Marie Feagins Photo Credit: Memphis-Shelby County Schools
The Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board of Education will offer a superintendent contract to Marie Feagins, in a move that signals the end of an extensive search.
“Dr. Feagins emerged as the choice after a comprehensive search that included robust input from the community, parents, teachers, and staff,” the district said in a statement. “Through community meetings, listening sessions, and candidate visits, the board learned of Dr. Feagins’ deep understanding of urban education, commitment to equity, and academic vision for MSCS.”
School officials said Feagins has a deep understanding for the city and county as well as an “understanding of urban education successes and opportunities.”
Feagins is now the chief of leadership and high schools for Detroit Public Schools. She received her doctorate of education in educational leadership from Samford University, an education specialist/master of education in school counseling degree from the University of West Alabama, a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of Alabama, and a certificate in education finance from Georgetown University.
The board search was narrowed to Feagins, Yolanda Brown, and Cheryl Proctor. Toni Williams has served as interim superintendent since August 2022 after Joris Ray resigned amid scandal.
Toni Williams, interim head of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Credit: Memphis Shelby County Schools
Interim superintendent Toni Williams won’t become the permanent leader of Memphis-Shelby County Schools after all.
The school board voted to approve a contract extension for Williams that could keep her in charge of MSCS through the new school year. But Williams — who was one of three finalists named in April — has to give up her quest to be superintendent on a permanent basis.
The condition is spelled out in Williams’ extended contract, which she negotiated with Memphis attorney Herman Morris, he told the board Tuesday. Her name is not expected to appear on an updated list of finalists that the board expects to receive Wednesday.
Williams’ exit from the superintendent candidate pool signals a quieter end to the district’s tortuous national superintendent search, which derailed after Williams became a finalist and the board began to fracture over the prospect of elevating another interim leader to fill the vacancy created by the departure of Joris Ray.
Ray, who was elevated from the interim position in 2019, resigned under a cloud of scandal in August 2022. His predecessor, Dorsey Hopson, had also been elevated from interim chief.
Williams accepted the interim role in August with assurances that she wouldn’t seek the job on a permanent basis, but she changed her mind. Since then, the board has largely sidestepped discussions about that decision, never rejecting her application.
A coalition of community advocates — including some of the five people who were banned from district property after challenging the board’s stewardship of the search — had been pushing the board in recent weeks to clarify whether Williams would remain a candidate, and continued to do so in a series of coordinated public comments Tuesday evening.
Board members Tuesday made clear their support of Williams’ interim leadership, and she received a standing ovation after board Chair Althea Greene described her accomplishments. The board’s long delay in setting the parameters of its search could keep Williams in the interim role for as much as another year.
“I have inherited more challenges than you could ever imagine. A district in distress …. But I have not quit,” Williams said.
Greene, who has led the search for the past year, will now be assisted by newly elected vice chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman. Dorse-Coleman is replacing former board member Sheleah Harris, who resigned her board seat two weeks ago. The Shelby County Commission will select Harris’ replacement in mid-July. The board will reelect leadership in the fall.
Meanwhile, outside search firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates is poised to present the board an updated list of superintendent finalists Wednesday after reevaluating interested applicants against a revised set of qualifications approved by the board in mid-June.
The new list includes five to seven top candidates, compared with just three on the initial slate released in April, according to communication from the firm obtained by Chalkbeat. The board could choose to interview those candidates or reopen the pool to new applicants — “in essence beginning a new search,” two top Hazard Young officials wrote. That option could cost the district an additional $19,000. (The initial contract with the firm allowed for total costs between $38,000 and $70,000.)
Reopening the search would significantly extend the hiring timeline as well. The “optimal” window to accept new applications is in the fall, the firm wrote, suggesting a timeline that culminates with the board selecting a new superintendent by the end of January. The proposed start date for the new superintendent, in that case, would be July 1, 2024.
The firm did not propose a new timeline should the board interview and select a new superintendent from its current candidate pool.
Hazard Young updated a proposed job description for the role, this time including minimum qualifications required by board policy that the firm did not use for evaluating candidates in the spring, as Chalkbeat reported.
When she became a finalist in April, Williams did not meet the board requirements, which focused on experience as an educator, but the board later relaxed the policy.
Williams said that under her extended contract, she has the option to return to a district role after her interim tenure. Because the contract is still being finalized, Morris said, there was no copy to review Tuesday evening.
Morris, who also worked for the board to negotiate the terms of Ray’s departure, thanked Williams “for her openness and willingness to agree” during the negotiations.
Williams will continue earning a $310,000 annualized salary and will have more vacation days under the extended contract.
Williams told reporters she had no regrets about applying for the permanent position.
“Regrets on serving 110,000 students?” Williams said. “Absolutely not.”
The MSCS board will meet with the search firm at 5 p.m. on Wednesday in the basement auditorium of the Barnes Building, 160 S. Hollywood St.
Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
The selection process for Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ next superintendent got derailed Saturday when school board members raised questions about an outside search firm’s selection of three finalists, shortly after their names were announced.
Now, the board is asking the search firm for the names of all 34 applicants, and it put off plans to interview finalists until it gets those names.
Saturday’s meeting was the first time the board deliberated publicly about the selection process since it voted to select the search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates of Schaumburg, Illinois. But instead of discussing the individual finalists, board members peppered Hazard Young officials with questions that made clear they were unsatisfied with the process and the results.
Some of their questions had been raised before by members of a community advisory committee that has challenged the lack of transparency in the process.
“I am not saying we want you to go back,” board Chair Althea Greene told Hazard Young officials during the meeting. “We are not just going to accept this … . We appreciate what you have done, but what I hear is it’s just not good enough.”
The board’s pushback adds a new wrinkle to a high-stakes search for a leader for Tennessee’s largest school district, which is struggling to improve academic outcomes for its 100,000 students and to sustain trust in the community. The previous superintendent, Joris Ray, resigned in August 2022 amid an external investigation into allegations that he abused his power and violated district policies.
Hazard Young, tapped in February to find Ray’s successor, presented the three finalists to board members Saturday: Brenda Cassellius, recently of Boston Public Schools; Carlton Jenkins of Wisconsin’s Madison Metropolitan School District; and Toni Williams, the current interim superintendent of MSCS. (See sidebar below for more about these candidates.)
The response from board members suggested that they expected — at some point during the process — to find out more than just the names of the three finalists, including more information on the full pool of applicants and how they were evaluated. They told Hazard Young President Max McGee and associate Micah Ali that their pushback was rooted in ensuring public trust in the process.
“This is not a restart. This is simply: Give us additional information to be able to validate to this deserving community that the right person will ultimately sit in this seat,” board member Kevin Woods said.
Board member Sheleah Harris said the board felt “unprepared, because we hired you all to do a job, and you did not do it well.”
Tikeila Rucker, a former teacher union leader and current community organizer, said she was frustrated that the board hadn’t raised its concerns with the firm earlier.
“It sounds like the board is just as lost as we are, and that is unacceptable,” Rucker told Chalkbeat.
Board member Stephanie Love acknowledged after the meeting that additional deliberation by the board in public meetings before Saturday could have prevented what she described as the “eleventh hour” hitch in the search.
Applicants for the position were evaluated against a rubric with 16 categories, which included reviews of application documents plus references, “Memphis connection,” and fit with MSCS’ needs, Hazard Young explained. Of the 34 applicants, 21 met qualifications for an interview, and 12 proceeded to the last stage, the search firm said. The three finalists were selected from that group.
Some board members on Saturday questioned why they were not provided with the rubric earlier.
“I’m not going to say the people that we have here are not the best. But is there a way for us to have a little more input that these are who we want?” board member Joyce Dorse Coleman asked.
Hazard Young’s contract for the search suggests there is room for more board involvement: It says the firm is charged with facilitating “board discussions to narrow (the) candidate pool after each round of interviews.”
That the board wants to know the names of all the applicants was new to Hazard Young, Ali said Saturday. It is unclear what information the board will eventually receive in response to that request.
In a statement after the board meeting, Greene said the firm would contact applicants to find out whether they still want to be considered, then release those names publicly “for full transparency.” Under state law, as affirmed by a state attorney general’s opinion, records collected by Hazard Young in connection with the search are subject to open-records laws.
While Greene has previously said the board did not expect to receive a full applicant list, other board members Saturday said they had asked to know who all the candidates are.
Two of the finalists presented, Cassellius and Jenkins, have decades of experience in education. Williams, whose background is largely in finance, rose to the top tier for experience that Hazard Young called “nontraditional,” a term that could apply to applicants who came from a foundation, military, or business background.
Harris, the board member, challenged the firm — and the selection of Williams as a finalist — on this point. If the board had given input on the rubric earlier, she said, the search “probably would have some different finalists.”
Hazard Young told board members Saturday that Williams sought a legal opinion on the policy that found it was “void and unenforceable.”
Kenneth Walker, attorney for the school board, said that the board’s policy was valid and that it gives the board discretion to choose someone with experience equivalent to the academic experience cited in the policy.
Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
