The appointed oversight board will have four years to address what Republicans argue is untenable academic underperformance and administrative instability in the district, which serves more than 100,000 students.
The new law gives the oversight board, which could be appointed at any time and must convene for the first time before July, broad latitude to set performance metrics for the district. It could also control everything from firing and hiring a superintendent to textbooks and classroom curriculum. The new body would have final say over the district’s $1.7 billion budget and major decisions like school closures and zoning.
Here’s what Chalkbeat says could happen in the state’s ongoing quest to let Republicans NOT from Memphis subvert the will of the people of Memphis.
Memphis Republicans Mark White and Brent Taylor, who are sponsoring the legislation, have both said in recent months that they want to align with White’s original bill.
White’s plan would install a board of managers, handpicked by elected state Republicans, that would have significant authority over the Memphis-Shelby County school district. Appointment powers would be given to the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker, all Republicans who are not from Memphis.
Every Wednesday, a group of fourth graders at Winchester Elementary put on black aprons and start packing up cardboard boxes with canned vegetables and mac and cheese.
The young volunteers spend their free periods prepping weekend meal boxes for around 30 Whitehaven families who line up outside the Memphis school building each Friday afternoon. It’s a routine that’s been in place since Winchester opened its food pantry in March.
Denise Wilson, a fourth grade math teacher who runs the pantry, said families typically show up once a month for help. She expects the number of families seeking food to increase in the coming weeks because of delayed and missing SNAP benefits, which are affecting one in 10 Tennesseans as the federal government shutdown drags on.
Former Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins is now suing a board member for personal defamation in an ongoing lawsuit over her January firing after less than 10 months on the job.
Feagins testified on Tuesday in Shelby County Circuit Court, where Judge Robert Childers considered Feagins’ request for a preliminary injunction, which would overturn the board vote to terminate her contract and reinstate her as district leader as the lawsuit plays out.
“I came here to do a job, and we have unfinished business,” Feagins said on the stand. “I didn’t come to sue the school district.”
While lawmakers did not approve a state takeover of Memphis schools this year, some haven’t stopped dreaming of how and when they might take over the state’s largest district.
Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor told WKNO/Channel 10’s “Behind the Headlines” Friday that their legislation to establish a state-appointed “board of managers” overseeing the district will be fast-tracked to pass this spring.
But district faces continued pressure, scrutiny from meddling lawmakers
Most of Tennessee’s legislators are not from Memphis/Shelby County, but that hasn’t stopped a cadre of them from attempting to tell the elected leaders of Memphis how to run their schools.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools narrowly avoided legislation that would have expanded state control over its elected school board and budget. But lawmakers intend to bring that bill back — and other efforts to audit the district and potentially change the timing of its school board elections have advanced.
Though versions of state intervention bills passed in the House and Senate, the chambers could not reconcile them before the Tennessee General Assembly adjourned on Tuesday. Each bill called for a state-appointed oversight board whose members would be paid by the school district, but the two versions differed on what powers it gave that board, and the thresholds that would trigger state intervention.
Less than one year after starting her work as Director of Schools in Memphis-Shelby County, Marie Feagins has been fired.
Chalkbeatreports that by a 6-3 vote, the school board opted to terminate Feagins’ contract.
Marie Feagins was fired Tuesday as superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, setting the district back to where it has been repeatedly in recent years: searching for leadership.
A bitterly divided school board voted 6-3 to oust Feagins less than 10 months into her tenure, approving a resolution that cited allegations of professional misconduct and poor leadership.
District rejects legislative plan to put more guns in schools
Officials in Memphis have announced that their school system will not allow teachers to carry guns at school, despite a legislative decision that would allow districts to permit teachers who receive certain training to carry firearms on school grounds.
The Director of Schools in Maury County has joined those in Memphis and Nashville in calling for a pause in TNReady as a result of repeated problems with the testing platform.
The Columbia Daily Heraldreports Maury County Director of Schools Chris Marczak said he agrees with the letter sent by Dorsey Hopson of Memphis and Shawn Joseph of Nashville. Marczak offered an alternative:
“I believe it would be best for us to focus solely on the ACT and align ourselves with outcomes that can affect students’ college acceptance and scholarship ability,” Marczak said.
Maury County district leadership has indicated the results from this year’s botched test administration are of limited value:
“Due to the issues with testing, we will not be adding TNReady/EOC data to the Keys’ scorecards for either the district or the school levels when they eventually come in,” Marczak said in an email sent to staff in July. “In light of the numerous testing issues, please know that the results of the assessments will be used to inform conversation only. These are the conversations we will have with principals and the principals will have with teachers/staffs.”
In response to the ongoing testing issues, Marczak shared accounts of students completing 75-minute long examinations in 10 minutes. When reviewing the examinations, Marczak said the district had over 600 missing scores. Questar, the contractor hired by the state to administer the test, reported that 600 individual assessments were incomplete.
Despite the growing concern over the inability to effectively administer the TNReady test, Commissioner of Education Candice McQueen has said the test is still an important tool:
TNReady serves as a vital feedback loop for teachers, parents, and administrators to tell us where we are, and the results inform what steps we need to take to help all students and schools succeed.”
TNReady might be an important feedback loop if it ever worked the way it was intended. But it hasn’t. Instead, it’s been fraught with problems since the beginning. Now, education leaders are standing up and speaking out.
The push to pause TNReady and possibly move forward with a different measure comes at the same time the TDOE is being taken to task for a failure to properly execute Pre-K/Kindergarten portfolios. Knox County’s School Board last night voted to send a message that they have “no confidence” in the portfolio process or in the TDOE.
The push against TNReady from key district leaders figures to make the test and overall administration of the Department of Education a key issue in the 2018 gubernatorial and state legislative elections.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
