Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
A Tennessee bill that would strip power from Memphis-Shelby County Schools board and create a state-appointed panel to oversee the district advanced in the legislature.
In a 6-2 vote along party lines, the bill from Republican Rep. Mark White of Memphis cleared the Tennessee House’s K-12 subcommittee after a hearing Tuesday, and moved ahead for consideration by the full education committee.
The hearing was lawmakers’ first public discussion of the legislation, which could overhaul how decisions about Tennessee’s largest school district are made. The bill would create a nine-member, state-appointed board to manage the district for at least four years. The elected school board would continue in an “advisory capacity,” but the state board would be able to veto the elected board’s choice of superintendent and direct a range of its actions, according to the draft legislation.
Critics of the legislation warned that the bill, if approved, could set a precedent for the state to encroach on local control in other districts across the state.
White insisted the legislation should not be framed as a state takeover.
It is not that, he said. “I am a representative of the city of Memphis. I am locally elected by the citizens of Memphis and Shelby County, and they have asked me to push forward on such legislation.”
The board members would all be Shelby County residents, and they would be experts in facilities, curriculum, contracts, budget, finance, K-12 education — “all the above things that you need to run the school system,” White said.
Under the draft legislation, the governor would appoint five members to the state-appointed board of managers, with the speakers of the state Senate and House each appointing two others. It also allows the state education commissioner to recommend that district public schools convert to charter schools.
Under the bill, modeled on a Texas law, the state board would have “full authority to right-size the district,” said White.
The legislation leans on Tennessee’s public accountability act, which enables the state education commissioner to intervene if at least 30% of a district’s schools have a D or an F letter grade and 25% of the students are chronically absent, White said.
In the Memphis Shelby County Schools district, just 17% of students are proficient in math, while 1 in 4 are proficient in reading, and the district has more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance needed for its facilities, White said.
MSCS recorded some improvement in the latest round of school letter grades released in December, with more schools earning A’s and B’s, and fewer schools earning F’s. However, 11% of eligible schools in MSCS earned failing grades, the largest proportion of F’s among districts with 50 or more schools.
White said he wants to see better outcomes given that $1 out of every $7 of the state’s $1.8 billion education budget goes to Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
“Our students deserve better than what we’re giving them,” White said. “The state deserves better, and so what I’m working on is a system of intervention.”
The proposal follows several years of leadership turmoil in the district. After Superintendent Joris Ray resigned under a cloud of scandal in August 2022, it took the school more than a year to find a permanent successor. But that successor, Marie Feagins, lasted less than 10 months on the job before the board fired her on the grounds that she misled the board about a range of topics.
The move divided the board and drew strong criticism from educators and members of the community. While some board members saw the firing as a necessary removal of an uncooperative leader, others saw an abrupt, potentially destabilizing decision driven by personality conflicts, and warned that it could invite state intervention.
White had urged the board to retain Feagins, saying the board’s conflict with the superintendent was distracting members from focusing on students’ academic challenges.
District advocates and officials, including school board members, sharply criticized White’s bill this week, and Democrats voiced their opposition at Tuesday’s hearing.
Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, questioned whether the state was an appropriate body to address issues in the local school system, and said passage of the bill would override the rights of local voters to determine how their school district is managed through representatives on the board.
He pointed to the failures of the state’s Achievement School District — a state-run turnaround school district created in 2010 that took over many Memphis schools and turned them over to charter operators in arguing against the bill.
Ron Redwing, the founder of the Save Our Students coalition, told lawmakers he “vehemently opposed this bill.”
Redwing acknowledged the school district faced challenges, but asked lawmakers to let district leaders solve them at the local level. He also warned that the bill could give the state leeway to strip power from other local districts and their elected boards.
“Be careful of the doors you open,” he said. “Because it’s Memphis and Shelby County today, but it’s Crockett County, Fayette County, and every other county tomorrow.”
Max Lubbers contributed reporting.
