- (female announer) 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.

- A look at the suburban 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 three superintendents from various suburban schools, starting with Jason Manuel from the Germantown Municipal School District.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me.

- Allison Clark, superintendent of Arlington Community Schools.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Ted Horrell is the superintendent for Lakeland School System.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me.

- And Mary Cashiola is editorial director for The Daily Memphian.

Before we get started, a bit of housekeeping.

We are in the middle of early voting as this airs.

Early voting has started this week and runs through, I believe, August 1st, and then election day is August 6th.

There are something like 150 plus candidates on the ballot.

You can go to Shelby Vote and get a bunch of information where to vote, how to vote.

The Daily Memphian has a big voter guide with information on all those candidates, stories we've done, and so on.

In some of the key races that are up and will be finalized in this round of the three rounds of voting through this year, county mayor, we interviewed both the candidates for that.

You can get that at wkno.org, YouTube, The Daily Memphian.

We also interviewed, on Behind the Headlines, I should clarify, for sheriff, the Democrat and Republican candidates.

You can get full interviews with them and lots of profiles and interviews of all the other candidates.

We're moving towards, for federal and state, this will be the primary.

And once we get those primary candidates lined up, we'll hope to get some of the big talked-about candidates on, certainly the redistricting, the now three districts that encompass or subdivide, depending on your perspective.

The Memphis area, Shelby County, we'll try to get some of those candidates on, senator, governor, all those.

But all of those are being covered on Daily Memphian right now as we talk.

I'll start with just a quick, and I may start with you, Jason, just 'cause that's how we introduced.

Germantown, just for everybody's sense, three elementary schools?

- We have four, yes.

- Four?

But one is elementary to middle.

Do you count that as an elementary school?

- Yes, we call it elementary.

- Okay, no, that's fine.

That's fine, it's fine.

- Yes, so three true elementary schools, Riverdale is a K-8 school.

We have Houston Middle School, which is a 6-8 school, and then Houston High School is our high school.

- And I'll do this for each of you, but just real briefly, as you go into this, what, a couple weeks from the school you're starting, the biggest challenges that you feel like you face, biggest opportunities you have?

And then we'll get into details.

- Well, for us, we always have a challenge with teachers, and this is a national challenge that we face, is there's a teacher shortage.

And so we are always looking to get the best and brightest in front of our students and make sure that we have quality candidates.

And as I've been doing this, this my 13th year being a superintendent, I think we came in at the same time, Ted, that it has really changed over time, the pools that we have, they've gotten smaller and smaller and smaller.

It's just not as attractive as it used to be.

- Allison, same for you.

Arlington has, what, two elementary, one middle, one high.

- That is correct.

- Again, all these districts as independent districts are about 13 years old.

But your biggest challenges, biggest opportunities?

- Well, I'm proud to say that we are 100% staffed today.

[guests laughing] So we hope we will stay that.

- There's always a little smack talk.

There's always a little smack talk between the districts when they come on.

- I know that my colleagues here, Dr.

Horrell and Mr.

Manuel, can share that same, is you're getting close to the beginning of the school year.

As Mr.

Manuel shared, it can be a challenge in staffing, especially when you have those programs that set you apart and they're highly sought after programs and you have that specialty instructor you need for that.

But today we're 100%.

So I keep my fingers crossed that we will stay that way until the first day of school, August the 6th.

- And Ted?

- Yeah, I think it's always a challenge to find the very best teachers.

And to my understanding, we're fully staffed as well.

I think one challenge that we all share is that every year during the state legislative session, they gift us with a number of new laws that impact education.

I think at our last board meeting, we updated 36 policies, the vast majority of which were results of legislation.

So mainly just staying on top of those things, making sure the school administrators, making sure the teachers know.

A lot of times they're just tweaks.

Sometimes they're more fundamental, but just making sure that we continue to follow our mission, vision, and goals, but also make sure we're in compliance with whatever the new laws are.

- Thirty-six just from the last session?

- Is that about right?

I mean, I don't think that's- - Yeah, yeah, again, I joked with you all before.

It's not a math test, except you're a former math teacher, so it's unfair to us.

But give examples to people.

Because I think so many people think, and this happens with the city, that the mayor of Memphis, I think people, casual observers of politics think the mayor of Memphis is over the local schools.

I mean, there's all these differences, right?

The state, which does a lot of the funding, has a big hand and a big say in how you all operate.

So give an example of a small tweak that would surprise people that is not a policy you all put in, but that came from the state.

- Sure, for example, there's a new requirement on having instruction on human trafficking as part of the curriculum.

So we all have to work with our academic teams to make sure that it's being implemented, that it's understood, that it's the approved curriculum, and that we're fitting it into an already busy schedule.

There's a couple of observations.

We're required to observe the 4th of July during the school year, even though the 4th of July does not actually occur during our school year, but there is a requirement now to recognize that.

So just making sure that we do it.

- Who teaches it, and what curriculum is it embedded into, and how are you gonna assess it?

But they never take anything off the table.

They continue to add new policies.

- Yeah, so we're right, it's a challenge.

- Some of the biggest- - Physical fitness assessment test now, that's come back.

You know, that was in place.

I can remember when I served as a principal, 'cause I could hear all the dinging in the gym to do the sprints and the runs.

Well, now it's back.

So we have to make sure that that's a hereto, and that our physical education teachers note that and record that.

- Yeah, we'll get to some of the bigger ones, but I'm gonna bring Mary in, but we'll get to vouchers, we'll get to all these kinds of other things, but let me turn to Mary here.

- Sure, I think one of the questions I have when we're having this discussion about the changes each year, right?

Like, so 36 new laws.

Y'all have all been in education for a while now.

One of the conversations I'm continually having with other parents and just sort of people my age is like, what have the biggest changes in education been over the last, like say, 20 years?

I know that's a huge question.

- I'll jump in on this one.

I think this goes back to my teacher problem.

We were getting candidates and people who wanted to go into education because it was about relationships and it was about working with children and making a difference in their community.

And now this view on accountability and how many ways we have to test, assess evaluations in classroom that's all top-down and dictated by state requirements.

It's taken the passion away from some of these educators who are coming and thinking, why am I going to go through all of that and have to provide 18 tests a year to our students' assessments?

It's a real challenge for educators.

So I think that's the biggest.

It's just the whole focus on accountability only for public schools has been the challenge.

- Not the private schools who get vouchers.

- Correct, no accountability there.

- Biggest changes for Ted.

- I think to that point, I think there's a lot more scrutiny and questions about what we do and how we do it.

And I think it can be unnerving sometimes for teachers that might feel like if they say the wrong thing or say something that may be perceived a certain way that there's gonna be some accountability.

And I feel like that's new and that's a change.

- For you, Allison.

- It's ditto, it's the same.

We all have those same challenges within our district.

And that challenge is because we do have people not soughting out being an educator.

We as leaders have to be creative and how do we make it exciting?

How do we keep them engaged?

We have to really work on the culture.

We have high salaries, but high salaries attract them, but to retain them and keep them in there, especially very talented educators, you have to really be creative in igniting it and making connections with them on a regular basis and not lose sight of that culture.

- One of those changes I would imagine, I mean, over the course, I mean, even from when my kids are now in their late 20s, something happened.

Phones, social media, AI.

I was lucky, I think, in hindsight.

Phones and social were really coming on, but my kids were just a little bit ahead of it, so it wasn't that bad.

- Now it's all kinds of, we've got bans in whole countries.

I mean, what, Australia?

They're banning social media under 16.

Phones at schools, there's a lot of data, not necessarily definitive about problems and dangers and benefits.

Where are all your policies on, I'll start with you, Allison, and we'll just go back to you.

Phones, it's a lot, but phones, social, and you can take AI or not.

- Right.

A year ago, that was a mandate that came by the state.

Elementary and middle were already functioning to not have the cell phones during the instructional day.

The high school, it got more relaxed, so we had to pull that back a little bit, but I will say that the way we did it in our communication to our families and students' listening sessions, it was understood that this is a state guideline, so instructional time, we do not.

When it comes to the devices, I know there's a lot of discussion on devices.

If they were on the devices from the minute they came into school all the way to the end of the day, I agree, that's a concern, but what I have viewed personally within my visits on a regular basis at school, it's a balance.

They use them to research, but then they come off of them to do the writing and dig deeper into the presentation format.

- Y'all's Rules.

- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause we opened Lakeland Middle Preparatory School in 2017, and one of the number one questions was, and I know everybody was making this transition around the same time, you are gonna be one-to-one, right?

Everybody's gonna have their own device, right?

We're gonna have a digital curriculum, right?

That was critical.

It would have been a failed opening if we had not secured that.

Obviously, the pendulum has swung the other way, and now the scrutiny seems to be, why are they spending so much time on screens?

Why are they spending so much time on devices?

We need to get back.

I do think it's a healthy conversation and the right one, and I do think the students' attention to those screens warrants that conversation.

- Yeah, you cannot have it during the instructional time.

We do have built-in periods because the state law said they have to be accessible to students.

They can't be on them, but in case of a crisis, they have to be available, so we make sure that they have to be off and stored, and that varies between the middle school and the high school about when they can access those.

- Back to Mary.

- It definitely seems like a high bar for schools to have to navigate, right?

Because I will say, my children are 10 and 12.

The 12-year-old definitely has a phone.

She has a lot of after-school activities.

I have to be able to talk with her.

Obviously, I don't want her texting her friends during class, and if there is something terrible, I do want her to have her phone, so I'm like, this state law, I want them to have their phones, and so having the schools have to be like, okay, bring your phone, but we have to put it somewhere where you can get to it, but you can't get to it too easily.

- It's a balance.

- I think a lot of us were doing that already, roughly.

We actually, when the new law came out saying that was gonna be the mandate, we were already in compliance.

We didn't have to change our policy at all.

They can have them, but they shouldn't be in use.

- I mentioned vouchers, which has been a big change over some years now as that voucher program has expanded.

I don't think you all are as impacted by charter schools.

That's had a lot of impact, obviously, within the Memphis-Shelby County School system, but vouchers, I'll go to you, Jason.

Vouchers have done what?

- They have damaged public school systems across the country, and I think it is an unfair playing system, and it's an effort to privatize education without any accountability.

I have no problem if you're adding 40, 50 laws every single year on the public schools that we have to monitor and adjust, but the second that you take public dollars and give them to private citizens or private school systems without any accountability, I wanna say, why do we have this high level of accountability that's really hurting public education and not allowing it to transfer over?

- In Tennessee, I mean, I'm unclear, how much is it, money that was, if a person who went to a Germantown school and got a voucher and left, do you lose those dollars, or did they fund the transfer of that person with dollars over and above what you were getting essentially on behalf of that?

- So you have two challenges.

The first is if we were 100% funding public education to the amount that it needed to be, then I would say this is a discussion that we could have, but they weren't funding us to begin with.

So we've talked about, and Dr.

Horrell and I have been advocating for preschool.

We're required to have special ed preschool funding in all of our schools, not paid for.

We're required to have it, but not paid for by the state, by federal government.

It costs us about $800,000 a year to do that, and we received $20,000 to do that program.

So we're required to do that.

So if they were funding everything that we had to do, and then said, okay, well, let's look at how we can fund these others, it's all taxpayer dollars that are being taken away from public education-- - So when the governor and the legislature passes, there's $100 million, whatever millions of dollars for this new voucher program, you read the headline, you think, oh, that's new money, and so it's not gonna affect the school left behind.

Allison's shaking her head, the former math teacher.

- It's not, because this year we received $7,500 for each pupil.

If they were with us, they receive a voucher.

That's taking away money from public education that would have gone for public education, it goes.

Plus, we don't get that $7,500 per pupil, because parents have so many options for their children to be educated.

- And I wanna counter also, too, our children aren't leaving in even buckets.

It's not like I can say, oh, let's get rid of that first grade teacher, because I had this many first graders take vouchers.

We still have the same overhead costs that we have as a school district, and that only includes the state portion of our funding, which is about 50%.

It does not cover the county funding that we also receive.

So when you lose a student, you are still losing county funding for those students.

- Is that county funding that's passed through money from the state, or it gets counted?

- Well, it's sales tax that goes to the state and then comes back to the local.

- No, no, go ahead, yeah, okay, okay, Mary.

- Well, I guess I was just sort of wondering with the, since we're talking about funding, let's talk about the funding from the cities for a little bit, because I know that's sort of up in the air, and in 2013, there's a state law that said you're gonna get 15 cents out of every $100 of appraised property tax value, right?

And it seems like the school system, especially in Germantown and the city, have two different interpretations of what that year is supposed to be.

So I think, if I'm understanding it correctly, the city of Germantown has said, yes, that law meant as of 2013, you get 15 cents from 2013.

But everyone else seems to be saying, no, it's 15 cents from that value now.

- So we have been in discussions with the attorneys for the State Board of Education and for the state itself.

So the challenge that we have, for us to create a school system, the state school board and the Department of Education at the state level said, if you wanna have a municipal school system, here's what you have to have to do that.

You have to provide the 15 cent equivalent for every $100 of property tax.

And that amount is not stagnant.

So it goes up and goes down because it's a formula based on property tax, it's not tied to student enrollment.

I think there's confusion about how that relates to the maintenance of effort that local funding bodies have to provide with the TESA funding formula.

- But is that for the county, the maintenance of effort?

- Yes, that's at the county level in relation to TESA.

So this is different from that.

So there's been some confusion.

So we're still waiting on an FAQ that will clearly define all this.

But I would like to point to the fact that all of our municipalities had to submit documentation to the Department of Education that clearly said, we had to pass a referendum that says we have to fund this amount of money.

Our taxpayers do and it has to be spent on education.

Fund and spend in the application documents that had to go to the state level.

- Right, because this all goes back to the schism, right?

When Memphis City Schools legacy were sort of, they gave up their charter, went back into Shelby County Schools, the "munis" left and it's like, that was the big controversy at the time, right?

Like, are we going to be able to pay for this?

Are people going to say, education is important enough that we will raise taxes if we have to, we will pay for this?

- Well, and the community had to vote on two issues.

Do you want a school system and are you willing to pay for it?

And the willing to pay for it, very clearly, we believe, included the 15 cent property tax equivalent.

I do wanna give credit where credit's due.

Lakeland, every year, since the establishment of the school system, has given us the 15 cent equivalent and we believe and hope they'll continue to do so.

- I was gonna say, before I go to Allison, let you comment, some math that we did, and again, between what you're getting from locals, the local government, to what, if it was interpreted the way that you all wanted to interpret it, the difference for Arlington is about over $200,000 a year.

- It was for this past year.

- For this past year.

- Because they did not fully fund it this past year in FY'26.

- Okay, for Bartlett, it's a full million, eight difference, again, these aren't exact, but that's an estimate of it.

For Collierville, a $2 million difference.

For Germantown, almost a million dollar difference.

You may say it's more than that.

But again, Lakeland, kind of for the win, so he's gonna stay quiet.

But so, Allison- [all laughing] - We believe Lakeland's position is correct and we support our fellow municipal districts.

- You'll hear us ditto a lot, because on topics like this, we collaborate very intensely.

- Yeah, yeah.

- We do.

- What is the, in Arlington, for you, what is the pushback that you get from city leadership that says, I assume they value education, but?

- We haven't received a clear response on that.

I look at what I have received, because every year, they have funded it since the inception of the school district.

It went up increasingly, every single year, because of the property tax, but in FY'26, they funded the same as FY'25.

And when we inquire, it's because other municipalities are doing this.

- Yeah, six minutes, another question for you here.

I know that's fine.

- Yeah, no, that's fine.

- So we have talked a lot about accountability.

Obviously, the largest accountability sort of elephant in the local schools is the takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

When that law was written, it has six sort of things that the school system has failed on, or that make it a candidate for takeover.

Obviously, that law was written very specifically, but does that make you concerned at all about a potential state takeover of your own districts, even though you're meeting all the metrics?

- I think we have to be careful, once again, when we're talking about accountability and what metrics we're gonna use, especially when we're talking about testing.

We had a huge argument with the department about the third grade retention law when that was coming down, because we were not talking about reading levels.

We were talking about performance on the state test.

And I always tell people I'd love for them to take the third grade test, because it's now like the SAT.

If you tell a third grader that there are five answers and three can be correct, and they don't know which one, they don't wanna know whether one answer is right or three are correct, we're not talking about reading on grade level, we're talking about a different test.

So whenever we're talking about accountability, yes, it's always a concern, because any metric could be used.

I could come up with any system to show that a school system is failing.

So I think you have to be very careful when you go down that path.

- It's not something we worry about actively in terms of a state takeover, to answer your question.

We're watching with great interest what happens in that situation as it does impact our greater community, but it's not something we're concerned about.

- One thing people point to is the letter grades, and I think that played into the takeover decision.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools had 66 schools that were, 65 schools in '24-'25 that were D and F schools, but it also had 66 schools that were A and B schools.

All of your schools, I believe, are A and B schools.

And just a side note, Metro-Nashville, the percentages are the same.

It's almost the exact same percentage of high-performing schools and what I think most people call failing schools, Ds and Fs.

Do those grades help you?

- No.

- No?

- No.

- Okay.

- That's another one- - I love that Jason's really holding back today.

- Yeah, no, no.

- He's really holding back.

- I've been doing this too long.

So what I'll tell you is, that's a comparative metric.

They're comparing students and schools to each other.

So there always have to be Ds and Fs.

There's not a bar.

We're not talking about a straight achievement.

So I can tell you, for example, we've tested low in some areas and we'll say, "Well, your special needs students "didn't test as high as your typical peers in that same school," so I'll get a lower grade in that portion of the test.

But my special needs students are outperforming students in an A school and doing better than them.

I'm not comparing apples to oranges.

So the letter grades look at subgroups.

They're also looking at different cohorts of students.

So it's a real challenge when you look at that.

- Couple minutes left.

Any thoughts on the letter grades?

'Cause I'm gonna go to one other thing here.

- We don't.

I mean, there's so much to focus on.

You look at achievement.

You want your students to be successful, but you look at it beyond test scores.

- I'll stay with you 'cause we're talking to you here.

One of the big things when the school district came apart and then you all have independent ones, and especially as your districts have grown, out of district, out of Arlington, out of Lakeland, out of Germantown, how many students, how do students come in and out?

What is the process for determining how many seats you have available for out of district children and what do you charge them?

- So we do not charge them anything to come to our district.

There is a process, it's called non-resident.

We have about 800 out of our 4,200 students that are non-resident.

They do have to go through a process.

It has to be looked at as their attendance, their achievement, as well as their behavior in order to make that.

- We're unique, we don't allow for non-resident enrollment.

So we serve the students within the Lakeland community.

- Is that a function of you guys growing?

You added the high school?

Was it part of that?

- Yes, we've designed and built, we started with just an elementary school, so we designed and built basically for our enrollment projections for the city of Lakeland.

- Yeah, you have a more complicated situation?

- Well, we do, we take students, well, we're similar to Arlington.

We take students from outside.

I don't know the exact number.

It fluctuates year to year, but we look at- - Some hundreds, probably.

- Yes, it's hundreds.

But we look at each classroom, each school, each grade band to determine available space, and then that's what we open up for non-resident students to attend.

We do charge tuition.

That's defined by law, what municipals can charge for tuition.

It's the amount of money that comes from that 15 cent equivalent of property tax.

You take that value, divide it by your number of students, and that's how much you can charge.

For us, it's about 500, over $500.

- And do you do that based on your population growth?

I mean, are you just kinda looking at all the metrics?

How many people are moving in or out of your cities?

The birth rate, all those kinds of things?

Capacity in certain grades?

- One thing we did in Arlington starting last year, and I believe Germantown is doing the same, it's PowerSchool Predictive Analytics.

And that studies our current enrollment and looking at those historical trends and comparing them, as well as the residential growth, and they do research on that through the town of Arlington to determine our projections.

So we are meeting, they give us a moderate and conservative number, and historically and currently, we meet that moderate number and exceed it a little.

- Okay, I think we're out of time.

I could ask you a really complicated question and give you 15 seconds to answer, but that probably is not fair.

Thank you all for being here, thank you for being again.

Allison, thank you for being here, thank you, Mary.

Again, as we tape this and as you watch this, early voting is underway, it goes through August 1st, and then election day is August 6th.

Lots of races, I think all your school boards are up right now, and they're not gonna endorse anyone.

That'd be fun, but Memphis Shelby County Schools, some seats there, County Commission, all kinds of primaries for federal and state.

So if you can, go to shelbyvote.com for how and where to vote, go to The Daily Memphian, look up our voter guide for all kinds of information on the various candidates.

If you missed any of the show today, you can go to wkno.org, YouTube, The Daily Memphian to get the full video, or you can download as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, we'll see you next week with I believe Lee Harris, outgoing county mayor.

Thanks.

[intense orchestral music] [acoustic guitar chords]