ACES – Memphis Flyer

As a lifelong Memphian deeply involved in our city’s civic community, never before have I seen a more transformational opportunity for Memphis than in the issue of whether Memphis Light Gas and Water should continue to get its electric power from TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), or find another less expensive and reliable source of power.

Next Wednesday, August 19th, the MLGW board of directors will make the critical decision of how to proceed with an RFP (request for proposals), which will tell us how much MLGW will pay for power from a new source. It is the next step – and arguably the most important step — in a prolonged search process that recently culminated with an IRP (Integrated Resource Plan). The IRP, commissioned by MLGW, is one of five studies that have said MLGW could save between $150 million – $450 million a year if it leaves TVA. Each of these studies also say that the initial savings will easily grow by more than a $100 million in 10 years.

Why is this RFP decision so important? The consensus of energy experts is that the only way MLGW can validate the savings is to issue an RFP conducted by an experienced and reputable firm that can expeditiously and accurately pull together cost bids from power suppliers around the nation that would tell Memphis what we will pay for power compared to what we now are paying TVA.

Three months ago, the Memphis City Council, realizing the importance of this issue, asked Mayor Jim Strickland to hire ACES, a national energy management company, to perform the RFP. ACES, which serves among other entities, municipal utilities and public power agencies throughout the country, operates as the procurement arm for MISO (Mid-Continent Independent Service Organization), the non-profit organization across the river which is six times larger than TVA and delivers electric power across 15 states (including parts of Mississippi and Arkansas) and into Canada.

ACES already has told Mayor Strickland that an RFP can be completed 90 days, plus a public comment period.

Thus, ACES is best suited to perform this study and is the logical choice. It would seek power bids from all sources of power, including wind, solar, gas, and nuclear. If the savings projections of these five studies prove to be true, the longer we wait to decide whether or not to leave TVA, our city could be losing anywhere from $500,000 – $1.5 million a day!

Look at it this way. The City of Memphis’ annual operating budget is about $700 million. Imagine what our city could do if we had an additional $200 million a year in extra income without raising taxes while, at the same time, reducing everyone’s utility bills by 20 percent. The Memphis City Charter allows that at least half of these savings could be used for a variety of things, including the repair of MLGW’s aging infrastructure, funding MATA, supporting economic development, improved funding for our schools, and additional funds for our police and fire departments.

This additional revenue would change the face of our city for generations and still provide all the reliable power Memphis needs at significantly reduced rates with a far better impact on our environment.

Until an RFP is done properly by an experienced company such as ACES, we will not have an apples-to-apples comparison of power costs between MISO and TVA, nor will we be able to accurately validate the projected savings detailed by the five studies.

As co-founder of $450 Million for Memphis, an independent group of civic, governmental, and business leaders and concerned citizens, I believe it’s imperative that Memphis take the proper steps its needs to leave TVA and find its power elsewhere. Our city can’t afford not to.

If you want to know more about the entire issue, $450 Million for Memphis will host a two-hour online session this Monday, August 17, from 3 p.m.-5 p.m., which will include presentations from all organizations in favor of MLGW leaving TVA. These organizations include Friends of the Earth and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. We also will have a presentation from MISO explaining the benefits of this nonprofit organization and how it works, and we will hear from our neighbors to the south and west — Entergy Mississippi and Entergy Arkansas. Their representatives will talk about their experiences after leaving their power supplier and joining MISO. In addition, there will be a presentation from a TVA distributor that also is exploring the likely possibility of leaving TVA.

The session will be live streamed at www.abetterwaythantva.org. Please take the time to watch, listen and then understand why leaving TVA and joining MISO is the biggest opportunity for change and growth in Memphis’ 200-year history.

Karl Schledwitz is chairman of $450M for Memphis.

SCS

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced last month a proposal to create a trust fund for mental health support for K-12 students.

Upon approval of the governor’s proposed budget, $250 million in state money would be put into the fund initially, and over time, the governor anticipates the fund growing as a result of private donations.

Lee said the funds would “support the growth and placement of mental health support services in our most at-risk schools.”

One in five children has a mental health diagnosis in a given year, the governor said at the time, and more than 60 percent of children who receive mental health support do so in school.

Additionally, the youth suicide rate is the second-leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24 in the state.

“Scores of teachers and principals, as well as our education commissioner, have pleaded for reinforcements from the state to help schools tackle mental health and other challenges that students bring with them into the classroom,” Lee said.

More Support

Shawn Page, chief of academic operations and school support for Shelby County School, applauds the governor’s proposal of a mental health trust fund. He said “our district has quite a bit of need around that area. We could always benefit from more resources.”

“Many of our children experience what’s called adverse childhood experiences,” Page said. “The things we hear every day on the news, from murder to other things, are what our children experience in the community and the issues our students bring to school with them. Every night we see some of the trauma that our students experience.”

With more funding for mental health and behavior services, Page said SCS would be able to invest in more personnel to support students.

“What we hear mostly from our schools is that they would like more support in the form of people,” Page said. “Teachers have a very difficult job. They’re on the front lines every day and the first contact for these students. They need extra support.”

Page also said there is a need for additional specialized staff to help students in crisis.

“When you have adequate staffing, there’s more of a probability that there’s going to be somebody who’s able to make individual connections to students,” Page said. “The thing that changes behavior and supports children is not creating another system, it’s touch and human connection.”

Currently, Page said SCS has three layers of support in place in all schools to address students’ mental health, behavior, and emotional needs.

The “first lines of defense” are the guidance counselors, Page said. Each school has at least one full-time certified guidance counselor, while some schools, depending on need and size, have more. They provide students with individual counseling, group counseling, and social emotional learning (SEL) support.

SEL helps students to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

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If the district were to get more funding, Page said SCS would also look to purchase an SEL curriculum that all schools could use. The curriculum would serve as a resource for schools to guide how to address particular issues, such as bullying or drug use.

“The big buzzword right now across the nation in educational circles is social emotional learning” Page said. “For years, the big focus has been on academics, scores, and state testing. In the past few years, there’s been more conversations around mental health, emotional learning, and behavioral support. Children can’t learn unless they are supported and healthy. Things are shifting to look at the whole child, rather than academics, academics, academics.”

The next level of support available to students in every school are social workers, who Page said provide a “deeper level of mental support” for students. For example, social workers would work with students with suicidal ideation or who have experienced extreme trauma.

Finally, each school has a behavioral specialist who focuses on the behavior of students by helping them resolve conflict and de-escalating situations.

Because many SCS students have been exposed to some form of adverse experience Angela Hargrave, SCS’ executive director of student equity, enrollment, and discipline, said it’s important for teachers to understand the effects of those experiences and how to respond. Hargrave said SCS began providing Adverse Childhood Experience (ACES) awareness training for all staff this school year.

The training versed staff in how ACES impacts brain development and children’s behavior as a result. The training also teaches staff how to respond to students who’ve had adverse experiences and how to create a learning environment that mitigates the negative impact of those experiences.

“While we have mental health centers and support, we also wanted to equip the teachers in the classrooms with as much information and tools as we could,” Hargrave said.

“When you turn on the news and you see all of the crime happening, these are our children and our families. And that’s not necessarily the case in other districts, but it is here. So if you see an incident that happened in the community where children are involved, those children don’t forget about that and come to school and everything is okay. They bring that with them. We definitely recognize that and have to understand that.”

Effects of Trauma

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Awareness Foundation released a report in 2015 citing that 52 percent of adults in Shelby County report having experienced at least one ACE in their life.

An ACE can include anything from witnessing or experiencing abuse, neglect, or domestic violence, to alcoholism in the family.

ACES Awareness Foundation

Based on a survey of 1,500 Shelby County residents, the report concluded that the most common adverse childhood experiences in the county are substance abuse, emotional abuse, and violence between adults in the home.

A little over a quarter of respondents said they witnessed someone being shot or stabbed in their community while growing up, while one in five said they did not feel safe in their neighborhood growing up.

Child psychologist and University of Memphis professor Kathryn Howell said exposure to trauma, such as witnessing or being a victim of violence at home or in the community, can cause developmental problems in children. These problems could cause trouble with basic functions such as decision making or paying attention.

Howell said trauma can also affect hormones that influence behavior and responses to everyday life situations.

In addition to the physical consequences of trauma, Howell said trauma can also influence the way children relate to others and view the world.

“We see in research that kids, who are exposed to trauma, when they’re presented with a neutral stimulus, they’re more likely to view it as threatening or harmful,” Howell said. “Trauma affects the world and how they view and interact with the people around them.”

Howell said trauma can also lead to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and ADHD.

“Many of these diagnoses are rooted in trauma,” she said. “There are just different ways that children react. They show sadness or aggression which oftentimes ties back to some type of adversity that they’ve experienced.”

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Howell said instability, such as limited access to food, can also affect a child’s mental well-being. For example, a child living in a food desert might have “uncertainty about their basic safety.”

“What we know about any mammal, not even just humans, is if their basic needs aren’t being met, then they won’t be able to function and thrive,” Howell said. “So if you’re hungry and you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from, then your ability to do well in the classroom is significantly hindered. It’s not that kids aren’t wanting to learn or lazy or difficult, but they aren’t being cared for enough.”

Howell heads the U of M’s REACH (Resilience Emerging Amidst Childhood Hardships) lab. The lab examines ways in which intervention can “alter the grim trajectory” a child might be on after experiencing a trauma.

“Kids aren’t able to fix these problems by themselves, so there has to be intervention by adults in the community and at schools,” Howell said. “It’s important that we acknowledge that this is a significant problem and it’s something that’s going to require all of our efforts to address.”