Roy Exum
At a time when we are all pleading for “out of the box” thinking in our public schools, I’ve got a hunch there is more going on outside the box today than there is inside of it. The city of East Ridge appeared before the Hamilton County School Board on Thursday with a genius idea: The city wants to take over the high school’s football stadium, its baseball diamond and other athletic venues from the Department of Education.
All of East Ridge High’s facilities are in chronic disrepair and, if the Hamilton County Commission will deed the property to the city – which is still in Hamilton County, mind you – the city will make its high school a showplace. The school board has voted 8-1 to ponder such a proposal but – whoa! -- that crack you just heard may well have come from the start of an earthquake.
I spent the biggest part of Saturday morning reading about Memphis and “community schools.” I read about the state of Tennessee’s “Achievement School District” and – yes – about national “vendors” - education companies like Green Dot, Aspire, and others.
The first thing you must know is that five years ago (2011) the Memphis City School system dissolved its charter and combined with the Shelby County Schools. When that happened the people in the satellite towns within Shelby County went berserk, this because the city of Memphis is among the 10 worst cities for crime in America and they didn’t want you-know-who coming out for dinner. (Remember when the Chattanooga City Schools closed? What a trip!)
Oh, it wasn’t just “white flight,” business after business folded and industry left, taking a lot of people with them, as you’ll find when you study the whole spider’s web. But faster than you can swim the Mississippi River the legislature curiously lifted a ban on additional school districts in the state. Six districts, with their own school boards and superintendents, almost instantly were on municipal ballots and then popped up inside Shelby County.
Collierville is a good example. They hand-pick their employees and today the high school is ranked the 10th best in the state. A public school, mind you, it has become so crowded (2,000+), a new high school is being built and between five elementary schools and two middle schools the educational achievement is incredible. The high school stats? 78.4 are college ready, 99.2 graduate, 95.7 go to college. About 25 percent of the high school student body is black and the poverty level is 20 percent … just like the town itself. Happiness reigns!
Let’s cut to the chase, brother. You are deaf and blind if you don’t know some Hamilton County communities may be getting close to doing the same thing. East Ridge is so anguished over its athletic fields it wants to inherit them but all across the county there remains such anger and discontent with the school board and the county’s Department of Education don’t be surprised by anything.
East Ridge’s request to better the high school campus ain’t nothing -- anything is possible. Trust me, the “elephant in the room” could have already triggered the earthquake. And what the haughties don’t understand is that this could be the start of something that neither the County Commission nor the school board can do anything about.
There are seven cities within the county. They are Chattanooga, Collegedale, East Ridge, Lakeside, Red Bank, Ridgeside and Soddy Daisy. There are three towns: Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain and Walden. Then there are “census-designated places” that could incorporate if they wanted – Apison, Fairmount, Falling Water, Flat Top Mountain, Harrison, Middle Valley, Mowbray Mountain, Ooltewah and Sale Creek.
Your “light bulb” moment is when it is rumored that at least three of the afore-mentioned communities contain people who are certain it wouldn’t take them nine months to hire a search firm for a superintendent, who are certain that 60 percent of their third-graders can read at grade level, and who are certain that 65 percent of their graduating seniors would not require remedial classes before college. Some groups talk of forming a separate district, others about several neighboring communities to band together. (Think Red Bank, Soddy Daisy, Sale Creek and maybe Hixson as an example)
Now, let’s go back to Memphis but before we do, remember when Education Commissioner Candace McQueen came down and said the state was on the verge of taking control of our low-performing schools? The wizards in Nashville would seize five or six, a near-certainty based on this year’s virtually hopeless test outcomes, and proposes to take them from the bottom five percent to the top 25 percent in the state scores. Put that on your virtually hopeless list, too.
In Memphis today there are 28 schools now completely controlled by what’s called the Achievement School District. Nashville now has three and spreading. The ACD was started in 2011 and things haven’t quite gone as planned but today public education in Shelby County has dramatically changed. When the ACD grabs a school, it also grabs all the money that would come from the county, the state and the feds. And, thus far the Memphis school district has lost 11,400 students to ACD.
When a take-over happens, all administrators and teachers are dismissed, but encouraged to re-apply, and – no – tenure means nothing. Obviously the state doesn’t have a bus-load of teachers, janitors, cooks or whoever. That is when the “vendors” like Green Dot bring their California-based solutions to Tennessee. According to Green Dot’s website, it is already running Kirby Middle, Wooddale Middle, Fairley High and Hillcrest High in the Volunteer State.
Aspire, another California vendor, also has four schools in Memphis thus far; Aspire Hanley No. 1, Aspire Handley Elementary No. 2, Aspire East Academy, and Aspire Coleman Elementary. Remember, the money that used to go to the Shelby County Department of Education now goes to California. In Memphis the Board of Education is broke, not to mention broken.
Up until now the schools the ACD grabbed are in low-income communities of color. Now comes a new wrinkle. This week it was learned that when Green Dot opens a new charter school in Hickory Hill (Shelby County) next year, it will become the first that will be directed by the state instead of falling under the Shelby County Department of Education, which is a bit ominous indeed.
The Shelby County Board of Education is reeling. Since 2011 more than 22 schools have been closed and, just Wednesday, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson took the first step in a massive overhaul that will close 24 more schools in the next five years. At the start of this year there were 22,000 empty seats in Shelby County Department of Education schools.
At Thursday night’s Hamilton County School Board there was a lot of jabber about a five-year plan. The board better get a one-year plan instead. In five years the school board and the Department of Education may eat a dodo bird for Thanksgiving. Because of the board’s performance over the last 10 years, and because it has allowed the HCDE to decline dramatically in performance, I can see a clear divide coming between the predominately white communities, who claim they are angered that the predominately black schools get more money yet have worse results. The Achievement School District will continue to pick off the bottom schools while the top schools in the county are already searching for ways to escape the circus.
Face it, America is mad and angry. Trump beat Hillary. Forget all for one. Today it’s all about me. Nobody wants to be pushed around anymore. Oh, and “the elephant” says good luck with the earthquake and that superintendent search.
royexum@aol.com