn postsecondary degrees in order to meet the state’s workforce needs, a report by an education policy and advocacy organization warned.

The State Collaborative on Reforming Education’s 2024 report, released at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, lauded Tennessee students’ overall progress on standardized tests since the pandemic, and a rebound in the number of students attending college during that time. But the group noted that fewer students were finishing college within six years of graduating high school.

For example, only 26% of the students who entered high school in 2012 had earned degrees or credentials by the summer of 2022, the report said. Black and Hispanic students have lower postsecondary graduation rates than their white peers. Among students who entered high school in 2012:

15% of Black students earned postsecondary degrees by 2022
16% of Hispanic students earned postsecondary degrees by 2022
30% of white students earned postsecondary degrees by 2022

“This is one of the most important data points in the report,” said David Mansouri, CEO of SCORE. “We know that the current pipeline, from K-12 to postsecondary education, and into the job market, is broken, and we are losing too many Tennesseans along the way who want and deserve better opportunities.”

Those numbers also don’t bode well in a state where only 56 workers are available for every 100 jobs, according to the report, and where 70% percent of business leaders say there are not enough trained workers to fill many of those jobs.

“To prepare Tennesseans for jobs enabling economic independence, the education system must better align and respond to the labor market,” the report said. “Tennesseans with postsecondary training valued by employers qualify for a larger portion of the state’s jobs, show greater resilience in the job market during economic downturns and experience greater earnings throughout their lifetime.”

To address the problem, SCORE recommends strengthening existing policies such as the Tennessee Promise program, which provides tuition assistance for students to attend community or technical colleges. SCORE said the program doesn’t go far enough to help students complete college, noting that only one-third of Tennessee Promise students earn a degree in six years.

It also recommends building more effective pathways between education and careers, such as providing clear information on which credentials and degrees are required for certain careers. And it calls for ensuring that K-12 education supports and meets student needs — for example, by finding more highly effective teachers for Tennessee’s low-income students and students of color.

Correction: Dec. 19, 2023: A previous version of this story stated that of the 26 % of Tennessee students who entered high school in 2012 and earned degrees or credentials in 2022, 30% were white, 16% were Hispanic, 15% were Black and 37% identified as other. The percentages for each racial or ethnic group are actually the rates within that group, not the number within the category of all Tennessee students.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools reporter Laura Testino contributed

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools graduation rate improves slightly

2023-11-21T21:58:41+00:00

The high school graduation rate for Memphis-Shelby County Schools students rose to 81.5 % in 2022-23, according to the Tennessee Department of Education, continuing a rebound from the pandemic years.

MSCS still lagged behind the statewide graduation rate of 90.6%. But the results reflected a 1.4% improvement from the previous year’s rate of 80.1%, and a big turnaround from 2019-20 and 2020-21, when the graduation rate sank to 77.7%.

Fourteen high schools — including six charter schools — posted graduation rates of 90% or higher, while 21 high schools increased their graduation rate by at least one percentage point.

“We commend our educators, students, and families for their hard work and we are proud of the gains we continue to see in our graduation rates,” interim Superintendent Toni Williams stated in an MSCS press release.

MSCS officials credited strategies such as Project Graduation, in which students can earn elective credits in the evening, as well as expanded tutoring with federal stimulus money and funding to hire graduation coaches.

TDOE officials pointed out areas of improvement across the state. Twenty-nine school districts boosted graduation rates for economically disadvantaged students by five percentage points or more, while 37 school districts improved graduation rates for students with disabilities by five percentage points or more, according to a department press release.

“Tennessee’s continuous commitment to ensuring students are successful in graduating from high school on time is demonstrated in this year’s statewide graduation rate and is a direct result of the hard work of Tennessee directors of schools, administrators, and educators have done with our families and students,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds stated in a press release.

MSCS high schools with 2023-24 grad rates of 90% or higher

Charter schools are indicated by an asterisk.

*City University School of Independence, 100%
Hollis F. Price Middle College, 100%; East High, 98%
*Memphis School of Excellence, 96.6%
*Power Center Academy High, 96.6%
Middle College High, 95.9%; Germantown High, 95.3%
*Crosstown High, 93.9%
*Memphis Academy of Science Engineering Middle/High, 93.3%
Whitehaven High, 92%
*Soulsville Charter School, 91.8%
White Station High, 91.2%
Ridgeway High, 90.6%
Central High, 90.2%

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

MLK College Prep students will have 6 choices for next year while new school is built

2023-11-03T21:27:45+00:00

Students at MLK College Preparatory High School in Frayser will get to choose from among six schools to attend beginning next school year, as Memphis-Shelby County Schools begins construction of a new high school on the same site.

MLK College Prep is closing as it returns to MSCS control after 10 years in the Achievement School District, a failed state effort to turn around struggling schools, mostly under charter operators. The school board rejected the school’s bid to return to the district as a charter school.

The new school on the site, which is expected to open in 2027, will replace MLK College Prep and nearby Trezevant High School. Trezevant, which is in the district-run iZone turnaround program, is one of the six schools that displaced MLK students can choose to attend next year, district officials said at a town hall meeting Thursday.

The others are Craigmont High, Medical District High, Raleigh-Egypt High, Middle College High and Manassas High.

Patrice Thomas, chief of strategic operations and planning adviser for MSCS, explained that MLK College Prep students will be assigned to Trezevant High by default. Transportation will be provided to Trezevant, but it will also be provided to two other schools that draw the most MLK College Prep students.

“Trezevant is the closest school to MLK, but that might not be the option for all our students,” Thomas said.

“We want to get a list of the top two schools that most of the students are interested in attending, and we’ll provide the transportation,” she said.

Two of the six schools — Middle College High and Medical District High — have minimum requirements for enrollment and may be off limits to some MLK College Prep students.

District communications chief Cathryn Stout said the district doesn’t have a lot of flexibility around the requirements because those schools are connected to college campuses, and many of the requirements were tied to students’ behavior.

“They want to make sure that students who are coming to use their college campuses, their college resources, have a certain behavior level,” Stout said.

A new high school in Frayser has been on the drawing board for some time, and for years, the district has been seeking funding for a school to replace Trezevant, whose deferred maintenance bills are among the highest of the public schools.

This year, MSCS received $9.9 million from the Shelby County Commission to help build the state-of-the-art school, which is expected to cost around $90 million.

Construction is expected to begin next April and end by February 2027, according to a schedule submitted by TWF Builders, the contractors for the project.

Reaction to the announcement of the high school choices for next year was mixed at Thursday’s town hall.

While most parents and attendees welcomed the idea of a new high school, some said they were frustrated, because they thought the students were going to remain in the school at least for the next school year.

Others worried about their children adjusting to a new school, and that “territorialism” at Trezevant might lead to their children being bullied.

“It is frustrating to parents, and I don’t think it’s fair to them that they’ve heard so many different stories,” said Tasha Williams, who came out to support the parent group Memphis Lift.

“We have to roll with the punches,” Williams said, “but the parents had gotten comfortable, because they thought they had time to plan, and they found out that they didn’t.”

Bobby White, CEO of Frayser Community Schools, the charter network that managed MLK College Prep, told parents that the new high school would offer a new beginning for the neighborhood.

“I know that this is challenging. I know that this is life changing,” he said. “But this is a one-time opportunity for 38127. The discomfort of the moment shouldn’t get in the way of the excitement for the future.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Author: Black teachers’ resistance to segregation 60 years ago holds lessons for teachers today

2023-10-16T21:41:34+00:00

As a Birmingham, Alabama, native, Tondra Loder-Jackson was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. She was especially inspired by the 1,000-plus Black children who walked out of school in Birmingham on May 2, 1963, to protest Jim Crow segregation in what would be known as the Children’s Crusade.

Still, one question lingered for Loder-Jackson. Where, she wondered, were the Black teachers?

Now a professor of educational foundations at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Loder-Jackson sought the answer to that question — and wound up debunking a narrative that Black teachers either shied away from the movement or were hostile to it.

In her 2016 book, “Schoolhouse Activists: African American Educators and the Long Birmingham Civil Rights Movement,” and in a 2023 book she co-edited, “Schooling the Movement: The Activism of Southern Black Educators from Reconstruction Through the Civil Rights Era,” Loder-Jackson details how many Black teachers, at the risk of losing their jobs and, in some cases, their lives, organized quietly and supported the movement through their scholarship and their teaching, and through associations with outside groups.

Loder-Jackson recently talked to Chalkbeat about her work and the lessons teachers in states like Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and others where teaching about race is being restricted, can learn from those 1960s schoolhouse activists on how to resist new state-sanctioned attempts to whitewash Black history.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Why did you want to explore the role of Black educators in the Civil Rights Movement?

This seemed to be a relatively untold story, although some scholars began to unearth some archival data and tell new stories decades ago. But no one that I knew of in Birmingham was focused on educators, and really, on the contrary, I discovered there was a false narrative in Birmingham that Black teachers and principals were categorically tepid about getting involved in the movement. In fact, there’s one narrative about a Black principal who stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent his students from skipping school during the Children’s Crusade in 1963.

Why is it important to correct this narrative — that Black teachers weren’t involved in the movement — at this time?

The false narrative that Black teachers in Birmingham, and in the southern region, were not active in the Civil Rights Movement leaves our teachers today with a lost memory of the kind of activism that teachers were involved in. There was an active network of below-the-radar teachers and administrators who contributed to the Alabama movement in various ways that were typically aligned with their professional practices. They formed Black teachers associations … . There is clear evidence, in national and local archives, that Black Alabama teachers joined ranks with the Alabama State Teachers Association. They were involved with them, they were involved in the NAACP, they were involved in the Alabama Christian Association, they were involved in all the civil rights organizations. It’s important for all educators to know, irrespective of race or ethnicity or nationality, the role that educators played in voting rights and in all aspects of the movement.

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised by this underground railroad of Black educators and how they came together as a collective to fight for civil rights. They were instrumental in putting together reports to document racial discrimination, they fought for voting rights, they sponsored Black history programs, and they were involved in strategizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They came together as a collective to fight for civil rights.

It was true that some didn’t feel comfortable protesting, but many blended in with crowds during the mass meetings, which was one of the core activities of the movement. I have interviewed teachers who said they have attended every one of those meetings.

Did you think that in 2023, 60 years after the Children’s Crusade, that states like Tennessee and Florida would adopt laws that make it hard for teachers to teach about that crusade and, by extension, the role that Black teachers played in it?

Everything goes around in circles. We had a backlash against multiculturalism in the 1980s, but then things died down a bit. The backlash today, however, seems especially vitriolic. I have to consider the role that the first Black president elected two times, and a pandemic that opened up classrooms virtually with some students’ parents looking over their shoulders, and the George Floyd protests may have played in this.

What is especially troubling about these laws and their potential consequences?

The attacks on civic education are disconcerting to me. That is the space in public schools where students learn how a democracy should work. One teacher I interviewed told me one important lesson she taught during the movement was to help students understand why they were going out to march in the streets, and she would use her civics lesson to make a connection between their actions and what they were doing. So teachers play an important role in laying the intellectual foundation for any social movement, and teachers, and Black teachers in the South particularly, played that role.

What can educators in states where teaching about race is restricted learn from Black teachers in Birmingham who found ways to resist unjust laws that wouldn’t cause them to lose their jobs or lives?

Today, we definitely don’t want to have situations where we have educational gaps and orders keeping teachers from teaching social studies authentically and with fidelity.

So I would say that the lessons that teachers of today can learn from teachers of the past is to find ways to organize at their schools on a local, state, and even a national and international level. Beyond unions, there are a lot of professional associations and informal coalitions that are emerging.

In Birmingham, I’ve become part of a group called Coalition for True History. It’s an emergent grass roots organization that is made up of educators, civic leaders, and community members. We are advocating rigorous, authentic, and critical approaches to teaching history. We’ve had the NAACP and other groups to help interpret legal leeways (around laws that restrict lessons on race).

So, (teachers) are going to have to work in solidarity. Based on my scholarship and research, that is the model that we have from the past.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

This Memphis ‘Educator of Excellence’ mixes English and arts to motivate students

2023-09-19T02:39:25+00:00

Years ago, while an intern with Bridge Builders, a Memphis program designed to help youths think critically and resolve conflicts, someone told Crystal L. Johnson that she had good rapport with the young people.

Johnson ultimately parlayed that compliment, as well as her diploma from Overton High School for the creative and performing arts, and her degrees in English and psychology, and in instruction and curriculum from the University of Memphis, into a teaching career.

She’s been at it for 17 years.

Johnson now teaches 12th grade Advanced Placement English at Hillcrest High School, a charter school of 432 students in Tennessee’s Achievement School District. Her work with the students at the Whitehaven school recently earned her recognition as a 2023 Educator of Excellence. The honor comes with a $1,500 award sponsored by the Crews Family Foundation and bestowed by New Memphis — a non-profit organization that focuses on supporting leaders and ideas to improve the city.

Johnson’s work transcends her classroom. She’s also a writer, spoken word artist and executive director of the youth development nonprofit Live Seed, Inc., which puts on spoken word performances.

Johnson, whose students affectionately call her “Miss C.J.,” recently told Chalkbeat Tennessee how she approaches her job.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My lessons on poetry and creative writing are my favorite. It allows the students to break free from the traditional rules of grammar. It allows them to express themselves. The poetry lesson on “Where I’m From” is my favorite. The students talk and describe their neighborhoods and who they are. It gives me access into learning more about them and gives them practice being vulnerable with their writing.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

The Peppertree apartments are down the street from Hillcrest. The news reported the need to shut them down due to lack of maintenance, which made the building a safety hazard. The police and/or ambulance could be heard on our street heading to those apartments on the daily. Now that they have closed, it has affected our enrollment and daily attendance. Many of our former students lived there and now have moved. It’s a good thing that the apartments were closed, due to crime and safety issues, but we also lost some students.

How do you approach news events in your classroom?

I show the news clip and pose a question or writing prompt to accompany the video. For example, when the Montgomery Riverboat Brawl went viral, I showed a news clip and asked, “What is the story, or series of events that led to the brawl? What are your thoughts on this? How could this have been avoided? How does this news clip affect current racial relations in our country?

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I was a student that attended optional [magnet] schools, so I had access to different resources. However, I didn’t like that I had to leave my neighborhood to get the social and academic school experiences that I did. There was information that my neighborhood peers didn’t receive, and it compelled me to bring that type of instruction to any school I taught at, no matter the label or location.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best advice I received was from a Rotary Award-winning educator. It was my first year as a teacher at Overton High School, my alma mater. Mrs. Seymour caught me staying late after school again grading papers, planning ahead, and trying to get my bearings. One day she stopped inside my room and said, “Ms. Johnson, what are you still doing here?” After I answered, she retorted, “The work will always be here. There will always be papers to grade and students to tutor. Make sure you schedule some time for yourself, or this job will overwhelm you.” She was right. I had to learn to pace myself. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

The “Freedom Writers Diary,” and the film helped inspire me to teach differently. It confirmed what I already knew about teaching youth from urban areas. You have to build rapport, build connections to see growth and achievement.

What new issues arose at your school/in your classroom during the past school year and how did you address them?

Most issues dealt with seniors staying focused and attending school daily. Seniors especially begin to get part-time jobs, and it becomes a challenge to keep them motivated to the finish line. I had to implement creative ways to get them to come more such as field trip incentives for attendance and submitting satisfactory work.

How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

When I’m not at work, I spend time with my family, especially my 11-year-old son, Robert, who attends Maxine Smith STEAM Academy. I perform at poetry readings. I travel, work out at the gym, enjoy live music with friends, attend New Abyssinia Baptist Church, or just relax. It is smart to partake in self-care activities that encourage good mental health. As an educator, it can be draining, so it is imperative that I get “me” time.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis’ Peabody Elementary closes for mold cleanup, forcing hundreds of students to relocate

2023-09-13T02:02:03+00:00

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Students at Peabody Elementary School will attend class at two other buildings while the school district works to eliminate mold from the 114-year-old structure.

According to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Peabody’s K-5 students and staff will move to the first floor of Middle College High School, at 750 E. Parkway, beginning Thursday. The school is about a mile away from Peabody.

Its pre-kindergarten students will attend W.H. Brewster Elementary, at 2605 Sam Cooper Blvd., about 3 miles from Peabody.

Peabody closed Sept. 8 after mold was discovered in the ductwork and grates on the school’s first floor. District officials said they will update parents during fall break, Oct. 9-13, on when they plan to move Peabody’s 323 students back into the building.

“Significant progress has been made” in removing the mold, MSCS said in a notice to parents. “However, the complexity of the job has exceeded our initial expectations due to the historical nature of the structure.”

This is the second time in the past two school years that MSCS students and staff have had to change schools because of issues linked to aging buildings.

In August 2022, students at Cummings K-8 Optional School had to relocate after the school’s library ceiling partially collapsed just days into the new school year. The structure that houses the library was built in 1930.

Old buildings like Peabody Elementary are more susceptible to mold because they’ve been exposed to weather and excessive moisture longer than newer structures.

Inhaling mold can trigger allergies and asthma. In Memphis, asthma is the cause of more than 3,500 visits to LeBonheur Children’s Hospital each year, and is the most common diagnosis, according to the hospital’s website.

More than 33 of MSCS’ schools were constructed before 1950, meaning the buildings are 70 or more years old.

District officials will introduce a new facilities plan this school year that will propose ways to deal with a growing backlog of costly maintenance issues. A mix of construction projects, closures, and consolidations will likely affect thousands of students, forcing more students to relocate to different buildings, at least temporarily.

MSCS said it will provide crossing guards, security officers, and additional support staff to ease the transition at Peabody. Regular bus routes will continue for bus riders.

For those who walk or who require additional transportation, an extra bus will arrive at Peabody at 7:15 a.m. and 7:50 a.m., and will return to Peabody for dismissal at 3:30 daily.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools TCAP scores show modest gains

2023-07-18T21:20:24+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools students gained some ground on state math tests, newly released test scores show, but they have yet to rebound to pre-pandemic proficiency levels.

In English language arts, where the district recouped pandemic era losses last year, scores stagnated.

Officials released the district-level results of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP, Tuesday afternoon.

The gains for Memphis were much more modest than the previous year, when officials trumpeted a district “trending up” following devastating academic declines during the pandemic. Overall, scores on the tests students took in the spring approached 2019 levels but have yet to completely return for all students and subject areas.

MSCS Deputy Superintendent Angela Whitelaw acknowledged in a statement that the district had “continued work to do this year.”

Statewide, math scores followed a similar trajectory as in Memphis, although scores for MSCS students were lower than statewide averages. In MSCS, 15% of students were on track for their grade in math compared with 23% in 2019. The 2021 low was 7%.

But while Tennessee students in general continued to see literacy gains, Memphis did not see much growth after last year’s rebound.

Students in grades 3-8 take the state assessments each year, and high school students take subject-area tests at the end of their courses.

“One key takeaway for me is the momentum we saw in our high schools,” Whitelaw said. “With the exception of English 1, we saw gains across the board.”

The score reports do not reflect the progress of students as they move from one grade to the next. For now, they can be used only to compare, say, this year’s sixth graders to last year’s sixth graders.

So they don’t capture how much this year’s third graders in Memphis improved from when they were in second grade. Those improvements showed up in an analysis MSCS shared earlier this summer in connection with Tennessee’s new reading law. This past year’s third graders were the first class subject to the new state law, which uses students’ TCAP scores in English language arts to determine whether they need more intervention to avoid being held back.

MSCS’ recovery efforts have helped students who are the farthest behind, the data shows. In both ELA and math, the share of students who scored “below” proficiency on the test — the lowest performance level — continued to shrink. But for both subjects, that share is still larger than in 2019, and the divide is more pronounced in math.

“Having visited these classrooms this morning, it helps me to remain hopeful and optimistic,” Bill White, a top MSCS academic leader, said after a tour of summer class at Shelby Oaks Elementary. “Because the data nationwide shows me that coming out of those learning losses is going to be tough, and it’s going to be slow, and it’s going to require extra time and instruction.”

The testing data reflects achievements from the most normal school year the district’s students have had since classrooms shuttered in March 2020 as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19. The 2021-21 school year was online for most Memphis students. They returned to classrooms in 2021-22, but spikes in COVID-19 infections led to waves of absences and disruptions to learning.

Students didn’t have those kinds of disruptions this past school year, but the district did have a turbulent year, starting off with transitions in top leadership and ending with the fallout of a stalled superintendent search.

For the coming school year, the board plans to order a review of the district’s academic programs, which interim Superintendent Toni Williams has started preparing. The results are expected to also inform spending decisions as federal COVID relief funds run out.

“We know the district is doing something right,” board member Kevin Woods said about the academic review. “And I think the better way we frame that is why so many of our students struggle, with all the investments that we make.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis school board to craft policy on banning public commenters

2023-05-31T06:44:15+00:00

Memphis-Shelby County Schools board members, responding to critics of the decision to ban five activists from district property after disruptions at a May 9 board meeting, agreed Tuesday to help create a new policy to maintain order and preserve public safety at meetings.

The board didn’t take a formal vote, but members agreed in principle to set a timeline to have such a policy in place.

“I expect for this so-called ban to be rescinded,” said Gilbert Barnes Carter III, one of several commenters at Tuesday’s meeting who denounced the district’s ban on the activists. “We have no credible evidence that these community leaders, who stand for children, pose any terroristic threat to anyone.

“You cannot be upset when people hold you accountable. You cannot do that and expect to hold a public position,” Carter said.

The five people banned from district property are Tikelia Rucker, a former teacher’s union president; Rachael Spriggs, a former school board candidate; and local community activists Damon Morris, LJ Abraham, and Amber Sherman. The district’s orders threaten them with arrest if they appear at any MSCS schools or properties.

Carolyn Jackson, the chief security officer of MSCS, said district officials are trying to schedule meetings with the activists to resolve the issue. She told the board that the bans were authorized after the May 9 special called meeting, when loud panic alarms were set off shortly after board Chair Althea Greene cut off comments by Spriggs about the superintendent search.

“We were concerned that if nothing was done to stop this disruptive behavior, these meetings would become more disruptive and possibly harmful to those in attendance,” said Jackson, who said the five activists were identified for violating rules and being disruptive.

But when Jackson and interim Superintendent Toni Williams referred board members to a video of the May 9 meeting, board member Frank Johnson questioned the rationale for the bans.

“The way the video shows is that not everyone was participating with the panic alarm,” said Johnson.

“What we’re seeing in these meetings, we’re seeing years of frustration, of entities doing things in this city that are not conducive to what the people want,” Johnson said, adding, “It seems like in this case that an action was done, and now it seems a narrative is being created to justify that action.”

Board member Kevin Woods said that anyone who is banned should receive written notice explaining why and be given a chance to appeal the decision. Board member Amber Huett-Garcia said the board needed to come up with a timeline and a date to have such a policy in place.

Greene, the board chair, said she would meet with Jackson to begin working on the timeline. But she also said that safety would remain a priority.

“We care about your comments, but we also care about the safety of everybody in the room,” she said.

Four of the banned activists — Spriggs, Sherman, Morris and Abraham — gathered with their supporters outside of the administration building to denounce the bans as a violation of their right to free speech, and objected to being labeled security threats.

They directed their ire at board member Keith Williams, who said the board needed to encourage “a proper culture, not one of uncivilized behavior.”

“They want to make us these violent, off-the-chain people,” Spriggs said, “but they know that’s not true.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis school board dysfunction risks repelling top superintendent prospects

2023-05-17T21:59:48+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board is finally approaching a consensus on reopening its stalled superintendent search to get more applicants in the pool.

The question now — a full month into a pause with no end in sight — is whether the district can attract more high-caliber candidates when its board is still struggling to define what it wants from its next superintendent.

“The relationship between the superintendent and the school board is maybe the most important job consideration for a superintendent,” said Jason Grissom, a professor of leadership, policy, and organizations at Vanderbilt University who has examined issues such as superintendent turnover.

The way a board conducts its search signals the board’s ability to “be on the same page, and to function successfully,” Grissom said. Without that, “some candidates may back away.”

The bigger risk, Grissom and others warn, is that continued discord among board members makes the job of the next superintendent more difficult and causes them to want to leave.

Turnover among superintendents is already high in urban districts. And MSCS, where most students aren’t reading at state benchmarks and where many struggle with poverty, can ill afford more instability at the top.

Process unraveled abruptly and publicly

District officials had promised the public a search process that would help restore trust and confidence in district leadership after the scandal that prompted former Superintendent Joris Ray to resign in August.

Instead, the search veered off course just as it was set to conclude, with some board members questioning the entire process and board policies after the outside search firm presented three top candidates. Board Chair Althea Greene declared a halt to the search and canceled planned interviews with the finalists.

Disagreement among school board members is common and can be a sign of a deliberative body fulfilling its duty rather than acting as a rubber stamp. “Democracy is sometimes ugly,” MSCS board member Kevin Woods acknowledged last month.

But the MSCS board’s disagreements have erupted unexpectedly and in public view, pointing to broader dysfunction.

The discussions and events since the April 15 meeting have turned up more signs the board had failed to coalesce on fundamental aspects of the search, even as it was in full swing. For example:

Months after they approved a contract for the search firm — Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates — some members appeared to be unclear about what the firm was charged with doing, or what criteria it was using to evaluate candidates.
Some members suggested that new steps be added to the search process that had been outlined to the public months earlier.
The vice chair has been at odds with other members about whether to enforce a longstanding board policy that requires a superintendent to have 10 years of classroom or school leadership experience — a policy the search firm didn’t apply in screening applicants.
The district barred several community activists who raised questions about board actions in the search and threatened them with arrest. MSCS said the bans followed “disruptive” behavior and threats to public safety.
The board is poised to extend the selection timeline into the next school year after accelerating it in December for the purpose of having a new superintendent on duty by the summer.

A board retreat on Friday — featuring a meeting facilitator and an expert in school board operations — offered the first clear signs that MSCS board members acknowledge the need to start fresh with shared goals, rather than arguing about what has happened so far.

“You agreed on something … . You said status quo is not it,” said the facilitator, Tomeka Hart Wigginton, a former board member who led the superintendent search for Memphis City Schools in 2008.

Board member Stephanie Love, who is now co-chairing the search with Joyce Dorse-Coleman, pointed to Hart Wigginton as one of the reasons the board is moving forward and able to have “a more defined search process for greater community confidence and a better work environment for our next MSCS leader.”

As things stand, 26 candidates remain in the pool. But according to HYA, only three of the top seven candidates it identified are still interested: Carlton Jenkins, superintendent of schools in Madison, Wisconsin; Angela Whitelaw, the district’s chief academic officer; and Toni Williams, the interim superintendent. Another candidate who withdrew has since asked to re-enter the search, but it is unclear if she would be a possible finalist.

Two top contenders identified by HYA dropped out within days of the April 15 meeting: Brenda Cassellius, former superintendent of Boston Public Schools, withdrew after learning that the interviews were postponed, and later accepted a leadership role at a nonprofit. And Keith Miles Jr., superintendent of Bridgeton Public Schools in New Jersey, will become superintendent of the School District of Lancaster in Pennsylvania.

District’s reform efforts are on the line

Board members have signaled that they want more candidates to apply, and a new set of criteria to evaluate them. They plan to keep meeting until they can agree on their next steps and a revised timeline.

Whoever is selected will have to take on responsibility for a school reform effort that has been thrown off track by the pandemic and Ray’s resignation. And the district wants someone who will stay long enough to see it through.

Jason Grissom is a professor of leadership, policy and organizations at Vanderbilt University who has examined issues such as superintendent turnover.

But the odds are not in MSCS’ favor unless board members can find common ground. Grissom said research has shown that school board dysfunction is a predictor of superintendent turnover. And urban districts, with high numbers of low-income students and students of color, already struggle with greater turnover. Memphis has the nation’s fourth-highest child poverty rate among large cities, and nearly 90% of MSCS students are Black or Latino.

“Superintendents of urban districts stay in those jobs for less time than in other kinds of districts,” Grissom said. “It’s a hard job, and it’s a very political job, and so they have vacancies more frequently.”

In a 2021 RAND Corp. survey of 3,459 charter- and traditional-school superintendents, half said they planned to leave their jobs in the next few years, or were unsure about staying. ”Superintendent turnover can potentially harm district functioning in that it can disrupt longer-term and systemic school reforms, which typically take five or more years,” the report warned.

That finding points to more urgency for the MSCS board to resolve its differences and fix its selection process.

Questions about Williams’ candidacy lead to crackdown

One place to begin, Grissom said, is with more transparency and communication among board members and with the public.

Some board members, for example, said they asked for the entire list of applicants because they were in the dark about how the rubric was created for evaluating them, and because they didn’t know who the three finalists were until Hazard Young announced the choices publicly.

“We as a board did not decide as a whole on the criteria,” said Sheleah Harris, the vice chair.

Venita Doggett, director of advocacy for Memphis Education Fund and a member of a community advisory committee that was involved in the search, raised similar concerns.

“Not only were the advisory committee members not included or weren’t heard, it looks as if the board members who raised those concerns also weren’t heard,” she said.

Rebuilding public trust in the search process will likely be a heavy lift for MSCS.

Some community members and education advocates said they became skeptical of the process when Williams, who initially said she wasn’t interested in the permanent job, applied for it and emerged as a finalist, despite not having the minimum classroom experience required by board policy.

Williams said she applied for the role after receiving support from community members and board members.

When Rachael Spriggs, an education advocate and former school board candidate, questioned the board on that point at a May 9 meeting, she was silenced by Greene, the board chair, on the grounds that she violated a public commenting policy by referring to a district employee by name.

Spriggs soon found herself banned from entering district property, along with several others, including former teacher union president Tikeila Rucker, activist L.J. Abraham and, later, disability rights advocate Damon Morris. In a statement, MSCS said the bans followed “disruptive” behavior and threats to public safety.

Neither Greene nor MSCS personnel would say who authorized the bans. But the crackdown on several prominent critics — including police threats to arrest them if they enter any district buildings — has the board facing a fresh round of public criticism at the same time that it’s trying to reestablish trust and attract new superintendent candidates.

Public needs reassurance about the process

With the search effectively starting again, board members must be conscious of what they’re communicating to the public and candidates, Grissom said.

“They need to be real clear about any changes they’re making and why,” he said. “They must take seriously how a search can signal things to the candidates and to the public. It can signal to them what it may be like to work in this environment.”

Board members may have a good reason to, say, waive the experience requirements for a candidate like Williams, he said, but they must think about what that signals — especially for keeping top superintendent applicants in the hunt and building trust with the community.

“You can still get buy-in even if the public doesn’t get its first choice, but they feel the process was legitimate and everyone followed the rules,” he said.

That’s the reset some board members are seeking after the May 12 retreat, where they reached a consensus on reopening the search and seeking more applicants, as well as reworking the rubric for the job.

They hope to have a formal plan soon — nearly nine months after Ray resigned.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges says reading festivals can counteract book bans

2023-05-16T16:56:50+00:00

In elementary school several years ago, Olivia Shackelford read about how 6-year-old Ruby Bridges endured racial slurs, ostracism, and death threats for integrating an all-white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.

Groups such as Moms for Liberty that try to get books about race banned from schools say that reading such stories can traumatize children.

But Bridges’ story didn’t traumatize Olivia, her mother said. Instead, it energized her desire to learn more about the history of racism in America and the sacrifices of people like Bridges.

“She read about Ruby Bridges and the impact she had on integration, and she was obsessed, for years, with meeting her,” said Stephanie Shackelford, who brought Olivia, now 13, and her two other daughters, Cassidy and Blue, to the Ruby Bridges Reading Festival at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on Saturday.

“We’re from Cabot, Arkansas, and found out that this was going on in Memphis, so she finally got a chance to meet her.”

As Tennessee, Florida, Texas and other states remove books that recount painful periods in history from school shelves, Bridges said that book festivals like the one that bears her name will be key to helping children like Olivia learn about the history of racism in America.

According to a report by PEN America, a group that champions freedom of expression through literature, 1,477 instances of book banning occurred in the first half of the 2022-23 school year, up 28% from the previous year.

And while Florida and Texas led with the most bans, Tennessee law is also making it easier for local authorities to ban books — including titles like Bridges’ own “Ruby Bridges Goes to School,” which a parents group in Williamson County objected to.

Bridges spent part of Saturday afternoon signing her newest children’s book, “I Am Ruby Bridges: How One Six-Year-Old Girl’s March to School Changed the World,” and others. Before that, she spoke to reporters about how her story wound up being the target of book bans, what must be done to combat them, and why stories like hers are especially important during this time.

Here are some highlights:

On her first book, “Ruby Bridges Goes to School,” becoming the target of book bans:

“I try to write my books in an uplifting way. My books have been truthful, and I do uplift everyone who was involved (in her integration effort): my teacher, who was white, my psychologist, who was white, the federal marshals who supported me, the people around the country who supported me.

“(But) they said the reason my books were being banned was because it made young white kids feel bad about themselves. So, for them to say that, that’s ridiculous. So, when they started targeting me, I couldn’t ignore it. Then I got a call from Congress asking me if I would speak about it.”

(Bridges spoke against Texas book bans during a House Oversight Committee hearing in 2022).

“Once my books are pulled down, you probably should expect that a lot more would follow. But if you’re banning my books because they’re too truthful, then why don’t we start having a conversation about the books that we force our young people to study, like the textbooks we know omit so much of the truth?

“So, if we’re going to ban my books, let’s take them all off the shelves and start anew.”

On what parents and communities should do to fight book bans:

“I think this festival speaks to that. We need to all come together to make sure books are available to kids, and to grow more reading festivals.

“I believe that if we’re going to get past our racial differences, we can’t do it alone. There was a time when we, as African-Americans, couldn’t be caught with a book, or couldn’t let people know we knew how to read. But we’ve come a long way from that, and it seems like we could be heading in that direction again if books are being banned.

On why the racism she endured as a 6-year-old is important to children’s understanding of history:

“I was recently asked to speak at a conference based on history. I was thinking about what I wanted to say about history. Then I thought about how I had to get on a plane to travel from Louisiana to D.C.

U.S. marshals escort Ruby Bridges to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960.

“I thought about how I arrived and made it safely, but someone in another plane didn’t (because of a plane crash).

“When that happened, they had to send a plane crew to the wreckage, to go through that wreckage, and to find that little black box.

“Can you imagine what those people must have seen going to that site, going to that wreckage, to get that little black box? Why was that box so important? It was the history that little black box held to make sure that I, on the next flight, would arrive safely.

“If history works for something like that, what makes us think it won’t work for racism — to rid us of racism? If we tell the truth — good, bad, or ugly — if we teach that it happened, then maybe history will move us past our racial differences.”

On how being a civil rights icon propelled her to become a writer and literacy advocate:

“I never dreamed that I would become an author myself, but writing my own story made me realize that I didn’t just want to give books away to kids, but to inspire them to write. I hope this festival can help do that.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Shooter kills 3 children, 3 adults at Nashville private church school

2023-03-28T19:48:51+00:00

A person armed with multiple guns killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville Monday morning before being fatally shot by police.

As details of the police investigation and images emerged Tuesday, school families and local leaders were still trying to piece together what happened, a task familiar to a growing number of U.S. communities that have faced the tragedy of a school shooting.

The three student victims at The Covenant School were young, all 9 years old, authorities said. One of three adult victims was Katherine Koonce, the head of school. The others were a custodian and a substitute teacher.

While school shootings in the United States have increased in the last two decades, they are rare at private schools. Sarah Wilson, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools, which represents private schools, said she believed this was the first shooting at a private school in Tennessee.

Tennessee’s efforts to improve school security have largely focused on public schools rather than private ones and generally emphasize fortifying school campuses rather than reducing the number of firearms.

Brad Goia, director of independent schools for the Nashville Area, called the shooting a “horrible tragedy.”

“It has devastated all of us because, first and foremost, we are heartbroken for Covenant,” said Goia, who is also headmaster of Montgomery Bell Academy, an elite all-boys college prep school in Nashville. “The suffering that the Covenant community is feeling also heightens the ways that all of us are vulnerable, that the unthinkable can happen anywhere.”

Nashville is perceived as a relatively safe place, Goia said, “but these events reshape our view of the world.”

The Covenant School was founded in 2001 as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church. The campus sits atop a hill in an affluent part of Nashville known as Green Hills and is the educational home to some 200 students in preschool to sixth grade. Students have Bible classes and attend daily chapel services.

The school’s motto: “shepherding hearts, empowering minds, celebrating childhood.”

Police responded to a call at 10:13 a.m. about an active shooter at the school. Identified by police as 28-year-old Nashville resident Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the shooter came to the campus armed with two rifles, a 9-millimeter pistol, and “significant” ammunition for the firearms, police said.

Police said the shooter entered the school through a side door after shooting out the glass, then proceeded to the first and second floors, firing multiple shots before being fatally shot by the police on the second floor.

Drake said police believe the shooter fired at students at random. The student victims who were fatally shot were in several locations.

Police identified the student victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults killed were Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill, both 61, and Koonce, 60, the school’s leader.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper praised the police response.

“Guns are quick, they don’t give you much time,” Cooper said. “So even in a remarkably fast response, there was not enough time. And those guns stole precious lives from us today in Nashville.”

Drake, the police chief, said, “I was hoping this day would never ever come here in this city, but we will never wait to make entry to go in and stop a threat, especially when it deals with our children.”

Children from The Covenant School arrive in school buses at Woodmont Baptist Church to be reunited with their families after Monday’s shooting.

Shooter was a former student at the school

Police initially described the shooter as a woman. But the shooter’s gender identity was unclear, given some conflicting statements from authorities. According to The Tennessean, police released the shooter’s birth name, and said that the person used he/him pronouns.

The shooter previously attended the school, police said, but it is unclear when or for how long. Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Monday afternoon that the shooter did not have a criminal history and that it was too early to describe a motive for the shooting.

Police searched the shooter’s home and found writings and documents planning the attack, including a map and plans for entering and shooting. The notes included additional locations, but police couldn’t confirm whether any of the locations were planned targets.

The three weapons that were brought into the school were among seven that the shooter had purchased legally from five different Nashville-area gun stores, Drake said in a briefing Tuesday.

Gov. Lee’s safety bill focuses on public schools

Gov. Bill Lee, who tweeted that he was “closely monitoring” the situation and praying for the community, identified school safety as one of his top priorities during his 2023 address to Tennesseans. His proposals so far have mostly focused on beefing up security protocols at public schools.

Recently, Lee proposed a sweeping school safety bill, requiring all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation.

Despite having one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, Tennessee has enacted numerous laws under Lee’s leadership to loosen requirements for gun ownership. In 2021, he signed a law allowing most Tennesseans 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety.

This year, however, the governor’s administration has opposed several new bills from Republican lawmakers who want to loosen those regulations even further.

At the White House on Monday, President Joe Biden called the shooting “a family’s worst nightmare” and called again for a federal ban on “assault” weapons, a term that’s used to describe certain military-style semi-automatic firearms.

“We have to do more to stop gun violence; it’s ripping our communities apart — ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “And we have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”

Shooting rattles a tight community

State Rep. Bob Freeman, a Nashville Democrat whose district includes the Covenant School, said that in a small city like Nashville, it is inevitable for many residents to have connections to Covenant’s children and families.

Freeman said he heard Monday from one school family who found out their child was safe but knew two of the children who died.

“And tonight, families across Nashville and our state are going to have to have some tough conversations with their children trying to explain why this has happened and to assure them that they are safe at school,” he said.

Claire Walker, a second-grade teacher at another private Christian school nearby, felt anguish as she pushed her newborn son in a stroller past the entrance to The Covenant School, where some Nashvillians had already begun to place bouquets of flowers in memory of the victims.

“We have many good friends whose kids go here, and my heart has been with them all day,” said Walker, who had just seen the list of victims and found no names of children she recognized.

“But they’re other people’s kids,” she added quickly, “and they were just 9 years old.”

Before landing her current job, Walker had interviewed for a teaching position at The Covenant School and had even toured the school with Koonce, the headmaster who was among the adult victims. “She was sweet,” said Walker, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I’ve got a 7-week-old and a 20-month-old, and it’s terrifying to think that they’re going to be in school in a couple of years,” Walker said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers the Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Retention rule in reading law could hold back over 2,700 MSCS 3rd-graders, official warns

2023-03-10T23:35:39+00:00

More than 2,700 third-graders in Memphis-Shelby County schools are at risk of being held back under Tennessee’s retention law for struggling readers, a MSCS official told the board’s Academic Performance Committee Thursday.

The numbers are based on students’ performance on the i-Ready reading proficiency diagnostic assessments that are administered nationally and were given to MSCS third-graders last winter.

Those assessments serve as predictors of how students will perform on the English language arts section of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test, or TCAP, which is the sole criterion used to identify students for retention under the state’s stricter reading law passed in 2021.

Of the 6,748 MSCS third-graders who took the winter tests, 4,196 students scored below a cutoff that would call for further intervention under the retention law, according to data presented by Jaron Carson, chief academic officer for MSCS.

Of those 4,196 third-graders, 1,409 would be exempt from the retention law because of a disability or an individualized education plan, or because they are English language learners.

That leaves 2,787 MSCS third-graders who could be held back this year if the winter assessments accurately predict their scores on the spring TCAPs, Carson said.

But Carson also presented recommendations to the committee to reduce the likelihood of retention for those students. They included pushing for a change in the state law to allow third-graders to take the English language arts section of the TCAP three times.

Suggested dates were April 17-21, June 12-26 and July 8-19.

Right now, students in grades 3 to 5 take the TCAP from April 17 to May 2. The state Education Department will also hold a TCAP retake for third-graders from May 30 to June 2.

In Mississippi, which has been lauded for boosting its ranking for the fourth-grade reading proficiency rate from 49th in the nation to 29th, third-graders get three chances to pass its reading assessment test. Carson cited Mississippi’s successes in making his recommendations.

Another recommendation was to give third-graders unlimited time on the third-grade English language arts test, or more time to complete certain sections.

The recommendations come amid growing concerns about the impact of the law in Tennessee, and a flurry of efforts in the legislature to revise it. Three weeks ago, critics of the law gathered at First Congregational Church in Memphis and voiced worries about the law, including what they saw as unfairness that a single test would determine whether a child is promoted, and the lack of tutors available to help students who needed to catch up.

But Gov. Bill Lee has stuck by the law with the stricter retention policy, which he pushed for during a special legislative session on education in 2021 to deal with the impact of the pandemic.

MSCS board member Amber Huett-Garcia, who attended the meeting at the church and who has spoken with lawmakers about possible revisions, didn’t sound optimistic about the chances of Carson’s recommendations being adopted.

“About 2,700 students are likely going to get a retention letter, and we have to be prepared to navigate that process,” she said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Contracts for Memphis Shelby County Schools security upgrades await board approval

2023-03-10T04:10:04+00:00

Memphis-Shelby County Schools would spend up to $6.3 million to bolster security in the district’s schools under a pair of contracts awaiting board approval.

The contracts with Memphis-based Oteka Technologies LLC call for spending about $807,000 on security technology — including cameras, intercoms, servers, software licenses, and intrusion alarm systems — and $5.5 million for upgraded wiring to support it all, according to board documents.

The board’s Audit, Budget, and Finance Committee approved the contracts Thursday.

“Utilizing this technology in the classroom supports an additional layer of safety” and will help protect students and staff, the district said in the documents, citing a rise in mass shootings and active-shooter incidents.

“Replacing discontinued intrusion alarm systems throughout the district and upgrading cameras will improve the building access systems to ensure doors are locked and secured at all times,” the document said.

The proposed security upgrades come as Gov. Bill Lee pushes a school safety bill that would threaten school districts with penalties if their schools are found to have entrances that are left unlocked.

Separately, the finance committee approved a $349,165 contract to another Memphis-based company, Barnes & Brower Inc., to repair the ceiling for the library at Cummings K-8 Optional School.

The library’s 40-year-old drop ceiling collapsed in August 2022, injuring three staffers. The school’s 300 students were relocated to nearby LaRose Elementary School.

The incident drew attention to MSCS’s aging school buildings. Over 33 of them are at least 70 years old.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS board backs land purchase for new Cordova high school under ‘three G’s’ settlement

2023-03-01T05:20:15+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County School Board agreed to buy nearly 36 acres of land north of Shelby Farms for a new high school that will accommodate 1,800 students and replace Germantown High School when it closes in 2026.

It will be the first new high school operated by the district in a decade. The site, currently owned by Crews Investment Holdings LLC, is located on Herbert Road, off Raleigh Lagrange Road, in the Cordova area.

Eight of the nine board members voted Tuesday to approve the $3.5 million purchase agreement, though some of them raised concerns about the capacity of the planned building. Board member Kevin Woods was absent.

The land purchase is one of the first steps in carrying out a settlement approved in December to resolve a decade-long dispute between MSCS and the suburban Germantown Municipal School District and to satisfy a new state law that bars a county school district from operating schools outside its municipal boundaries without an agreement.

Under the settlement, MSCS agreed to cede control of the Germantown elementary, middle and high school buildings — known as the three G’s — to Germantown, and Shelby County agreed to help MSCS fund construction of a new school in Cordova to accommodate students displaced from Germantown High School. The settlement called for a nine-year transition period.

The three schools serve a student body that is predominantly Black, with a high concentration of students from low-income families.

Board members Stephanie Love and Michelle McKissack backed the land deal, but asked whether the planned high school could be expanded to accommodate a potential increase in students.

“If you build it, they will come,” said Love.

Said McKissack: “Are there plans to present the (Shelby) County Commission with the options of providing additional funds, because it is an area of growth in our community, the Cordova area.”

Patrice Thomas, MSCS chief of staff, said that the district had only enough resources to support 1,800 students, but that it would work with architects and engineers to provide concrete estimates to accommodate more students.

“We would love to have money for additional expansion,” McKissack said.

The school, which is set to cost $100 million, will be paid for with proceeds from the sale of the current Germantown High property, and $77.5 million from the County Commission.

Construction is slated to begin in 2024, according to a board document, and the school is set to open in 2026, in time to accommodate the Germantown students who are freshmen now.

In other business from Tuesday’s meeting, interim MSCS Superintendent Toni Williams said the district plans to invest $27.3 million more in teacher salaries next year.

The agreement was reached after two months of talks between the district’s bargaining team and its two teachers unions: the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association and the United Education Association of Shelby County.

“While we strove for a unanimous vote on all items, ultimately I am extremely pleased that the majority of the conferencing team voted to put an additional $27.3 million in the hands of our teachers,” Williams said in a statement.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee 3rd-grade retention law will intensify Memphis students’ pandemic woes, local critics say

2023-02-23T23:50:43+00:00

Many Memphis youths are already struggling to overcome emotional and psychological trauma inflicted or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the specter of being held back in third grade if they can’t pass the state’s reading test will pile onto that trauma, Memphis and Shelby County child and education advocates said during a town hall Wednesday.

“I don’t want my babies that I’m responsible for caught up in this,” said Ian Randolph, board treasurer for Circles of Success Learning Academy charter school.

“They’re trying their best to meet our expectations as educators, and you put this kind of crap on top of them, after going through a pandemic … now you want to put more pressure on them to meet a state expectation?”

Randolph was among the roughly 50 people who gathered at First Congregational Church to discuss — and to lambaste — Tennessee’s strict third grade retention law, which kicks in this year. The law requires that third-grade students who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency on the TCAP assessment for English language arts participate in tutoring or summer learning programs, or risk being held back from the fourth grade. (Some students are automatically exempt.)

The law, passed in 2021 during a special legislative session that Gov. Bill Lee called to address pandemic learning loss, also included funding for tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling third graders catch up.

But those aspects of the law became unworkable for many families, some attendees said, because of issues ranging from a shortage of tutors to confusion about how progress is measured on the tests the students take after the recovery camps.

Barring changes in the law, thousands of Memphis students face the prospect of having to repeat third grade. According to data presented by Venita Doggett, director of advocacy for the Memphis Education Fund, 78% of third-graders in Memphis-Shelby County Schools could be held back this year, while 65% of third-graders could be retained statewide.

The figure would be closer to 80% for Black, Hispanic and Native American third-graders in MSCS, and 83% for low-income students.

The implications of those figures resonated with Natalie McKinney, executive director and co-founder of Whole Child Strategies Inc., a nonprofit that supports families and children in the Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis.

The retention law, she said, would have a disparate impact on children in those neighborhoods, where 1 in 3 residents are poor, and 70% of the schoolchildren are from low-income families.

“They’ve all been impacted emotionally by the pandemic,” said McKinney, who moderated the town hall. The retention policy “doesn’t make any sense.”

Lee and other defenders of the law say that it’s needed to avoid pushing unprepared students ahead, and that holding students back who aren’t proficient in reading is part of the state’s post-pandemic recovery efforts.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” the governor once told Chalkbeat.

But even some of his political allies have expressed concerns about enforcing the law based on the result of a single test.

Already, Doggett said, 19 proposals have been filed to amend the law — bills that range from nixing the retention requirement altogether to extending funding for summer camps and other aid beyond this year.

Pending the outcome of those efforts, organizers of the town hall urged attendees to sign a letter they had drafted asking Lee to issue an executive order to waive the retention policy for third graders testing below proficiency this year.

“The current 3rd grade class of 2022 and 2023 were the students who were affected by the pandemic,” the letter reads. “Studies show that a tremendous amount of learning loss occurred due to these students being virtual in the previous grades. In addition, these studies showed (that) to recoup the loss during the pandemic would take years.

“The third grade retention law seems to hold these students and educators accountable for something that was new to this generation for which they had no control,” the letter said.

The letter also urges lawmakers to use more criteria than a single test to determine whether a student should be retained, and to focus on broader solutions, such as partnering with community agencies, to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

Besides sending a letter to Lee, opponents of the retention policy said they planned to pressure their local public officials to push back on the law, as many school boards have. Some called for the MSCS school board, the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission to issue a joint resolution supporting the waiver.

The two MSCS board members who attended the meeting in person, Amber Huett-Garcia and Michelle McKissack, said they intend to push for revisions to the law.

“Let me be clear: This is not a good law. I do not support it,” said Huett-Garcia, who said she plans a trip to Nashville in early March to talk directly with lawmakers.

“The mood that I have gotten from legislators is that they know that they have not gotten this right,” she said, “but this is not the time to let up pressure.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tyre Nichols’ death in Memphis creates another tragic teaching moment for Facing History & Ourselves

2023-02-10T18:15:08+00:00

The nonprofit group Facing History & Ourselves, which operates in more than 100 countries, provides educators with curriculum and resources to help students understand the lessons of history to combat bigotry and hate. It has operated in Memphis since 1992, and has reached more than 121,000 students in that time.

It also guides educators in using current events to spawn thoughtful discussions, help students think critically about difficult issues, and understand that they have agency in shaping those issues.

One of the current events students are discussing is the death of Tyre Nichols. The 29-year-old skateboarder, photographer and FedEx worker died days after being brutalized by Memphis police officers during a traffic stop on Jan. 7. Five officers have been charged in his slaying, which sparked protests throughout the city and nation.

Michele Philips is executive director of Facing History & Ourselves’ Southeast region, and is based in Memphis. Philips spoke with Chalkbeat about the role Facing History & Ourselves instructors will play in helping Memphis students grapple with Nichols’ death.

The interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

How is Facing History & Ourselves taught in Shelby County schools?

Facing History & Ourselves is in 80% of the middle and high schools, and grades 6 to 12. It looks different in each school. We have a Facing History & Ourselves elective, in which students can get a semester credit for social studies. About 30 schools have that course. Then we have a lot of teachers in English and Language Arts to teach “To Kill A Mockingbird,” but use it to teach the history of lynching and mob mentality, as opposed to just the coming-of-age of Scout.

Again, the purpose of Facing History & Ourselves is to use the lessons of history to confront bigotry and hate. We feel like that’s more important than ever now, and we’re sticking to our script.

I noticed on your website that you have a mini-lesson on the long, troubled history of law enforcement and Black people. One of the essential questions it presents is the challenge of teaching that history without stereotyping law enforcement. How does Tyre Nichols’ death complicate that?

It can complicate it, but we try to help students see each other’s total humanity. We help them recognize they can be agents of change through seeing each other’s humanity. I keep thinking about how our students today are going to be the community leaders, are going to be the police officers, the professionals, the decision makers of tomorrow. The practice of seeing each other’s total humanity starts with our students.

How would your instructors talk to students who are disillusioned and upset after seeing the Nichols video?

We don’t talk to them. We listen to them. We really let them sit with that, because the last thing we want to do is minimize their pain. Our teachers are really skilled at listening, and letting the students talk. We don’t want to say that it’ll be all right, because it may not be all right. I think our teachers have done that, not pushing a student who is angry or sad to talk about it, because they may not be ready to talk about it.

As you know, back in 2021 the Tennessee legislature passed a law restricting how lessons on race are taught. How is this affecting your instructors — especially when students are bound to have questions about race and police brutality in the wake of Nichols’ death?

I knew you were going to ask that. As you know, learning history is nuanced and complex, but it’s well within the ability of our students to understand with guidance from caring educators who are coached and trained on how to teach with empathy and accuracy.

That’s what we do. We have always been committed to teaching history with all of its honesty. The first thing that you do in a Facing History class is to teach the teachers how to build a safe and reflective classroom, so that the students get to learn each others’ stories, so that when you have a difficult conversation, we’re much more capable of being able to understand and hear each other.

What they teach is within the state standards of Tennessee. But I’m not going to tell you that it hasn’t had a chilling effect on some of our teachers. Some have been anxious and nervous. I’m not going to sugarcoat that.

How are your instructors working to tamp down that chilling effect, especially in this moment we’re in?

I think that our teachers are committed to slowing down and talking about (Nichols’ death) in a process that really humanizes the students, so they can reflect and have conversations. So far, we haven’t had a pushback.

There are ways to do this. Let me give you an example. In August, when we had the situation with the shooter (19-year-old Ezekiel Kelly was charged with killing three people in a citywide shooting spree), I went to Central High School and listened to Mary McIntosh’s Facing History & Ourselves class, and sat there and listened to her unpack the fear those kids had around that shooting that happened in August. She slowed it down, and got them to free-write it in a journal, just dump it all out, and gave them agency to be able to talk to each other.

Again, if you start with building that safe and reflective classroom, where every voice matters, that helps.

A 2021 study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that inner-city high school students in Los Angeles who were exposed to high levels of police violence were more prone to struggle academically in school, or to drop out. Do those findings surprise you?

Unfortunately, no. I think the trauma that is happening to our young people, even seeing it over and over again, is trauma. We frequently work with our instructors on building a culture of care, because (violence) does have a ripple effect of them doing worse in school.

Looking at the historical case studies of policing in this country is also helpful, because then you can see the legacies of where this comes from, and also see what we need to do. And what I keep coming back to is what we need to do will come from these students, because they’re going to be the future leaders.

One of the students I spoke with regarding Tyre Nichols’ death told me he was becoming desensitized to police brutality and that he almost sees it as inevitable. What can your instructors do to help youths understand that this doesn’t have to be the case?

I’m glad you asked that, because we don’t believe that history has to be inevitable, and that we’re doomed to repeat it. We believe history is made by human beings, and we don’t have to repeat that. Our slogan is “People Make Choices and Choices Make History,” and if we can get our students to see each others’ humanity, we don’t have to repeat that.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools board picks Illinois firm Hazard Young to lead superintendent search

2023-02-08T06:23:20+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County School Board took a major step Tuesday in its pursuit of a new leader for Tennessee’s largest school district, voting unanimously to choose the firm Hazard, Young, Attea, and Associates to conduct a national search.

HYA, of Schaumburg, Illinois, was among four firms that applied for the job. Board Chair Althea Greene; the district’s general counsel and chief legal officer, Kenneth Walker; and its chief of human resources, Quintin Robinson, recommended HYA after vetting all four firms.

The four applicants “are all excellent firms, all who have represented large urban districts and identified superintendents who are working throughout the country now,” board member Kevin Woods said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Hazard Young is a reputable firm, and I stand behind the decision.”

But before the board vote, a number of speakers expressed concerns that the process of selecting the firm had not been transparent enough, and that members of the public should have had the opportunity to examine how the firm was ultimately selected.

After the meeting, Greene said it was up to the board, not the advisory committee or the public, to make the choice.

“We followed the procurement process. We provided that information to board members,” she said, responding to a question from The Commercial Appeal about public input on the search firm selection. “Now we will be able to provide it to, through open records, to anybody who requests that information.”

“But it was not something that we needed to publicly have a conversation about before this board voted on it and decided that they agreed with the search firm,” she said.

The board will pay the firm a base consulting fee of $38,000, according to the board’s agreement with the firm, plus some additional costs.

Hazard Young has blemishes on its record

HYA has more than 30 years of experience and has conducted superintendent searches for large urban school districts such as Atlanta’s and Denver’s in recent years. In some cases, though, it has been accused of not properly vetting candidates.

For example, it recommended a candidate with a history of sexual harassment allegations to lead Illinois’ Des Plaines Elementary District 62 in 2016, the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago reported.

In 2015, HYA defended its record to the Tennessean, after it was revealed that one of the finalists it recommended for the Metro Nashville Schools superintendent job in 2008 had left his former district in Fresno, California, in financial ruin.

“We’ve made mistakes, and some we’ve learned about after” the search, a firm partner told the Tennessean at the time. “But of the roughly 5,000 to 6,000 candidates we’ve recommended ... we’ve done a very good job.”

When Chalkbeat asked about HYA’s controversies, Greene said that she was not aware of them, and that the board selected the firm based on “what was submitted.” She left without taking more questions.

The MSCS board announced a national search last August, after former superintendent Joris Ray resigned amid allegations of improper relations with employees and abuse of power. It hopes to have a new superintendent in the job by May.

AP African American Studies course renewed

In other business, for a second year, students at White Station High School will get the chance to take an Advanced Placement African American Studies Pilot course.

The board approved a recommendation to continue the pilot, which the College Board is administering in 75 high schools around the nation.

Developed by college professors and academics around the nation, the course offers a more rigorous curriculum on the lives of Black people in the nation, as opposed to simply history.

“AP African American Studies Pilot will increase student access to culturally relevant coursework and challenging college-level coursework,” the recommendation reads.

“Per College Board, White Station High School was chosen based on the school’s strong commitment to AP course work, its strong AP offerings, its diverse student population, and its history of being one of the first high schools in Tennessee to offer AP Seminar and Research.”

The second year of the pilot will cost the district $1,299.

The College Board revamped the pilot to exclude certain authors after it came under fire in Florida. That state’s Department of Education barred the course amid claims that it violated a state law that restricts how lessons about race and gender identity are taught.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tyre Nichols’ killing has some Black teens seeing police as threats, not allies

2023-01-30T02:43:00+00:00

Hours after his school day ended Friday, 16-year-old Caleb Carpenter made his way to the Interstate 55 bridge connecting Memphis and Arkansas to join protesters who had gathered after the release of footage showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by police.

“I’m tired of seeing all the Black-on-Black crime, but I feel unsafe with the police now, after that video I saw,” said Caleb, who attends Memphis Business Academy, a charter school. “I hated that it was Black police officers doing this to him, and I couldn’t do anything but question why.”

The area near the bridge was the scene of similar demonstrations in 2020 following George Floyd’s murder. Now the demand for justice was for one of the city’s own, a 29-year-old skateboarder, nature photographer, father of a 4-year-old son and FedEx employee who was simply trying to go home on Jan. 7 when he was stopped by Memphis police officers, tossed to the ground, cursed at, kicked, and pummeled as he cried for his mother.

Some protesters held skateboards in solidarity. Others held signs reading, “I Am Tyre Nichols,” “Justice for Tyre Nichols: Jail Killer Cops,” and “The People Demand: End Police Terror.”

Chants went up: “Say his name! Tyre Nichols,” and “No Justice, No Peace.”

Dylan Goodwin, a student at Collierville High School, said on Sunday that Nichols’ death has reinforced longstanding fears about the police.

“When it comes to Black people, the first thing I heard about the police was to keep your hands on the wheel, to be real cautious around them, and to say, ‘Yes sir, no sir,’” said the 16-year-old, who did not attend the protests.

“So now, it’s [a Black man killed by police] happened again, and it’s sad…I got used to talking around police, and being wary around police, and not particularly trusting them in general.

“It’s sad, because I’m 16, and I just want to live my life and enjoy it, and not have to worry about the people who are supposed to be protecting me.”

Footage released by the City of Memphis showed officers pepper-spray, tase, kick, and throw brutal punches into Nichols, sparking nationwide outrage at another violent incident involving an arrest of an unarmed Black man.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools let students out early on Friday and postponed after-school activities and Saturday athletics because of worries about potential unrest.

At least one study suggests that police violence may also cause Black and brown students to struggle academically. A 2021 study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics focused on high school students in Los Angeles who lived in neighborhoods where incidents of police-involved killings were common.

It found that “exposure to police violence leads to significant decreases in the educational achievement and attainment of Black and Hispanic students…

“These effects are largest following police killings of unarmed minorities and differ meaningfully from those of criminal homicides, which produce smaller spillovers that do not vary with the race of the deceased.”

That may also contribute to education inequality, the study found: It estimated that officer-involved killings caused nearly 2,000 students of color from underrepresented communities to drop out of Los Angeles schools during the period studied.

As Caleb Carpenter and other young people clamor for police reforms, they know what’s at stake: To live in a place without the specter of being killed or brutalized by police.

That’s why Caleb said he joined the activists at the I-55 bridge.

“I’ll keep protesting,” he said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS board member Michelle McKissack makes it official: She’s running for Memphis mayor

2023-01-26T22:35:06+00:00

In 2018, after she and Joyce Dorse-Coleman ousted two incumbent men to propel women to a six-seat majority on the Memphis-Shelby County School Board in an election dubbed the “pink wave,” Michelle McKissack saw possibilities.

“We’ve been out here, doing the do for so long, and there’s no reason why we cannot run for office and win,” McKissack told The Commercial Appeal.

McKissack ultimately became chair of the board. And on Thursday, she officially announced she was pursuing another possibility: Becoming Memphis’ first woman mayor.

In a social media post announcing her candidacy, McKissack touted her leadership of the school board during the pandemic and pledged to continue her advocacy for youth, teachers and public schools.

“This moment calls for investment in our youth, solutions for crime and public safety, economic and community development, housing affordability, clean and attractive neighborhoods, support for our LGBTQ+ community, and so much more,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

The announcement came the same day that five Memphis police officers were charged with murder in the beating death of a man named Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop, an incident that has sparked anger in Memphis.

“It is clear we have to do something different to change the way police interact with members of our community,” McKissack tweeted last week in response to the incident.

McKissack, a native Memphian and former broadcast journalist, joins a packed field aiming to replace Mayor Jim Strickland, who is barred from running a third time because of term limits.

Those contenders include Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, former Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner, state Rep. Karen Camper and businessman J.W. Gibson II.

McKissack made her public announcement at Downtown Elementary School, the school all four of her children attended, and where she got involved in schools as a parent volunteer.

McKissack, who won reelection in August to her District 1 school board seat, said volunteering at Downtown Elementary was among the experiences that led her to run for the school board.

But she recently told Chalkbeat that her time on the board also made her realize that the city could play a bigger role in supporting the school system, in particular through workforce training and direct funding.

As chair during 2021-22, McKissack guided the board through a tumultuous period, as the schools struggled to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and its scandal-plagued superintendent, Joris Ray, resigned.

The Memphis municipal election is Oct. 5, 2023.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

My passion for education equity is informed by my past — and our future

2023-01-25T23:22:09+00:00

Tonyaa Weathersbee’s first-grade photo, 1965-66. She was a child of Jacksonville educators during the early days of desegregation, and her passion for education equity was nurtured early on.

For my first day of school in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1965, my mother dressed me in an orange-and-white gingham dress that she made, tied white ribbons on my two smallish pigtails, and gave me a quarter and three pennies to buy the hot lunch that remains my favorite comfort food: Baked spaghetti, English peas, a roll, and a square of yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

Turns out it was a halcyon beginning that briefly insulated me from the harsh realities that raged around me.

One of those realities was starting school in the Duval County School System, which was so grossly underfunded that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools had disaccredited its high schools the year before.

Another was being a Black student in that system, one that ignored a desegregation order issued in 1960, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

Black students in this system had to navigate puddles and other assorted ickiness to reach classrooms in schools plagued with drainage problems, overcrowding, and other issues that turned learning into an ordeal when it should have been an adventure.

Schools were so crowded that, as a Black former Jacksonville elementary school teacher described it in a 2021 report on inequities in the school system, “Our third graders were going across the street to the little church that was across the street from the school, and then our fifth and sixth graders had to go down behind the school across the creek, to another church.”

“Our (Black) schools were allowed to get in disrepair,” the teacher recalled.

The learning conditions were so horrendous that in 1964, 27,000 Black students, under the leadership of the NAACP, boycotted the schools over two days.

My parents, who were both teachers in that system, tried to make my everyday education experience as fulfilling as that segregated system would allow. But they understood that if it persisted, I wouldn’t be prepared for a future outside of it.

Tonyaa’s father, William Weathersbee, and a classmate, William Cherry, at William Raines High School in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1976. Her father was a football coach and dean of boys at the school.

That is why they walked out in 1968 to protest the state’s refusal to adequately fund schools, a statewide walkout that served as a prelude to wider tensions that erupted later that year, when assassins killed Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

It would be another three years before Duval County finally yielded to the accreditors and the courts.

The last high school was reaccredited in 1971 and desegregation — largely through court-ordered busing — began that year. It was then that many of the glaring inequalities, like hand-me-down books and desks, began to ebb. The dilapidated Black schools were either closed or converted to other uses.

Yet decades later, in Jacksonville and in school systems throughout the nation, the battle for education equity still rages.

It is that history and lived experience that informs my work here at Chalkbeat Tennessee.

Tonyaa’s mother, Wallace Weathersbee, in her classroom at West Jacksonville Sixth Grade Center sometime in the late 1970s, early 1980s.

I fondly remember my first day of school because for me, that reflects how education should begin — as a journey of dignity and possibilities for children; as something to be experienced and not endured.

It should also be an experience in which resources are available to students regardless of where they live, or what color or ethnicity they are, or how much their parents earn.

But for far too many students in Tennessee and elsewhere, that’s not the case.

Public school students continue to be isolated by race and class. And today, as Black and Latino youths make up an increasing share of students in public schools, the stakes of failing to recognize the significance of this moment couldn’t be higher.

According to a 2020 report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, Black students now make up around 15% of students in public schools, while Latino students, who are the fastest growing segment of public school students, make up 27%. Asian students make up nearly 6%.

White students now make up 47% of students in public schools, down from 79% in 1970. That decline isn’t because more white students are going to private schools or being homeschooled, but because fewer white children are being born, according to the report.

“In a multiracial society where there is no racial majority, skills in working and living successfully in multiracial institutions are a vital asset,” the report concludes.

“These skills are learned, mostly through experience, and are extremely difficult to acquire living in segregated communities and attending segregated, concentrated-poverty schools.”

So while the quest for education equity when I was a child was driven by the civil rights movement and fears of more social unrest, what must motivate it now is the reality that the workforce of the future will rely heavily on people who aren’t white.

What that means is that education equity isn’t just about ensuring a future of opportunity for children who will constitute a majority of the nation, or simply about doing what’s morally right and fair.

It’s about the future of a nation that will need educated workers to fill jobs that people like myself — children of the 1960s and 1970s — now hold.

But if thousands of students are left to struggle in schools that have become more racially and economically isolated since my childhood, or in school systems that are horribly underfunded, as Jacksonville’s schools were when I entered first grade, then we’re not just failing them.

We’re failing the future.

It’s fortuitous that someone like me wound up living and working in the city where Dr. King spent his last days helping its sanitation workers fight for equity and dignity.

Fortuitous that I — a Black woman whose mother taught fifth and sixth grades and whose father was a high school dean and coach who admired Dr. King so much that he made me memorize “I Have A Dream” when I was 8 — am here working in a space designed to continue that equity work.

Fortuitous that my journalism journey took me from the 904 — Jacksonville’s area code — to the 901 — Memphis’ area code.

But being at Chalkbeat is an opportunity for me to turn that serendipity into action by guiding education coverage that centers on what King, my parents and others fought for: educational equity and opportunity for all children.

Especially those who look like the future.

Tonyaa Weathersbee is a multiple award-winning journalist, proud University of Florida Gator and Jacksonville Raines High Viking. She joined Chalkbeat Tennessee as its bureau chief last August after a 26-year career as a columnist at The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida, and at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Cummings students will stay at LaRose Elementary as delays slow repair of collapsed library ceiling

2023-01-24T23:47:09+00:00

Because of a delay in repairs to a library ceiling that collapsed in August, students at Cummings K-8 Optional School will finish out the school year at nearby LaRose Elementary School in South Memphis.

While the repairs could still be done as early as this spring, Memphis-Shelby County Schools said in a news release, officials decided the Cummings students should remain at LaRose to avoid any disruptions during Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program testing.

The 40-year-old drop ceiling collapsed on Aug. 15, just a week after the school year started. No students were in the library at the time, but three staffers were injured, The Commercial Appeal reported. The collapse prompted MSCS to order reviews of buildings older than 70 years with drop ceilings, and called new attention to the issue of deferred maintenance in the schools.

Over 33 of MSCS’ schools were built before 1950, meaning they are more than 70 years old. A study done eight years ago found that the district’s older buildings and equipment were deteriorating rapidly, Fox 13 News reported in August.

While Cummings was built in 1961, The Commercial Appeal reported that the structure that houses the library was built in 1930, and the drop ceiling was installed in 1982.

Around 300 students attend Cummings, while 233 attend LaRose. MSCS also praised Cummings’ principal, Dwana McGuire, and LaRose’s principal, Staci Hendrix, and their staffs for their leadership amid the emergency situation.

“We applaud how they have rallied their teams and supported students and families. They have epitomized the meaning of #MSCSTogether,” the release said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org

MSCS superintendent search advisory committee wants to hear from more citizens

2023-01-24T00:18:05+00:00

Members of an advisory committee guiding the search for a new Memphis-Shelby County Schools superintendent said they want the firm picked to lead the search to gather more feedback from the community on what kind of candidate it should look for.

The panel, which includes representatives from the school board and local advocacy and nonprofit groups, resolved at a meeting Friday that once the search firm is chosen — likely by Jan. 31 — it will be asked to do additional surveys to capture additional input from students and businesspeople.

The committee said it believed that more time was needed to gauge the leanings of a wider swath of the community.

The decision responds to concerns that the results of the community survey, which was administered by KQ Communications, a public relations firm that’s working with the school board on the search, might not have fully captured responses from certain constituencies. Business leaders, for example, may have identified themselves as community members, or vice versa.

About 650 students responded to the KQ survey. Of the nearly 3,000 adults who responded, only about 6% identified themselves as businesspeople.

The committee’s decision also came amid concerns that the process was being rushed, and that the Jan. 31 deadline to select the search firm should be extended.

“Most of what I’m hearing from my colleagues, who are mostly clergy, is that it feels rushed,” said the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., pastor of the New Olivet Worship Center and a former MSCS board member.

But school board Chair Althea Greene, who presided over the meeting, along with Sarah Carpenter, executive director of Memphis LIFT, reminded attendees that one reason the timeline for hiring a superintendent was moved up from July to April was concerns from the board and others that the process would be too slow.

“A lot of people already think it’s moving too slow, and you all have to realize that people are looking for superintendents all over the country,” Carpenter said.

At its meeting Friday, the advisory committee also discussed qualities they’d like to see in candidates for the superintendent job, in particular experience leading an urban district. They also talked about the importance of the search firm’s track record in placing candidates.

“If that firm has placed 25 superintendents, I would like to know how long those superintendents have remained on the job,” said Greene.

The previous superintendent, Joris Ray, served in the job for about three years before resigning in August under a cloud of scandal. Ray was under an investigation into claims that he abused his power and violated district policies by having adulterous affairs with subordinates.

MSCS and Germantown school boards back ‘three G’s’ settlement, ending 10-year dispute

2022-12-16T04:28:37+00:00

The decade-old dispute between Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the Germantown Municipal School District ended Thursday as the two districts’ school boards signed off on a deal that allows Germantown to take over two schools currently operated by MSCS.

The resolution, spurred by a new state law, means that thousands of MSCS students who attend the Germantown Elementary, Middle and High schools — known collectively as the “three G’s” — will be able to remain in those schools as the buildings begin a transition to the Germantown district’s control.

Under the agreement, Germantown will pay MSCS $5 million for Germantown Elementary and Middle schools, which are both located in the Memphis suburb but have been operated by MSCS since 2013. The agreement also calls for Germantown to help MSCS sell the high school building, and for Shelby County to contribute $77.5 million to a replacement high school in the Cordova area, MSCS’ first new district-operated high school in over a decade.

The pact allows a transition period of up to nine years for affected students and staff.

The agreement passed the MSCS board 7-0. Board members Michelle McKissack and Sheleah Harris were absent. On the Germantown school board, the vote was 4-0. Board member Ryan Strain recused himself because his employer, Baker Donelson, works with MSCS.

Germantown city leaders and Shelby County commissioners backed the agreement in votes earlier this week. The culminating votes came just over two weeks before the end-of-year deadline to reach a settlement over surrendering control of the three G’s and Millington’s Lucy Elementary to their respective local school districts.

The deadline was part of a new state law passed this year that says a county school district can’t operate a school within the geographic boundaries of a municipal school system, unless they’ve negotiated an agreement.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, MSCS board Chair Althea Greene said she is grateful for the collaboration that led to the agreement, which was the result of mediation efforts led by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

“This collaborative effort is evidence that when we come together, everyone wins,” Greene said. “This is the first of many opportunities for us to collectively ensure that we continue to put students first.”

Germantown school board Vice Chair Amy Eoff called the pact “a step in the right direction” for students attending the three G’s, citing the nine-year transition plan that prevents current students from being displaced abruptly.

“The fact that it avoids litigation is good … . I’m as comfortable as I’m going to be with this agreement,” Eoff said.

But for Memphis City Council member Martavius Jones, it was tough to ignore the weight of the history that led to the pact. Jones was on the Memphis City School Board in 2013 when Germantown and five other Memphis suburbs formed their own school districts to avoid being grouped into the combined Memphis-Shelby County district.

A 2013 federal settlement allowed MSCS to keep control of the three G’s at the time, but Germantown continued trying to obtain them, even though most of the students attending the Germantown schools live outside of the suburb.

This year, two Republican state lawmakers, Rep. Mark White of Memphis and Sen. Brian Kelsey of Germantown, sponsored the legislation that put the future of the three G’s and their students — most of whom are Black, and a third of whom are considered economically disadvantaged — in doubt again. That rankled Jones, who believes that it violates the 2013 agreement.

Accepting the new settlement “sends a bad message to Nashville that we’re not going to fight this,” said Jones, who urged the Shelby County Commission to reject the pact.

“It also is another example of members of the Shelby County delegation (in the legislature) actively working against what’s in the best interest of Memphis,” he said.

State Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who serves as second vice chair of the Senate Education Committee, criticized the law as an example of the state legislature meddling in a local dispute.

However, Akbari said, the current pact is the best possible outcome.

“I know that the only way Memphis-Shelby County Schools would be whole is if they got a new high school,” Akbari said. “The fact that’s happening is a big deal, and the ramp up time will help the students stay together.”

The fate of Millington’s Lucy Elementary remained uncertain as of Thursday, as negotiations between the two districts continue. MSCS officials have said Millington plans to use Lucy Elementary as a school and have expressed hopes for “an equally positive outcome” for the 350 affected students.

MSCS teachers get new labor agreement — 4 years after the last one expired

Separately, the MSCS board endorsed a labor agreement with educators that has been stuck in negotiations for three years.

The 6-0 vote — McKissack and Harris were absent, and board member Keith Williams, a leader of one of the district’s two teachers unions, abstained — comes after the district rejected the other union’s attempt to start the bargaining process from scratch.

MSCS teachers have been without a labor agreement with the district since 2018, when the last one expired. The district’s two teachers unions last went to the bargaining table in 2019, but did not settle on a new contract with the district.

The larger of the unions, the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, which Williams leads, had urged the board to support terms of an agreement that emerged from those negotiations.

But members of the United Education Association have argued that they didn’t have enough seats at the table during the last round of negotiations, and contend that an entirely new contract is needed to address rising health care costs, stagnant salaries, and large class sizes.

In October, UEA presented the school board with a petition that would force the district back into negotiations.

Last week, the district announced it could not verify the number of signatures on the petition because of discrepancies that included duplicate and ineligible signatures and rejected the UEA effort to restart negotiations.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Shelby County Commission approves pact to transfer ‘three G’ schools to Germantown

2022-12-15T04:06:08+00:00

The Shelby County Commission Wednesday moved closer to resolving a decade-old dispute over control of three schools in Germantown, approving a deal that would, among other things, provide funding for a new high school in Cordova.

But their vote wasn’t a slam dunk. Five commissioners voted against the pact, some of them citing the cost to county taxpayers, and others objecting to the state law that put the future of the Germantown schools and their students in limbo.

The proposed settlement was unveiled last week by Shelby County government officials, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Germantown Municipal School District, and the City of Germantown. It calls for the Memphis suburb to help MSCS sell the Germantown High School building, with the proceeds being added to the $77.5 million the county would provide to build a $100 million high school in the Cordova neighborhood, just north of Germantown. It would be the first newly built MSCS district-operated high school in a decade.

The agreement also calls for Germantown to pay MSCS $5 million for Germantown Elementary and Germantown Middle schools.

Germantown city leaders approved the pact Tuesday. If the MSCS board and the Germantown school board do the same Thursday night, they would help end a dispute between the districts that began in 2013, after Germantown and other suburbs formed their own school districts in response to the merger of Memphis and Shelby County school districts, but the three Germantown schools remained under MSCS governance.

The commissioners on Wednesday also approved a $38.7 million amendment to the county’s capital improvement plan to pay for the first half of the county’s $77.5 million commitment to the Cordova school.

Commissioners Edmund Ford Jr. and Amber Mills, who voted no on the settlement, were skeptical that the county would ultimately be able to muster the finances to make the agreement work.

Mayor Lee Harris said the money would come from borrowing supported by either property taxes — the usual formula — or sales taxes, or from commercial paper loans. Harris also said the county already planned to make substantial investments in schools.

“I believe kids everywhere, and around our county, deserve our attention and investment, and deserve a first-rate learning environment,” he said.

Harris reminded commissioners that the agreement was simply a green light to begin the process of transferring the schools to Germantown.

If an agreement isn’t finalized by next month, the county would run afoul of a new GOP-backed state law that bars county districts from controlling schools that are located within the boundaries of a municipal district.

Commissioners Erika Sugarmon and Britney Thornton, who also voted no, questioned whether the commission should bow to a state law that threatened to displace around 4,000 students who attend the Germantown schools, most of whom are Black and live outside Germantown. The schools serve a mix of MSCS students who are zoned to the buildings and others who come for its specialized programs.

But others said that resistance would be futile at this point — especially with a deadline looming and the fate of 1,800 Germantown High School students hanging in the balance.

MSCS interim Superintendent Toni Williams told the commission that without an agreement, 800 of those students would return to their home neighborhood schools once the high school was transferred to Germantown, while 1,000 would have to find another school.

Commissioner Miska Clay-Bibbs, a former chair of the MSCS board, said those students were at the top of her mind.

“We’re really here to solve the issue of 1,800 kids who are about to be displaced, and (see that they) are taken care of,” she said. “That’s what I’m very sensitive to. That’s why I think this agreement is so important.”

The proposed agreement would allow MSCS to continue operating the three G’s for nine more years to prevent current students from being displaced and allow time for the new high school to be built.

Said Commissioner Henri Brooks: “We have to make a decision for these families. We know how we got here — the state’s encroachment on our autonomy. That’s how we got here. But what we’re dealing with now is taking care of children and families who didn’t ask to be here, and who don’t want to hear all this other stuff.

“We’re in the position, and there’s nothing we can do about it … . We just have to roll with it.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalklbeat.org.

Germantown city leaders approve settlement to take over ‘three G’ schools from MSCS

2022-12-14T00:37:43+00:00

City leaders in Germantown unanimously backed an agreement Monday that would allow its municipal school district to take over two schools currently operated by Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the first in a series of votes needed to settle a long-running dispute between the two districts.

If the Shelby County Commission votes for the deal Wednesday, and MSCS and the Germantown Municipal School District sign off on it Thursday, Germantown would pay MSCS $5 million for Germantown Elementary and Middle schools, which are both located in the Memphis suburb.

The deal also calls for Germantown to help sell the Germantown High School building, and for the county to subsidize construction of a new $100 million MSCS high school in Cordova.

According to a joint statement from the commission, the city of Germantown, the Germantown Municipal School District and MSCS, proceeds from the sale of the high school would be added to the $72 million that the county would provide for the new school.

“It just marked the culmination of a lot of compromise and negotiation to bring forward something that could be worked through,” said Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo.

“There’s an awkwardness in that the city of Germantown doesn’t manage schools that are named after Germantown,” Palazzolo added. “But this is a solution that gets everyone whole and takes care of multiple constituencies at once.”

The new high school would be the first one built in the MSCS district in more than a decade. And the transfer agreement would resolve a dispute that goes back to 2013, when Germantown and five other Memphis suburbs created their own school districts in response to the merger of the Memphis and Shelby County districts.

Germantown Elementary, Middle and High schools — known collectively as the “three G’s” — remained under the governance of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. But this year, Tennessee lawmakers passed a law that bars county school systems from operating schools within the geographic boundaries of a municipal school system, effectively forcing MSCS to cede the three schools to Germantown by year end.

The law sparked concerns that around 4,000 students who attend those schools, most of whom are Black and who live outside of Germantown, could be displaced.

The proposed agreement that the Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen backed Tuesday addresses that issue by creating a long transition period: It allows MSCS to continue operating the three G’s for nine more years.

That would give current students a chance to complete their education in those schools during preparations for the high school sale and the construction of the Cordova high school, according to a Germantown city press release.

“This comes with a remedy where students can continue their educational journey in the building they started in,” Palazzolo said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalklbeat.org.

Amid MSCS’ national superintendent search, some in Whitehaven push for a local candidate

2022-12-08T20:11:58+00:00

Beverly Davis, president of the Whitehaven Empowerment Zone PTSO, believes the next superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools should possess one main asset: Bluff City roots.

Davis, who is also a member of the MSCS board’s superintendent search advisory committee, addressed a group of about 60 who gathered at Healing Cathedral Christian Church in Whitehaven Wednesday to share their thoughts on who should succeed Joris Ray.

Davis plans to share that community feedback with MSCS board members, who have launched a national search for Ray’s replacement and hope to find one by April.

“We have educators here. Our people are just as educated as the person in the next state or the next country,” Davis told the crowd, many of whom were educators or affiliated with community organizations. “Me, I want homegrown. And the reason I want homegrown is because homegrown cares.

“Homegrown is not going to take that money and in the next year or two, (they’re) gone.”

Ray, a longtime district employee, quit as superintendent in August amid an investigation of claims that he abused his power and violated district policies by engaging in adulterous affairs with employees he supervised. The board approved a severance package equivalent to about $480,000, and closed the investigation without issuing any findings.

When Ray was appointed in 2019, some community groups criticized the board’s decision to abandon a national search and choose a candidate within the district.

Others at the Healing Cathedral meeting also said they’d like to see a local person in the job, and they had a name in mind: Whitehaven High School Principal Vincent Hunter.

Hunter helped build the Whitehaven Empowerment Zone, which was founded in 2016 as an initiative to boost student achievement by focusing on neighborhood schools that feed into Whitehaven High, and to shield them from state takeovers.

But MSCS eliminated funding for Hunter’s duties as director of the program in June. That move, among others, fueled demands by Davis and others for Ray and several school board members to resign.

Marqui Fifer, principal of Robert R. Church Elementary, said Hunter is the model for the kind of superintendent he wants the board to hire.

“What we’re looking for is a superintendent who understands that just because you’re in the central office doesn’t always make you right, because we have a lot of talent within our zones, and within our schools, and sometimes we just want to be heard,” Fifer said.

“So if you’re asking me, myself, what we’re looking for, what we’re looking for is a Dr. Hunter,” he said.

Darla D. Young-Berry, principal of Havenview Middle STEAM Optional School and a Hunter supporter, said the Whitehaven neighborhood has a lot at stake in the superintendent search, noting the growth of charter schools in the area.

Many of the students who attend them and return to traditional public schools become frustrated when they learn they are failing when they were passing at the charter schools, she said.

That frustration leads some of them to act out criminally, Young-Berry said.

“That’s a big problem,” she said, “because it’s my middle schoolers who go out here and rob and steal because they don’t understand” why they’re failing school.

“If we don’t pick the right superintendent, Whitehaven won’t exist anymore,” she said.

Hunter, who also attended the meeting, said the praise he received made him feel valued.

The next superintendent should make teachers, staff and administrators feel the same way, he said, in addition to having a track record of sustained success.

“Hopefully, we’ll get that this time, because we’re at the point in Memphis education where, if 80% of our kids still aren’t reading (at) grade level, we won’t have a workforce, and Fortune 500 companies won’t come here,” Hunter said.

Hazel Moore, a beautician who is also known as “the mayor” of Whitehaven, also praised Hunter, especially his stance on boosting skilled trades.

“When I saw the heart of Dr. Hunter at Whitehaven, I said this is the place to be. He’s concerned, and he cares about the children,” Moore said.

Want an opportunity to offer your input on the search for the next superintendent? Here’s the district’s schedule of public meetings:

Dec. 8, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Snowden School, hosted by school board members for Districts 1-3.
Dec. 15, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Southwind High School, hosted by board members from Districts 4-6.
Jan. 12, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Parkway Village Elementary School, hosted by board members from Districts 7-9.
Jan. 21, from noon to 2 p.m. at the district offices.

Clarification: This story has been updated to make clear that it was community members, not Davis, suggesting Vincent Hunter as a superintendent candidate.

Tonyaa Weathersbee is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Connect with Tonyaa at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Flu outbreak threatens more disruptions for Tennessee schools

2022-12-02T23:43:40+00:00

Districts throughout Tennessee and the nation are working to help students recover from learning losses spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. But another respiratory illness is threatening to undermine that work.

Last month, flu outbreaks sparked school closures in at least 10 districts. And while the spread of flu hasn’t prompted closures in any Shelby County schools, the area isn’t immune to the threat.

According to Shelby County Health Department data as of Dec. 1, 7.6% of visits to emergency departments were for flu and flu-like illnesses. During the same period last year, the figure was around 2.4%.

The majority of those visits were from patients aged 5 to 24.

Dr. Nick Hysmith, medical director of infection prevention at LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, said he believes the absence of a real flu season during the pandemic — when people were masked and social distancing — plus an earlier flu season, is likely fueling the increase.

Also, Hysmith said, many children may not have yet received their flu shots.

Still, he said, LeBonheur hasn’t seen child flu cases “to the extent of what we’re seeing right now.”

What they’re seeing likely reflects the fact that, as of Dec. 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, California and Washington, as the states with the highest levels of flu activity in the nation.

If the situation worsens, it could impede students’ recovery from COVID learning loss not just through temporary school closures, but through absences of teachers during a time of staffing shortages, said Bradley Marianno, professor of education policy and higher education at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

“There’s not a lot of research in terms of flu-related disruptions, but we do know that instructional time matters for students, and that these absences caused by sickness will impact student learning,” said Marianno, whose research has examined, among other things, the pandemic’s effect on teachers and teachers’ unions.

School closings due to flu will likely be a repeat of 2010, during the H1N1 pandemic, he said. That outbreak of swine flu led some 700 schools in the U.S. to close for anywhere from three days to two weeks.

Complicating that situation, though, is that school districts are grappling with post-COVID-19 personnel shortages, Marianno said.

“You get to a situation where you can no longer staff the schools effectively,” he said. “If Tennessee is like other places around the country where we have substitute shortages, it can still be difficult to keep the schools open even if a large number of students are healthy enough to be in the classroom.

“I wouldn’t call it a disaster,” he added, “but there will be some small effect on student learning.”

The COVID-19 crisis showed that such disruptions in schools do not affect all kids the same, Marianno said.

“They affect the kids who don’t have the same resources at home for learning,” he said.

To contain the spread of flu in classrooms, Memphis-Shelby County Schools “works closely with the health department on guidance for handling any confirmed cases of an infectious disease,” the district said in a statement.

Any decision to close a school is based on “local health authorities’ guidelines, recommendations and district safety protocols,” the district said.

Marianno said that the threshold for most districts in deciding whether to close schools because of flu is usually when they realize they don’t have enough staff.

That appears to be the threshold that McNairy County, just east of Shelby County, reached when district officials closed schools on Nov. 4 because of a flu outbreak.

McNairy’s director of schools, Greg Martin, told WREG-TV that the flu was taking a toll on support staff as well as students. Nearly 4,000 students are enrolled in that district’s 10 schools.

In the meantime, the Memphis school district has issued a guide to parents on what to do if their children show signs of flu or flu-related illnesses, as well as regular steps, such as hand-washing, to kill viruses.

“As the health and safety of students and staff remain our top priority, we will continue to monitor developments closely,” the MSCS statement read.

Cleared of wrongdoing, two top MSCS officials opt to leave their posts

2022-11-19T02:24:10+00:00

John Barker, a Memphis-Shelby County Schools deputy superintendent who was on leave pending an investigation into a complaint against him, has retired from the district.

Additionally, the official who made the complaint, district human resources chief Yolanda Martin, has resigned in the wake of an investigation of a separate complaint against her last month.

The district announced the two moves in a press release late Friday. According to the release, the investigations found no evidence of wrongdoing by Barker or Martin. It said both were eligible to return to their jobs, but opted not to.

Barker, deputy superintendent for strategic operations and finance, “decided instead to retire from MSCS and pursue other opportunities,” the release read. “We accept his decision yet share our appreciation for his longstanding service to our school community in various roles, including Director of Research and Evaluation, Chief of Staff, and his position as Deputy Superintendent.”

Martin, the district said, “elected to pursue other professional endeavors,” noting her service as a teacher, assistant principal, instructional leadership director and human resources leader.

“Her support and leadership will not soon be forgotten, and we wish her well with her next opportunity and beyond,” it said.

Barker was placed on paid leave in September as the district investigated an employee complaint against him. The employee turned out to be Martin, who, according to a letter obtained by The Commercial Appeal, said that she was subjected to ongoing harassment based on race and sex from Barker, whom she directly reported to.

The investigation into Martin began a month later. Martin told Chalkbeat she believed the nature of the complaint was retaliatory, but MSCS board chair Althea Greene said it wasn’t related to its probe of Barker

Another member of MSCS’ executive cabinet will take on Barker’s duties, according to the release, while MSCS has hired a new chief of human resources, Quintin Robinson, who is set to start on Nov. 28.

The investigations followed the departure in August of former Superintendent Joris Ray, who was himself under investigation into allegations that he abused his power and violated the district’s code of conduct.

The departure of two more district leaders comes in the midst of big challenges for MSCS, including academic recovery from the COVID pandemic, declining enrollment, teacher shortages, rising gun violence, and the search for Ray’s successor. The search is expected to run into next summer.

Samantha West contributed to this story.

MSCS board will launch national superintendent search this month

2022-11-04T23:18:59+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County School Board will look nationwide for a replacement for its former scandal-plagued superintendent Joris Ray. The search will begin this month.

“The MSCS Board will kick off a national search for a new superintendent this month with a vote to launch an RFP [Request for Proposals] to find a search firm,” board chair Althea Greene tweeted on Friday. “From there, we can hire a firm, engage the community and recruit candidates. We expect to name a new superintendent by the end of 2022-23.”

It’s been a decade since the board conducted a national superintendent search.

In 2019, groups including the Memphis Education Fund and Memphis LIFT, a parent advocacy group, urged the board to launch a national search to replace Dorsey Hopson, who resigned as superintendent in 2018 to take a job with Cigna.

Instead, the board promoted Ray, who was serving as interim superintendent. He resigned in late August 2022 amid an investigation into abuse of power and inappropriate relationships with district employees.

On Friday, Sarah Carpenter, executive director of Memphis LIFT, praised the board’s decision and said she wasn’t surprised by it. She also said she’s organizing a parent committee to question and vet candidates for the job, something they didn’t get to do when Ray was appointed.

“We need them [the job candidates] to know what our needs are. That’s especially important with many parents coming from low-income communities,” Carpenter said.

Tonyaa Weathersbee is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Connect with Tonyaa at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools board taps Althea Greene as chair

2022-09-28T20:37:54+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to appoint Althea Greene as its new chair, as the district enters a crucial period.

Greene will succeed Michelle McKissack, whose two-year term as chair is ending. McKissack was reelected to the board in August, but recently announced that she is eyeing a run for Memphis mayor in 2023.

Greene, pastor of Real Life Ministries and owner of a catering company, was appointed to the board in 2019 by the Shelby County Commission. She spent 38 years as an educator in MSCS before retiring in 2018.

Greene will face an immediate challenge: leading a search for a new superintendent after the district spent more than $400,000 to buy out the contract of its scandal-plagued former superintendent, Joris Ray.

The superintendent search is set to begin next month.

The board leadership transition also comes at a time when Memphis students, like others across the nation, are grappling with pandemic learning losses, as well as the violence plaguing the city and the trauma that comes with that.

“That’s not the culture and climate we want for our students,” Greene told Chalkbeat on Sept. 8, after four people were killed and three injured during a teenager’s shooting rampage on the day before.

Ezekiel Kelly, 19, has been charged in connection with the slayings. The shooting spree, Greene said, was all that students were talking about at the schools she visited that day.

“We’re going to have to work together as elected officials to change that, and to make sure that we put the correct laws and the correct policies in place,” she said.

The board also voted unanimously to tap fellow board member Sheleah Harris as its new vice chair. Harris, also a former educator, is the founder of Living Grace, a nonprofit that serves homeless youth in Memphis.