WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): Every week it seems, the Memphis Shelby County Schools District is facing a new controversy. Lately several reports show incidents of abuse, raising questions of safety, and also a potential loss of funding. With us again to talk about this and other issues is Memphis political analyst, Otis Sanford. Welcome back!
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris, good to be back with you.
BLANK: Well, this week we learned that the district could lose $30 million in funding for Head Start programs due to instances of preschool teachers hitting, kicking and otherwise manhandling students. This comes after a report that the district violated civil rights laws by not responding to numerous complaints of sexual harassment and assaults. So to start, Otis, what is the district's response to all of this?
SANFORD: Well, it hasn't been a good response at all. The response that I saw was a pretty hollow statement that said that they care about the safety of all their students. Well, I mean, that's just a boilerplate statement. They have not responded to this in a very cogent way. They need to do better. Because this is very alarming to read about teachers, really, preying on students. It's outrageous.
BLANK: We do have a new superintendent and mostly new school board. And we know administrations inherit problems. What should they be doing to restore some faith in the system?
SANFORD: Well, they need to be communicating, obviously, a lot more. And we do need to be clear: this happened well before superintendent Marie Feagins came on board. This started back around 2017, but in terms of what the current superintendent and the school board, which is, as you said, at least four new members, they need to be communicating a lot more about the steps that they are taking. And they are. I mean, I've read that they have instituted some new policies that deal with this. So they are addressing this, I believe, in the way that they should.
BLANK: When the state's largest public school district fails on so many levels -- and not just academically -- but making schools appear dangerous, doesn't this help Gov. Bill Lee's argument for school vouchers? You know: we can't save our schools, but we can at least help middle-class families get their kids out.
SANFORD: Well actually in a lot of quarters it does, Chris, buttress his arguments that we need to continue to look at vouchers. But I maintain vouchers are not the answer. The answer is to do a better job of making sure the public schools are led well, are monitored well, and that the hiring process is better. And you mentioned the Head Start issue. We should not have anybody in the Head Start program basically assaulting the little kids. So while this will give the governor some more ammunition to say, yes, let's do vouchers, the real thing is: let's do a better job of fixing our public schools, especially the local one.
BLANK: Well, on another issue, the New York Times published a disturbing editorial piece into voting rights in Tennessee this week. 21 percent of Black adults in this state cannot vote because of a prior felony conviction. That's about 200,000 people. It's the highest rate in the country. The issue is that even decades after people have paid their debt to society, Republicans here have put up ridiculous barriers to voting, like you can't vote unless you can own a gun. Why is voter disenfranchisement so important to Republican lawmakers here?
SANFORD: Because they want to stay in power and they know that the only way to stay in power is to keep people who don't vote for them -- and for the most part those are people of color -- if they can suppress the vote, then they get to maintain their supermajority in the legislature to maintain power. It is a very stark form of racism at his worst.
BLANK: Is there anything to be done about it here in the state?
SANFORD: Obviously, you can take people to court. I mean, there was one very recent court case that dealt with what you mentioned at the very beginning. A person who had paid her debt to society 30 years ago, she wasn't allowed to to vote because she needed to have her gun ownership restored, which is most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And a court had decided with her. So, the courts are going to have to get involved in this. But that's the only way that I see because you know, the Republicans are not going to change. They are not going to, you know, finally wake up one morning and say, "oh, let's not disenfranchise 200,000 people in the State of Tennessee, especially if those people, for the most part, don't vote for me." They don't care about that group.
BLANK: There have been Republican governors elsewhere saying, you know, the right to vote is part of being in a democracy and have changed these policies, making it easier for people to get their voting rights back. Is there a reason in Tennessee that is completely the opposite?
SANFORD: I've read a statement from Gov. Bill Lee, and it was about as weak as you could get saying he didn't know anything about the issue. And then just gave some milquetoast statement about people should have the right to vote. That's why Tennessee is where it is. But it'll take the courts to have to deal with this.
