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- The state's role in local schools, 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 two state representatives, one state senator, and one state representative, Mark White, thank you for being here.

- Thank you for the invitation.

- And Brent Taylor, state senator, thank you for being here.

- Glad to be here, Mark's gonna deal cards for us later.

- Okay, yeah, we're gonna look forward to that, that'll be towards the end.

Along with Laura Testino, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We are talking about schools and you both were very much in the news and very much at the front of potential changes with Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and maybe other parts of the statewide system.

But you both had bills, slightly different, that didn't get passed in the last session, but are still, I think we'll talk about this, but I think very much alive for the future.

That would have, depending on how one wants to characterize it, I'll try to do as neutrally as possible, created new control, new authority over Memphis-Shelby County Schools above the school board, above the elected school board.

Let's do, for those who maybe forgot a little bit, don't know exactly what happened, let's go through, and I'll start with you, Mark, 'cause you're closest to me, what your bill did.

And then Brent, if you'd go through how your bill is slightly different and where you guys are in terms of, are you gonna bring these bills back?

There's an audit that's gonna happen that was settled on and approved.

So walk us through the bill briefly.

- Right, what we did on the House Chamber side, and we started working those in January, we started working on it last year, but from January through April while we're in session, the House version basically created a nine-member board of managers, which had authority over the school board.

The school board would not be removed, they would still be in place, but they would be in more in an advisory role to the nine-member board of managers.

And so we felt that that is something that was needed, and they'd all be from Memphis, Shelby County, people in the business industry and the education industry who had knowledge and background on how to really move our 100,000 student school system at Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

- And in your bill, that board of nine people would've been appointed how?

- They would've appointed, and that got changed a little bit.

We had it through the governor and the two speakers, House and Senate.

- Okay.

And Brent, how is your bill different than that?

- Yeah, so the Senate bill was different in that it's the same in that it had an advisory board, the difference is the advisory board under the House bill would've actually had authority to actually perform a lot of the duties that the school board currently serves.

The Senate version, the advisory board really was merely an advisory board and that they would make recommendations to the school board.

But the catch was that the Commissioner of Education is what I'm trying to say, the Commissioner of Education would have the authority to remove school board members who don't get on with the program.

And so that would be the idea that this advisory board would make recommendations, and for those school board members who are obstinate to the change, then they would be doing so under the threat of removal.

The Senate version, I actually liked the House version, but I could not get that through the Senate, the Senate and my colleagues, they still had PTSD from the Achievement School District.

And they were afraid that if they were to do this and we put in a board that actually makes the decisions in lieu of the elected board, that if it went south, the legislature's fingerprints is on it.

So that was the Senate bill is what I could get through the Senate at that time.

- And just for people, I'll do this poorly, but the Achievement School District was put in place to take over the bottom, what, 5, 10% of school?

- Certain bottom 5%.

- Bottom 5%.

Many of those were in Memphis, not all of them.

I think generally, looking back on it, there wasn't a whole lot of success that came from that.

I think you can point to certain schools, but it was not particularly a successful program.

It got the state very much involved.

Before I go to Laura, just talk about in much more detail and authority with this, one more thing, are you bringing your bills back, I guess, for both of you?

- Yes, well, we have passed it in the House and we have passed the Senate version.

So they're sitting there fully ready to go.

All we have to do when we go back in January, if the timing is right, is just line them up, kinda like the Big Beautiful Bill that Congress just did.

- I haven't heard of it.

- You haven't heard of it.

So you had the House version, the Senate version, then go back to the House to line it up.

We just didn't do the lining up, so we held it right there come January, so all we had to do was line 'em up and move.

- Agreed.

- Yeah, agreed.

And one of the reasons we decided, it was literally on the last day of the session, we decided we got $6 million that we set aside for this forensic audit.

And we thought, you know what, let's see if we could get the results of the audit and see if that will help us inform the best way to merge the two bills together.

- And I wanna follow up on that and just sort of see, you know, what you are hoping to learn from the audit that would inform what some of those compromises might look like, 'cause you guys have explained sort of how the advisory board, new board authority would look, but there were other pieces of your bills as well that would, you know, sometimes intervene in certain rules about vouchers, other possible takeovers of other low-performing schools and, you know, sort of as well as kind of the list of things that an advisory board may be able to decide.

And so, you know, are those the things that you think you may change based off what the findings of the audit are, or do you think that the audit will inform more of what this intervention mechanism ends up being?

- Well, I will say, I think what we'll learn from the audit, and by the way, a $6 million forensic audit is the kind of audit that people go to the pokey over.

So we'll find out in there if there has been a misappropriation of money, how they spend money.

And so I think the audit will help us decide the best way for the district to spend money going forward.

And I mean, there are a lot of areas where you could look to how we deal with school buildings, how they maintain school buildings.

And you know, Mark and I were talking yesterday, they've got this, they sit on a lot of cash, but then when they need something, they go to the County Commission or the state for them or us to fund it.

It's just like when my kids were little, they would save their allowance in their little piggy bank, but when they wanted to buy something, they'd come to mom and dad to buy it.

And that's where we are with the school district.

So I think it will help us inform that, but there are other things that the audit won't touch that I think the school takeover bill will address.

And that is, if you look, the school district is the worst school district in the state.

- I wanna talk through some of the TCAP data in just a little bit about that.

- Right, well, I'll be glad to do that, but it's the worst school district in the state.

And the school board is acting in a way that a bunch of dumbasses would act.

And that is that they had the best school in the state, the University School, the best school in the state, highest test scores.

Kids from every zip code in the county went to University School.

It was 50% white, 50% Black.

And the school district would not even let 'em grow.

And so the school district wouldn't even look at the best school in the state and try to learn from that.

- And state solved that with creating legislation that created them to be their own district.

- We worked on that for three years.

And now the University of Memphis Campus School is their own LEA.

- Yes.

And Representative White, for you, about what you expect the audit to inform?

- Well, we're hoping that we'll uncover 'cause we've heard stories and people have called me for years and years about the spending, this year the school budget is $1.9 billion.

That's a lot of money.

The state's investment is $900 million.

That's why we're so actively engaged, almost a billion dollars comes from the taxpayers across the state.

We have 147 school districts, the total state budget is $6.8 billion.

We're getting $1 out of every 7.

And as Senator Taylor said, we're not performing like that.

And so we're hoping that the audit will show us some places where, you know, billion dollars plus deferred maintenance of our facilities and you know, just on and on and on we could go.

- Sure.

- And so, we're hoping that we'll uncover some things that we say, "Okay, this is why we need a board of managers."

- Sure, okay.

And just as a quick follow up to that, we know from procurement documents where the comptroller, who's picking the firm to do this audit has said, you know, "We are probably going "to keep the engagement letter confidential "so we're not, you know, "the public is not gonna necessarily know what this audit is going to exactly cover until it's done."

And also that the contract with the firm that's selected is set to begin in July and is projected to be between a 9- and 18-month contract.

Which stands to reason that it may be possible that the audit is finished up and these auditors can come and speak to you and the legislature when session returns in January, but it's also possible, it seems, based off of this projection that the audit is not done at that time.

What do you plan to do with your legislation if the audit is not complete?

You can start.

- Well, we've got until we adjourn in April, end of April, sign and die, as they say, we're in the second year, the two-year term.

So we got those four months also as we're waiting on that.

So we don't have to do it in January, by the way, but we've got it alive and well, and to see, we got six months, and then four months.

So we got 10 months of data will be coming in.

- Okay.

- Same.

- Same, okay.

- And I was just gonna make the same point that we can wait 'til the end of session to see if we get the result of the audit.

And look, even if we don't have the full results of the audit, if we could get partial results enough to help us inform the best way to merge the bills together, we may be able to have information at our fingertips to do that.

- Does it not concern you?

I mean, some of the pushback on this or the criticism of it, people I think even who aren't necessarily happy with the performance of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, these school board members were elected.

I mean, they had free and fair elections.

People voted for them and they won, and not liking their decision, not agreeing with their decision, is that justification for essentially stripping them of power?

- I think it is, and this is why.

We have 100,000 students, right now, the data, you're gonna get into the TCAP data, three out of four are below proficiency.

The Governor of Arkansas just dismissed the Blytheville School Board for many reasons that they're not effective in that region.

I think there comes a point in time for the health of the city, and Senator Taylor have talked about this many times, you've got the educational foundation of a city and then that if you don't do a good job there, then you go deal with crime issues.

We hear over and over again, they build prisons based upon third grade reading scores.

And so, and that's all true.

And so we've got a wonderful city, we've got economic development coming in right now.

If we don't have an educated workforce, and our K-12 is kicking it, then we're doing our city damage.

- But again, that's not, I mean, they were elected.

I mean, isn't that the fundamental of democracy that, you know, you all were elected, if let's say somehow, it's unlikely in the dynamics of Tennessee, you're both Republicans, that a governor or someone above at the federal level came and said, "I don't like what Brent Taylor is doing."

- I hear that a lot.

- I know, but what about someone coming in and saying, "No, we're gonna strip you of power," even though you were overwhelmingly elected?

- Well, first of all, the school board ranks right up there with jock itch in terms of what people think about 'em.

- But that's not the point.

I mean, there are people who don't like you, like you said.

- But we did pass a bill last year which went largely unreported.

And that is that next year, the entire school board will be up for reelection because this experiment of staggering the terms of school board members turned out to be a disaster because in that off year where you're not on the same cycle with the County Commission and the county mayor, there is reduced voter turnout.

And some of the school board members who were elected, got elected at a fraction of their counterparts who were on the other cycle.

So we passed a law that next year, the entire school board will be up for election and, hopefully, the voters will have an opportunity to assess how well these school board members- - Okay, you and then I want one more of this.

- I just wanna say I wanna give credit to Representative Torrey Harris who carried that bill.

This made it non-partisan.

He's a Democrat and he carried that bill, seeing that that is an area that we need to look at.

- Sure.

- But one more for me, Laura, and then I'm gonna, because Laura knows way more about this, but I just wanna do the big picture thing of what people are responding to in some cases.

So let's say, so now that the election is synced up, let's assume the reconciled bill is gonna go through next year for a second.

Would you want that board to go in place before or after the next set of elections?

And I think that matters, 'cause again, what will those school board members and the people voting for them know I'm voting for a board that is empowered or a board that is advisory.

I mean, that would seem to really matter.

Or would the board come in with the currently elected school board and take over and oversight above them before the new board came in?

This sounds wonky, but again, it gets back to the, these people were voted for in free and fair elections.

- Yeah, but I will say this, at every level there is an opportunity for elected officials to be removed.

I mean, how many times the Democrats impeached President Trump?

They're talking about doing it again.

- But the process went through and it didn't happen.

- That's right, and this is a process, no one is gonna show up to a school board meeting and point to different school board members, and say, "You're out."

It all undergoes a process.

But, you know, they tried to impeach the President, there's a way you can try to remove a DA, I don't know if you've heard about that.

- I think we may have talked about that.

- That's right.

You can also remove judges and we've done that.

And there are ouster proceedings.

There was talk about trying to remove the county clerk.

So this is not unprecedented, but it is difficult, and it should be difficult because, to your point, you're overturning the will of the public.

- One more and then we'll go back.

- But neither bill removed the board, by the way.

One put 'em in advisory, and then the one that I had in the House also put 'em in advisory, the board of managers had the authority.

I think we're at a point in time in our city, we need some, like, some good business managers.

If I could say this very quickly, we have a $2 billion budget for our Memphis-Shelby County Schools for 100,000 approximately students.

It took FedEx from 1973 to 1983 to get to a billion in revenue.

A billion in revenue.

Now, if three out of every four of their packages were late or never made it, Fred Smith, who we are going to really miss in this community, he did so much for us, he would've gotten rid of every person on that board until they got it right.

We're at a critical time in the history of our city is that we've got to get our K-12 education right because it is hurting the future of this city.

- All right, back to Laura.

- Yeah, I do just wanna make one clarification.

The County Commission still has to act on the legislation that would allow for all nine members to be up for election.

So, you know, I know that there are some County Commissioners who have said that it's their intent to vote for that, but as of now, it is still just half at this point that will be up for election.

But I wanna talk about, and both of you talked about this when you presented these bills, which is, and we've touched on it a little bit here, which is just, you know why, right?

Like, what is the impetus, and a lot of times it's academic results.

That is why we are wanting to intervene, why you both are wanting to intervene in the school district.

So we have some new TCAP data from this past school year that, you know, I think I want to know from you both, you know, to really get into the nitty-gritty as much as we can about what is satisfactory from the school district.

What amount of achievement or growth is what you're wanting to see.

Just to kind of start with a few statistics, I'll talk about English language arts results for all grades is the numbers that I'll share here.

So across the state, we had 40.9% of students in all grades in Tennessee reach proficiency on ELA.

And in Memphis it is very different, it is 24.6% proficiency.

The district's proficiency was higher for younger grades.

But you know, some of the higher grades, not as much.

If we drill down though into a district that is 75% black, fifty-three percent economically disadvantaged, which are higher shares than across the state, we see more similar results.

The state averages are higher, but not by much.

For instance, economically disadvantaged proficiency rate for the state of Tennessee, 23.8%, for MSCS, 20.2, proficiency of black students in Tennessee, 25.8%, at MSCS, that's 22.2%.

So those differences aren't as stark.

You know, I think that, you know, there are officials across the country who look at these subgroup performances because they're historically underperforming groups wanting to figure out how to support them and raise those scores.

I don't offer those comparisons to say that I expect that those are proficiency rates that you think are great, but more to just kind of put this in context of sort of, you know, what do you expect the school district to do differently than the state right now to really outperform averages for those same student groups that they're serving?

- Children are children and all children have the ability to learn and for us to divide things based upon race or gender, anything, I think does a disservice.

I want the 100,000 students in the Memphis-Shelby County System to do as well as the students that are represented in Germantown who have the highest ACT scores in the state along with Collierville.

They should have the same opportunities and the same privileges, and they should be doing just as well.

And they can, I know there's a lot of factors when you have socioeconomic issues that a lot of our young people in the city deal with.

But that's what we're fighting for.

We're fighting for a better system for them so that they can have the same opportunities in our workforce or higher education such they choose.

- Yeah, I just don't agree with the premise of the question that somehow because somebody's poor or black that they can't learn as well as their white counterparts.

Campus School's a good example.

They had kids from every single zip code in the county.

It was 50% black, 50% white, and it was the best school in the entire state.

And the Memphis-Shelby County School District, they contracted with Campus School, they were under that LEA and they didn't even have enough sense as a school board to look and say, "Look, we got the best school in the state.

Let's look and see what we're doing there and replicate it."

They didn't even have sense enough to do that.

And so we have to make changes and that FedEx example was a perfect example, and as we got a almost $2 billion enterprise here, it is not performing well.

And to answer your question specifically, what do they have to do?

Look, we don't expect them overnight to get to the state average.

It will take some time to do that, but we need to be moving and headed in the right direction and we need more than just small incremental increases.

And I believe that with the right board in place, and the right policies, we can get there.

- And, you know, I think speaking about Germantown, some of their highest proficiency scores on the TCAP are about 70%.

I think that there are a lot of people who hear 25% proficient and expect, you know, like they would want their student to make 100% on a test.

100% proficiency is just not what happens on the TCAP test in Tennessee.

Is the state average the goal then?

I know I sort of framed the question talking about state averages, is that where you think that MSCS should be able to grow its students?

- Well, think about this.

That's the state average.

We're bringing the state average down.

What would the state average be if we were up here where the average would be above the 40%?

So we're kind of pulling the whole state down.

I sat on the national nation's report called NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, where we test the sampling tests of all 50 states so that we know in Tennessee how we're doing compared to Massachusetts, or Washington, or Mississippi.

And so, we need to have everyone doing well so that we can, we're actually, the good news is as a state, we're doing better than most.

We have a long way to go, but we're doing better than most.

- Let me come back to the, I think you were talking about the premise, of rejecting the premise of Laura's question.

And I think about Dorsey Hopson, former school superintendent during the transition from merger, and then demerger.

And he sat here in one of these chairs and he said, "Look, Eric, this is," and I quote it all the time, I paraphrase it poorly all the time.

He said, "For so many of our kids, "they come in late, having walked to school, cold, wet, "they didn't have dinner, "they weren't able to do their homework, "and they didn't have breakfast.

"So that's where we start every day.

"So we've gotta get this kid some dry clothes.

"We gotta give him some food, we gotta give him some books.

"We gotta give him a pencil, we gotta get him paper.

"We gotta get him caught up on yesterday's last night's homework."

That's not because they're black, that's 'cause they're poor.

And I think that to me, that always sits with me.

And I don't think you guys are callous about that.

And they're poor, and you can see from the data, they're the poorest districts in Tennessee.

And by and large, the poorest districts in this country don't do well because of the kinds of things that Dorsey talked about.

This is a majority black city, with overwhelming majority of black people in the Memphis-Shelby County School System.

But I think that's the point of the statistics not to in any way imply black kids can't succeed.

This is, to me, I think, and to Dorsey and to others, it's about poverty.

- It is.

And everything you say is true.

So what do we do about it?

- Fair enough.

- And that's the thing that makes me angry is we are not addressing it the way we can address this.

How do you address it?

Well, you maybe you need to break it down into smaller parts.

Why does a University of Memphis School do well?

You know, they got a smaller, we want them to expand.

Germantown is 8,000 students, I think, Collierville and Arlington, they're 10, 12.

Let's address those needs.

We can't just keep doing what we're doing and expect to get different results.

- And Eric, I agree with you, but we've been doing the same damn thing now for a decade and it's not getting any better.

And to Mark's point, I think one reason the University of Memphis Schools, Germantown, Collierville, Arlington, Lakeland, Millington Schools are succeeding is because they're smaller.

And I think we've got a district that is too big, it's unmanageable.

And I really think the discussion ought to go in the coming years is whether or not we need to break up the Shelby County School System into smaller districts.

And there you would be in a better position to address those poverty issues as well.

- Those poverty issues are, you know, if you look at the TCAP data along economically-disadvantaged students, I do just want to point out those trends are still generally reflected.

They may not be exactly the same, but Millington, which has a population of students who are more economically-disadvantaged than compared to say, Lakeland or Arlington, they do have, their TCAP scores reflect that in that way.

- But Laura, which is better to address that, a big behemoth district made up of 85, 90,000 kids or a smaller district made up of 8 or 9,000 kids?

I think the smaller district is much more agile and they can address those concerns better than a big district can.

- And we will do entire shows about Brent Taylor's proposal to break up the school district next year.

That's what I heard you saying, I think, or something like that, but we could do a whole show on that.

We didn't get to everything.

I gotta cut you off a little bit early today.

Thank you, Laura, thank the both of you.

A bit of sad news this week and in our world, and I think for people who follow news, Karanja Ajanaku, friend of the show who for many years was in this seat and our roundtables, passed away this last week after a fight with cancer at 70-years-old, used to seem old, doesn't seem as old anymore.

He was a reporter for a long time at The Commercial Appeal.

He was the editor of the New Tri-State Defender.

His friend and colleague, Otis Sanford, wrote a beautiful column this week.

And if you knew Karanja on this show, he was so thoughtful, so insightful, and had perspectives that just always surprised me and made me think about whatever it was we were talking about.

When Tyre Nichols and all of that happened, he said, you know, among the horrors of it, he said, "I keep thinking about these policemen's families whose lives are destroyed."

And I had never thought about that.

And Karanja just thought differently about things.

Otis said about him, "Every person who chooses journalism as a career "should do so to be a difference maker.

"Many succeed, some excel.

Karanja excelled."

So thoughts to Karanja's friends and families, thank you for joining us.

Join us again next week.

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