Tag: school board

Categories
Opinion

The Benefits of a Big School System

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You work with what you have, and what the transition team and the citizens of Shelby County are going to have in 2013 is a big consolidated public school system — probably one of the ten biggest in the country for the first year or two.

The transition team has held its first of many meetings. There are so many big and small decisions to be made in the next two years by the transition team and the new school board, but bigness is a given. So what are the benefits? Here are a few that come to mind.

Marching bands. As Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden wrote this week, there is a lot of pride, excitement, talent and diversity in a high school band. Charter schools, which are proliferating, can’t offer this.

Sports teams, gyms, and playing fields. One more reason why it is so important to try to persuade the suburbs that it is in their best interest to stay with the county system and not form their own districts. John Aitken and David Pickler are going to be key spokesmen.

Superior experienced teachers. The best Memphis and Shelby County schools are holding their own with private schools if the number of National Merit Scholars and the dollar amount of scholarship offers is any indication. In five years, the new Shelby County system could be competing with more than 50 charter schools, DeSoto County schools, private schools, and new suburban school systems. Good teachers, already a hot commodity, are only going to get hotter. The future Shelby County system must aggressively recruit and retain talent, and that will mean better pay, benefits, and fighting lies with facts and fire with fire when it comes to that.

Special programs. MCS spends nearly $11,000 per pupil because it serves so many students with special needs. And MCS, under Kriner Cash, has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of foundation and philanthropic support. Can you “buy” college-bound students with programs such as the International Baccalaureate Program? We’ll find out.

Structure. Starting a school, much less a school system, is not easy, as Memphians learned in the busing years in the 1970s and as they are learning today with charter schools. Money, buildings, maintenance, transportation, and leadership can all go haywire. Why take a chance on your child’s education? Better to go with the established professional. At least that’s the argument.

Tax money. By no means should the new county system let it leak away to breakaway systems. For the middle class families, if you’re paying for Shelby County public schools anyway, you might as well use them. Why double-tax yourself?

Distinguished alumni. Thousands of them. If it worked for them, it can work for you.

Community spirit. New and different. Be a part of history. Move forward together. Pride in place. Idealism won’t convince everyone by any means — not even everyone on the transition team — but this has to be the pitch. Don’t underestimate the talent on the transition team or the willingness of people to give the big new system a shot for a variety of reasons.

Above all, compete, compete, compete. Everyone else is.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Mayor Coaxes Council to Support “Dramatic School Reform”

CREDIT: jb

Making a deceptively brief and low-key pitch to members of
the city council Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Willie Herenton solicited their help
in arranging a referendum on the November ballot to determine whether the city
school board should henceforth “be appointed or elected.”

Herenton further suggested to council members Myron Lowery
and Janis Fullilove, who double as members of the city Charter Commission, that
they might consider authorizing such a referendum as part of their own
forthcoming ballot initiative in November.

Absent from his presentation to the council was any hint of
the slight edge with which the mayor had first broached his proposal for
“dramatic school reform” at a press conference in the Hall of Mayors on Monday. At the heart of it was a variation on a vintage Herenton proposal, a five-member board to be appointed by the mayor and ratified, in effect, by the council.

And Herenton seemed intent Tuesday on being as ingratiating as
possible to the current council, beginning by complimenting it for having “demonstrated that
it could really make a difference in this community on some very important
fronts.” As he would put it, contrasting the current 13-member body, nine of
whose members are in their first year, with previous ones, “This is not a status
quo council. I see a different mix here.”

The mayor drew an implicit contrast, too, between the council and
the school board, which had just rejected him as a prospect for the school
superintendency and whose existence as an elected body he now proposes to
abolish. The council, on the other hand, “as that body that takes the heat for
the tax rate, ought to have greater authority and accountability for the
schools.”

Insisting that the plan he was broaching was “not about
me,” Herenton said it should be structured so as not to take effect until 2012.
“That’s when Willie Herenton is history. You follow me?”

The mayor credited a “different climate” of opinion in the
state and the nation, and factors like the No Child Left Behind Act, for his
sense that now was the time to “make these changes while we can.”

In a brief give-and-take with reporters following his
session with the council, Herenton was asked about his current opposition to the
council’s decision last week to withhold funding from Memphis City Schools. A
reporter reminded him that he had proposed just such an expedient several years
ago as a means of forcing the issue of consolidation.

“Somehow or another, you have to send a shockwave,” said
Herenton, who said, “Nobody heard me then.” Now, however, there was a different
council and a different attitude toward change in Nashville. The mayor seemed to
be inviting a different idea – that of state intervention, reminding the
reporters of what he had also mentioned to the council, that state government
under the Bredesen administration had begun to intervene directly in the
Nashville school system.

Had the mayor been functioning then, or was he functioning
now, s as a “puppetmaster?” the newsman wanted to know. “I’m not going to let
you personalize the issue. We’re trying to change the culture,” the mayor said.

Categories
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.

Categories
News

Feds Indict ex-Commissioner Bruce Thompson

Former Shelby County commissioner Bruce Thompson was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on four charges connected to his work as a consultant to a Jackson, Tennessee construction company.

The indictment was announced at a press conference by United States Attorney David Kustoff and FBI Special Agent in Charge My Harrison.

“What can I say? What can I possibly say?” said Harrison. “Same game, different name.”

Harrison warned that public officials who think they are “entitled” to more than their salary are on the FBI’s watch list.

“Whether you’re north, south, east, or west we’re watching,” she said.

The investigation of school construction contracts is ongoing, Kustoff said. A grand jury has been hearing testimony about campaign contributions and other matters. According to the indictment, Thompson did not actually have the power to influence votes on the Memphis school board but “falsely represented” to H&M Construction and its joint-venture partner Salton-Fox Construction that he could help them win a contract to build three city schools. The commission appropriates money to fund schools in Shelby County, including the Memphis City School system.

The indictment says Thompson, 48, received $263,992 from H&M in two payments in 2005 after the school board awarded the firm the contract, reversing a previous vote that gave the contract to another firm. The indictment says that Thompson “did cause to be placed a check in the amount of $7,000 addressed to Kirby Salton from H&M Construction in the custody of an interstate common carrier” on November 16, 2004. That is the technical description of a mail-fraud charge.

Both the wording of the indictment and Kustoff’s remarks, however, left it unclear whether the $7,000 was passed on to board members and exactly what Thompson was supposed to do for his $263,992, which is nearly nine times the annual salary of a county commissioner.
“Thompson would falsely represent to representatives of the joint venture that by reason of his position as a Shelby County commissioner he had the ability to control the votes of members of the Memphis City School Board in connection with the awarding of a contract to construct three schools,” the indictment says.

Thompson, a white Republican from East Memphis, was a commissioner from 2002-2006 when he decided not to seek another term. His name came up in the Tennessee Waltz investigation when FBI agents posing as executives of E-Cycle Management said they wanted to meet him. The first Tennessee Waltz indictments were made public in May of 2005, putting public officials on notice to be careful about their business dealings, especially with regard to consulting. Thompson’s contacts with H&M regarding the three school construction jobs began in 2004, according to the indictment.
Thompson initial court appearance is scheduled for Wednesday.

Categories
Opinion

Painful Lesson

City government does big things like collect taxes, set budgets, and provide police protection. But often it’s the little things that impact peoples’ lives and shape their views. Things like graduation ceremonies at the Mid-South Coliseum.

In the space of about six weeks, city officials managed to create a crisis disrupting the plans of thousands of Memphis families and then resolve it. The story offers a glimpse of how members of the city administration, the school board, and the City Council operate — sometimes working together and sometimes painfully ignorant.

Around January 27th, the news broke that city and county schools would not be able to use the Coliseum for graduations as they have in the past because the building was not in compliance with code requirements for disabled citizens. Some schools made plans to shift graduation to the DeSoto Civic Center. But that idea enraged Memphians who pay taxes to support the Coliseum, the Pyramid, and FedExForum.

One of them was Wanda Halbert, a member of the Memphis City School Board of Education and mother of a child graduating this year from White Station High School, one of the affected schools. Halbert, who said she does not read the daily paper, said she learned the news a few days after it broke. In a committee meeting, Superintendent Carol Johnson said there were code-compliance issues that would cost $100,000 to fix. She suggested that parents who had already ordered graduation announcements insert a slip of paper informing recipients of the change of venue. But Halbert, one of three board members with graduating children (the others are Jeff Warren and Kenneth Whalum Jr.), was not satisfied. She even wondered about financially compensating families for the cost of reordering announcements and invitations.

“It was not a petty issue,” said Halbert, who recalled the chaotic scene five years ago when Ridgeway High School decided to hold graduation in its gym and had to turn away several guests due to lack of space. “It was the worst thing in the world,” she said.

The Coliseum has problems of its own in addition to code compliance. With more than enough seats for all comers, recent graduations have been marked by rowdiness, despite efforts of principals and teachers to encourage decorum. And at last May’s ceremony for University of Tennessee health-sciences grads, the power went off, and those attending had to cope with oppressive heat and darkness. Drew Ermenc, whose wife was one of the graduates, said it was “a mess all around” and especially so for elderly people.

Halbert contacted Memphis City Council member Myron Lowery, who had already heard the news and was surprised by it. On December 19th, council members had been promised by Parks Division director Cindy Buchanan and chief financial officer Robert Lipscomb that the Coliseum would be available for graduations even though it is slated to be closed later this year. For Lowery, it was an all-too-familiar problem.

“Too often as council members we read about decisions within our scope that are changed by the administration without informing us,” he told the Flyer this week.

Lowery asked Halbert to send him an e-mail, which he forwarded to City Council chairman Tom Marshall, along with his own e-mail, which said in part, “This is not only a serious creditability [sic] issue for the city, it was [sic] create a hardship for thousands of our citizens.” He suggested the council discuss it on February 6th.

Lowery called Buchanan for an explanation. Although she is a veteran city administrator, Buchanan has been head of the Parks Division for only about a year. The division includes a hodgepodge of golf courses, community centers, and tennis courts as well as the Fairgrounds complex, which includes the Coliseum. Mayor Willie Herenton is scheduled to report to the council in two weeks on his overall plan for the Fairgrounds. In January, he surprised Memphians by recommending that the Coliseum be demolished so that a new football stadium can be built.

Lowery says Buchanan told him it would cost too much money to open the Coliseum. He reminded her that she had earlier promised that the Coliseum would be available. Buchanan disagreed but later called back to apologize to Lowery after he produced a transcript of the December meeting. In it, Buchanan says “minimal maintenance” will enable the Coliseum to be used for “small community events like the high school graduations.” Councilman Jack Sammons asks, “So you could still do the graduations?” She replies, “Right.”

On Tuesday, February 6th, the day the council was scheduled to meet, Lowery read in the morning paper that the graduations were on once again. The subject came up at a committee meeting that day. Keith McGee, chief administrative officer for the city, came to the meeting and assured members that the Coliseum would indeed be available for graduations this year only.

“Other than these graduations, the Coliseum is closed,” he said.

McGee said the U.S. Department of Justice has signed a consent decree with the city of Memphis about compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, commonly known as ADA compliance. The Justice Department has agreed to allow graduations.

Council members were not satisfied. They wanted to know why they were not informed and how schools were informed that they would have to find alternate sites. McGee said Buchanan (who was not at the meeting and who could not be reached for comment because she is out of town) informed school officials by telephone, setting in motion the whole chain of events.

“This council needs to be kept informed on the front end,” Lowery told McGee.

So the graduations at the Coliseum are once again on. Bring your friends, canes, fans, sweaters, flashlights, and earplugs. And congratulations.