- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- MATA, the Ford indictment, and will the state take over the school system, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists talking about some of the biggest stories of the week.

First up is Toby Sells from The Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Katherine Burgess from MLK50.

Thank you for being here again.

- Yeah, thank you for having me on.

- Laura Testino is with The Daily Memphian, and Bill Dries, also with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk about a bunch of things, but we gotta start, and we'll start with you, Laura, with the potential takeover and the moves at the State Capitol around Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

We're taping this Thursday morning, which is important 'cause things could change even as we are taping this, and certainly by the time this airs on Friday.

But give people who aren't maybe as close to this, or maybe just seen a headline, the snapshot of it, and then we'll talk through all the kind of paths this could take.

- Sure, so the change here is that the details of a state takeover that's been promised from Memphis Republican Rep Mark White, really since the school board has considered terminating former Superintendent Marie Feagins, those details were revealed this week and debated for the first time in a House subcommittee on Tuesday.

And the House subcommittee passed the bill that would allow the takeover of MSCS through several different levers.

The takeover would look like a state appointed board of managers, so these would be Shelby Countians with some amount of education experience to have authority over the locally elected board.

And it would also restore authority to the state for districts that are taken over for the state to recommend that a charter operator come in and convert an existing public school to a charter school, very reminiscent of the, what is now being phased out, Achievement School District.

- Yeah, this could have changed even, you know, but just this would allow the state board of managers appointed, again, local people from Shelby County, to have the school district for four years and a max of six years, I think as it was written this week.

There were triggers that would start this.

And, again, these could change as the bill goes through, you know, it's gotta go through, you know, the full committee, it's gotta go to the full House.

It's gotta go through the Senate.

Brent Taylor is running the bill on the Senate side, I believe.

- That's right, yep.

- The district would have to be in the bottom 30% of schools that, or 30% of their schools would have to be D and F rated schools.

- Yep, and that's an important kind of, I think, piece just to note, is state letter grades are new in Tennessee.

The law was passed in 2016, but they were only first implemented a couple years ago.

And pretty much across the state, public educators were really frustrated at this 11th hour overhaul of what the letter grades would do, because they prioritize achievement over how well your school is growing kids, which in Shelby County is really important.

And so there were some people who argue that these letter grades are more indicative of how much poverty is in your school system than how much achievement there is.

So to use that with a consequence that's this big is pretty striking for what happened just a couple years ago.

- Yeah, the other trigger that's been talked about is, and you gotta hit all four of these, I believe, is that the district is in the bottom 5% of district performance statewide, and that 25% of students are chronically absent, and the County Commission or county legislative body has passed a vote of no confidence in the school board.

That's all where we are right now, is that correct?

- About.

- Okay, yeah.

- So we might have, even though that's the version that these four triggers with an "or" is what passed the House subcommittee, Rep Mark White during that subcommittee meeting, essentially promised an amendment forthcoming as it goes through its next education committee, which he chairs next week, that would reduce those to three and make sure that they're the three, that it actually apply to MSCS and add an "and."

So he's promising a more narrow scope.

That's not for sure what's going to happen in the Senate companion bill.

And we might see some other changes in the versions of the bill that senators debate in the Senate Education Committee next week.

- One more for you, and then we'll get takes from people here.

The school board would not be dissolved.

- That's right.

- That actually kind of surprised me.

I would assume, but there would still be an elected Shelby County School Board, but essentially the board, they would report to the board and all the authority would go to the board.

They would leave the school board to hire or fire a superintendent, but even that would have to be approved by the board of managers.

- Yes.

- So it's a school board in name only.

- In name only, yes.

And that piece is what could really change with potentially some of the Senate amendments that have been filed.

- And I should also say the intent is to target this at just Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

- That's right.

- Because other districts around the state do not want the state messing with their districts.

And that dynamic, as we've seen before in Memphis, and Nashville experienced this as well, some of the other big cities, but that- - And certainly, yeah, is part of what would help it pass or not pass the legislature.

- Bill, your take on all this, we've covered schools for 15 years on this.

You've covered schools even before this, thoughts?

- Well, what really is interesting to me is that the no confidence vote by the County Commission has come to play a major role so far in the legislature's debate about this.

And that has really roiled the waters locally, because you now have folks who are on different sides of the whole Marie Feagins thing who have united and who have said, "None of us want a state takeover of the school system."

And then, you have elements within that who are saying, "Well, thanks, County Commission, for triggering this whole thing."

- Yeah, they took that no confidence vote a month or two ago.

- Yeah.

- This was in the wings, Representative White has been talking about this since the fall that there would be some sort of takeover type.

He also pushes back on the notion it's a takeover, right?

Am I right about that?

- He pushes back on it in the sense that it, you know, he's promised state intervention.

He really hangs his hat in his differentiation on the fact that it would be Shelby County residents on the board and not appointees from across the state.

- But here's the thing about that though.

In keeping the current school board in place and putting another board on top of it, you're really accentuating that this is a takeover.

- Yeah, Toby, thoughts?

- Nobody wants a takeover.

People want local control of how they run their business wherever they live, right?

And we've seen time and again, I've written about this time and again, how these lawmakers, I won't say Nashville lawmakers, but these lawmakers from the state, they wanna meddle.

They wanna meddle in the affairs of the way we run our city here.

And it's easy for Memphis to feel like we get picked on.

I mean, you remember Representative Justin Pearson got kicked out, you know, we sent him right back.

But, you know, did that nullify the will of the voters in Shelby County?

A lot of people thought so, a lot of people were really hot about that.

And so that has happened in Memphis a million times.

And we're like, okay, you know, these rural lawmakers or small-town lawmakers, you know, from say Crossville or Portland, you know, they're trying to have a say in this big city politics.

Maybe they don't understand how it functions down here, how it works, and it's easy for Memphis to feel like we get picked on.

But just a few years ago, and we're still in the middle of the appeals process on this, Nashville gets picked on all the time.

Right now, the state legislature said they wanted to cut the Metro Council up there from 40 members down to 20 members.

You know, one judge said no, and they're appealing that right now, and I think we're waiting on that vote pretty soon on that.

But also another time the legislature wanted to take over the Airport Authority Board and the Sports Authority Board.

- In Nashville.

- In Nashville, that's right.

And all of those are in appeal right now, but so far, every judge or every judge panel has said, "Look, you know, we have the Home Rule Amendment, which means that we can't make a law just for one city."

So then you come up with this legislation that's drafted in this weird way, you know, that says, you know, "Must have this many people in this."

And, you know, they draft it to basically get down to one place that they want to legislate about.

And so that's been the big armor that all these folks are using right now, and maybe with this, you know, Memphis will use the same thing.

- Yeah, Katherine, thoughts on this?

- Yeah, a quote stood out to me in a story Laura wrote about the ASD news.

And in it, I believe it was, correct me if I'm wrong, the State Department of Education said that, "Local control leads to better student outcomes."

And they were talking about ASD, but it really struck me that this probably applies in other cases as well, and yet that's being ignored by the state legislature.

- Yeah, let's talk, oh- - So- Oh, I was just gonna say, just to illuminate, too, some of the stakes of what could happen with a takeover of this size is, you know, if the version of the bill passes that puts a board of managers on top of the locally elected board, that's for four to six years.

We've been talking, the huge stakes for Marie Feagins was that there were all of these kind of, you know, really big things that the district was looking to improve over the next four to six years.

And that throws, you know, more tumult in that certainly for academic improvement, but also for facilities, right?

That's the thing that we have been talking about and talking about that crosses all kinds of commissions.

You're gonna have somebody in charge there that's learning new role where we're going to have, you know, should this pass new policies, they're trying to understand what their authority really is at a time where the literal physical footprint of the district is expected to really significantly change.

- Yeah, and that's the 275 or so buildings, many of them empty, underutilized, some of them in disrepair, many in disrepair.

Let's do one more thing, let's tie up ASD and we'll move on to other things.

We can talk about this for the whole show.

Achievement School District came in 12, 13, 14 years ago.

Bill and I definitely interviewed the original, lots of people involved with that.

It came out of the Haslam administration, you're gonna correct me where I get this wrong.

It was an idea of taking over low performing schools, not exclusively in Memphis, but most of them were in Memphis, and taking them from the district and operating them, in many cases, giving them to charter operators.

There were maybe some successes you could point out, but, overall, I think pretty much everyone was, "This didn't really work, this was not successful."

Simultaneous to all this legislation, the legislature's looking to end, officially end, the ASD.

But also, look, this board of managers would have the authority to take these schools and give more of them to charter operators.

Is that correct?

- Not the board of managers, but the state would.

And there's some things in the takeover legislation that would, you know, give more power to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, which is a new 2019 body that authorizes kind of like what the state's function was with the ASD, managing charter schools.

- Yeah, and right now, if I wanted to open a charter school, I would first start in Shelby County.

But this state board is meant in part gonna potentially be more empowered to bypass a rejection from Shelby County or an acceptance by Shelby County, right?

It could go either way.

- Yes, it could.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yes, we're good, yep.

- Much more that we could talk about for the entire show.

Laura, everybody here has been writing about it, so there's tons to watch.

And, again, we're recording this Thursday morning and some things could change even today.

But thank you, Laura, and thank you, everyone.

I wanna switch, Bill, to Edmund Ford Jr. was indicted.

Walk us through that indictment, the allegations.

He is not guilty, he has been alleged of these things.

And we'll talk about some of the probably dynamics that people aren't aware of that come into play.

- Well, the latest thing that happens is there are a lot of documents, some recordings that the Feds have that are in the process of being turned over to Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr.'s attorneys in this.

He's charged with several counts of bribery and tax evasion involving grants that he proposed on the City Council, and then later on the County Commission.

Now, the first story on this came from Katherine when she worked at The Commercial Appeal.

- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And that involved a grant to Junior Achievement that actually is not one of the grants that he's charged with, correct?

- Correct, yeah, and it's not even a part of the grants program that the commissioners have, that was a separate type of grant entirely that he allegedly was doing roughly the same thing with.

- And the alleged kickbacks come in the form of this grant money, city and county, 'cause he was a city councilman, now a county commissioner, or was, is he still a county commissioner?

- Yes.

- He's still a county commissioner.

Granting money, and then selling laptops that that nonprofit would buy back laptops from one of his companies or services from one of his companies.

But, again, the 450 that you wrote about, that is not in this lawsuit.

- No, that is not in this lawsuit.

That is not part of the community enhancement grants program, but it was the same format where he issued the grant, and then sold the computers.

- And to make this even more complex, Katherine's reporting on Junior Achievement is mentioned in the charges against Ford, but it's not one of the counts he's charged with.

- Either of you can take this, one of the things that people probably don't, you know, the average citizen doesn't realize that the county commissioners individually do these, what'd you call the community enhancement grants?

- It used to be called community enhancement grants.

- Yeah, they're grants that they can give out.

The Council still has that or the Council stopped it?

- Both of the bodies still have the- - They're $100,000 grants?

- No, it's a pool of $2.6 million for each one.

Each commissioner, each councilmember, has an allotment of $200,000.

They can propose multiple grants from that, they can join in grants from other council members or commissioners.

And the full Council or Commission votes on each proposed grant.

- And the allegations against Ford are money from these programs?

- Yes.

- When he was a city councilman, when he was a county commissioner.

The notion of these grants, I mean, the positive take on them is the councilmember or commissioner is most in touch with their individual district.

And it's a way for them to say, "Hey, there's a really important thing going on here.

It doesn't have to go through the whole process of any other allocation, and we're gonna support this local nonprofit that does amazing work with kids."

Or something like that, I don't mean that cynically, that does happen.

The negative side of this is there's not exactly a whole lot of oversight apparently on this, maybe, allegedly.

- Yeah, and the County Commission had a discussion about changing the grants process on Wednesday, two days ago as this airs.

And Mayor Lee Harris was there who was on the City Council.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And he basically told the body, he said, "Yeah, I know that you say you've got some measures here to safeguard this to make sure it doesn't go wrong."

He said, "But really you don't.

"Unless you have another branch of government looking at it "and having some control over it, which you don't, there are no safeguards."

- Other thoughts on the grant program?

- Yeah, the grant program, years ago when I was looking at it for The CA, there weren't a lot of requirements on documentation to submit, receipts, I believe, were optional.

- Yeah.

[panelists laughing] - Wow.

- Sorry, I'm sorry, I thought you said receipts are optional, I could not have possibly heard that.

- Am I right on that, Bill?

- Yes.

- Yeah, yeah, and I've read through some things where even when they turn in receipts, there's just huge gaps missing, and I'm talking about organizations that weren't even the ones under investigation.

This is just a common thing that has occurred in this grants program for years, and it's been known for years.

And one thing that's really struck me is there's been a bit of a narrative that any reform to the grants program or reform to the Ethics Commission is somehow taking Lee Harris' side versus Ford Jr.'s side.

But to be clear, this has been an ongoing problem for a long time, it is not just linked to Ford Jr. - The other thing about this is the commissioners and some of the council members will actually say, "Yeah, but the whole body has to approve it."

There have been some instances where there have been no votes on grants of another commissioner or councilmember.

But those are pretty rare, because it's just human nature.

You're not gonna vote against someone else's grant, because then they're gonna vote against yours.

- Right, I mean, there's a disincentive to vote against.

Yeah, let's, again, we can do a whole show just on this stuff, just on the grants, let alone the allegations and indictment against Edmund Ford Jr. Why don't you give us what comes next, and then we'll move on to some other things.

- Well, the County Commission is considering several options here.

Chairman Michael Whaley proposed to all of them on the Commission.

One was to just take a one-month moratorium on doing any grants.

That was- - Toby's laughing.

Toby's laughing at the one month.

But keep going, keep going.

- That was voted down on a 5-6 vote.

The two other measures or ordinances, they're still alive.

Basically, it's changing around the Ethics Commission part of this.

The other one is a ballot question that would specifically define conflicts of interest, and by the way, include school board seats in the county's recall provision in the charter.

- Okay, so much more to talk about, next for Edmund Ford Jr., he's in the court system now.

Now, this is gonna take some time to work through.

- This is gonna take some time.

There's been some trial dates talked about later this year.

Those seem highly unrealistic.

- Let's shift to another bright spot in local government, sorry, I shouldn't do that, is MATA, and we've all been, but MLK50, news site MLK50.com, people should go take a look.

But, Katherine, what's going on with MATA?

People have seen some of the headlines, but it's shocking.

- Yeah, so about two weeks ago, we received very shocking news.

I think the one that got the most headlines was inappropriate credit card usage for personal expenses, like spa visits by a MATA employee who has been put on administrative leave.

But the news that really caught my attention was that MATA officials have, for about a year now, published route schedules that they knew they could not actually supply a bus or a driver for.

So they in effect implemented a route cut without telling the public, so they're still giving them schedules that were not accurate, and without approval of the MATA board.

So that was a huge revelation that came two weeks ago.

Just this week, yesterday, Wednesday, the MATA board met in committee and heard from the consultants TransPro a plan to build back that service that was secretly cut.

So they're gonna start trying to do it incrementally as they get buses repaired.

So if they get one bus available, they're gonna try to add in a route a little bit here, a little bit here, and hopefully build back to the full capacity of what we should have had in 2024 by, I believe, July is when they expect to do that fully.

So it's a bit of a process, but they're trying to get back to what was actually published.

- And where are we with the City?

The City put another round of money in, is that correct?

- Yeah, so that money was actually money that was promised when they requested that the City not do, or that MATA not do route cuts.

So MATA said, "We won't do the route cuts, but we're gonna need $5 million to not do them."

- And they did the route cuts anyway.

[panelists laughing] - Well, these were additional- - It is not funny.

- These were additional route cuts proposed on top of the secret route cuts.

So they were given that money, it was a bit of a process.

The consultant coming in really has, I think, smoothed some things over with councilmembers.

They've been providing financial documentation that's been asked for, they've obviously been uncovering things like the credit card usage.

And councilmembers who were very skeptical of MATA seem to be a little bit more, beginning to be more comfortable with the idea that things are being turned around.

- Which would turn into continued funding from the Council potentially.

- Yes, yes.

- Okay.

- There definitely is a sense that they can't ask for more money right now, but they're hoping that once they kind of clean up things and get everything in shape, then maybe they can go back and ask for more money.

- With five minutes left here, I wanna, again, we can do a whole show on all these, but we wanna switch to you, Toby, on Memphis 3.0.

Maybe for people who've forgotten or didn't know what Memphis 3.0 is, and what's going on with it right now, and some tensions around that planning process.

- That's right, it's kind of a slow burn controversy out there.

3.0 was adopted in 2019.

It's a comprehensive city plan.

We say, "Here's how we wanna grow, "and here's where we wanna grow, and here's how we're gonna do it."

It's really basic.

It's been on the books for six years now.

Before that, the last plan that we have was like 1981.

So Jim Strickland devised this plan to come up with a comprehensive city plan.

It's called Memphis 3.0.

And so now it's up for kind of a five-year renewal plan right now.

And so they're having a whole host of, you know, city-led meetings to go back out and say, "Is it working?"

You know, "Where do we wanna grow?

How's it gonna go?"

In that time, there's been a group called MidtownMemphis.org, and if y'all maybe have seen their signs kind of cropping up around Midtown and other places, it just says, "Don't let 3.0 sell out Midtown neighborhoods."

And, you know, you're not a real, you know, effort in Memphis unless you have a sign in your yard about it, right?

"Save the Greensward", all that, you know.

So people have been telling me about it, talking to me about it, I saw the signs, and so I finally went to a meeting, this was, you know, two or three weeks ago, and just listened to these people and what they had to say.

Kind of the main organizer on this is Robert Gordon.

He's an author and does many things around town.

And he's really worried, and a lot of other folks are really worried, that the plan is gonna call for more density, right?

And it's not just density for density's sake, they're not against that.

But where's it gonna go?

You know, they're saying they're looking at anchors.

And I'm trying to be really careful about how I say this, 'cause when I talk about it, it's a touchy subject, and I'll get a phone call from City Hall I know and from the MidtownMemphis folks and say I didn't get it right.

But the overarching is saying, okay, well we know that, say Overton Square is an anchor, we wanna build around here, right?

We can't expand our boundaries in Memphis anymore, so we're gonna grow up not out, is what they say.

So these folks are looking at this map, and they say, "Okay, well we know right here, you know, this is a single-family neighborhood," and 3.0, this map is calling for higher density, so maybe they can put multi-family in there.

So what they're worried about is that this map and, you know, some out-of-state developer can come in and put in, you know, some big condo or something like that on a street that used to be single family, and that's what people wanted in those neighborhoods.

That's how they're afraid that, you know, these neighborhoods are gonna get sold out, right?

Go in there, destabilize the neighborhood, that's their terminology for it.

And then, all of a sudden, you've got a neighborhood that used to be thriving with, you know, local folks, and now, you know, it's changed the neighborhood a lot, and, you know, that would happen kind of maybe over decades.

But then you talk to folks at City Hall, I talked to John Zeanah, who's at development and planning with the city and county.

And he says, "Absolutely not.

"There's just absolutely no way that what they're saying is gonna happen is gonna happen."

And I've never really covered anything before where the distinction seemed so black and white.

I'm like, you know, "You're saying absolutely not, and they're saying absolutely so."

I think this, for us, is gonna be something that we cover and we follow a lot, so I'm planning other stories and I'm having a lot of background information talks now with a lot of folks that's pretty interesting, that say, "Maybe not, but maybe so, and there's more to it."

And so I'm gonna keep covering this thing as we go along.

- We had a bunch more to get to, but we could hardly get to what we had on the list.

I know you're also writing about some criminal justice data analysis that the state government put together, also death row lethal injections, so people can be looking at The Flyer for that.

Other stuff you're working on, Laura, that you can talk about here?

Obviously, following everything up at the state I'm sure is gonna be a lot.

- Yes.

- A lot of time.

Katherine, other things on your radar?

- In addition to MATA, the integrity policing task force that the mayor and Judge Donald have put together, I'm continuing coverage of that.

They'll have their second meeting later this month.

It is, again, closed to the public even though we were promised open meetings.

So waiting to see if future meetings will be open.

- And we're out of time, but I'll say they're starting to make some noise around county mayor candidates and governor, which is 2026, but right around the corner from the point of view of elections, right, Bill?

- Yes.

- So you'll be writing about that, okay.

That is all the time we have this week.

Thank you guys for being here.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the episode, you can get the full episode at WKNO.org, or on YouTube, or The Daily Memphian.

You can also download the full podcast of the show from The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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