Tag: Memphis City Schools

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Opinion

Naifeh Is Wrong on Segregation Claim

Jimmy Naifeh

  • Jimmy Naifeh

One more time: Shelby County schools are not segregated. They are white schools only in the sense that a slim majority of the students in the 46,249-student system are white.

The latest offender to use this inflammatory generalization is Tennessee state Representative Jimmy Naifeh, who ought to know better. As a lifelong resident of Tipton County, he attended public schools that really were segregated by law in the 1950s. Naifeh was in high school in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education and in 1957 when President Eisenhower ordered troops to Little Rock to safely integrate Central High School.

The racial imbalance in public schools in Memphis, Shelby County, and Tipton County today is the result of many factors, but segregation by existing law is not one of them.

According to the Tennessee Report Card, there are 17,513 black students (37 percent) and 24,849 white students (52 percent) in the Shelby County public schools. Another 10 percent of the students are Asian or Hispanic.

The Tipton County school system, including Naifeh’s home town of Covington, has 11,639 students, including 2,963 blacks (24 percent) and 8,908 whites (73 percent).

The Memphis City System has 102,798 students, including 94,299 blacks (83 percent) and 8,917 whites (8 percent). NOTE: Counting students is controversial and an inexact science. The “average daily membership” for MCS differs from the “demographic profile,” which says MCS has 113,571 students. This is why the percentage of black students is 83 percent.

Private schools in Shelby County generally do not list racial breakdowns of students on their web sites.

But it is safe to say that Shelby County schools are more racially diverse than the Tipton County, Memphis, or private school systems.

At the individual school level, several of the 207 schools in Memphis are at least 99-percent black; there are a few elementary schools, including Campus, Richland, and Grahamwood, that are majority white.

In the Shelby County system, the demographic outliers are Southwind High School and its feeder schools, all of which are at least 90 percent black. Those schools are in the Memphis annexation area but are operated by Shelby County. The schools with the highest percentage of white students are in Collierville, but they are integrated to a degree that would have been unimaginable — not to mention illegal — before 1954.

The high school that Naifeh attended is closed. Tipton County has three high schools; the percentage of white students ranges from 47 percent to 82 percent.

You can spend hours looking at demographic trends and statistics. My point is simply that “segregation” is the wrong word to describe Shelby County schools. Self segregation is not legal segregation. That is not to say that there are not issues of race and class in the school merger debate, especially if private schools are included in the picture. A few years ago, federal judge Bernice Donald ruled that the county schools should be more racially balanced at the individual school level, but she was overruled.

We don’t know yet what the municipal school systems would look like or even if there will be such things. If they were to include their current city residents only, then the schools in Collierville and Germantown might well be less diverse than they are today. But in order to fill their buildings and keep their teachers working, the munis need to boost enrollment and include students from unincorporated or annexation areas.

Could there be schools in future municipal school systems that would trend toward becoming 90-percent white schools, while the future unified system could trend toward becoming 90-percent black? History shows that is possible, if not likely.

I have watched the clip of Naifeh’s remarks several times. I think he was trying to cut to the chase. This is a time for straight talk, but segregation is not quite the right word.

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Opinion

Hamer To Resign April 30th

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School board member Martavius Jones has confirmed that Deputy Superintendent Irving Hamer will resign effective April 30th.

Jones said he received a “privileged” notification Tuesday but did not open it until Wednesday morning. He declined to disclose it but confirmed that Hamer said he plans to resign at the end of April.

Hamer is accused of making crude remarks about an MCS employee at a party for Superintendent Kriner Cash in February. He is currently on unpaid leave.

“I didn’t know what the outcome would be,” said Jones. “I laud him for the work that he has done and we just have to move forward.”

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Opinion

Confusion on Taxes and a CFO at City Hall

George Little

  • George Little

Property tax bills are confusing enough, but the city of Memphis has outdone itself this year with not one but two disclaimers.

In another sign of a city administration that looks disturbingly erratic and half-cocked on finances, the 2011 Memphis property tax bills include a “GF (general fund) one-time assessment” of 18 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. That goes with the “general fund” tax rate of $2.2917 and the debt service rate of 71 cents and the CIP fund rate of .0031 (translation: a couple bucks or so on your bill). Total: $3.1889.

The bottom of the bill says “Any subsequent special school tax approved by the Memphis City Council will be mailed separately,” which suggests there’s more to come.

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Opinion

Revenge of the ‘Burbs

Sharon Goldsworthy

  • Sharon Goldsworthy

The votes have not yet been taken, but the road map is pretty clear. Barring court intervention, Shelby County suburbs including Germantown, Bartlett, Arlington, and Collierville aim to have their own municipal school systems in place by 2013 and will stake a claim on their current buildings and sports facilities lock stock and barrel at no charge.

On Tuesday the Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BMA) met to receive a feasibility study in a one-hour meeting that drew a small crowd of about 40 people. There was no public comment and no vote by the board. There will be a public meeting on February 1st at the Germantown Performing Arts Center that is likely to draw hundreds of residents. After that, the BMA will go on a two-day retreat to decide its next move.

Which, Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy indicated, is apt to be this: A referendum in May and, assuming a “go-for-it” vote, a school board election in November and employment of a superintendent next January. That person would hire everyone else, which consultants estimated at 776 other certified and classified employees.

Total projected enrollment: 8,142 students in eight schools. Projected expenditures, $60,921,144 from projected revenues of $62,483,135. The revenue would come from several sources including at least 15 cents on the municipal tax rate — either a new levy or an equal sum taken from the current rate of $1.48. Alternately, the city could levy an extra half cent on the sales tax, which, of course, is paid by locals and non-locals alike.

A similar proposal was unveiled in Bartlett on Monday, and Collierville is on deck for Wednesday.

The 15 cents on the tax rate, said consultant Jim Mitchell — a former Shelby County Schools superintendent — is required by state law. Muni’s must spend it, but they don’t necessarily have to raise it in the form of additional taxes. Even if they do, the gap between the Memphis tax rate of $3.19 and the suburban rates of $1.43 to $1.49 is so wide that 15 cents seems a pittance by comparison. All Shelby County property owners also pay $4.02 in county taxes. School board member David Pickler said the referendum might not be a lay-down because many of Germantown’s young folk go to private schools and the general population is aging into the golden years. But noone on the BMA appeared alarmed in the least at the consultants’ recipe.

The sweetest caramel in Mitchell’s box was the opinion that the ‘burbs can get their schools at no charge. Precedent, he said, dictates as much. He said that Shelby County since 1965 has given 44 schools to Memphis City Schools, via annexation, at no charge. The reasonableness, much less the legality of this charming argument, will certainly be tested.

Board members asked if Germantown could perhaps partner with its wealthy neighbor to the east, Collierville, in a common school system. No, said Mitchell. Each must go its own way, although they can “cooperate” all they want.

“You’re going to have to create your own district,” he said.

Mitchell was among friends. At one point, he reminded alderman Ernest Chism that they go way back and invited him to call him with any questions. The meeting was business-like all the way, with no citizen input this time around. Mitchell noted that Germantown’s school population is 25 percent black, but there are no blacks on the BMA. Nor were there any on the 2011 edition of the Shelby County school board which has merged with the Memphis board. The Shelby County system did not elect board members until 1998.

The full consultants’ report can be seen on the Germantown web site. Check page 122 for a summary.

A picture is emerging. The picture looks like this: As many as half a dozen municipal school districts, the strongest of which would have 8,000-10,000 students. And a county system of roughly 110,000 students that would look a lot like the current MCS system with a new name, new board, and different boundaries. Many’s the slip, but that’s the outline.

Mitchell’s final word of advice: This will not be easy, but should Germantown decide on such a course of separation, “you’ve got adequate time.”

Some years ago I was an MCS parent, and my children competed against Germantown and Collierville in soccer and baseball. We were pretty good but simply could not beat them, ever, in those sports. Basketball, the city game, was another story, thanks to the likes of Dane Bradshaw and J.P. Prince. But soccer and baseball, no way, although there were a couple of close calls with overwhelming evidence of divine intervention. My young athletes would go off to college and become teammates and friends with their former rivals, but to this parent, at least, the takeway was: We ain’t gonna beat the ‘burbs at their own game. I haven’t forgotten it.

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News News Blog

Teen Shooting Victim Knew His Killer

The teenager shot last Friday after a Central High School basketball game likely knew his shooter, said Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong during a press conference at the Memphis City Schools Board of Education on Tuesday afternoon.

The victim, 17-year-old Terrance Wilkins, was a student at Booker T. Washington High School. Wilkins was taken off of life support on Sunday.

His murder remains unsolved, and Armstrong urged anyone with information to contact 528-CASH.

Armstrong said the shooting stemmed from an altercation that occurred after the basketball game, off of school property on Bellevue and Linden. He said the suspect is an African American male between the ages of 17 and 19.

The meeting, which also involved Memphis City Schools’ officials, focused on the current protocols in place between MPD and MCS security.

“I want to use this time for us to review our policies and discuss whether or not there is a need for adjusting them. While I know and understand that the safety of school events is something they adopt as the responsibility of the school system’s security team, the city’s overall safety falls squarely in my domain,” said Armstrong in a statement released subsequent to the shooting.

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Opinion

The Help: Schools Have Lots of It These Days

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H. L. Mencken said “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” There are several variations on that theme, from Woody Allen (“Those who can’t teach teach gym”) to the unknown cynic who said “Those who can’t teach administer.” Professional skeptic James Randi has collected several of them on his website.

Here’s one more: Those who neither do nor teach consult or tell others how to teach.

In nearly 30 years of on-and-off reporting on local schools, I can’t remember a time when there have been so many educational entrepreneurs, consultants, advocates, advisers, foundations, and reformers hovering around the Memphis and Shelby County public schools.

A list, probably incomplete, would include The Gates Foundation, the Hyde Foundation, the online education outfit K12, Teach Plus, Stand For Children, the MCS Teaching and Learning Academy, the consultants advising the suburbs on forming their own separate school systems, State Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman, the Tennessee Charter Schools Association, the federal No Child Left Behind standards, Teach For America, The Council of the Great City Schools, the Memphis Urban League, the U.S. Education Department’s Race to the Top program, and at least a half dozen lawyers or law firms that weighed in on the consolidation process. Plus assorted PTAs, bloggers, columnists, and authors.

The newest addition to the mix is the Boston Consulting Group, which was chosen Thursday to advise the Transition Planning Commission. The consultants will be paid $1.7 million to prepare a merger plan by August 2012.

Some of these organizations put teachers in classrooms. Some of them advise from the sidelines. Some provide millions of dollars in funding. Some siphon teachers away from traditional schools. Some encourage parents and students to remain in traditional schools. Some help teachers network. Some measure the progress that teachers and their students are making, or are not making.

All are drawn to what is the biggest school system merger in American history. Teachers must feel like a patient with a mysterious disease who is prodded, poked, stared at, monitored, and tested by doctors at a hospital. They must long for the days when the PTA came through with classroom supplies, cookies, and a pat on the back.

How much actual reform there will be remains to be seen. It’s not great dog food if the dogs don’t eat it.

What we know for sure is this. Concerned parents will do whatever they have to do to get their kid into a good school. Suburbs are deadly serious about separate systems. “Choice” and “options” are other words for escape hatches. The hardest part of public education is teaching in urban schools, with 25-35 students in five classes a day. The fastest burnout is among classroom teachers. The pressing question for a classroom teacher is “what do I do Monday?” The stress is why they leave.

Now throw an observer, more paperwork, shorter planning periods, harder test standards, and longer hours into the job description. One of the best and most idealistic young teachers I know said “to heck with it” this semester, and it wasn’t because of the pay.

But at least there’s no shortage of advice.

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Opinion

The Problem with Kriner Cash

Kriner Cash

  • Kriner Cash

Kudos to The Commercial Appeal and reporter Jane Roberts for getting MCS to release records of Booker T. Washington principal Alisha Kiner’s 2009 suspension, but it should not have taken such unusual effort to get the information.

Unfortunately it is characteristic of the tenure of Kriner Cash as superintendent. Media requests for such basic information as enrollment are met with instructions to file a Freedom of Information request. That is what The CA did to get Kiner’s records. Releasing that information a year ago might have scuttled BTW’s chances of winning a shout-out and visit from President Barack Obama this year, but the fortress mentality at MCS precedes that event.

BTW’s outlier graduation rate caught my attention last year and I wrote about it in February, arguing that it was not replicable due to a significant enrollment decline in one year. The column drew a rebuke in a signed comment from Alisha Kiner. At a school board meeting, Cash singled out BTW for praise and compared its performance to optional schools White Station and Central, which I thought was unfair to BTW, misleading on the part of Cash, and inaccurate. A couple of months later the stakes were raised when BTW became a finalist for the Obama visit.

As The CA reported, there were people in MCS who knew about Kiner’s suspension and there was even a petition. I heard from some of them and encouraged them to come forward. I assumed, wrongly, that internal pressure would force MCS to divulge any potentially embarrassing information before Obama’s visit. An education blogger also wrote about the BTW graduation rate. And my former colleague Mary Cashiola, who is now spokeswoman for Mayor A C Wharton, wrote about her problems getting public information from MCS on enrollment that might influence school-closing decisions.

School board members apparently did not know about the suspension. Dr. Jeff Warren said disciplinary issues involving teachers and principals are for management to handle, while the board deals with policy.

“That typically won’t come to us,” he said.

Warren is sympathetic to Kiner. He believes she was new to BTW and made a mistake for which she has paid the price. “She has become an exemplary principal,” he said.

Board member Kenneth Whalum Jr. said he did not know about the suspension until reading about it Thursday.

“Institutionally, the board knew – or should have known – about it as a function of our oversight responsibilities, even if that knowledge was very general in nature,” he said.

Like most Memphians, I was moved by the televised BTW graduation and Obama’s visit. I later met some of the graduates at a civic club luncheon and was very impressed by them. There are apparently some positive things going on at BTW under Kiner’s leadership.

But the end doesn’t justify the means, whether it’s college sports programs chasing national championships or public school systems under pressure to increase test scores and graduation rates. The good work of many can be tainted by the cheating of a few.

I don’t happen to think that Kiner’s suspension is as big a deal as, say, the lawsuit last week against First Horizon over $883 million of its mortgages, which the CA ignored for four days. But that’s not the issue. The Kiner suspension was news because of BTW’s remarkable improvement in graduation in one year and moreso when the school was singled out for national acclaim.

In education, big improvements are hard to make in a year or two. That is not to say they don’t happen, but the underlying facts must be known before a super teacher or super principal is hailed. Many outstanding teachers and principals labor in anonymity and achieve slow, steady progress. Happily, some of them are getting recognition, like the math teacher at Whitehaven High School who was the subject of a story in The Commercial Appeal earlier this year. A friend of mine whose wife is a standout advanced calculus teacher is trying to get the College Board to identify extraordinary AP teachers. I hope they do.

Honest data and prompt, full disclosure are crucial as the Memphis and Shelby County school systems move toward a merger. Spin and stonewalling won’t work. Trite as it sounds, that’s the main thing.

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Opinion

Schools Merger Up to Judge Mays Now

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No guns, no sex, no stolen cash, no cops. Just a stack of holiday homework for U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays that may be the most important federal court case in Memphis in decades.

All of the parties in the schools merger case filed their final briefs on Thursday, setting the stage for Mays to decide when and how the Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools will be consolidated. The question of “if” seems moot since everyone agrees it’s going to happen sooner or later.

There are seven players in the game. Their briefs total 180 pages, plus a few hundred pages of supporting exhibits. Not exactly a full-employment act for lawyers, but a pretty good lick. Judge Mays says he will make a ruling with dispatch.

Here is a summary of the final positions. At stake: the future of two school systems with roughly 150,000 students, one (Memphis City Schools) overwhelmingly poor and black, average ACT score 16.6, and one (Shelby County Schools) majority middle-class and affluent and racially mixed, average ACT score 21.

The legalistic blah-blah about special school districts is not mere semantics. The underlying issue is who gets the bill for paying for MCS, which has a 2011 budget of $1,196,364,127. Presently, 6% comes from the city of Memphis, 30% from Shelby County, 38% from the state, 21% from federal government, and 5% from other local sources. The city council wants to get out from under the financial obligation but has booked a 18-cent property tax hike just in case. When the systems are consolidated it is possible that there will be one countywide tax for schools, not a separate tax in Memphis in addition to the county tax.

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Opinion

Tax and End: Wharton For One-Time Assessment

City Councilman Shea Flinn’s proposal for a one-time 39-cent property tax assessment gained the support of Mayor A C Wharton Tuesday, and Wharton said that if the council goes along with it then a long-running dispute with Memphis City Schools could be settled.

The assessment on property owners in Memphis would raise about $40 million, which Wharton said MCS officials agreed to accept as full and final payment of a $57 million debt going back to 2008. The council will take up the proposal in two weeks. The city would still have to pay MCS $80 million or about 9 percent of the school system’s operating budget every year until the city and county systems are merged.

The assessment would cost the owner of a $200,000 home about $180. It is likely to provoke charges that it will become permanent, like the “temporary” county wheel tax.

Wharton made the announcement during his budget speech to the council. He said one reason he accepts it as the best of some bad options is that, as an attorney, he is uncomfortable defying the ruling by three courts that Memphis must pay up.

Although Flinn has publicly said his proposal has no chance, that now seems to be a misstatement. Iin a committee meeting, Council members Joe Brown, Wanda Halbert, and Janis Fullilove said they would oppose it. Council members Kemp Conrad, Harold Collins, and Reid Hedgepeth said major fixes are needed in the budget, not one-year measures. Collins described the approach as “shoestrings, paper clips. and bubblegum.” Whether that means cuts, taxes, or some combination will be revealed in the coming weeks. The committee kept Flinn’s proposal alive without recommending it.

Jackson Baker

Wharton and Flinn compare notes before the Council meeting.

What gives the proposal a chance is the acceptance of the offer by the MCS officials, the promise that it will be a one-time assessment and not an annual tax increase, the support of the mayor, and the scarcity of other options.

Brown said he would oppose privatizing the sanitation department or additional layoffs beyond the 125 proposed by Wharton. Fullilove said she is against layoffs and holiday reductions for city employees and would like to hear discussion of a payroll tax on people who work in Memphis but live outside the city. Halbert also floated the idea of a payroll or privilege tax.

Wharton proposed that city employees not be paid for 12 of their 14 holidays, which amounts to a 4.6 percent pay cut. He also proposed $23 million in combined cuts from every division except police and fire.

“Nothing we do will generate universal praise or support,” said Wharton.

The final 2012 budget must be ready by June 6th.

Memphians can look forward to some other fees in the new economy. Wharton said charging for car inspections is one possibility. And as a counter proposal to Wharton’s suggestion that the city privatize downtown parking meters, the Center City Commission wants to “modernize” them rather than “monetize” them. “Diligent enforcement” of parking violations by an outside firm would put a little extra cash in city coffers, especially if ticket scofflaws were unable to renew their car registration, as some council members have suggested. And police, who are spared from the layoffs, can be counted on to diligently enforce speed limits and traffic violations.

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Special Sections

The Epping Way Mystery

CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY BING / MICROSOFT

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  • PHOTO COURTESY BING / MICROSOFT

Ah, Memphis is just full of mysterious places.

A friend of mine was driving along James Road in Raleigh and happened to turn south on a little road called Epping Way. The road ends after just a few blocks, and he came to a rather fancy gate, with stone pillars on either side. This gate is padlocked (I believe he told me that), and there is a rather prominent sign on one of those posts, proclaiming “NO TRESPASSING – PROPERTY OF MEMPHIS CITY SCHOOLS.”

Now this, in itself, is intriguing because I never knew that Memphis had a school in that area. But it’s only when you turn to Google or Bing for a good aerial view of the property that the mystery deepens. As you can see from these two images, taken from different angles, beyond that gate is a double driveway that curves back to some type of school-looking building, which seems to be rather unkempt and abandoned.

And then look to the side of it: not just one, but SIX overgrown tennis courts, side by side. There’s even a nice little gazebo, if you look closely, all by the shore of a very nice lake.

I’ll go ahead and tell you that if you go to Bing and rotate their birds-eye view option, looking at this site from various angles, at one point the building completely disappears, leaving only some kind of concrete foundation. So it’s safe to say that this structure has been torn down, though various aerial views — apparently taken weeks or months apart — don’t consistently show it.

But what was this place? Why all the tennis courts? And what does the Memphis City School system have to do with it?

Does it surprise you to learn that I sent these images to the good folks at the school system and asked them this very question, and they didn’t even bother to respond? No, it didn’t surprise me either. Either they don’t know, or they don’t want to say. And after my family gave them that fine Lauderdale School, too. So disrespectful!

If anybody know what this curious property is — or was — please tell me.

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  • PHOTO COURTESY BING / MICROSOFT