- (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.

- The potential takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by two members of the Memphis-Shelby County School Board.

Natalie McKinney is board chair.

Thanks for being back here.

- Thank you.

- Michelle McKissick is a board member and a former board chair.

Thank you for being here again.

- Thank you.

- Along with Laura Testino, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We had, I'll say you all I think maybe saw or at least read about it, and I'll just say to everyone, we had Senator Brent Taylor and State Senator and State House Member Mark White on the show a couple weeks ago talking about a number of things, but a lot of time spent on the effort that they are leading at the legislature to do a takeover of the school system and put essentially an advisory board.

We talked about more details about that.

You can read about that in The Daily Memphian.

You can also see the full video at wkno.org, YouTube, or on The Daily Memphian.

But I wanna give you all a chance to respond to some of those things, and we can talk through some of those things.

One of the issues they are really leaning hard on and trying to push this bill through this session, they couldn't get it done last year, they had to reconcile some bills and get in those weeds or not, but is an audit that was approved, a $6 million audit by an outside firm of Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

They, when they were on the show, had recently, and other Republicans, Republican leadership, had gotten a behind-the-closed-doors update on that audit.

And there were varying takes on it.

Brent Taylor said it was things we couldn't possibly believe, but had really no details.

Mark White was a bit more restrained, which isn't necessarily all that hard in that situation, about there were problems that he wanted to see explored.

I'll read from Bo Watson, who is a Hixson Republican and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, very senior person up at the state legislature.

He said after the briefing some weeks ago, "There are certainly indications that there's been "really poor records management at a minimum, and the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse is extensive."

What do you all know about the audit?

What have you been provided in terms of this interim?

It's not even an interim report.

It's not gonna be done for many, many months.

What do you know is in that audit?

- And a simple answer?

I don't know.

We have not seen anything.

We haven't had any sort of preliminary reports on it, only what we've heard through the media.

And so I'm looking forward to seeing what they've seen so far.

- What we do know is it's more of processes issues about going through the documentation and those sort of things, but nothing that they can say any findings.

There are no findings yet because there is no report.

- I mean, are you happy this audit is happening?

- I think it's important.

When you have a school district of this size, it's a very large school district, the largest in the state of Tennessee, it's always good to take a look at what can be done better.

And a lot of transitions happened over the years.

People don't realize we're still dealing with the aftermath of the merger, merger/de-merger, of all the school districts.

And so dealing with all of that and still coming out from under it, I think it's good to take a look, saying, "What can we do better?"

- Okay, let me say it before I go back to you, Natalie, and then get Laura.

Give or take, just based on the website, two hundred schools in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, it's 106,000 students, about 14,000 employees, a little under half are teachers.

It's a $1.9 billion budget.

I mean, so it's a huge enterprise.

It's had, what's the number now, four superintendents in five years or something like that, with some interims and so on.

We'll get to that as well.

From your point of view, Natalie, is there potential waste, fraud, and abuse that you think might be found by an audit?

- There's always potential.

I think you just gave the stats.

We're basically a $2 billion entity.

We've got 14,000 employees, and sometimes some I's don't get dotted and T's get crossed.

So I don't know that it rises to the level of fraud or waste or abuse, but I do know that we've always said that we were open to this audit.

This is what you do when you have a new CEO.

I would think anyone in the business industry or even in the nonprofits, you wanna open up your books and you wanna open up all your operations and you wanna see what is the issue, what's going well, and what can we do to make things better?

- Isn't there, I'm sorry Laura, but isn't there an audit every year and outside audit firm?

How is this one different?

- Well, from what I'm told, they are looking at things in a deeper way.

The audit that takes place annually, we've passed without any incident from an independent auditor for Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

So I'm really curious to know what all they're looking at.

And so that's the discovery part.

- Okay, let me bring in Laura.

- Sure, yeah, yeah.

The district's recent audit had two findings that we reported about in The Daily Memphian.

And the forensic audit, the Comptroller's Office has told us they've come to a new agreement with CliftonLarsonAllen that will provide an interim report in mid to late March that lawmakers then may use to reconcile their bills.

And then the legislature would have to approve $1.7 million additional dollars for that forensic audit to ultimately be complete.

There's a lot of effort.

They have billed this audit as a path toward reconciliation.

And I also wonder, knowing that now Superintendent Roderick Richmond has been meeting with Nashville lawmakers, whether the school board has been meeting with lawmakers as well, and what sort of input you have given toward this legislation.

Have you tried to influence or persuade lawmakers to make any particular decisions about what the final bill would look like?

We can start with you, Michelle McKissick.

- I've had informal conversations as an individual board member, so not as the board as a whole, with both Senator Taylor and Representative Mark White.

And I know that's the case for some other board members.

But I guess I just wanted to impress upon them that we're willing to work with the state to say, "Here's some deficiencies within the district and how can we make them better."

So that's been the approach that I've had in my conversations with them.

- So my conversation was on the front end of this with Mark White, and we had, with Vice Chair Coleman at the time last year, and we came up with some suggestions around how we could work together.

And I think that I'm interested in seeing if that's something that we can pursue as we move through this.

Again, this audit was about being fair and reasonable and accurate.

And so we look at it as a way for continuous improvement, not as a gotcha, not being punitive, but this is a way that we can do some things better.

Not saying that we're doing anything absolutely wrong, but we can always do better.

And that's what we're viewing this as.

And that's my hope that the legislators are doing as well, and willing to work with us to figure out how we can do that together.

- Go ahead.

- It's okay.

- Okay.

The takeover right now, again, there's two bills they're reconciling.

It's got to go through the Senate.

But the gist is a nine-member board of managers, three appointees each from the governor, State House of Representatives, State Senate speaker, that would really essentially supersede the board that you all are on.

What would that look like?

- I don't think we get there.

- You don't think it'll happen?

- So speaking from my perspective, I think that you have some problems constitutionally.

- So lawsuit.

- So lawsuit.

- Let's talk about that a little bit.

You guys were here last time and you spoke to us and said in the summer that you would launch a legal challenge against legislation that had initially put your seat and four others on the ballot for this upcoming election, Chair McKinney.

- And we did.

- And the lawsuit, you won the lawsuit.

There's only four seats on the ballot this time.

One criticism that both the opponents that changed from the Election Commission to then the County Commission and the judge did bring up was just that the lawsuit kind of came at a later time than it could have.

If the district were to launch a legal challenge against takeover legislation that passed, would you launch it quickly?

- So first, let me say it.

I'm one of nine, so that's my perspective on fighting it.

And two, I will leave that to our legal team to decide on timing.

So that's a legal strategy that I don't think we have necessarily.

I don't know that we're necessarily all qualified to say when.

- One other follow-up question about the appointed board of nine.

Michelle McKissick, you were seeking reelection, and Chair McKinney, you will return to the board without being on the ballot.

Do you have any input, if this appointed board is to exist, about who the membership should be and what kind of working relationship would exist were this legislation to pass and a legal challenge not be successful?

- I hate to play what-ifs, but to answer your question, to try to address it, I would hope that this managing board, if it were to come to existence, would have really meaningful interaction with the elected board.

There's a wealth of knowledge.

You just don't jump into this position and say, "Okay, I know what's going on."

I mean, I've served on this board for eight years, and it has been amazing what I've learned along the way, but what I also brought to the table.

And so I think, if anything, we could certainly be beneficial in working together to help them do whatever they're supposed to do better, because we are connected with the community in a way that we've been elected.

And so people chose us for that role and to help guide them along the way.

But that's a big what-if, but I wanted to address your question.

- Sure.

- The arguments for, right now, the audit has kind of taken center stage in terms of clearly Mark White and Brent Taylor pushing to get this bill across the finish line.

But the impetus in the past is, there have been some really low-performing schools, right?

I mean, in 2023-24, which is the numbers I pulled from the site, and these are the state letter grades that they give schools, there were 77 or so schools that were D or F schools.

That includes charter schools and ones run by you all in the Memphis-Shelby County School system.

I mean, is there an argument, I've heard from other people, there's a lot of politics when you're talking to the legislature and stuff, but I've heard from other people, like, "We've been talking about the school system forever.

We've had these failing schools.

We need to try something different."

Is that a fair argument?

- Well, perhaps part of it is, but another part of that equation is that also, the district has been severely underfunded by the state.

That's something that needs to be a part of the equation as well too.

But I'll let Chair McKinney address this.

But the school district has seen significant improvement from the schools that came off those D and F ratings to B and C or higher.

And so there's been growth and improvement over that period.

- So I appreciate that.

I'm glad you looked at that, 'cause I looked at it the other way.

We have 120-plus schools that are ranged from A to C. So let's look at the glass half full, and actually more than half full, in terms of our schools.

So our schools are actually, the major or over majority of our schools are actually performing from an A to C level.

We are putting, I think our administration under Dr.

Richmond, he's looking very deeply at how to move those other schools off of the D and F list.

So I think we need to pay attention to the trend line, because it's actually getting, more of our schools are going into the A, B, and C range.

- Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, because, again, we're looking at school year 2023-24 grades, there's 57 schools in the A and B. You said A and C. I think probably a lot of people in Memphis don't know that and don't have that perception.

Is that because of the media?

Is that because of all the turmoil?

You talked about the merger, de-merger.

Is that because of politics of people pointing to the low-performing schools?

Which no one wants.

I don't hear you guys defending lower-performing schools.

Why is that perception that I bet most people in Memphis wouldn't think there are 57 schools, whatever the number is in the most recent year, in that A and B, graded by the state and graded against schools across the state?

- I think as a district, we definitely need to do a better PR campaign in letting people know outside the MSCS community that the schools are doing and students are doing better than the perception that is out there.

I think it's contributing to a lot of factors that we won't go into detail here, but I think that's part of it.

But also it's so nuanced, because you'll have a school, say where my kids went to school, Downtown Elementary, I think it was last ranked at C level.

Well, you have students who are coming from so many different socioeconomic levels coming into that school, and that impacts the overall score.

You have some extremely high-performing students, and then you have those who are really struggling.

And so if you look at the smaller numbers, you'll see where that impact is taking place.

So it's hard.

I hate to give one broad brush of saying, "Here's the letter for that school" when there's so much beneath that.

- Yeah, yeah, you wanna add?

Then I'll go to Laura.

- Yeah.

I think you also need to recognize that the board, along with the superintendent, were doing a much better job during our board meetings, so actually, of communicating that information, of where we are and what we're doing and how we're planning on addressing these things.

I think the board is doing a great job of holding the administration accountable to what they wanna see with the scorecard.

And that's gonna be very public and transparent on the website.

So yes, we could do a better job, as Board Member McKissick has said, and I think we're moving toward that.

- Yeah, 10 minutes left here, Laura.

- On Tuesday, you guys voted to close five schools, which is the first step of potentially 15 closures over the next three years if the district continues to follow a long-term facilities plan that this board also recently approved.

About $6 million in annual cost savings, about $27 million over 10 years taken off of estimated deferred maintenance by not having these buildings on the books.

But one of the reasons that you all and the administration have said this is happening is to improve academic outcomes, improve learning experiences for students.

I wonder how you are planning to direct the administration or what you want to hear from the administration to see if that is true, see if the students who are going to these new merged schools do begin to experience improved academic experiences, do have additional programming that they're offered.

- Yeah.

Like I've said, and we've been doing this for the past, I guess since, what, September or so, we are focused on having the superintendent bring us the scorecard that aligns to all of these schools.

We want to see the data.

So I think we've heard from board members very specifically.

I know some schools were impacted in your district and also in Board Member Love's, and they were very clear about we wanna see whether what you are saying is actually gonna play out.

And again, I want us to understand that what we're doing is trying to modernize and provide a state-of-the-art education and academic program.

That's the whole point.

Consolidation and closure are two strategies for us to invest in our schools and invest in our academic programming.

And so that is what the whole purpose of this facilities plan is.

And yes, we will monitor, and you will see us monitoring what happens in those schools and all of our schools.

- I guess to be a little bit more specific about that question, we can talk about Ida B. Wells, for example.

Ida B. Wells is not a school that anyone is zoned to, so you're not necessarily going to see all of those students end up in the exact same place now that the school is closed.

So in addition to monitoring individual school performances, do you anticipate that the district should take any additional steps to monitor the specific students who will be leaving these closed schools?

- I think the district needs to look at the district as a whole, at all schools and all students, and monitoring that, because if you are focusing on the district as a whole, that's gonna impact every individual student.

And that's something that I know that I'm laser-focused on.

I mean, it was just so difficult to say as a board Ida B. Wells needed to be closed, but it just wasn't physically, fiscally responsible for us to keep that school open.

And that's the tough conversations we're gonna be having for years to come as we work through this master facilities plan.

- Those five that were closing, apologies if I'm repeating something Laura said, but I think you guys were looking at 15 schools total over three years.

Is that the number I pulled?

- From the long-term facilities plan.

- From the long-term plan.

- Yeah.

- I mean, the next 10, the decisions on those will be made when?

- That'll be brought to us according to the plan.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And so that I think will be up to the superintendent, how he rolls that out in conjunction, and we have committed to working with our Facilities Ad hoc Committee, thinking about how we engage community, thinking about how we then fund and finance some of this modernization that we're trying to do and may result in renovations, it may result in repurposing, it may result in maybe even a new school build.

So we'll see.

- Yeah.

If 15 schools total, that would represent, I think, about 10% of the overall facilities.

I think I'm quoting Laura correctly.

I'm looking at her.

Hopefully, I didn't get it wrong.

- That's right.

- Seven minutes left here.

Vouchers have been a big priority of Governor Lee, and to some degree, certainly Republican-dominated legislature has passed that.

There's a proposal to add as many as tens of thousands more.

It's not real clear how many might get approved.

It seems like a certain amount are gonna get approved, an expansion of vouchers.

What sort of impact have vouchers that allow parents of MSCS children to take their kids out of the school and go to private schools?

- It's so interesting that you should ask that because we were just at a Tennessee School Boards Association meeting, and they were stating that, at this point, the majority of the students that are being impacted with these vouchers are already in private schools.

So they're not exactly attracting students from MSCS.

And my biggest concern with the vouchers is, of course, public dollars going into private schools, but also the lack of parity in terms of, if you're receiving these public dollars now, private schools need to be held to the same level of accountability as public schools.

- Yeah.

So if the money for the voucher is $9,000, $10,000, I should write that down.

- It's about $9,200 for students who are not part of certain income eligibility for students who are, for students who are not, it's about $7,200.

So the students that you were just speaking about have about $7,200.

- So if that student was not in MSCS, the school system doesn't lose any dollars?

- No.

- Because if a student in MSCS leaves, they take their money with them and you guys are down $7,000 to $9,000.

Is that correct or no?

- The question becomes, is this a sustainable model across the state for those who choose to stay in public school system?

Because I don't know where that money's coming from, and so does that mean that it is potentially pulling from students who choose to stay in the public school system?

I'm not sure.

I don't know the formula and I haven't seen the math.

- Lee's proposal was to add $155 million to the voucher program.

Now, I don't know that the legislature has the appetite to fund that full, but he's pushing hard for it, and they have pretty dramatically expanded it.

- Well, what would you say if that same $150 million went back into public schools across the state of Tennessee?

It would have an impact.

It would have a positive impact.

- How would you spend that money as one board member?

And then I'll go to you.

- First of all, infrastructure.

Our schools are so old, especially in my district, District 1 that I represent.

Central High School, Ida B. Wells, Idlewild Elementary, Peabody, they're all extraordinarily beautifully old schools that need so much love.

- And I'm putting you on the spot.

How would you spend that $150 million?

- Probably the same way, but I'd also figure out how do we do a sustainable model of recruiting and retaining teachers, particularly around paying them.

That's one of our biggest issues.

We don't have enough money to do that.

So that kind of revenue could allow us that.

- Yeah, five minutes left, Laura.

- One of, the ESA program, the program that has existed specifically for Memphis-Shelby County public school students to use vouchers, it's about 2,500 students in Memphis that have left MSCS or the ASD to go to private schools.

But that is not all of the enrollment that could have happened in that program.

That program has been under-enrolled, and the remaining funds in recent years have gone back to public school districts to improve the lowest-performing schools.

I wanted to talk about the lowest-performing schools because the district, in its closure plan, closed two former Achievement School District schools in Frayser, Frayser-Corning, which was already a merge of two of those schools, and Georgian Hills.

But the district is also going to keep open the last two schools in the ASD this upcoming year, Hillcrest High School and Kirby Middle School.

As I have covered this, it's been a kind of chaotic unwinding of this state takeover district, and there was no clear path for any one school.

But all of these students are still, unless they're some of those who have taken the vouchers, part of Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

What is going to be different about the way that MSCS works with its lowest-performing schools going forward?

What is the standard that you want to set for the administration about how to improve those schools' experiences?

- I feel like we have been here and done that before.

So our turnaround model, the iZone, was highly successful.

And we actually have the architect of that model leading our school district right now.

So I have complete confidence that Dr.

Richmond and his team are thinking very critically and very deeply about how they make sure those two schools begin to see the same level of increased performance as we have seen in some of the other turnaround models that we have here.

- The iZone changed though and didn't always have that extra hour or the same resources for the more highly effective teachers.

Are those two things that you would want to see brought back, or do you expect a different plan?

- I think one of the things in talking to Dr.

Richmond, and you remember I was part of the district years ago when we were doing that, is that we recognized that it was hitting a plateau.

And I think he recognized it.

And so I think he's doing the work to figure out what are the next steps and phases to that to ensure that you keep getting the high performance out of that model, so there may be some tweaks to it.

I'm interested and excited about seeing what Dr.

Richmond comes up with.

- Okay, thank you.

- With a minute left here, in COVID nationally, chronic absenteeism in schools spiked everywhere, including here.

I think a recent story that either Laura did or Chalkbeat did- - Chalkbeat did, yeah.

- Chalkbeat, to give them credit.

The high school absenteeism in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which is 18 or more days out, is at 40%.

It's about 12,000 students at the high school level compared to about 25%, to be fair, statewide.

Back to accountability, I guess I'll give you this question, is do you feel like that's a priority for the board and you wanna, I mean, you can't turn the dials on that, but is that a high priority for you and the board, for the administration to tackle that number?

- It's a high priority for all of us.

We were just addressing it in our board meeting the other night and rolling out a new dashboard that is public called My Pathway to Greatness.

And it monitors that every parent can look at it every single day to see where their child stands academically and especially with their attendance.

And sometimes, you may not even realize how off your attendance may be due to illness or whatever, but you can monitor that.

And more importantly, the district can monitor it so they can try to jump in and correct a problem before it becomes more significant and serious.

- We're out of time.

I didn't give you the last word here, Natalie, but we will have you both back.

We appreciate both of you being here, and we will be covering, and thank you, Laura.

Laura and others will be covering the moves at the state legislature about this potential takeover and then again possible legal outcomes.

We did have, if you came late, we did have Brent Taylor and Mark White from the state legislature on the show a couple weeks ago.

You can get that show as well as past shows with the chief public defender, Steve Mulroy, the DA.

All that is at wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, or YouTube, where you can download the full podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next week.

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