Tag: Dorsey Hopson

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Opinion Viewpoint

Hopson’s Choice

On Monday, when Shelby County commissioner Chris Thomas decided not to offer his widely advertised motion for the commission to drop its litigation against the six suburban municipalities planning school systems, he was merely bowing to reality.

Several realities, in fact — beginning with the high probability that, even with the expected defection of Chairman James Harvey, a Democrat, from the ranks of lawsuit supporters, there was still a majority in favor of continuing with the lawsuit, consisting of six other Democrats and Republican Mike Ritz. That was enough to out-vote Thomas and the coalition of suburban Republicans that has steadfastly opposed the litigation. The best they could hope for was a 7-6 outcome against them.

Another reality confronting Thomas was last week’s unveiling by Dorsey Hopson, superintendent of the unified Shelby County Schools system, of a plan that resolved one basic issue in ongoing negotiations between the suburbs and the commission — that of who would administer to the unincorporated areas of Shelby County. Hopson’s answer was clear and categorical: The unified system would.

The superintendent’s plan also went far toward resolving the other basic question: What to do about the school properties within the six suburbs of Germantown, Collierville, Arlington, Lakeland, Bartlett, and Millington? Hopson’s choice was to insist on leasing the buildings to the municipalities — at a rate to be agreed on but one that, it was clear, would not be the nominal one desired by the municipalities.

As Hopson spelled that out Monday night, at the SCS board meeting that saw his plan overwhelmingly approved, the leases would be for 40 years, with all sorts of provisos regarding defaults and damages that put the onus of compliance on the suburbs.  

And, crucially, four schools on incorporated suburban turf would be retained by the united SCS system — Lucy Elementary School in Millington and three vintage institutions in Germantown: Germantown High School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown Elementary.

As Germantown mayor Sharon Goldsworthy and others discovered when they appealed this verdict at Monday night’s SCS board meeting, there was virtually no chance of altering it. By state law, SCS is the official governing body for public education in Shelby County, it owns the school properties, and it has first dibs on their disposition. The rationale for selecting the particular four schools for retention by SCS was that the majority student population of each derived from the unincorporated areas, not from within the corporate limits of the host suburb.

Although Goldsworthy talked of conferring with her lawyers and continued to call for further discussions regarding the fate of the three Germantown schools — gaining a sliver of concession from Hopson that negotiations about the buildings (with him and board attorney Valerie Speakman) might conceivably touch on the issue — the chances of revision seemed remote.

The main reason for that was that no complaint was being heard from the other five affected suburban municipalities. Indeed, as SCS board member David Reaves of Bartlett explained somewhat apologetically when he declined Monday night to oppose the Hopson plan, “People in the north like this plan.” Mayor Mike Wissman of Arlington, a former board member and a bystander Monday night, confirmed that judgment.

The only board member voting against the Hopson plan was David Pickler, the former longtime chairman of the defunct all-suburban county school board, now a representative of Germantown. (And Collierville, too, though no grumbling about the plan was coming from that quarter.)

The once united front that could spur state Senate majority leader Mark Norris to seek remedial legislative action on behalf of the county’s suburban municipalities seemed irrevocably broken — a Humpty Dumpty that could not be patched back together.

It would appear that, after all the fire and brimstone and legislation and legal bickering, Hopson, the former attorney for Memphis City Schools and co-attorney for the provisionally unified system, had finally disposed of the central issues regarding the crisis-born school merger and the subsequent formation of municipal school systems. All that remains is some haggling over the cost of leasing school buildings.

Just in case, the county commission majority will almost certainly keep the existing lawsuit alive, though its linchpin, an accusation of resegregation, has been compromised somewhat by the Hopson plan’s de facto appropriation of minority students along Germantown’s unincorporated rim.

Presiding federal judge Hardy Mays, who has granted the litigating parties an additional 60 days to reach agreement, may soon be proclaiming an all-clear.

Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.

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Politics Politics Feature

Beginning of the End?

The great war over the fate of Shelby County’s schools — one which has preoccupied activists of various kinds, the media, city, county, and state jurisdictions, and the judicial system — may soon be winding down.

And the winner is …

Dorsey Hopson

Actually, that’s a matter of opinion. As matters stand, with the Shelby County Schools board’s adoption Monday night of a plan by Superintendent Dorsey Hopson, there are several parties that might proclaim victory: the SCS board itself; the Shelby County Commission, whose majority has been litigating against the six suburban municipalities hatching independent school systems; and the majority of those municipalities, which seem satisfied with the plan.

If there is a loser, it is Germantown, which sees the territorial integrity of its municipal school system compromised by the absorption of three namesake schools — Germantown High School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown Elementary — into the unified Shelby County Schools system.

Hopson announced his plan last week, and victory peals or alarm bells (depending on the source) began sounding almost instantaneously. But the outcome was not formalized until Monday night, when the SCS board finally sat in judgment over the plan.

Most unusually for a school board meeting of whatever jurisdiction, the evening’s main drama was not delayed by curricular or procedural minutiae at the jam-packed business session in the Coe Administration Building on Avery. Germantown, whose officials and citizens showed up en masse to prevent it, saw the seven-member SCS board turn down its plea for retaining the three schools, or at least for more time to discuss it.

Referring to debate on the matter as “a conversation just begun,” Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy, said, “We respectfully ask, even urge, that you delay a definitive decision about the schools within the city of Germantown.” She thereby led a parade of several fellow townsfolk in the board’s opening public period, which also featured spokespersons for other causes, including the rescue of South Side High School from the state’s ASD system, over which the board had no control, and for a K-through-eight expansion at Barrett’s Chapel, over which it did have jurisdiction.

The Barrett’s Chapel folks got their way, those from South Side couldn’t, and those from Germantown didn’t — despite some eloquent testifiers, including a Houston High parent wearing a Germantown Red Devil pullover in solidarity, and the young son of Tim Coulter, who followed his father with the affectingly simple line, “Please don’t take my school” (an echo of the South Siders’ own plea, “Please don’t take our school away”).

40-year Leases for Each Municipality

After the public period was over, there were reports — from board chairman Kevin Woods, from the chairs of various committees, and finally, the crucial one, the superintendent’s report, delivered in Hopson’s flat and measured phrasing.

After a typically understated reference to the “extraordinary level of angst” that had afflicted all sectors of the county during the school merger controversy, followed by a brief statement of the good news for the Barrett’s Chapel contingent, Hopson detailed, city by city, his plan for the six incorporated suburbs that aim to have their own municipal school systems in August 2014.

Beginning with Arlington and proceeding through Bartlett, Lakeland, Millington, Germantown, and Collierville, Hopson read out his formula: a 40-year lease on terms to be negotiated for county school buildings currently within the cities’ municipal limits and with each city responsible for defaults and damages.

In only two cases was the number of leasable properties less than the number within those limits. As had been revealed in Hopson’s bombshell announcement last week, Shelby County Schools intends to maintain responsibility for Lucy Elementary School in a community newly annexed by Millington and for three namesake institutions in Germantown — Germantown High School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown Elementary School.

As Hopson and other SCS spokespersons explained last week, the choice of institutions to be retained was dictated by the system’s decision — for financial and various logistical reasons — to provide public education for the unincorporated areas of Shelby County and for the school-age populations in those areas. The four institutions chosen all contained majorities of pupils living in the unincorporated areas. (In an interview, though, Goldsworthy would contest that fact for Germantown Elementary.)

“In a nutshell,” said Hopson, “I have authorized myself and Ms. [Valerie] Speakman [the board attorney]” as negotiators with the suburbs.

“In the North … People Like this deal”

The first board member to address the Hopson resolution was David Pickler, representative of Germantown and Collierville. Pickler expressed himself as “deeply troubled” by a plan that had not been submitted to an “open, fair, and public conversation” but had been engineered with “a very specific guiding of what the outcome had to be.”

Pickler then made a formal motion for the board to delay voting on the plan, pending “a more thought-out public process.”

Board chairman Woods asked if there was a second, and there was none — a fact causing several of the Germantown advocates in the audience, who had applauded Pickler lustily, to gasp or cry out in disbelief.

The reason would be made obvious when, after a ritual endorsement of “a very thoughtful resolution” by Memphis board member Teresa Jones, Bartlett member David Reaves, in a regretful but firm manner, lowered the boom. “In the north … most of the people like this deal,” he said. “I sympathize, but I represent the north.”

In a concession to Germantown sensibilities, Reaves did move to divide the board’s voting on the plan six ways, city by city. That motion failed 5-2, with only Reaves and Pickler voting for it.

Before the board’s vote on the Hopson resolution, former board chairman Billy Orgel, who had been honored earlier for his service during the board’s 23-member transitional phase, said he thought the Hopson plan would hasten a mutually agreeable resolution of the whole merger controversy. (Unmentioned Monday night was the fact of the ongoing county commission litigation against the municipalities’ school plans, still unsettled.)

Optional Status for Germantown Schools

Chairman Kevin Woods then posed a series of rhetorical questions to Hopson and attorney Speakman, addressing potentially contentious parts of the plan. That gave the superintendent the opportunity to note that the district would treat all three Germantown institutions as optional schools and that the staff and teachers at each would likely remain in place. For her part, Speakman affirmed that it was by no means unprecedented for schools within municipalities to function as parts of extraneous systems.

Pickler won one tenuous concession from Hopson — the superintendent’s somewhat tepid acknowledgment that theoretically the board, during negotiation, could consider revising the question of Germantown’s schools. The board then voted on Hopson’s plan, endorsing it 5-1-1, with Pickler the only no vote and Reaves politely abstaining.

In a colloquy with reporters later on, Goldsworthy talked of convening her lawyers and trying again to get public discussions on modification of the Hopson plan. She had no ready answer when asked if there was any legal alternative to acceptance of the board’s will. Asked if her city could run a viable school system minus the three affected schools and the state funding destined for students in the adjoining unincorporated area, she gamely suggested that, come what may, Germantown would succeed with its system.

Asked if there was any reason other than logistical for her city’s bearing the brunt of sacrifice in the Hopson plan, Goldsworthy only smiled cryptically. When her interviewer suggested he couldn’t interpret a smile, she answered, “Oh yes, you can.”

(For more on Superintendent Dorsey Hopson’s plan, see Viewpoint, p. 15.)

Categories
Opinion

The Problem with Quick Consensus

showofhands.jpg

Don’t let it go to your head, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson.

Six votes ain’t a landslide. Anyone who says, as a certain newspaper did, that “many applaud” your swift appointment has a bit of a counting problem. Six people quoted in an article, two of whom are current school board members, is not that many, and yes, I know headlines are shorthand and I have been guilty of this myself. “Many” times.

Take it from a veteran of the scribbling class: If someone says you’re wise or smart or insightful it means they agree with you, no more.

The 23-member unified school board was a circus, for sure, as those who attended the 5-hour meetings well know. But that stage of the process probably had to happen. Birthing a baby often takes hours, and, I am told, is quite painful.

Hopson never would have gotten the job a year ago or two years ago, much less a week ago. I thought he was a cold fish, but I was wrong. He was doing his job as general counsel the way he was supposed to do it. Now that I have gotten to know him a little bit I think he’s a swell guy and right for the job. (That means he agrees with me.)

A 23-member board is too big, but a six-member board, in addition to being an even number, is too small. That’s one board member for every 24,000 students in the system. That doesn’t square too well with the theory that school governance should be as close to the people as possible. In the six future municipal school systems, assuming they happen, there will be five board members, for a ratio of 2,000-1 or less. And notice that most of those positions are going to be contested races. There is always disagreement.

If quick consensus is such a great idea then why not just have 3-member boards? The former Shelby County school board had 7 members. For most of the board’s existence, all of the members were white and male, even though the county system had thousands of black and female students. No wonder there was so much harmony and consensus, as board members endlessly reminded us dysfunctional Memphians.

I rarely covered the old county board but I knew one of its customers, developer Jackie Welch, well. As he told me once, he “kinda had the market” on new schools and the subdivisions that fed them for several years. It’s hard to get that kind of clout in a place like Memphis where there is/was more diversity and scrutiny.

Hopson, as he knows, is in the honeymoon period. Let’s see how much consensus there is when the size of the board is finalized, members are elected or appointed, and the tough issues come down the pipe. Like who gets the buildings and the students, and at what cost.

One more note. The details of Hopson’s contract are being worked out. That presumably includes his pay, which is likely to be higher than the pay of the city and county mayors. Anyone alarmed by that should take a peek at the publicly available tax forms (form 990, available on line at guidestar.org) of local private schools that are about one percent the size of the unified system but pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to their leaders.

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Opinion

Hopson and Pickler on New Board and Superintendent

Dorsey Hopson

  • Dorsey Hopson

If he has any qualms about being chosen as “permanent” Shelby County Schools superintendent by just 6 of the 23 board members he worked with for the last two years, Dorsey Hopson wasn’t talking about them Wednesday.

Asked if he could do a brief telephone interview, Hopson replied by email:

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the confidence that the board has shown in my leadership. We have so much work to do and I am excited about this once in a lifetime opportunity to lead and serve our community. We will have many challenges ahead but we will face them in a transparent and responsible way. I look forward to working with our board and the entire community.”

Hopson was legal counsel to Memphis City Schools under Dr. Kriner Cash and interim superintendent for a year. His contract details have yet to be worked out.

In its first meeting, the new “seven-member board” that is actually only six members until the seventh slot is filled, unanimously chose Hopson and told the superintendent search firm — which concluded after two months that a viable candidate could not be found given the uncertainty — the deal was done. One week ago the board had 23 members, and within a year it could have 13 members.

The ratio of students to board members in the county system is roughly 24,000-1.

David Pickler

  • David Pickler

The day after the superintendent selection, board member David Pickler was at a meeting of the National School Boards Association to discuss, among other things in the media announcement, “the lack of flexibility local public schools currently face.” He is president of the association.

Pickler said school boards in the association range in size from 3 to 23 members. He said the “ideal” size would be 5 to 9 members.

He said Hopson should have “at least a two-year contract and preferably three or four years.”

He said that if the suburbs leave the county system his district should still have representation on the county board because it includes parts of Cordova and the Southwind area that are not in Germantown. Pickler’s term ends September 1, 2014.

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Opinion

A Rare Bright Day for the Unified School System

CREDIT: John Branston

Dorsey Hopson and staff

For a day, at least, it was all sunshine.

Under a bright blue sky, Interim Superintendent “Dorsey” (Hopson) introduced Interim assistant superintendent “David” (Stephens) and the rest of the administrative staff. No formality, no bodyguards, no limos, no scowling Irving Hamer, no snark, no hostility, no guarded answers. Maybe it was the weather, or the spirit of Easter and renewal. But less than 24 hours after another five-hour school board meeting, the new leadership aired it out.

Hopson said there will be no attendance zone changes and no busing. There could be more school closings, but not until the 2014—2015 school year. The school system will try to get full payment of past debts from the city “but I don’t want to be in an adversarial position with the city,” Hopson said. “I hope they do the right thing and pay what they owe.”

John Aitken was “great” but “the work goes on.” Hopson does not plan to apply for the permanent superintendent’s job, if permanent can be used in such a context.

“We’ve got to all be partners whether we have one district or ten districts,” he said.

The picture was worth 1000 words. Both Hopson and Stephens have children in the city or county public schools. And Stephens has a good personal story. His father, O. Z. Stephens used to work for the Memphis City Schools back in the busing years. In fact, he cowrote Plan Z, the “terminal” busing plan that drove more than 30,000 students out of the system in 1973 and 1974.

David Stephens

  • David Stephens

David Stephens said his father’s views of the merger have softened since two years ago when I interviewed him and he said he feared another round of white flight and busing. The slow pace, in this case, has been a good thing. David is working on his doctorate, and part of his research is interviewing his dad. They got about an hour on tape. I asked David if I could listen to it some time and he agreed. I will write more after we meet.

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Opinion

A Tie Vote on Teacher Pay Change at School Board

Dorsey Hopson

  • Dorsey Hopson

The Unified School Board voted 10-10 Tuesday on a proposal to change the way teachers are paid. But the measure, which needed 12 votes to pass, can come up again because of some strategic moves by proponents of the change.

Three members of the 23-member board were absent. Board member Kevin Woods voted “no” but is actually in favor of the change. By voting no he reserved the right to bring up the measure again — a practice that is fairly standard on the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission. Barbara Prescott, chairman of the Transition Planning Commission which proposed the change, said she believes there is one more “yes” vote among the three absentees, which, with Woods, would make a majority.

The proposal puts more emphasis on student test scores and less emphasis on experience and advanced degrees. But interim superintendent Dorsey Hopson emphasized that it would not cut the pay of any current teacher or any teacher currently working on an advanced degree.

In the face of dozens of Memphis Education Association members holding signs urging board members to vote no, Hopson defended the proposed change, in the first test of his leadership as superintendent.

He gave a good account of himself, as did several board members in the debate that avoided emotional outbursts. The complex issue, with conflicting studies and research, lends itself to “on the one hand, on the other hand” speeches, and there were several of them.

The division on the board defied the usual stereotypes. Both suburban and Memphis representatives were to be found on both sides. So were board members with advanced degrees. Proponents included David Reaves, Tomeka Hart, Jeff Warren, Betty Mallott, and Billy Orgel. Opponents included Joe Clayton, Snowden Carruthers, David Pickler, Sara Lewis, Patrice Robinson, Stephanie Gatewood, and Kenneth Whalum Jr.

No speaker carried the day, but Hopson had the most memorable line. He repeatedly used the fictional example of a degree in “basket weaving” qualifying a teacher for more money. In the example he used, a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and excellent student test results and mentoring experience would make $43,994. Another teacher with a master’s degree and 45 more hours of graduate school with mediocre test results and no outside mentoring or added responsibility could make $66,258.

Categories
Opinion

Twenty Questions: What’s a Special Master?

speakman_hopson.jpg

A lot of Tuesday night’s three-hour school board meeting (a “cup of coffee” in school board time) was like a game of Twenty Questions, with school board attorney Valerie Speakman doing the “I’m thinking of a person” part and channeling federal judge Hardy Mays.

Had this been a party or a courtroom, Mays, of course, would have been there himself to answer the questions. But a school board meeting is neither of those, so Speakman did her best to recount details of a meeting Monday between Mays and attorneys in the schools case.

Is this person important? Oh, yes, special you might say. Is it a special master? Yes. Man? Not necessarily. Lawyer? Not necessarily. Do we know this person? Maybe. Would the master be our master? Possibly. Do we have to hire this master? Not necessarily. Would the master make the merger happen faster? You’re getting warm. Including the superintendent selection? Warmer.

So it went for an hour or so, board members probing and Speakman trying to be both candid and careful. Attorneys thought the meeting was going to be routine until Mays brought up the prospect of a special master, a land mine he had buried in the wording of the consent decree in 2011. After weighing Speakman’s answers and interim Memphis City Schools superintendent/attorney Dorsey Hopson’s too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen warning, the board decided not to request appointment of a special master, which is no guarantee that it won’t happen anyway.

Speakman said Mays is not pleased with the progress of the merger and “made it clear that he would not entertain any delay.” He is especially unhappy with the superintendent selection process. The board’s timetable has that happening in May. The Transition Planning Commission recommended that it be done last year.

“He specifically said May is way too late in the game,” Speakman said, adding that Mays “likes” Shelby County Schools Superintendent John Aitken. Whether the judge likes him in the Facebook sense or likes him for the job is not clear. “Why is the judge trippin’ about another superintendent?” asked board member Dr. Kenneth Whalum Jr.

Speakman estimated the merger is about 20 percent done, but the unified board is on the verge of making “monumental decisions” regarding jobs in the next 30-45 days. When attorneys asked Mays if it was prudent to merge the school systems when the suburbs might find a way out, Mays said that issue is not going to be resolved in 30 days, 90 days, or even longer and the board should “put the concerns about municipal school districts out of their minds” and carry on. Adding words to the effect that when you entered into the consent decree in 2011 you should have considered the consequences.

Mays told the attorneys that politics should have no role in the merger. But the context of that statement is not known. Mays, former chief of staff to ex-governor Don Sundquist, was once a political creature himself and knows that one person’s policies is another person’s politics. The 23-member school board represents a spectrum of views and loyalties. Jobs, schools, hundreds of millions of dollars, and neighborhoods are at stake. To expect politics to play no part in this is not realistic.