Memphis school intervention bill heads to both chambers’ floors with key questions unanswered

Lawmakers advanced two conflicting versions of a bill to the House and Senate floors this week that would create state intervention into Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

If each chamber passes its version, the final details of one of the most talked about pieces of legislation this session would be decided in a conference committee.

The House version of the bill is more limited than the Senate’s and would only impact Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Under the legislation, the governor, speaker of the house, and lieutenant governor would have the authority to jointly create a board of managers with the power to supersede district leadership. The district’s superintendent and school board would be relegated to serve in advisory roles and would not be able to meet, make key decisions, or alter the makeup of the existing school board without approval from this new group of state-appointed managers.

Representative Mark White (Photo by the Tennessee General Assembly)

“What I’m working on is an intervention model where we set up a 9-member management board which goes in and tries to understand the curriculum and expenses and everything in our system and why we have 23 percent reading proficiency and 17 percent math proficiency,” said bill sponsor Mark White, R-Memphis, at Monday’s House Finance, Ways, and Means Committee meeting.

The Senate’s version of the bill could potentially impact other school districts outside of Memphis. It would allow the Tennessee Department of Education commissioner to intervene in so-called “challenged school districts,” that aren’t meeting state performance standards in math and English language arts (ELA), are made up of at least 50 percent of students from economically disadvantaged households and have at least one school on the state’s priority school list for the last five years.

Under the bill, the education commissioner would be able to remove the director of schools and some or all school board members in these districts and the county commission would then replace them. The bill also states that if the district has employed three or more directors within the last three years, the mayor could recommend the county commission hire a new director of schools.

The bill would additionally authorize the creation of a state appointed advisory board for “challenged school districts,” though the panel would have less direct authority than the one created by the House legislation.

Senator Brent Taylor (Photo by the Tennessee General Assembly)

“This bill allows the state to easily dismantle the education system in Shelby County or any district that fits this criterion, but it requires the local community to rebuild it and to improve the school system down there with the advice and consent from appointees from the state,” said bill sponsor Senator Brent Taylor, R-Memphis, in Wednesday’s Senate Finance, Ways, and Means Committee meeting.

Taylor’s bill would also expand the Education Savings Account (ESA) program that allows parents to use tax dollars to send their children to private schools in challenged districts by removing any income cap.

The legislation faced pushback in the meeting from Senator London Lamar, D- Memphis, who said five thousand teachers submitted petitions opposing it.

“The majority of my community doesn’t want this bill because we at the state have not done right by Shelby County Schools in Memphis. We have a bad track record of governing our local school districts,” said Lamar. “And while we may not like some of our school board members or their decision around who they want to keep as a superintendent or who they don’t, that doesn’t justify for us to supersede their decision making when by the constitution they are rightfully elected to do this role.”

State lawmakers have been discussing the possibility of intervention into Memphis-Shelby County Schools since last year when the district’s school board began the process of firing former Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins after less than a year on the job.

Neither chamber has scheduled a floor vote on the legislation yet, but it’s expected before the end of session next week.