Tag: Memphis City Schools

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Editorial Opinion

First Report

In time-honored tradition, it is time for the first six-weeks’ grade report on the newest student to hit the Memphis educational scene. That would be Kriner Cash, a transfer from Miami, Florida, and, it would appear, a quick study.

First, how did the new superintendent do in his entry-level course, Introduction to Memphis 101? He seems to have learned fast, accommodating himself not only to the political structure in these parts but, in one of his earliest innovations — a proposal to break up the school district into four administrative areas — borrowing a useful holdover idea from the regime of the city’s current mayor, onetime superintendent Willie Herenton. It’s probably a good idea in itself and indicative of a sense of diplomacy which will serve Cash well in years to come. Herenton, a disappointed suitor for the job who once lumped Cash into a class of applicants he called “third-rate,” was able to do some sincere bragging about the new man. At the very least, that will stave off what many see as an inevitable clash until such time as the superintendent has his feet firmly on the new earth he inhabits.

On the other hand, Cash’s quick hire of a former mayoral intimate, David “Smokey” Gaines, as MCS athletic director raised eyebrows — especially since the holder of the job, the well-respected Wayne Weedon, had to be shoved aside to accommodate Gaines. That, plus Cash’s importation from Miami of new MCS security chief Gerald Darling, who had been cited for a sex-scandal cover-up by a Florida grand jury, engendered fears that Cash might be seeing overly eye-to-eye with Herenton, who is more or less constantly being charged with cronyism.

There’s a plus side to that if it indicates Cash understands the nature of his new turf. In recent remarks to the Memphis Rotary Club, the new superintendent assailed what he saw here as “a culture of failure” and promised to remedy it by, among other things, finding new ways to institutionalize the role of fathers and father figures in the school system. Also promising was Cash’s pledge to aggressively pursue the involvement of qualified adults as tutors.

Cash seems to understand that MCS’ over-large corps of over-age students — those who have repeatedly failed annual promotion — is at the core of performance by the whole student population. He proposes to target these students for a mixture of stern discipline, countertruancy measures, and hands-on incentives. Meanwhile, he will encourage mainline students to achieve results by providing exhibitions and other opportunities for superior work on their part to be displayed to the public.

All students will have to toe the line on dress codes and cell-phone use. While we have reservations about the latter policy, we recognize that some students are trafficking in something other than educational ideas, and banning the phones may be a prerequisite to getting that problem under control. And we were struck by his proposal to outfit schools with wardrobe closets so that students who come to school with ill-fitting garments will be forced to shed them and climb into something else that, Cash said, “is the right size.”

Is Cash himself the right size? The answer to that will determine his final grade. Meanwhile, we’ll give him an Incomplete. And we’re optimistic about his progress.

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News The Fly-By

Compromise Concerns Cash

New Memphis City Schools superintendent Kriner Cash may have initially said he could figure out a way to live with the City Council’s $66 million budget cut. But Thursday, August 14th, at a public meeting held at Bridges U.S.A. in Memphis’ Uptown neighborhood, the superintendent was singing a different tune.

Whatever may have been said in the past, it’s clear that the superintendent and his team have determined that MCS needs the city funding commitment, not just this year, but in perpetuity.

Cash referred to a gloomy PowerPoint presentation and said that without the additional funding, jobs would be lost, textbooks won’t be replaced, initiatives won’t be launched, and significant additional cuts will have to be made in years to come as the system fails to meet its state-mandated cash reserves.

Cash justified six-figure salaries offered to new hires by saying the generous salaries were market value. He also said that a majority of the job cuts would come from the system’s main office and administration.

The superintendent’s presentation assumed yearly increases in operating costs though school enrollment has been in decline.

The proposed compromise between the city and the school system is, quite literally, passing the buck.

The school district would transfer $57.5 million from its reserves to the city, an amount the council says it’s owed for debt-service on bonds it issued for the system. The city would then give the $57.5 million back to the school system, which would allow the district to balance its 2008-2009 budget.

The problem, according to MCS, is that the one-time transfer doesn’t replace the funding stream the school district loses if the council continues to withhold funding in the future.

If projections are correct, MCS could witness a budget shortfall of $14 million by 2010.

The dialogue between city officials, school district personnel, and the public was hampered by a series of ground rules designed to allow such a meeting in light of a pair of lawsuits the city and the school district have filed against one another.

At press time, the City Council’s budget commitee had approved the compromise and sent it on for a full council vote.

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Opinion

Back To School

City and county public schools opened this week, and students aren’t the only ones who could use an orientation.

Kriner Cash, his staff, and members of the Memphis City Council and school board should climb on a yellow bus and check out three new high schools their predecessors left them — and taxpayers — at a cost of nearly $100 million.

Each of the schools — Southwind High School, Douglass High School, and Manassas High School — comes with the latest furnishings and technology and some important unfinished business. Taken together, they offer a lesson in school choice, city-county politics, urban renewal, flight from the inner city, and the underpinnings of the current conflict between the Memphis school board and the City Council.

Southwind, located in an unincorporated area of suburban sprawl between Germantown and Collierville, opened in 2007 as a Shelby County school but will become a city school when Memphis completes a politically touchy annexation of the adjacent area. The school has 1,484 students this fall in grades 9-11 and will add the 12th grade in 2009. More than 90 percent of the students are black. U.S. district judge Bernice Donald has ordered Shelby County Schools to make all of its schools within 15 percent of the system’s overall 35 percent minority enrollment. The school system has appealed the order, and a decision is expected later this year.

Manassas, which opened in January, is in a blighted neighborhood near the abandoned Firestone manufacturing plant about two miles north of downtown. Famous as the city’s original high school for African Americans, Manassas graduated just 38 students in 2007 before the new building was completed. Capacity is 800 students. Current enrollment is just over 500, according to Principal Gloria Williams.

Douglass, located in a hardscrabble industrial area of North Memphis dotted with small businesses on Chelsea Avenue and single-family homes, is one of the feel-good stories of the year. It was closed in 1981 and rebuilt in 2007 and 2008. On Monday, alumni from as far away as California came to a 7 a.m. dedication ceremony called “Coming Home and Giving Back.”

“It’s all about school and community pride,” said Principal Janet Ware Thompson.

Completion of the gym and auditorium are behind schedule, however, and the school opened Monday with about 350 students, well below its capacity of 800 students.

Douglass and Manassas are touted as prototypes of smaller neighborhood high schools. Their revival is due to dedicated alumni and political muscle. Former Memphis school board member Sara Lewis championed Manassas, her alma mater, and city councilman Barbara Ware, a Douglass graduate, did the same for her old school. Even if Douglass and Manassas reach their capacity, their enrollment will be about a third of the largest and most overcrowded high schools in Memphis — Cordova and White Station — which each had more than 2,200 students last year.

Southwind is likely to be at its capacity of 2,000 students by 2009. Super-sized Southwind sprawls across a 62-acre site jointly approved in 2006 by the city and county school boards and purchased for an eye-opening $5.2 million. At 325,000 square feet of space, Southwind is tied with its design twin, Arlington High School, as the biggest public school in Tennessee. Neighboring subdivisions along Hacks Cross and Shelby Drive boomed before the subprime mortgage crisis came along and are still marked by signs that say “NO CITY TAXES.”

Most City Council members and MCS leaders were not in office when construction of these three schools was approved. Cash succeeded former Superintendent Carol Johnson in July. Nine of the 13 members of the City Council are newcomers this year, and that number will rise to 10 when Scott McCormick resigns in two weeks. Former school board member Wanda Halbert moved over to the City Council, and Lewis was named to a full-time city job.

At a Southwind High ribbon-cutting ceremony last week, there was little recognition of its city-county parentage. City officials were invited, but only school board member Betty Mallott showed up. The City Council voted against completing annexation of the Southwind area in 2007 (shopping centers and commercial areas have been annexed but not schools and houses), and another push could be five years away, according to Shelby County Schools superintendent Bobby Webb.

The Central Nutrition Center is the symbol of excess in Memphis City Schools. But pricey catering and spoiled food are small potatoes compared to the cost of new high schools. Shelby County, with city and county tax money and the blessing of the Memphis school board, built near suburban subdivisions where population is increasing. MCS builds in declining neighborhoods as a catalyst for redevelopment. Either way, it’s an expensive proposition.

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News The Fly-By

Back to School?

CREDIT: RAJA RC | dreamstime.com

In an interview a few weeks ago, new Memphis City Schools superintendent Kriner Cash said he wasn’t interested in going back to a small school district.

“I’ve done that and been there,” he said. “I’m interested in the large challenges.”

That’s good to hear, because already it seems Cash will have nothing but large challenges.

Earlier this week, the Memphis City Schools board of commissioners heard plans to overhaul the district’s literacy program, an update on corrective action at the beleaguered central nutrition center, and possible scenarios if the school system has to cut $30 million, $74 million, or a whopping $500 million from its budget.

In addition, when the state released its progress data in July, 30 Memphis City Schools were on the list of high-priority schools, while an additional 34 were cited as being in danger of becoming high-priority schools.

But when asked about the school system’s challenges, Cash said, “It seems to me that our greatest challenge is to change the perception of our general constituents about our school system.”

To do so, Cash said he would work on improving services and do a better job of publicizing and marketing the positives of the district. But two recent staffing decisions have already been perceived as leaving a mark.

Cash first hired former Miami-Dade schools security chief Gerald Darling to create a Memphis City Schools police force. Unfortunately, in Miami, Darling was cited in a sex scandal cover-up by a Florida grand jury.

Cash also hired David “Smokey” Gaines, athletic director at LeMoyne-Owen College, to replace MCS athletic director Wayne Weedon. But only days before his termination, Weedon had been given a positive evaluation.

Cash is investigating why and how that evalution was missing from Weedon’s personnel file.

When I talked to Cash several weeks ago, I asked him why he — or anyone — would want to be superintendent of a large, urban school district. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad there are people out there who are interested in the job. But with the deck stacked against them, as it often seems to be, I wonder what they think they’re getting out of it.

“It is one of the toughest jobs in America today,” Cash said. “The issues are the demands and no-win situations that a lot of people feel. I don’t feel that way, though. I come from a different cut of tree, and I always believe in turning negatives to positives.”

There are plenty of negatives. More than 8,500 of the district’s students are not proficient in math. Roughly 6,500 are not proficient in reading.

“No one in that group is going to be an engineer or a financial wizard,” deputy superintendent of academic operations Irving Hamer told the MCS board. “There’s a whole category of work they’re not going to be able to do.”

As the new superintendent, however, Cash said he has a mandate from Memphians to improve the system.

“Right now, right at this moment, we have to capture it, because there is a small revolution going on,” he said.

If he’s not careful, he could very easily squander that small revolution.

He said he thought it was exciting work and asked if I didn’t agree. I said that I thought it was challenging work.

“I’m going to build coalitions,” Cash replied, “and that’s the key.”

But he might be better off without some coalitions — or even the perception of some coalitions.

After Cash hired Gaines, someone realized that the former Globetrotter used to play basketball at LeMoyne-Owen College with Memphis mayor — and education enthusiast — Willie Herenton. And since the city administration was criticized for cronyism when Herenton appointed several former bodyguards and security staff to top administration positions, it looks like business as usual.

If Weedon had been let go in less suspicious circumstances, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. As it is, the story doesn’t make sense, and it has left some citizens wondering if Cash has been co-opted by Herenton.

With public perceptions of MCS at the top of his list, Cash might want to take another look.

After our interview, the last thing Cash said was this: “I’ve got to attack the perception that there is a lack of quality leadership at these schools and the accountability in these schools. You do that — and we are — and you’ll see a difference right away.

“Just follow me. Track it. Hold me accountable.”

I’m sure the public will do just that.

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Editorial Opinion

Passing the Exam

The Memphis City Council, composed overwhelmingly of new members after last year’s city elections, has acquitted itself well in most respects — never more so than when it dared last week, by a convincing 10-3 majority, to begin a radical reversal of course in the matter of school funding. By voting to withhold almost $70 million of its expected $93 million annual contribution to Memphis City Schools, the council made two statements at once: 1) As noted implicitly in the budget resolution introduced by newcomer Bill Morrison, a teacher himself, and explicitly in the comments of several council members, MCS has long gone without anything resembling adequate accountability in its allocation of resources. 2) Hard-pressed Memphis taxpayers, long forced by our two-headed local government system to pay two tax bills at once, were due for a modest break and got one.

Add a third statement: This council affirmed that it will not roll over and be taken for granted by MCS, to whose coffers it has been making voluntary, not mandated, contributions all these years. Even one of the three nay votes, that of freshman member Jim Strickland, was based not on disagreement with the majority’s essential premise but on Strickland’s feeling that school cuts should be phased in and supplemented by more stringent reductions in the city’s administrative budget.

Admittedly, there are serious and concerned people in the community who disagree with the council’s action. Operation P.U.S.H., which sought an injunction against the budget resolution last week, was rebuffed in Chancery Court but will press forward with litigation. Whatever the outcome of that, the council has taken a resolute and overdue step in the rehauling of local education, one which may ultimately have positive pedagogical, as well as financial, results.

All’s Well That Ends Well

Bishop William Graves of Memphis, the first African American to serve on the governing board of the TVA, is due for another term on the board as the result of Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander’s apparent victory late last week in a political contest with Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Reid had long blocked President Bush’s reappointment of Graves, whose prior partial term expired last year, on the ground that congressional Republicans had earlier purged bona-fide Democrats from the board and that Graves, a nominal Democrat but a past backer of both Bush and Alexander, had insufficient party credentials. Alexander had retaliated by blocking Dr. Ikram Khan, a Reid protégé, from being confirmed to the congressionally endowed United States Institute for Peace. Both blocks were finally removed by mutual agreement, as was an impasse on most of 80 other presidential appointments.

The credentials of Bishop Graves, who represents a sprawling district of the Christ Methodist Episcopal Church, had also been pleaded for by local Democratic congressman Steve Cohen — a fact that speaks to Graves’ reputation and that took the issue somewhat beyond the contours of a political grudge match.

We are pleased by the outcome, both for Bishops Graves’ sake and for the ultimate triumph of common sense over partisanship.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Waiting in the Wings

The wildly fluctuating odds on a MacArthur-like return of Mayor Willie Herenton to the vacant Memphis school superintendency went up when some of the five finalists in the school board’s vaunted national search had second thoughts and started to drop out, one by one. They went down when Herenton overplayed his hand by calling the remaining candidates “third rate.”

In fact, Herenton’s odds go up or down on a daily or even hourly basis, depending on whether he or his chief backer, school board member Kenneth Whalum Jr., are blowing hard or keeping it civil.

Right now, neither the mayor nor Whalum are contenders for the Congeniality Award, and Herenton’s prospects for a job switch are correspondingly dim. If that scenario holds, it will disappoint an increasingly crowded queue of candidates who hope to succeed His Honor in the mayor’s chair:

— Criminal Court judge Otis Higgs was the first serious African-American mayoral candidate in Memphis history when he ran unsuccessfully in 1975 and 1979. Higgs confided to the Flyer some weeks ago that he would be willing to resign from the bench and serve a several-month term as interim mayor if the school board should hire Herenton away as a full-time superintendent.

— City councilman Myron Lowery met with several council colleagues last week to assure them his hat would be in the ring in a special mayoral election. Professing no fear of current Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who would be the initial favorite in such a race, Lowery said candidly that he preferred not to wait until he was eight years older to make his own run.

— Mayor Wharton answered, “Yeah,” when asked by the Flyer in early April if he would be interested in running to complete Herenton’s vacated term. This was after he had made it clear that he had closely consulted with his Memphis counterpart on the latter’s plans to resume control of Memphis City Schools.

— Former city councilwoman Carol Chumney, runner-up in the 2007 mayor’s race, virtually announced for the office on the day of Herenton’s premature “resignation” bombshell in March. As for Wharton, Chumney made it clear in the days following her defeat in last year’s race that she would have welcomed the presence of both the county mayor and Herenton in the 2007 mayoral field, believing that a split of votes between the two would have benefited her.

That questionable thesis might appear sounder if applied to a 2008 field including Wharton, Lowery, and three other recognizable black candidates.

— One of those is Whalum, as outspoken on the school board as Chumney had been on the council, as unpopular with his mates, and as determined to march to his own set of drums. He may also have the same sort of cachet with restless voters wanting as abrupt a change as possible at City Hall.

— There are also James Harvey and Thomas Long. Harvey, a first-term Shelby County commissioner, has made it clear that he will be a candidate for city mayor at the first available opportunity. Long, now serving his fourth term as city court clerk, was quick to say, at the very beginning of Herenton’s Willie-or-won’t-he resignation drama, that he would run for any resultant vacancy.

And Chumney may not be the only well-known white candidate, either; her predecessor, both as city councilman from the 5th District (Midtown, East Memphis) and as chief council nonconformist, is John Vergos, anything but an admirer of hers and someone who has nursed mayoral ambitions himself.

But the probability of mayoral wannabes having to wait until 2011 is the going scenario according to this week’s odds.

Of course, the mayor might leave office early for some other reason, even if he doesn’t become superintendent again. And there could be all sorts of unforeseen consequences from the current budget chaos in both city and county government, especially if the Young Turks on the City Council, boosted by Herenton’s apparent complicity during his tête-à-tête with the council last week, should follow through on threats to cut or eliminate city government’s share of school funding.

In any case, if there should turn out to be a mayor’s race this year, we have a basic cast of characters in waiting — and there’s probably room for more.

Senior editor Jackson Baker writes the Flyer’s Politics column.

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Opinion

Twenty-two Questions

Three superintendent interviews down, two more interviews to go. So who should be the HNIC of the Memphis City Schools?

HNIC, as Mayor Willie Herenton and other fans of the 1989 movie Lean On Me know, stands for “head [N-word] in charge.”

Don’t worry. Nobody used those words this week in interviews for the best-paid government job in Memphis. They’re taken from the movie about bat-wielding principal Joe Clark, played by actor Morgan Freeman. Herenton and some members of the Memphis City Council think a Clark-type is needed as the next school superintendent.

The school board and its search-team consultants have other ideas. The first round of interviews Monday and Tuesday consisted of a dainty game of “22 Questions” posed to each applicant, who had three minutes to respond to each question. Neither the applicants nor the board members had seen the questions prior to Monday afternoon.

This brings to mind a puzzle that ancient philosophers called the “Job Applicant’s Dilemma”: If the questions are secret and the interviews are seven days apart, should next week’s job candidates Google the questions and look like a smartypants or not Google the questions and exhibit a stunning lack of curiosity and research skills?

Far be it from me to be a snitch, but here are 22 questions NOT on the list, which should give you some idea how the search is being conducted:

Should a fictionalized portrayal of a principal in a 20-year-old movie be the role model for the next superintendent?

Should a 6′-7″ mayor and former superintendent be the role model?

Should an eighth-grader who is big, easily pissed off and has access to guns be paddled, suspended, or told to sit in the corner as punishment for bad behavior?

Should a first-grader who is shy, small, and gets smacked around at home be paddled for misbehaving in school?

Should the MCS dress code be strictly enforced? Define “strictly enforced.”

Should the MCS mission statement, “Every Child. Every Day. College Bound.,” be kept, modified, or abandoned?

Should every child pass through a metal detector every day?

Should the Memphis City Council withhold all, some, or none of the $93 million city contribution to schools this year, as has been proposed?

If your answer is “none,” then should there be a 58-cent city property tax increase, as has been proposed?

Should the city and county school systems, which are both funded in large part by the county, be merged or kept separate? You have three minutes to answer.

Should city schools get $3 for building or renovating schools for every $1 the county schools get for construction?

Should the governor of Tennessee take over the Memphis City Schools this year or next year if they don’t improve? By the way, name the governor. If you don’t know, why are you here?

The Memphis Education Association has 6,350 members. Would you like to say a few words to them?

Within 10 percent, what are the annual operating budgets of the city of Memphis and Memphis City Schools? If you don’t know, why are you here?

If the optimum size of a high school is 1,200 students, how many students should graduate each year? Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings wants to know.

If your answer to the above question is equal to or more than 125, what would you do about nine high schools that graduated fewer than 125 students in 2007?

Explain why Memphis rebuilt Manassas High School, which graduated 38 students in 2007, for $30 million.

Should Southwind High School, opened in 2007, be a city or county school?

Should the city school board, county school board, or developers with a vested interest choose new school sites in unannexed areas that are growing?

Should the school board get a raise, and should there be a school board at all?

Why are there no mayors among your references?

Are you sure you really want this job?

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Opinion

The Next Superintendent

The next superintendent of Memphis City Schools should be too young for the job.

Too young, that is, by conventional standards. If ever a school system needed fresh blood, fresh thinking, and youthful energy and idealism, it is MCS.

Memphians are familiar with the superintendent search process. Engage some consultants and a local nonprofit or two with no vested interest — which means no children actually attending Memphis public schools — to do a “national search” for a Dr. Gerry House or a Dr. Carol Johnson, who brings along some friends to take the most important and well-paid administrative jobs.

They announce their “reforms,” make headlines, burden teachers with extra paperwork, polish their resumes, stay a few years, and suddenly leave for greener pastures. Then the school board names an “interim” superintendent who is over 60 years old and a 30-year employee of the school system: a Ray Holt, Johnnie B. Watson, or Dan Ward. Then the process starts all over.

What if, instead, MCS was run by a superintendent and staff of twenty- and thirtysomethings with recent experience as teachers, coaches, and principals of Memphis public schools or similar urban public schools?

There are two good sources for such candidates. One is the current pool of Memphis teachers and principals who have demonstrated results and earned the respect of their peers. The other is the national Teach for America program, which is now 17 years old and has enlisted 17,000 of America’s brightest college graduates into teaching in urban and rural schools. One of the goals of Teach for America is to keep its “corps members” in public education beyond their two-year obligation. One way to do that is to show them they can put their talent, training, energy, and idealism to work on a big stage while they are “too young.”

Of course, the truth is they are not too young. Last week, FedEx founder Fred Smith was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “The riskiest strategy is to try to avoid risk altogether,” said Smith, who was five years out of Yale and a year out of the Marine Corps when he founded Federal Express.

In The Wall Street Journal last week, there was a story about the American soldiers who are running counterinsurgency classes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of them is Capt. Dan Helmer, a former Rhodes scholar. He is 26 years old.

Our best and brightest and bravest can start companies and fight wars and command armies, and they can run our failing school systems if we let them.

I have had the pleasure of getting to know several Teach for America teachers working in Memphis since the program came here in 2006. Most of them got placed at the toughest schools, not the optional schools with college-bound students. The good news is that almost all of the corps members are still working here and making a difference. The bad news is that some schools are worse than most people know unless they have close contact with teachers and students.

I often think about getting them to tell their war stories to the Flyer, but that might make their jobs harder. And these young teachers aren’t seeking sympathy anyway. They plug away in classes for five periods a day — often classes without textbooks for the first two weeks of school, classes with 40 students and only 30 desks for the first five weeks of school, classes where they are under pressure to get 80 percent of their students to pass the Gateway examinations, classes where a terrified teacher locked herself in her closet.

A “too young” superintendent and staff would make mistakes, but veterans make mistakes too. Look at the MCS transportation mess, the spoiled-food mess, and the grand jury investigation of construction contracts. But a young superintendent with recent classroom and administrative experience in Memphis or similar schools would make a lot of smart decisions too and grow into the job.

Willie Herenton became superintendent of MCS in 1978 when he was 39 years old. Within three years, he closed underused schools and helped start the optional schools program. Name a successor who accomplished as much.

As Fred Smith told Chris Wallace, you can’t be afraid to change, because if you are, then inevitably something bad will happen. In Memphis, it already has.

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News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

The news from the Memphis City Schools just keeps getting worse. We knew the department that runs the cafeterias — the Central Nutrition Center — had ordered too much food last year, but a recent audit shows that more than $3.6 million worth of frozen food had to be tossed out because there was no place to store it. No wonder our landfills are reaching capacity. That’s an awful lot of fish sticks.

The Bartlett Police Department sells the Millington Police Department a pair of old radar guns for just one dollar. Explaining the bargain price, a Bartlett spokesman tells reporters that they are old models, and “we are not going to repair or auction them.” Repair? Do they even work?

Vandals have been making their mark on buildings in Lakeland, but officials reassure jittery citizens that the graffiti is not caused by gangs. Instead, they believe the cryptic symbols are “tags” spraypainted by other groups — including what was described as a “small clan” of skateboarders who are only 10 to 14 years old and call themselves “The Kids Rule Click.” Hey kids, it’s actually spelled “clique.” Stay in school.

A Germantown surgeon already charged with three counts of sexual assault now faces an additional charge of indecent exposure, from a massage therapist who claims the doctor allegedly exposed himself during the session. It looks like it’s time for this orthopedic surgeon to be hands off.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Department charges two vendors from Texas with selling counterfeit designer shoes, purses, wallets, and other items. No wonder our new purse says “Goochy.”

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News The Fly-By

Weapons Test

CREDIT: ODVDVEER | dreamstime.com

Last Wednesday, Markees Smith, a 15-year-old Manassas High School student, was arrested after his handgun accidentally went off, shooting a 16-year-old classmate in the arm.

On the same day, 20-year-old Eddie Smith was arrested at Fairley High for bringing a gun onto school grounds to confront a 17-year-old female student. While wrestling the gun away from Smith, a school security officer broke his hand.

The day before, a gun was recovered from Ridgeway High when a 14-year-old student was caught putting it inside a classmate’s folder.

Following last week’s incidents, the Memphis City Schools administration is asking schools to beef up weapons screenings. Currently, schools are required to perform nine random weapon checks per school year. The new request does not mandate additional screenings but leaves it to the discretion of principals.

“They’re not saying you have to do 15 as opposed to nine. They just want them to be more frequent,” says MCS spokesperson Shawn Pachuki. “They may come up with a [new] number down the road.”

School board member Tomeka Hart says the current requirement is only meant to be a minimum number of screenings.

“That certainly does not mean that a school only has to do nine,” Hart says. “We need our policies to be broad enough so that we’re not hand-holding our principals. We expect our principals to know their communities and to tailor their practices for the needs of the community.”

Prior to last week’s shooting, Manassas, a small school with fewer than 600 students, performed random metal detector screenings once a month.

“This was a student who knew there was a chance he’d be checked that day, and he still brought a gun to school,” Hart says. “He knew if he brought a gun to school, he’d be kicked out for a calendar year. We can’t get a whole lot tougher on our policies.”

Memphis City Schools adopted the use of metal detectors in 1996, but last year the district set a minimum number of screenings per year. Hart says using the metal detectors on a daily basis would take too much time.

“If it takes an hour to get kids through, do we start school an hour early or do we miss an hour out of the education day?” Hart asks.

At least one school, Booker T. Washington High on Lauderdale, conducts daily weapons checks. Principal Alisha Kiner says school doors open at 7:30 a.m., and students are screened upon entering the building. Those with backpacks enter one door, and those without are screened at another door. The school’s 755 students filter through screening until the tardy bell rings at 8:10 a.m.

“Believe it or not, we still find something every once in a while,” Kiner says. “To be honest, parents need to check their kids before they leave the house. That would make it so much easier.”

Every middle and high school in the district is equipped with at least one walk-through metal detector and two metal detector wands. Additional walk-through units are added per 500 students, and schools get more wands for every additional 300 students.

It can take six people to operate a check at small schools and up to 20 staff members at larger schools. Some schools opt to perform checks before class and others surprise students with random wand checks during class.

“They could set up a checkpoint in the hallway between periods. Kids walk out [of class] and then, bam, there’s a set-up there,” Pachucki says. “Or they might walk into a classroom and announce, okay, everybody, we’re going to do a metal detection check. Principals have the discretion to do them when they want and as frequently as they want.”

The real problem, Hart says, lies within the communities. She says educators should do a better job talking to parents and kids about guns.

“We have to get into our communities and talk to our parents. We need to go find out, from that particular family, what is it about your child that made him or her decide to bring a gun to school today?” Hart says.

Despite the three incidents last week, Hart says gun incidents at city schools are infrequent. However, MCS was unable to provide statistics of gun incidents by press time.

“We have to put these incidents into perspective,” Hart says. “It’s rare that kids bring guns into our schools. We have 115,000 students. Even if 20 kids in a school year bring their guns to school, the board has to look at the big picture.”