Six months after former Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) superintendent Joris Ray resigned while facing claims of abusing his power, the district is narrowing down the qualities it’s seeking in his replacement.
Earlier this month Memphis-Shelby County School Board members chose Illinois firm Hazard, Young, Attea, and Associates to conduct a national search for a new leader. The firm is now in the process of building a profile of what the community wants in its next Superintendent based on board and community input sessions.
Regardless of what qualities the group ends up recommending, there are strong feelings throughout Memphis about the type of leader who should take over.
As part of an ongoing effort to amplify those community voices, the Tennessee Firefly spoke with one student and one teacher, who’s asked that his identity be kept confidential. We found both share some similarities in the type of superintendent they’d prefer to see take over but they view race and gender differently.
Eight Grade Perspective
Cameron George is an eighth-grade student at Maxine Smith STEAM Academy. He attended elementary school at Peabody Elementary after his mother took advantage of the district’s school choice transfer process to move him to a school outside his zoned elementary school.
George says he believes the next superintendent immediately needs to focus on providing better resources to the district and improving the qualities of the teachers.
“Because some schools are outdated and need new textbooks, desks, and computers,” said George. “Some teachers are just teaching for a paycheck and do not have any classroom management or can deal with the behaviors of students.”
The eighth grader also said the next district leader needs to show trustworthiness and have experience leading an urban school district. Cameron says he doesn’t think it’s important for the school board to choose a superintendent of one particular race or sex.
“I really don’t care about the race or the sex of the person as long as they can do the job,” said George. “I do believe it should be a person from Memphis because they understand the urban population of students and the landscapes of Shelby County. This person should have prior classroom teaching experience in an urban district.”
Elementary School Teacher Perspective
The elementary music teacher who spoke about the superintendent search with the Tennessee Firefly also wants a superintendent with experience in the classroom, but he sees both race and gender differently. He says both are key factors in bringing in a superintendent that will offer stability to Memphis.
The teacher believes Memphis needs a superintendent who will stay for at least ten years, and he emphasized the challenges he believes a leader of color would face leading a Memphis district with a large number of white teachers.
“The honest answer is I would like for it to be a black person, but I believe for true success for the city of Memphis, it would have to be a white man and I say that because a lot of people don’t listen to black people for some reason,” said the teacher. “A person can be completely right and completely qualified but they will question everything that that person does and they will find a flaw and they will magnify that flaw but they don’t tend to do that to white men. And I believe if you found a white man and he did a good job, I think they would let him do it. I don’t think a white woman can do it. I don’t think a black woman can do it. I don’t think a black man can do it with the people that will follow instructions.”
The teacher is African American and a former student of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. He says he knew he wanted to be a teacher when he was in the 11th grade and chose music because band kept him out of trouble when he was a kid.
He says the next superintendent needs to lead the district into a new direction and not make the same mistakes he’s seen over the years, adopting new strategies that don’t work and sometimes and abandoning them before they have time to work.
“I’ve seen new policies implemented. I’ve seen new teaching strategies implemented. I’ve seen new technologies implemented,” said the teacher. “And none of it has worked.”
When asked what he would like for the superintendent to focus on, the teacher said students need an education that helps them advance in the community’s new high paying careers.
He believes too much focus has been on preparing students to work in manual labor type jobs instead of the tech jobs that are a part of Shelby County’s future.
“We need to focus more on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), we need to focus more on technology, and we need to focus on students that may move. I believe a lot of our education is based on students to pretty much work in warehouses and a lot of our education doesn’t seem to prepare them for more than that,” said the teacher. “Why not prepare students for the stars and if they land on the moon ok, it’s still better than making $12 an hour.”
