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Interim MSCS Leader Outlines Her Vision for District as Superintendent Search Narrows

Toni Williams, interim superintendent of Memphis-Shelby Country Schools, used an annual state-of-the-district address Tuesday to review the results of her six months leading the district and to outline a vision for the future of the district. (Laura Testino / Chalkbeat)

In a speech reflecting on the recent school year and teasing budget priorities for the coming one, interim Memphis schools leader Toni Williams described a district on the rise, with big decisions ahead about improving facilities, literacy, and safety. 

Williams also implicitly made her case to be considered a candidate in the search for Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ next superintendent, a position she once said she had no interest in assuming on a permanent basis. 

The school board, working with a national search firm, has been soliciting applicants for that post since March 1st, and is in the process of narrowing its list of candidates to a small group of finalists. The search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, will interview 12 candidates by Thursday afternoon and is expected to deliver a slate of three finalists to the school board in April. Finalists will be interviewed publicly on April 21st and 22nd.

Williams used the annual state-of-the-district address Tuesday to review the results of her six months leading the district, following the departure of Superintendent Joris Ray, and to outline a vision for the future of the district. 

In the months after she was appointed, Williams appeared to soften her stance against seeking the permanent job. After her address today, she demurred when Chalkbeat asked whether she had applied or been interviewed for the role. 

“I don’t want today to be about me,” Williams said. “I want to just stay focused on, you know, really today’s message.”

She added: “But there will be other opportunities to answer that question.”

Williams’ theme for the address was “triumphant together,” a nod to the district’s calls for community members to help remove the often poverty-related barriers Memphis students and families face outside school. Rather than “Reimagining 901,” a tagline Ray used to describe a facilities and academics plan, Williams spoke of “transforming the 901.” 

“What transforming the 901 is about is a long term, thoughtful, shared vision for rebuilding this community, including wraparound services, community schools, expanding pre-K and after-school programs … . It has to be a community effort,” Williams said.

Williams’ speech at the district’s Teaching and Learning Academy auditorium had the feel of an elevated school assembly, unlike the more lavish hotel ballroom addresses of Ray’s tenure. The house lights stayed on, and attendees went home with stationery sets featuring student artwork.

The setting was meant to show that the district could be a “good steward of the resources that we already have,” Cathryn Stout, the district’s chief of communications, explained during a preview of the address.

Williams spent much of the 90-minute address explaining district plans for issues of interest to key constituencies in the district, in the business community and among Shelby County and City of Memphis leadership. (You can watch the full address online here.) 

For teachers, the district plans to invest $27 million in teacher pay, a move that will bump up starting salaries. 

Williams confirmed a new 10-year facilities plan. The district released a plan two years ago, but Williams had told the Shelby County Commission, which funds capital projects for the district, that the district would provide a new plan when requesting funds for a new Cordova high school. 

She touted new state investments into district career and technical education that would appeal to the business community. 

To improve attendance rates, Williams said, the district has upgraded communication to families about student absences. That includes referrals to community resources. The steps follow a rise in tensions between the district and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who in the fall claimed concerning crime rates were linked to low school attendance. 

With a few months to go in the current fiscal year, district officials still have to prepare and present a budget for next year, which will be the first time the district sees a boost of recurring funds through a new state funding formula, called Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. The funds could ease the transition out of programs funded by one-time federal pandemic funds, but the district will have to assess which programs remain.

An ongoing review of academic programming funded by the millions of dollars in federal aid will help inform which programming makes the cut. Tuesday, Williams pointed to $30 million annually toward “specialized education assistants” in lower elementary grade classrooms and $42 million annually toward reading and math tutoring as successful programming funded by the federal cash influx.

Williams also said the district is looking to scale a piloted school safety program across all district middle and high schools at a cost of $50 million. The technology, according to a video played during Tuesday’s program, sounds alarms at school entrances that aren’t designated for student or staff use. Improvements also would speed up student weapon searches at the start of the school day. 

Williams also announced the finalists for the teacher, principal and supervisor of the year:

Supervisor of the year finalists: 

  • Brian Ingram, Human Resources
  • Sunya Payne, Student, Family and Community Engagement
  • Reggie Jackson, School Operations 

Principal of the year finalists:

  • Keyundah Coleman, John P. Freeman Optional School
  • Renee Meeks, Sea Isle Elementary School
  • James Suggs, G.W. Carver High School 

Teacher of the year finalists: 

  • Thomas Denson, White Station Elementary School
  • Tishsha Hopson, Hickory Ridge Middle School
  • Ollie Liddell, Central High School

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Advisors Want More Public Input on MSCS Superintendent Search

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Members of an advisory committee guiding the search for a new Memphis-Shelby County Schools superintendent said they want the firm picked to lead the search to gather more feedback from the community on what kind of candidate it should look for.

The panel, which includes representatives from the school board and local advocacy and nonprofit groups, resolved at a meeting Friday that once the search firm is chosen — likely by Jan. 31 — it will be asked to do additional surveys to capture additional input from students and businesspeople. 

The committee said it believed that more time was needed to gauge the leanings of a wider swath of the community. 

The decision responds to concerns that the results of the community survey, which was administered by KQ Communications, a public relations firm that’s working with the school board on the search, might not have fully captured responses from certain constituencies. Business leaders, for example, may have identified themselves as community members, or vice versa.

About 650 students responded to the KQ survey. Of the nearly 3,000 adults who responded, only about 6% identified themselves as businesspeople.

The committee’s decision also came amid concerns that the process was being rushed, and that the Jan. 31 deadline to select the search firm should be extended. 

“Most of what I’m hearing from my colleagues, who are mostly clergy, is that it feels rushed,” said the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., pastor of the New Olivet Worship Center and a former MSCS board member.

But school board Chair Althea Greene, who presided over the meeting, along with Sarah Carpenter, executive director of Memphis LIFT, reminded attendees that one reason the timeline for hiring a superintendent was moved up from July to April was concerns from the board and others that the process would be too slow.

“A lot of people already think it’s moving too slow, and you all have to realize that people are looking for superintendents all over the country,” Carpenter said. 

At its meeting Friday, the advisory committee also discussed qualities they’d like to see in candidates for the superintendent job, in particular experience leading an urban district. They also talked about the importance of the search firm’s track record in placing candidates.

“If that firm has placed 25 superintendents, I would like to know how long those superintendents have remained on the job,” said Greene.

The previous superintendent, Joris Ray, served in the job for about three years before resigning in August under a cloud of scandal. Ray was under an investigation into claims that he abused his power and violated district policies by having adulterous affairs with subordinates.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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MSCS Superintendent Search to Stretch Out To July 2023

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board discussed a proposed superintendent search timeline during Monday committee meetings. It comes over two months after the board cut ties with former Superintendent Joris Ray. (Ariel Cobbert for Chalkbeat)

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board wouldn’t select the next leader of Tennessee’s largest school district until July — a month before the 2023-24 school year begins — under a proposed superintendent search timeline.

The timeline, presented to the MSCS board during committee meetings Monday afternoon, calls for the board to spend several months gathering community feedback through four public input sessions, a student input session, and a survey of stakeholders including parents, educators, and business and nonprofit leaders across Shelby County.

MSCS board Chair Althea Greene also pitched the formation of a community search committee largely composed of representatives of local education advocacy groups and nonprofits.

“This group will work to help us capture the voices of the community,” Greene said Monday.

Though not yet set in stone, the proposed timeline offers a first glimpse of what the superintendent search will look like. It comes more than two months after the MSCS board approved a separation agreement with former Superintendent Joris Ray, who had been under investigation over allegations that he abused his power and violated district policies by engaging in sexual relationships with subordinates.

It also comes days after the Greater Memphis Chamber, the local economic development group, called on the MSCS board to establish a “rigorous” search process to attract “high caliber” candidates and to ensure that local candidates don’t get an unfair advantage.

“We cannot overstate how important the success and management of MSCS is to the future of our community,” six representatives of the chamber wrote in a Nov. 11 letter to the board, a copy of which was obtained by Chalkbeat. “The students of today are the employees of tomorrow.” 

Some school board members wondered whether the process should be sped up in order to attract the best candidates and allow the next superintendent more time to transition into the role.

Under the current timeline, the search firm ultimately hired by the board wouldn’t begin accepting applications until Feb. 16, 2023, and the search wouldn’t end until April 30. After that, the board would have a month to review the applications and select three finalists, who would be interviewed throughout June.

Current board policy says the interview process should include at least two public meetings “to allow members of the community and employees to meet with and submit questions to the finalists.” 

“I would like for us to be much more aggressive,” said board member Michelle McKissack, who was chair of the board when Ray resigned and is currently considering a run for Memphis mayor. “There are a pool of candidates that are out there, and they’ll be getting a lot of attention from a lot of school districts, so we want to make sure we have the opportunity to attract as many as we can.” 

Board member Kevin Woods also advocated for an accelerated search that would launch the bidding process to find a national search firm as quickly as possible. The proposed timeline says the board will start the process Dec. 1. 

Greene expressed willingness to adjust the timeline as needed, saying it will have to be flexible depending on how the search progresses.

She also emphasized her intent to involve the community throughout the process.

The last time the board was about to embark on a nationwide superintendent search, members changed course and hired Ray in April 2019. At the time, board members said they thought Ray, a longtime district employee who had been serving as interim superintendent for months, was an “exceedingly qualified candidate” and deemed a national search unnecessary given the cost and time it would take. 

Some Memphians disagreed with that decision, feeling the board should’ve widened its search before determining that Ray was the most qualified candidate. Memphis LIFT, a parent advocacy organization, led the charge against Ray’s appointment, and last week launched its own parent task force to give the board feedback on the next leader of MSCS.

Another prominent Memphis advocacy organization, MICAH, has publicly asked the board to hold at least two community input sessions. Greene said she decided the district needed to have four. The sessions are scheduled for:

• December 8th, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Snowden School, hosted by school board members for Districts 1-3.

• December 15th, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Southwind High School, hosted by board members from Districts 4-6.

• January 12th, 2023, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Parkway Village Elementary, hosted by board members from Districts 7-9.

• January 21st, from noon to 2 p.m. at the district offices.

A student input session is slated for December 6th, from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. A location was not specified.

Greene also touted the community search committee, which will include her and Woods representing the board; a veteran MSCS teacher; and local advocacy groups and nonprofits including Memphis LIFT, Bridges, Literacy Mid-South, Whitehaven Empowerment Zone, MICAH, Memphis Education Fund, and Stand for Children. 

“I thought long and hard about members to serve on our community group,” Greene said. “I tried to touch every community group, because some of you have been doing this work for years — you’ve had your boots on the ground.”

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Opinion

Superintendent Search

If Memphis school board members stick to their schedule, and if six of them can agree, there will be a new superintendent by the time you read this.

My hedged bet is on Kriner Cash. But whether that guess is right or wrong, three men with a combined total of more than 100 years experience in public schools and government — Cash, Nicholas Gledich, and Willie Herenton — gave thoughtful attention to MCS. The next superintendent and the school board should learn from all of them.

Let’s get one thing straight. School board members, led by Chairman Tomeka Hart, and The Commercial Appeal will herald a successful search and a new day for MCS. But the process did not change the status quo in one fundamental way: The school board is still there. Memphis was unwilling to follow the lead of urban systems such as New York City and Washington, D.C., which have done away with elected school boards.

Herenton won’t get the schools job, but he will continue to be a player so long as he serves out his fifth mayoral term, which doesn’t expire until 2012. The Herenton non-candidacy is dead, but the “Herenton Blueprint for School Reform” lives.

Or some of it, anyway. Corporal punishment for grades K-8 is opposed by both Cash and Gledich. Underused schools operating at less than 60 percent capacity will get a reprieve for at least another year without the only proven school-closer — Herenton — as superintendent. City-county school consolidation, which Herenton endorsed in January but backed away from in May, is not going to fly.

Other parts of the Herenton blueprint will fare better. Vocational education, or applied education if you prefer, got everyone’s support. So did a central office overhaul, but not to the extent of Herenton’s proposal that every administrative job be declared vacant. A new school at the Mid-South Fairgrounds is in developer Henry Turley’s master plan. The motto “Every Child, College Bound, Every Day” is not long for this world. Maybe Herenton’s “Business as usual is a recipe for disaster” should replace it.

Hanging questions include the city-county school funding formula based on average daily attendance, the classification of Southwind High School and future schools in unannexed areas as city or county schools, the tense relationship between the school board and the City Council, and the city’s extra financial contribution — if any — to MCS.

Kriner Cash would be a Memphis celebrity. He is telegenic, with an intriguing, Obama-like biography. High school athlete in Cincinnati. Exchange student to Norway. Degrees from Princeton and Stanford. Child of a white mother of Pennsylvania Dutch and French descent who played piano and sang in Tommy Dorsey’s band and a black “Renaissance man” (architect, professor, scholar) father. Cash praises Strunk and White’s little classic The Elements of Style and vows to write a monthly newspaper column. And surely he is the first candidate for superintendent of MCS to list squash as a hobby.

Cash says a superintendent should be “visible with a purpose.” He is a lieutenant in the huge (353,216 students) Miami/Dade County Florida Public Schools. He expressed reservations last week about “full funding” of MCS after the City Council cut $72 million, and according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he is interviewing in Cincinnati this week “regardless of the Memphis decision.”

Memorable Cash quote: “I am going to bend this organization and bend it hard if data support that is what is needed.”

Nicholas Gledich is a chief operating officer who makes the buses run on time and has been in the Orange County, Florida, school system for 30 years. He is a finalist for another superintendent’s job in Osceola County, Florida.

Memorable Gledich quote: “If I’m your superintendent, I may have to say things to you [the board] that you don’t want to hear. Shame on me if I don’t say them.”

Two things about the Orange County School System caught my eye. It has 65,000 more students than MCS but 24 fewer schools. And it has 13 schools on Newsweek‘s 2008 list of the best 1,358 public high schools in America. MCS has one. Nine of the Orlando standout schools are magnet schools, as is the one MCS school, White Station, which is called an optional school. In their “wisdom,” some MCS board members are threatening to cut the optional program.

The superintendent search was rocky. The consultants from Ray and Associates held near-empty public meetings during spring break, failed to produce a list of 15 to 18 semifinalists, as they said they would, refused to disclose the names of other applicants among the 221 “inquiries” from 44 states and 54 “completed files,” produced no details of the employment contract, and came up with two “finalists” who withdrew and two more who seem eager and qualified. MCS ought to hire both of them.

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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.