Last May, a network of organizations, community members, parents, and students came together to form Together 4 Students to advocate for accountability in Memphis.¶
The group’s founder is longtime community organizer Henry Jones, who tells the Tennessee Firefly that he’s also a parent of two students who face challenges within their own schools.¶
Jones said the goal of Together 4 Students is to ensure that every child, including his, benefits from raising the quality of classroom instruction.¶
“Our accountability is focusing on doing the right things for our kids,” Jones said.¶
Opposition to State Intervention
For Jones and other members of the organization, doing the right thing includes opposing the Memphis-Shelby County School Board's recent efforts to challenge state intervention in court.¶
Earlier this year, state lawmakers created an oversight board with power to make sweeping changes in the district, including the authority to hire and fire board members or superintendents. That intervention is currently in limbo following a court order last month.¶
Together 4 Students launched a letter-writing campaign that sent more than 8,000 letters urging the board to drop the lawsuit and instead work with the oversight board and continue collaborating with the community.¶
“Every dollar spent on lawyers is a dollar taken directly from a classroom. Every week wasted in court is a week our kids fall further behind,” according to the group’s letter campaign.¶
Together 4 Students also attended and spoke at the Shelby County Commission's August 10 meeting where commissioners approved MSCS’s nearly $1.8 billion budget. Together 4 Students said no MSCS representative or school board member was in attendance at the meeting.¶
Jones argues district leaders should have been there to answer to the community.¶
“Accountability for us means working in collaboration, and that's what we want to hold in those school board members and the county commission,” Jones said. “How can we create systematic change and reach the classroom?”¶
Community Approach
On its website, Together 4 Students focuses on three key areas of its approach, including raising the quality of instruction for every student, maintaining a unified standard of quality for schools countywide, and engaging in community alignment that supports every student.¶
“If we want to expand access to high-performing schools and if we really want to build systems that support every child, then we have to have the community engaged,” Jones said.¶
Through leadership training, Together 4 Students is helping coordinate a pipeline within the Memphis community that “meets them where they’re at,” Jones said. That includes partnering with a fellowship to help young adults ages 16 to 21 develop leadership, training, and community organizing skills.¶
Jones said members of the group go door to door in their neighborhoods, have one-on-one conversations with people and parents, which then form small groups, and then turn those small groups into action.¶
As the 2026-2027 school year has already begun, Jones said their main focus is to continue developing leaders. He said the group understands that recruitment is a long-term process, but members and other organizations are willing to put in the work.¶
“We’re really strict in it and helping people to understand and making them aware of what you can do as an individual and what you can do in a collectivist way,” Jones said.¶
