Tikeila Rucker, then president of the United Education Association of Shelby County, speaks during an anti-voucher rally in front of the state Capitol in Nashville on April 8, 2019. (Photo by Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat)
Whether characterized as an assault on public schools or a pathway for more education choices for families, this week’s Tennessee Supreme Court ruling in favor of the state’s embattled school voucher law stirred a torrent of public feedback.
Reactions to the 3-2 decision split largely along partisan lines, bringing cheers from many Republicans, including Gov. Bill Lee, who said that the ruling “puts parents in Memphis and Nashville one step closer to finding the best educational fit for their children.”
Wednesday’s ruling revives Lee’s education savings account program, which lets eligible families use taxpayer dollars toward private school tuition or other private educational services. But it doesn’t guarantee the program’s survival.
The decision overturned lower court rulings in favor of the governments of Shelby County and Metropolitan Nashville, which argued that the 2019 law violated the Tennessee Constitution’s “home rule” provision, because it applied only to districts in Memphis and Nashville without local consent.
But several other legal avenues remain open to challenge the law, including a second lawsuit filed in 2020 on behalf of 11 public school parents and community members in Memphis and Nashville based on their students’ constitutional rights to adequate and equitable educational opportunities.
The plaintiffs in that case “have asserted these constitutional claims from the beginning of the litigation challenging the voucher law, and intend to vigorously pursue them,” said a joint statement from the Education Law Center, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU, which are collaborating on the litigation.
Local governments in Shelby and Davidson counties also could pursue other legal claims.
Here’s what Tennesseans are saying about this week’s long-awaited ruling:
Memphis-Shelby County Schools: “The recent ruling is an unfortunate roadblock on the path toward progress and makes serving students in the state’s largest urban district even more challenging.”
Adrienne Battle, director, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools: “Private school vouchers undermine our public schools and have failed to support the learning needs of students who have used them in other states where they have been tried. We strongly disagree with the court’s opinion, which undermines the principles of local control and will harm Davidson County taxpayers who will ultimately be on the hook to pay for the state’s voucher scheme.”
Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis: “Our first priority in government is to build strong public schools. But where that is not available, school choice should be an option.”
Kay Johnson, director, Greater Praise Christian Academy, Memphis: “I am overjoyed by the court’s ruling. This program gives students in poor-performing schools the opportunity and support to attend the schools that best suit their needs. That is a win for them, their families, our communities, and our state.”
Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville: “This could not be worse for Tennessee children in tandem with the bill to transition our entire education program into evangelical hedge-fund schools. This is terrible news for our state.”
Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis: “The fact that Davidson and Shelby County taxpayers are singled out as the only counties in the state of Tennessee where the taxpayers are forced to use their tax dollars to fund private school enrollment is absurd and discriminatory. And even more dangerous and disturbing is the precedent this decision sets for the Tennessee General Assembly to continue, with the backing of the highest court in the land, to dump other shit legislation only on the people of these counties.”
John Patton, Tennessee director, American Federation for Children: “The Tennessee Supreme Court made the right decision by declaring that the Education Savings Account program does not violate the HomeRule Amendment. These programs encourage both private and public schools to create new and better options for all students.”
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III: “The Education Savings Account program has always been about helping Tennessee students — giving eligible families a choice in education, an opportunity they currently do not have. It challenged the status quo, a move that is always met with resistance. … While there are further court proceedings that need to take place, this is a major step forward.”
Beth Brown, president, Tennessee Education Association: “This ruling is not the end of the fight against private school vouchers. We’ve seen the privatization industry’s playbook come to life in other states and witnessed the damage caused to students and public schools. They start a small program, then expand it, and then expand it a little more, until public education funding is obliterated.”
Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus: “In this decision, the Supreme Court erased constitutional protections for local control and years of precedent. Not only does this decision usher in a terrible education policy, but it invites more political meddling that surely results in local governments losing freedom and independence from state interference.”
Raymond Pierce, president and CEO, Southern Education Foundation: “There is a long and well-documented history of school voucher programs in the South being used to avoid integration by siphoning public funds out of public schools. … While this law stands for now, the Southern Education Foundation will continue to fight school privatization efforts that would take our nation back to the days of a segregated and inherently unequal education system.”
Justin Owen, president and CEO, Beacon Center of Tennessee: “We are so pleased that the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed what we have always known: the ESA law is not a violation of the Tennessee Constitution’s Home Rule Amendment. We are fully confident after this decision that families in Nashville and Memphis will finally get the choice opportunities that they deserve.”
Victor Evans, executive director, TennesseeCAN: “A student’s ZIP code or neighborhood should never dictate their future, but without the options and resources that those from wealthier areas enjoy, that is too often the case. Tennessee’s Educational Savings Account program will help address this glaring inequality and need.”
TJ Ducklo, spokesman for Nashville Mayor John Cooper: “We’re disappointed by today’s ruling but will continue to vigorously fight this law through all possible avenues.”
JC Bowman, executive director, Professional Educators of Tennessee: “Legal experts will continue to debate this case on its merits for many years, and it may still face additional legal challenges. The Tennessee Education Savings Account will ultimately be defined by the students who participate in the program and their academic success or failure. Public schools will remain the choice of the vast majority of parents in our state who believe their child is receiving a high-quality education.”
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
This week marks the return of Hernando’s Hide-a-way favorite, Dale Watson. He’s in demand from coast to coast, so his appearances at the club he personally helped to relaunch are understandably rare. Now’s your chance, and thanks to the video/audio infrastructure at the club, live-streaming is a hi-fi experience. The same can be said of B-Side Memphis. Together, the two clubs have kept the live-stream torches burning, and those of us who track the upward surges of the coronavirus are forever grateful.
ALL TIMES CDT
Thursday, May 19 7 p.m. Red Clay Strays, Josephy Huber and Jordan Joyes — at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way Website
A lake could be created next to the Snuff District and a floating entertainment dock could be headed to Cobblestone Landing, according to legislation proposed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis).
Cohen said he proposed the two “Memphis-centric projects” for the 2022 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) on behalf of the city of Memphis. These projects are part of riverfront improvements proposed by Mayor Jim Strickland in December.
Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube
Those plans would build two new riverboat docks on the Mississippi. But it would also create a two-million-square-foot lake for swimming, paddling, and fishing in the north end of Wolf River Harbor next to the burgeoning Snuff District in Uptown. It would also include a new “floating entertainment dock” at Cobblestone Landing.
Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube
A statement from his office Wednesday afternoon said the bill would allow “the Wolf River to create a lake adjacent to the historic downtown Snuff District,” done, apparently, by damming the Wolf River. It would also accommodate a floating entertainment dock at Cobblestone Landing.
“Both projects will transform our city and appeal to residents and tourists alike,” Cohen said in a Wednesday statement.
Details on the floating dock are scanty. Information from the bill says only the project is hoped to ”entice visitors and the Downtown workforce down to the harbor’s edge at Cobblestone Landing.”
Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube
To create the lake, labeled Sunset Lake in a city YouTube video, a dam would be built in the harbor a mile and half north of its entrance at the tip of Mud Island. The lake’s water elevation would be determined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which, according to the bill, “have been supportive of the project concept.” The water quality of the lake would be “improved” to “allow enhanced recreational usages including kayaking, swimming, and fishing.”
Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube
“The new lake will allow visitors to have access to the riverine environment of the Mississippi River which is found in more remote reaches of the river but is available in Uptown/Downtown Memphis,” reads the bill material.
The bill says the lake would be sandwiched between the $62 million project to repurpose the snuff factory to the east (with 294 housing units and 10,000 square feet of retail space) and the hundreds of residents of Harbor Town on the west, ”who will benefit from access to such a great public amenity.” A “strong possibility” exists that visitors to the lake could access it by Downtown’s Big River Trail.
Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube
Strickland unveiled his riverfront proposals to the Memphis City Council in December. He mentioned them again in his State of the City address in January.
“We have a unique opportunity to expand Beale Street Landing and Greenbelt Park docks, as well as, create a lake and a series of additional docks and other improvements along the riverfront to increase economic development in the area and improve the quality of life for residents,” he said.
As the sun set one dreary Monday in late April, a group of about 15 activists, parents, teachers, and community members gathered in an old church building on N Graham Street, less than a block away from Kingsbury High School.
The agenda: How to save a school and neighborhood they all love.
The concerns they raised about Kingsbury were wide ranging — from a lack of communication with school administrators to escalating violence in the community and fears that the needs of the school’s growing population of Spanish-speaking immigrants aren’t being met.
The catalyst of their meeting, though, was the late March announcement of what Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials call a “fresh start” — requiring teachers to reapply for their jobs in order to return next school year. District officials say the initiative is part of an ongoing process of reevaluating school culture and climate and, in turn, improving academic performance.
Many members of the Kingsbury community have complained that the decision came suddenly and without community input. And at the April gathering, attendees voiced little confidence that a district-led purge of teachers, with the risk of more instability, would help solve Kingsbury’s problems.
Rather, they agreed, real change would have to come from a broad coalition of parents, students, teachers, activists, and community members, all determined to counter decades of disinvestment in the school and their neighborhood.
Zyanya Cruz is working to assemble that coalition. An organizer with the Center for Transforming Communities, Cruz called the meeting in the old church building as part of an effort to form a Kingsbury parent-teacher-student association that would help reconnect the school with its community.
“The school is the heart of the neighborhood, and if you have an unhealthy heart you can’t have a safe and happy community,” Cruz said. “Families are feeling disillusioned and unheard; like they’re not being valued as people. The school is meant to serve them, and it feels as if they’re not being served.”
Archived stories from The Commercial Appeal about Kingsbury’s early days in the 1950s and ’60s painted a rosy picture of a beloved school that Memphians were proud to say they attended.
Kingsbury students often made published listings of the honor roll, and stories in the newspaper documented times of athletic prowess for the Kingsbury Falcons. Kingsbury’s alumni included Mike Butler, who went on to become a star basketball player at University of Memphis and play in the pros.
Integration of Memphis City Schools began in the 1960s, and a wave of African-Americans were elected to local government, Daniel Connolly wrote in his 2016 book “The Book of Isaias,” about a Kingsbury graduate who had migrated from Mexico. But the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. outside Memphis’s Lorraine Motel would “harden racial resentments for decades,” Connolly wrote, leading to white flight and the decline of downtown Memphis.
By the 1990 U.S. Census, Memphis had become a majority-Black city, Connolly wrote. At the same time, “thousands of immigrants began arriving in Memphis, many coming directly from Mexico.”
From 2000 to 2010, Memphis’ Hispanic population soared, primarily in two neighborhoods: Hickory Hill and the area around Kingsbury High. But the community lacked political clout, because many immigrants weren’t eligible to vote. In 2007, Connolly said, the city office dedicated to helping immigrants had just two employees, and neither spoke Spanish.
Today, Hispanics make up just over 55% of the high school’s population, according to the state Department of Education.
Jose Salazar, a local activist, fondly remembers the high school for its diversity and supportive community as he and his family settled into Memphis after emigrating from Mexico.
One memory stands out from his senior year in 2009, when he was part of the Kingsbury soccer team’s historic first run to the state tournament.
Although the season ended with a loss in the state quarterfinals match, a Commercial Appeal article recounted the team’s struggle to fund the trip to the tournament — and the way the community wrapped its arms around the underdog team.
Kingsbury alumni and community members ultimately came up with $15,000 and a coach bus for the trip, ensuring “this team of internationally diverse student-athletes from Liberia, Sudan, Mexico and China would get its chance to compete for a state championship,” the article said.
But Salazar’s experiences at Kingsbury weren’t all positive. Gangs and violence were part of the neighborhood, Salazar said. And those issues have only become worse.
“Kingsbury has always had its problems,” Salazar said. “But I don’t think it’s ever been this bad before.”
Salazar has moved out of the Kingsbury neighborhood, but his mother still lives there, and he tries to continue serving the school and community as an activist.
After a late October shooting outside the nearby Streets Ministries left three teens and an adult injured and the community fearful of escalating violence in the neighborhood, Salazar helped organize a candlelight vigil and advocated for more police patrols after school.
Since then, students, teachers and community members have noticed an increased police presence both inside and outside the school, more searches of students, and multiple lockdowns.
The elevated police presence has only made Crystal Oceja, a ninth-grader at Kingsbury, feel less safe and less valued at school.
Earlier in the school year, Oceja said administrators picked two students from each grade and interviewed them about how to make the school safer. Oceja shared concerns about having more police in school with administrators, but said she doesn’t feel that perspective was heard or taken into consideration.
In many ways, school these days is suffocating, like a prison, Oceja said. Uniformed and armed police officers are in Kingsbury’s hallways throughout the day, Oceja said, escorting students to class to ensure they don’t skip. On several occasions, administrators have involved officers in student discipline, Oceja said.
Oceja was also among those who advocated to remove Shelby County sheriff’s deputies from Memphis school buildings in the fall. Despite efforts by “Counselors not Cops” activists, the school board ultimately voted to keep deputies in schools in November.
“A lot of stuff goes down that’s very traumatic in the hood, and if you’re going to a school where you’re not valued, it’s going to affect you even more,” Oceja said. “You feel like no one’s listening to me, my voice doesn’t matter, so why should I speak out? That’s something I’ve noticed in a lot of my peers.”
Another example of how community voices go unheard is the bathrooms, Oceja says. Toilets often get clogged and overflow onto the floors, she says, and the bathrooms are not adequately cleaned afterward.
“A lot of times I purposely hold it until I get home because of how nasty the bathrooms are,” Oceja said. “I can’t ever focus when that happens. That’s all I can think about.”
Oceja aired these concerns to district leaders, including MSCS board Vice Chair Althea Greene, whose district includes Kingsbury, but change has been slow to come.
Greene said she’s heard the community’s complaints about Kingsbury’s bathrooms and the police presence. She’s one of several school board members currently speaking out against unclean school buildings and advocating for changes to the district’s proposed custodial services contract.
And while Greene understands how students feel about police in schools, after the shooting near Kingsbury and “so many incidents with guns” across the district, she said she didn’t see any alternative.
Maria Alejandra Oceja, the guardian of her sibling Crystal, said she first learned of Kingsbury being “fresh started” while scrolling through Facebook.
Maria Alejandra Oceja said she doesn’t believe the fresh start is the solution to issues at Kingsbury. She has echoed her sibling’s complaints about the heightened police presence on campus and the poor conditions of bathrooms to school officials and Greene, but has yet to see changes.
“We didn’t ask them to fire the teachers. The teachers are not the problem — they’re the ones who have been holding it down through the pandemic,” Maria Alejandra Oceja said. “To me, it’s the leadership that is the problem, and they’re deflecting responsibility.”
In an interview with Chalkbeat last month, Superintendent Joris Ray said that the “fresh starts” at Kingsbury, as well as Hamilton High School and Airways Achievement Academy, are the continuation of a districtwide restructuring that yielded dozens of new central office leadership positions and school principals — including at Kingsbury and Hamilton.
“I think the fresh start is going to make the schools better and the students are definitely going to benefit,” Ray said. “When you’re a leader, it’s not about making adults comfortable. It’s never about making myself comfortable — each and every day, I’m uncomfortable. The easiest thing to do is what people want you to do, but students will not benefit.”
Greene, the school board member, stands by the decision to ask all Kingsbury teachers to reapply for their jobs, but she also acknowledges that the district “dropped the ball” by not holding a meeting to communicate the decision to parents. After speaking with several concerned students and parents and seeing the chaos and confusion the lack of communication caused, Greene said, the district is now planning that meeting.
“When you ‘fresh start’ a school, I think it’s important that you also ‘fresh start’ the community,” Greene said. “They’ve got to be part of this process in order for it to work.”
The announcement that they will have to reapply for their jobs has rattled Kingsbury teachers who have already been dealing with the pandemic, violence, lockdowns, and years of administrative turmoil.
In 2018, a Kingsbury principal, Terry Ross, was suspended due to allegations of harassment of teachers and improperly changed grades. Then, last spring, principal Matt Smith was suspended after being accused of sexual harrassment. A month later, Ray appointed Shenar Miller as Kingsbury’s new principal as part of an academic restructuring, and he remains in the position today.
In the weeks following the “fresh start” announcement, several Kingsbury educators told Chalkbeat they’ve felt increasingly frustrated and underappreciated.
“It was definitely demoralizing to get the fresh start notification,” said one teacher who has decided not to apply for her job and plans to leave MSCS at the end of the school year. She asked not to be named out of fear of retribution during her final weeks.
“I’ve struggled the last few years trying to decide if (teaching at Kingsbury) was the best choice for me — mentally, physically, and for my family — because I’m pouring a lot into my students and it just takes a toll on me,” she said.
The educator, who’s been teaching at Kingsbury for several years, also worries what effect continued turnover will have on Kingsbury. The school seems to be in a “constant state of fresh start,” she said.
Amid a nationwide teacher shortage, the situation only worsened this year, the teacher said, leaving many overwhelmed. Two math teacher positions and an English as a second language teaching position were not filled until January — an especially concerning problem given Kingsbury serves the largest proportion of English language learners among MSCS high schools. Nearly 35% of Kingsbury students receive ESL services, according to state data.
And the population continues growing: In February alone, the teacher said, Kingsbury got at least 12 new students who had just moved to the U.S.
“We’re in a whole different ballpark than what’s happening at other schools,” the teacher said. “We need more resources and support and training to help with that, not a fresh start.”
In a statement, MSCS officials confirmed that the vacant teaching positions were filled Jan. 3, and said they “work to support classrooms with qualified individuals when teacher vacancies arise to ensure there is no disruption to learning.”
Kingsbury’s counseling and ESL departments help ensure students’ needs are met with limited resources, but it’s far from ideal. In addition to lesson planning and grading for all of her students, the teacher also must write individual learning plans for each of her 40 ELL students.
“It’s not that we shouldn’t have to do that. We should; it’s helpful and (the students) should have that type of support,” she said. “But the sheer amount of planning time we have does not allow us to get all that paperwork done.”
Greene said she’s working with district officials and neighborhood organizations like Streets Ministries to ensure ELL students and families at Kingsbury and throughout the neighborhood are able to access the resources they need.
“Schools can only do so much, but because of the language barrier in that neighborhood, I feel like we need to be doing more,” Greene said.
Salazar, the Kingsbury graduate turned activist, said there seems to be a lack of hope and a sense of apathy in the community, perpetuated by poor communication and understanding between the school, students, and parents. For real change to happen, he said, Kingsbury needs more community engagement.
That’s why Cruz, from the Center for Transforming Communities, is striving to launch a Kingsbury PTSA. So far, Cruz has held four meetings to kickstart organizing, and she strives to make them as accessible as possible for families: They’re bilingual, held in the evenings, and include free dinner. The April meeting was at Su Casa, a nonprofit housed in an old church that offers English language lessons and other resources for Memphis’ Latino immigrant community.
After providing English classes to adults for several years, Su Casa expanded its offerings in 2016 to a bilingual preschool program for children in the neighborhood. Executive Director Michael Phillips said he hopes the investment in early childhood education, like the formation of a PTSA, will help build a more engaged community.
“What’s possible,” he asked, “if we really inject some resources into developing leaders today — the young kids, the kids that are in high school right now — knowing that it’s going to take us a generation to really reap the benefits of that?”
For now, Cruz hopes parents and students will feel safe at these meetings voicing their concerns.
And that’s exactly what activists, teachers, and families did at Su Casa in April, as they munched on tacos, talked about Kingsbury’s challenges, and laid out their next steps for forming the PTSA.
In the minutes before they left Su Casa, amid the chatter and goodbyes, the attendees expressed excitement about their momentum — and hope for Kingsbury’s future.
Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
“Want to see a free mind-reading trick?” magician Hayden Childress asks on his website. “Whatever you do, DON’T read this sentence. Amazing isn’t it? You couldn’t help read but the sentence! Also, you probably didn’t notice ‘but’ and ‘read’ were switched in the sentence above, did you? Magic!”
“Is this some kind of mind game?” you might ask. “Surely, this isn’t ‘magical.’” Well, according to Childress, “Magic is just inherently tricks on your mind, something that’s messing with your perception of the world.”
But Childress’ on-stage tricks go beyond switching words around in a sentence. He prefers to use everyday, practical props. “Like, I might borrow a phone from the crowd,” he says. “Everything I do is very interactive. A lot of it involves me bringing a person up. It’s sleight of hand, comedy, and psychology with a lot of these tricks — messing with how people think or the decisions they’re going to make.”
And if you think that there’s no way someone can trick such a smarty as yourself, think again because Childress has been practicing his sleight of hand since he was 10. “I got into [magic] the same way most people got into it,” he says. “I saw some magic on television. Right away I went to the public library and picked up a bunch of books on magic and studied them front to back. And when I was about 11, there was a magic shop at a shopping mall about an hour from where I lived. I used to go there, and the magic shop owner saw that I was really into it and just let me work for tips doing tricks outside the shop. I would walk up to people at a table in the food court and say, ‘Hi, can I show you a magic trick?’ I did that pretty much every weekend.”
Childress also picked up gigs in high school, working parties. “I knew I could make some money doing it,” he says. “I wasn’t sure how doable it was to do it full-time because I didn’t know many people who did it at the time.” So, by his late teens, he was stuck between choosing college or pursuing magic, but as fate would have it , two established and successful full-time magicians (one of whom was David Copperfield), upon meeting him, advised him to do both. “Because if you fail with the magic, you have a fallback of a normal career so that way you can take more risks.”
So, instead of going to college parties, Childress took any gig that he could while pursuing his degree in business. Oddly enough, some of his business lessons have applied well to his magic — particularly in learning about consumer behavior, he says. “So like how does Amazon make you buy this brand of pen? A lot of it is the same psychology. Like how did Hayden make me think of ace of hearts? It’s kind of like using those same techniques in the show, but I use them for magic. It’s less marketable but it’s more fun.”
Now a full-time magician, Childress says of his work, “I hope that after someone sees it that it might make them think of the world differently. But if they don’t, they can just enjoy any magic trick.”
Hayden Childress, Halloran Centre, Friday, May 20th, 8 p.m., $28-$35.
Italian barbecue pasta at Tamboli’s (Photo: Miles Tamboli)
Since May is the month of the big “B” in Memphis, more area chefs share their thoughts on barbecuing. After all, this is Memphis. Barbecuing is sort of second nature. Right?
Miles Tamboli, owner of Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza: “I made a barbecue pasta sauce that I’m really proud of to this day. I broke down barbecue sauce to its basic flavors and recreated it from scratch using Italian ingredients. Tomato base, caramelized onions, garlic confit, red wine, balsamic vinegar, smoked paprika, anchovy, and some more stuff. Tasted just like barbecue sauce. We tossed bucatini in it and topped it with seared sous vide pork belly from Home Place Pastures and nasturtium micros. It was excellent.”
Karen Carrier, chef/owner of restaurants, including The Beauty Shop: “Applewood smoked barbecued char siu salmon with crystallized ginger, candied lemon zest, and an avocado, watermelon, radish, and orange supreme relish.”
Joseph Michael Garibaldi Jr., Garibaldi’s Pizza owner: “We use a combination of fine- and medium-chopped hickory smoked pork shoulder and combine it with just the right amount of our sweet and sour sauce for it to caramelize the brown sugar on top and keep the pork moist and tender. … Our fresh, hand-tossed crust, signature fresh-packed tomato pizza sauce, and shredded mozzarella cheese provide a perfect base for the perfect barbecue pizza.”
Andy Knight, chef at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar: “Opening Loflin Yard and Carolina Watershed — both on Carolina Avenue — I attempted Carolina barbecue with a Memphis twist. I would cook the butts Carolina style — vinegar-based — then lather them up later with a rich Memphis-style sauce. Both locations were successful, but could never beat Memphis-style. From vinegar-based pork butts to 12-hour smoked beef brisket, nothing beats the dry rub and a rich barbecue sauce of Memphis-style barbecue.”
Betty Joyce “B.J.” Chester-Tamayo, chef-owner of Alcenia’s: “Barbecued chicken. I bake it first if I’m doing it at the restaurant. Sometimes I marinate it overnight with my Italian dressing.”
She also uses her eight seasonings, including Italian dressing, fresh rosemary, and even some of her homemade apple butter. She adds her barbecue sauce when serving. “I take barbecue sauce from the store and add my own ingredients: lemon juice, ketchup, Lipton onion soup mix, and other seasonings.”
Jonathan Mah, chef/owner SideStreet Burgers in Olive Branch, Mississippi: “My signature is the Korean barbecue — Le Fat Panda. My favorite cut is the pork steak marinated in Korean flavors and grilled. It’s a soy-based marinade with honey and mirin, green onions, and sugar, as well as sesame oil. Red pepper flakes for a little spice. Chargrilling is my favorite so that you burn that sugar a little bit on the grill. That’s the best part, to me.”
Jeffrey Zepatos, owner of The Arcade Restaurant: “We used to do barbecue at the Arcade. And we had a barbecued grilled cheese sandwich. So, I’d stick to something along those lines. Smoked pulled pork barbecue on Texas toast with a smoked cheddar cheese to top it off. Now we obviously don’t have smokers at the Arcade, so I was buying a great pork shoulder from a local vendor that we could heat up on our griddle. I think that was fun because it added flavor from our griddle to the barbecue, which gave it a unique taste from all the bacon and sausage we cook on it.”
Mario Gagliano, Libro chef/owner: “I’m from Memphis and I only know pork ribs with that classic vinegary Memphis sauce. All I’d do is take some baby backs and massage them with a nice dry rub, lightly sear it on low heat so as not to burn the sugars in the rub. Flip them and render some of that flavor off the bone. Then halfway submerge the ribs in boiling pork stock. Cover in foil and cook in the oven for a couple hours on 400 degrees. Remove them, brush some Memphis barbecue sauce and broil for a few minutes. Essentially, braising the pork, but it falls off the bone, super tender and moist. And you can find it cooked just like this at Libro at Laurelwood all through the month of May, baby.”
Could Plyler v. Doe be overturned? (Photo: Rmarmion | Dreamstime.com)
A nation that places immigrant children in cages can certainly (attempt to) prevent those same children from attending public schools. Since 1982, in its decision Plyler v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the state from discriminating against and denying children a public education based on their immigration status. That may be challenged soon.
The recently leaked memorandum from the Supreme Court removes any pretense of an impartial, apolitical judiciary. The Supreme Court, we now know, is part of the torn fabric of American political society. And it’s never a good look to see our justices openly mislead the public in sworn testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee. Justice Kavanaugh called Roe v. Wade (1973) “settled law,” and Justice Gorsuch acknowledged that Roe was the “law of the land.” Now, as appointed justices for life, they’ve determined that 50 years of precedent has no actual value.
The majority bemoans the schism it claims was created by Roe nearly 50 years ago but ignores the damage that the Supreme Court is about to do to our country by rejecting “settled law” and releasing a cornucopia of challenges to every decision that the right finds disagreeable from the past.
For example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott — who joins the other two amigos, Florida’s Ron DeSantis and our own Bill Lee, in a race to see who can undo more rights for ordinary people — is looking closely at Plyler. This is Abbott’s next step on his quixotic anti-immigrant agenda. Last month, he bussed immigrants from Mexico and Central America out of his sparsely populated state to densely populated Washington, D.C., in a pathetic (and cruel) political act that showed his determination to score points with the anti-immigrant base.
Such attempts at cruelty are popular with Abbott’s base, and he’s playing a political card, during a difficult re-election campaign against a viable opponent, a former representative from El Paso, Beto O’Rourke. Abbott needs to convince the “base” that he’s fighting to seal off Texas from migrant waves, caravans, illegals, masses, invaders — you pick the hyperbole that suits you — to prevail in November. He clearly believes that using this retro-activist Supreme Court to revisit free public education to undocumented school children is a way to do it.
Border states like Texas share a disproportionate responsibility in educating children of the undocumented residing in that state as many migrants pass through on their way to “El Norte.” But Texas school districts receive federal education funds on a per pupil basis (not a “per American pupil” basis), and they receive extra funding based on the needs of that particular demographic. Moreover, Texas receives more than $1.6 billion in state and local tax dollars from undocumented immigrants.
The motivation for this anti-immigrant wave is the same as it’s always been. It’s the sense that the nation is changing as we become more diverse. Every time in our history, when we face such change, we strike out at immigrants. Every time.
Texas should forget the Alamo, and “Remember the 187.”
In 1994, the good people of then-Red State California passed a noxious ballot initiative, “Proposition 187” the so-called “Save our State” initiative. The law attempted to remove undocumented children from California public schools. By 1999, the law was declared unconstitutional, and the good teachers of California refused to enforce it. Denying education to children is always bad policy. Offering free public education to all kids is one of the settled provisions of U.S. society, and our society has grown strong because we purposefully (not always perfectly) educate the youngest generations.
We’ve entered strange times — where settled law sits on seismic faults. Demagogues, now aided by the Supreme Court, declare war on American historical traditions — immigration and education — concepts that ought to unify and energize a nation. Maybe the one thing the majority draft opinion in Roe gets right is that the power to change the direction in which we are heading rests in the hands of voters beginning this fall.
Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and the board chair of Latino Memphis. Michael LaRosa teaches history at Rhodes College.
There is a great instinct to try to distill complex investment matters into simple solutions. For years, online experts insisted that you could get all the benefits of the market by just investing in one index like the S&P 500. Now that the shine of U.S. large cap growth is wearing off, a new reductionist approach is gaining traction — U.S. Treasury Series I Savings Bonds, or “I Bonds.” The siren song is simple — why expose yourself to the ups and downs of the stock market if you can buy a principal-protected investment with a current high yield? How could anyone disagree?
There’s nothing wrong with I Bonds, but there are good reasons why they’re not a substitute for your diversified portfolio — or maybe even your bonds and cash:
• Your rate on these bonds is exactly CPI for Urban Consumers, so technically you only just keep up with inflation. Generally, the purpose of an investment portfolio is to achieve returns in excess of inflation in the long run — these bonds won’t help do that unless you can perfectly time the market. If you could perfectly time the market, you’d probably invest in much more exciting things than I Bonds!
• The interest is taxable, so by buying these currently you’re locking in a slight loss after inflation in real dollars. You’re technically losing purchasing power.
• The current yield is attractive at 9.6 percent, however it will almost certainly not persist this high. The rate resets every six months so really you only get 4.8 percent the first six months and then an unknown rate after that. You have to hold for at least a year and if you redeem before five years you lose three months of interest. I Bonds aren’t even great for an emergency fund due to that one-year lockup, and it’s very likely you will get less than 9.6 percent holding for one year when the second six-month rate (and early withdrawal penalty) is factored in.
• If we all had unlimited time horizons and no short-term cash needs, we probably wouldn’t own any bonds. One of the main reasons to buy bonds is so that if stocks drop significantly, yields are likely to fall and bond prices go up. Since these are floating rate bonds, you don’t get that potential increase in your bond price, which is a reason it’s not a substitute for a traditional bond allocation.
• You can only put $10,000 a year into I Bonds per person, so chasing this high interest rate means you’re only hoping to make hundreds of dollars (not even $1,000) the first year. By the time you can put more money in, yields probably won’t look this good. For investors with larger portfolios, I Bonds won’t make much difference. If $10,000 is most of your portfolio, you’re probably younger and should reconsider going 100 percent bonds to begin with!
There’s nothing wrong with I Bonds, they just aren’t the panacea that some would have you believe. At the end of the day, it’s hard to imagine a long-term scenario where an investor would be better off buying I Bonds rather than adding to a well-planned diversified portfolio. There will always be one-size-fits-all investment ideas, but in the end we believe it’s worth navigating a little complexity to make the best decisions toward a secure financial future.
Gene Gard is Chief Investment Officer at Telarray, a Memphis-based wealth management firm that helps families navigate investment, tax, estate, and retirement decisions. Ask him your questions or schedule an objective, no-pressure portfolio review at letstalk@telarrayadvisors.com. Sign up for their next free online seminar on the Events tab at telarrayadvisors.com.
Though he settled in New Orleans to hone his craft as a poet, the faces and voices of Florida still haunt Thomas Dollbaum’s songs. “Nothing good comes from Florida, including you,” he sings with a weary croon, and he could be singing about himself or that hooker “riding high with some trick” — or both. Indeed, the song “Florida” is the perfect lead track on Dollbaum’s debut, Wellwood, out this week on Big Legal Mess Records.
Imagine a Tampa kid who grows up seeing more than he bargained for. Caught between the metal and rap scenes, he holes up at home to write songs evoking the damaged, yearning souls around him. “Going to high school in Florida, heroin was becoming really big again,” Dollbaum says. “I wasn’t that involved with it, but a lot of my friends ended up getting addicted in the opiate epidemic. Seeing people you grew up with ending up lost, where you don’t even know where they are anymore, those kinds of stories have always been wild to me.”
Dollbaum is a songwriter who completely inhabits his characters. Points of comparison might be Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, or other singers with a poetic bent, but unlike them, Dollbaum is writing from a land without a past. “Florida is cookie-cutter,” he says. “Everything’s new. Nothing’s got any history to it. People from all over move down there to start again. Everyone I knew as a kid was from somewhere else.”
The melodies are as sparing and unsentimental as the words, delivered unhurriedly, as when he sings “I walk hand in hand with my death.” The final result has a freshly minted quality, even where influences are apparent. Though the songwriters Dollbaum admires are in the mix, from the Silver Jews’ David Berman to Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell, or Neil Young, every move grows organically from the songs, Dollbaum’s own distinctive voice, and the lives he conjures up.
As Dollbaum stresses, these songs are more than mere diary entries. “Even in poetry, everything’s moving more to confessional stuff. I just don’t have much interest in that. These are songs and characters coming from growing up in Florida, a mixture of my own life and some of it very fictional. Lou Reed does that too. A lot of it is made up, but he makes these interesting worlds. That’s always interested me.”
Music has always fascinated him as well, though not the polkas his father played on accordion in his youth. “I played bass first, until fifth grade or so,” he recalls. “And then I wanted to write songs, so I moved to guitar. I’ve always been playing music.” Extended family in Indiana both taught him guitar and introduced him to the music of John Prine, and folk-rock graced with a realist poet’s vision is what Dollbaum has aspired to ever since.
He first won accolades for his poetry, which in turn took him to the University of New Orleans. Having completed his master’s degree there, now laboring as a carpenter, he and friend Matt Seferian began recording the demos that grew into this album just before the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Work continued under lockdown conditions, as they slowly built up tracks that initially featured only acoustic guitar and singing. From those labors comes a painstakingly crafted album that sounds as airy, natural, and flowing as anything from the 1970s’ Golden Age of singer/songwriters.
But this isn’t the California of a half century ago. The setting of Dollbaum’s debut is more like today’s America: a broken land that wanderers still flock to, in search of whatever they can’t find at home. Perhaps growing up in such a land gives you a sixth sense for uprooted souls and the desperate dreams that drive them. They’ve burned themselves into Thomas Dollbaum’s mind in ways he may never shake. Instead, he builds worlds for them and invites us in.
Thomas Dollbaum appears with Bailey Bigger and Kate Teague at Bar DKDC on Saturday, May 28th, 8 p.m.
Weirich with F.F.U.N. founder Stevie Moore at the CarreFour center (Photo: Jackson Baker)
The two candidates for Shelby County District Attorney General held near-simultaneous events on Monday, at sites roughly 20 miles apart.
Incumbent Republican D.A. Amy Weirich opened up her campaign headquarters at 6645 Poplar in the CarreFour shopping center and addressed a group of supporters and other attendees there. Democratic challenger Steve Mulroy, meanwhile, was conducting a press conference Downtown outside the Shelby County Justice Center at 201 Poplar.
The location of Weirich’s event was essentially the subject matter of Mulroy’s.
The incumbent D.A. had sent out an announcement of her HQ “grand opening” Monday morning via an email, the subject line of which was “Don’t forget to stop by on your way home.”
That prompted Mulroy to call his press conference, where he noted the location of the venue, just inside the Germantown city line. In a press release that paralleled his press conference statements, Mulroy said, “The Weirich HQ opens in one of the wealthiest, least crime-ridden ZIP codes in the county. This is not only tone-deaf, it’s emblematic of what’s wrong with that office, where 90 percent of the attorneys and supervisors are white, in a 55 percent Black county where criminal defendants are almost 90 percent Black.”
Those numbers are basically the same ones he put forth in another press conference in early April, at which he charged that the lack of racial diversity was a problem with the Weirich-run D.A.’s office. And he offered some new “background stats” to buttress his remarks on Monday. “The Germantown ZIP code is the third-wealthiest ZIP code in Shelby County, with a median income of $101,000. The U.S. Census says it’s about 5 percent Black. The website crimegrade.org gives it an A+, the lowest-crime category.”
In other words, Mulroy seemed to be saying, Weirich’s injunction to “stop by on your way home” implied that her political constituency, in East Memphis and outward into the elite suburbs, was far removed from the actual urban landscapes where most crime occurred, with the further implication that Weirich’s concerns would be otherwise than focused on crime in the inner city. Other speakers at the Mulroy press conference conveyed similar messages.
While there was certainly a fair assemblage of suburbanites at Weirich’s headquarters event, her crowd was somewhat more varied than that, including such pillars of the law enforcement community as Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael, Bill Gibbons of the Memphis-Shelby Crime Commission, and Buddy Chapman of CrimeStoppers.
And she was introduced to the crowd by Stevie Moore, an African American whose son was murdered 19 years ago and who subsequently founded the justly celebrated F.F.U.N. (Freedom from Unnecessary Negatives), an organization whose stated mission is “to provide the at-risk community holistic alternative solutions regarding their social issues (i.e., drugs, alcohol, low self-esteem, crime, gangs, lack of educational and basic daily survival needs).”
Moore vouched for Weirich as “a person who’s in our communities, and I can call her any time. The problem I had with most of our political leaders, they don’t come out to our communities. But she’s in the community, and that’s why I’m here for her today.”
In her own remarks, Weirich defended her efforts to control and punish crime and lauded such developments as the Tennessee legislature’s passage of “truth-in-sentencing” legislation. She said she intended “to focus our energies and our work and our mission, on protecting the victims in this community, on protecting the families in this community whose lives have been forever destroyed by the violence. So don’t fuss at me about being too tough on crime.”
