Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray (Credit: Shelby County Schools/Facebook).
The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board voted Wednesday to place Superintendent Joris Ray on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an outside investigation into whether he violated district policies on relationships with co-workers and abused his power.
The move follows allegations, first reported by the Daily Memphian, that Ray had adulterous relationships, possibly with current and former district employees. The motion passed on a 7-2 vote during a special meeting, with board members Stephanie Love and Joyce Dorse-Coleman voting against.
With the same vote, the board appointed Edward L. Stanton III, a former U.S. attorney now with the Butler Snow Law Firm, to lead the investigation, and chose Herman Morris Jr. of the Morris Law Firm to advise the board before, during, and after the inquiry.
John Barker, deputy superintendent for strategic operations and finance, and Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support, will fill in for Ray during the investigation.
Addressing board members after the vote, Ray said he was disappointed by their decision to place him on leave, but that he respects their oversight and that they will have his “full cooperation.” In a statement last week, Ray said he was confident he did not violate any MSCS policies.
At a press conference after the meeting, Board Chair Michelle McKissack said putting Ray on leave would protect the integrity of the investigation, allow witnesses within the district to come forward with information without a fear of retaliation, and “avoid any hint of impropriety” by the board. She emphasized that putting Ray on leave does not suggest the outcome of the investigation.
McKissack could not yet say how much the investigation will cost the district. As for the timeline, she said only that it would be conducted as quickly as possible, noting that school starts in less than a month.
“We want to be focused on the families,” McKissack said outside the district’s administrative offices. “We do not want any distractions.”
The investigation, which officially began after Wednesday’s board meeting, comes at a time of transition on the school board.
Four seats on the MSCS board will be up for grabs in elections on Aug. 4, including those of incumbents McKissack, Dorse-Coleman, and Charles Everett, who was appointed to represent District 6 earlier this year after Shante Avant resigned. In addition, board members Billy Orgel and Miska Clay-Bibbs are set to leave the board at the end of the month. Orgel did not run for reelection; Clay-Bibbs is running for a seat on the Shelby County Commission.
Ray became superintendent of MSCS in April 2019, after the school board opted to ditch a national search. Board members at the time called him an “exceedingly qualified candidate” and said they felt a national search was unnecessary as Ray, who had been serving as interim superintendent for months, could step in immediately.
But some Memphians disagreed and protested the appointment. Others expressed concern about allegations of sexual harassment lodged against Ray months earlier. A district investigation concluded the complaints were “without merit.”
Throughout Ray’s turbulent tenure — the pandemic, his clash with Gov. Bill Lee and GOP leaders over his decision to keep students learning remotely for much of the 2020-21 school year, and his later efforts to lead COVID recovery — he has enjoyed steadfast support from the school board. Ray secured an early contract extension through 2025, and he garnered high marks on all his evaluations.
On his most recent review in August 2021, Ray got an overall score of 4.2 out of 5 — or “completely meets expectations.” His highest marks were in the management of business and finance and community relations categories. His lowest were for governance and relations with the board and staff.
The board decision Wednesday followed a public comment period during which more than a dozen people, mostly principals and other district employees, vouched for Ray’s leadership, some of them dismissing the allegations against him as a distraction.
Steevon Hunter, principal of Kirby High School and the father of two MSCS students, said “people from all over” look to the district as an example because of Ray’s “inspiration and innovation.”
Renee Smith of Memphis Lift, a parent advocacy group that protested Ray’s appointment in 2019, was one of several community members to call on the board to take swift action against Ray.
“Our superintendent is the distraction,” Smith said during public comment. “And we all know it’s time for him to go.”
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.
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.
A recent Memphis-Shelby County Schools survey that seeks input about how to prioritize budget spending aligns with many of the priorities Superintendent Joris Ray outlined during his recent state-of-the-district address. (Courtesy: Chalkbeat)
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
Mar 16, 3:56 p.m. CDT
As Tennessee’s largest school district prepares its spending plan for next school year, Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials are seeking feedback from families and community stakeholders.
From facilities improvements and digital learning resources to social-emotional support and wraparound services like health care for students, the district survey seeks input about how to prioritize budget spending.
District spending aside, the survey also asks for input on other issues, such as whether Shelby County has enough pre-kindergarten classrooms and if K-2 teachers and parents have enough support to teach children how to read. It also seeks to gauge community awareness of various services the district provides, including tutoring, the summer learning academy, and its new social-emotional learning curriculum.
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Many of the questions asked in the survey are in tandem with the priorities Superintendent Joris Ray outlined in his recent state of the district address, including retaining and recruiting high-quality educators, boosting early literacy, and reducing the student-adult ratio at the K-2 level.
The survey comes a week before the school board will host a series of community meetings to discuss the upcoming budget, ESSER spending, and the district’s renewed literacy commitment. Under its second grade retention rule that it will implement at the end of this year, all students must be able to read before entering third grade. The meetings are scheduled for:
Monday, March 21, 5:30 p.m., A. Maceo Walker Middle School, 1900 Raines Road, hosted by board members Miska Clay Bibbs and Joyce Dorse Coleman.
Monday, March 21, 5:30 p.m., Richland Elementary School, 5440 Rich Road, hosted by board members Kevin Woods, Sheleah Harris, and Billy Orgel.
Wednesday, March 23, 5:30 p.m., Snowden School, 1870 N. Parkway, hosted by board Chair Michelle McKissack and board members Stephanie Love and Althea Greene.
Memphis schools have offered elective African American history and literature classes for nearly three decades. But next school year, White Station High School will offer a more rigorous, comprehensive, and collaborative version of the course shaped by professors from colleges and universities throughout the country.
White Station is one of about 60 schools across the U.S. to be selected to pilot a new Advanced Placement African American studies course over the next two academic years. The Memphis-Shelby County school board late last month approved the district’s participation in the pilot, which is expected to cost the district $600.
Calling the new AP African American studies course a unique opportunity, district officials said the pilot will expand on their longtime efforts to provide culturally relevant and diverse instruction to its more than 100,000 students, the majority of whom identify as Black. The course will only be available at White Station to start, but officials hope it eventually will expand to all the district’s high schools.
“Any time we can further enrich the historical study portion of our curriculum, it’s a great opportunity for our students,” said James Smith, manager of the district’s AP programming.
Paraphrasing George Santayana’s famous quote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Smith added, “this is a great opportunity for us to learn at a deeper level — a wider level — about our current political circumstances and our past history and the relationship between the two.”
Following the lead of urban school systems across the country in the early 1990s, legacy Memphis City Schools launched its first multicultural curriculum in 1993. The program infused more instruction about African, Asian, and other non-European cultures into required high school social studies classes, and also added elective African American history and literature courses — as currently offered at White Station and the district’s other high schools.
Now, Smith said, offering a more expansive view of African history, expanding the AP course offerings, and giving more students the chance to earn college credit all are exciting.
The curriculum for the pilot course is not yet set in stone, Smith said, but it will center on the migration of people of African descent to the U.S., the Caribbean, and Central and South America. The class will start with the medieval kingdoms of Africa, and progress through enslavement, the abolition movement, eventual freedom, and Black people’s continued battles for civil rights and equality.
The new AP class is an important step toward teaching children a more accurate version of history, said Chris Tinson, an associate professor of history and the department chair of African American studies at Saint Louis University. Tinson is among about 20 college professors who have advised the College Board in crafting the course curriculum.
When he was growing up in the 1990s, Tinson recalls few, if any, references to African American history in AP classes or exams. An AP U.S. History course may have briefly referenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., specifically his relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Today, it’s not much better, Tinson said. Many of his first-year college students cannot tell him much about the Civil Rights Act, or the 13th, 14th, or 15th amendments.
Tinson noted that the College Board’s expansion comes at a time when states across the country are passing legislation limiting how race can be taught in school — the latest movement, he said, in a longer history of denial in fully recounting American history.
“It’s a battle over who can tell the story of America. And what happens when you let African people, Brown people, Asian folks, Native American folk tell their history of being an American?” he said, “What happens is that students are well, way more informed. They’re way more appreciative of their neighbors in the classroom. There’s less drama, there’s less Halloween costumes where people are in blackface.”
Tinson added that K-12 schools are doing a “great disservice” if their graduates get to college without a broad perspective.
“We’re trying to do something really comprehensive and as current as we possibly can with this lesson plan,” he said. “This is really the first time that we can think and teach broadly about the African experience in the United States and the Western Hemisphere at this level.”
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
The board of the newly-branded Memphis-Shelby County School District on Tuesday endorsed a sweeping facilities plan that includes closing two schools, merging another two schools, and relocating several schools and programs, among other changes.
District officials said many of the changes are designed to better use schools with declining enrollment, address overcrowding at other schools, and move students out of buildings with millions of dollars in deferred maintenance.
The board agreed Tuesday night to close Alton and Shady Grove elementary schools after this school year. Alton students will instead attend A.B. Hill Elementary, and Shady Grove students will attend either Dexter K-8 School or White Station Elementary.
Dexter elementary and middle schools will merge to form Dexter K-8 School, and Mt. Pisgah Middle School will expand to include ninth grade.
In addition, three schools will relocate:
Maxine Smith STEAM Academy, a middle school, will move and share the East High School campus.
Northwest Prep Academy and the district’s Adolescent Parenting Program will move to the building formerly occupied by Airways Middle School.
Airways Achievement Academy, a K-8 school, will move to the building formerly occupied by Norris Elementary.
The changes are part of the district’s “Reimagining 901” initiative, which the board unanimously endorsed Tuesday.
The plan also calls for rezoning high school students in Memphis’ Riverwood neighborhood from Ridgeway High School to White Station High School, and for refocusing academic programming at Bolton High School on what the district calls “agristem” — agriculture, automotive, science, technology, engineering, and math careers.
Superintendent Joris Ray called the wide-ranging facilities plan the “first step to a new day” intended to revolutionize public education in Memphis.
Ray’s initial “Reimagining 901” proposal, presented last year, included constructing five schools, expanding 13 existing schools, and closing 13 to 15 schools by 2031. Ray responded to critics who said the district is rushing the changes.
“Parents, I hear you. Community, I hear you. But we can’t wait on doing what’s right for children,” Ray said in an impassioned speech before the board’s vote. “I’m committed to doing everything in my power to ensure all of our students have a world-class education, because this work is personal to me, because I was once one of those kids.”
Minutes later, the board unanimously passed the facilities plan, with no discussion, among 30-some other action items. The vote covered the district’s initiative to change its name from Shelby County Schools to Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
In a separate vote, the board approved renewing the charter contracts of several schools, including KIPP Memphis Academy Middle and KIPP Memphis Collegiate Elementary, two schools administrators had recommended for closure due to low test scores.
Before the votes Tuesday, 21 people addressed the board, most expressing either excitement or dismay about Maxine Smith STEAM Academy’s move from Middle College High School to East High School.
Andy Rambo, the father of an eighth grader at Maxine Smith STEAM Academy and of a junior at East High School who also attended Maxine Smith, commended the district for the move, and said it will make it much easier for parents like him.
Rambo also said he’s confident that combining two schools will lead to better educational opportunities for “all of Memphis’ babies,” including his 18-month-old son.
“It is a scary thing as a parent to trust a significant part of the social-emotional development of your child to someone,” Rambo said. “We cannot be more happy and confident in the decisions we’ve made.”
Conversely, Stephanie Ferreira, the mother of two East High School students, pleaded with the board to hold off on moving Maxine Smith to East and asked for “due diligence and investment” in working with parents and answering their questions.
“The position that we’re in as parents is one of confusion regarding a plan that many of us have just learned about over the past several weeks,” Ferreira said, adding many “walked away from the [district’s community] meetings with unanswered questions about a plan that was vague.”
Ray later defended the district’s plan as well-founded in extensive research, and also disagreed with complaints from some people that they weren’t well-informed about the proposed facilities plans.
“We don’t make haphazard decisions. We don’t just act without consulting the community, without asking the right questions, without garnering feedback,” Ray said.
While board member Althea Greene acknowledged some parents and community members are concerned about the changes, she said she is happy with the plan and the board’s decision.
“As we ‘Reimagine 901,’ we realize that things will have to change,” she said.
Asked after the meeting about the board’s lack of discussion before voting, Greene said members asked questions and discussed the proposal at previous committee meetings, and it was good they didn’t have to “waste time” at Tuesday’s business meeting.
Board Chair Michelle McKissack echoed Greene’s comments, saying the proposals approved Tuesday are not just about facilities, but also about the district “firing all of its cylinders” at its mission.
“It’s going to be difficult and not everyone is going to fully agree with it, but you have to look at the big picture and that’s what ‘Reimagining 901’ is all about,” she said. “It’s all about not just approving our school buildings, but what’s happening in the buildings.”
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
