WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): For more than a year, a few lawmakers have threatened a state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. This week, the details were finally worked out and approved. With us to talk about that is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Good to be with you.
BLANK: Otis, this has been a long time coming. It does have supporters here, who say the school district needs fixing. Now there will be a nine-member oversight board essentially running things for the next four years. What can this board do -- or maybe, will they do -- that an elected school board can't?
SANFORD: Well, academically, I don't think they can do much at all. Depending on who's in this group, they may be able to do a better job looking at the finances, making sure that processes are done correctly. So really, this new group will have more of an impact on the administration than the school board.
BLANK: And why is that? I mean, I get the idea that the sponsors of this bill, Sen.Brent Taylor and Mark White, think that maybe a management team would be better over the school district than the school board itself--than these elected officials. And could that work out for the best?
SANFORD: It could work in terms of oversight if this management team consisted of financial experts, organizational experts, people who know budgeting and processes involving a billion dollar enterprise. But again, since we don't know who they are, it's hard to say.
BLANK: Right, and during a conference committee this week where the final details were being hashed out, Rep. Mark White made one very specific request to allow Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton to appoint one person who lives outside of Shelby County. And as Sen. Ramesh Akbari pointed out, it seemed awfully specific, as if someone were already in mind. And this touches on the whole mystery of this board. We have been promised experts in management and education. What do you expect to see from state leadership?
SANFORD: I have no idea at this point, Chris. Because Sen. Taylor and Rep. Mark White said earlier on that all of these people would be from Shelby County. So, we know that's not true now. I'm not sure of what to expect here. Again, if they get professionals in finance and professionals in secondary education, maybe they will help, but this is all a wait-and-see game right now.
BLANK: The racial aspect, maybe, has not been discussed or debated enough. Again, we don't know who will be on this board, but it can't be ignored that white conservative lawmakers who have spent this whole session pouring money into private schools through vouchers, think they have a solution to fix a Black majority school district without ever mentioning race or poverty. It never comes up. Is bad management the only thing standing in the way of a top quality education here in Shelby County?
SANFORD: Absolutely not. And that's where our state legislators and the governor have blinders on here, Chris. They don't want to have to address the issues and the conditions that impact a lot of —or a majority of— the students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools. They don't want to talk about it. They don't even want to hear about it. But that's being naive to the reality here. I just don't know how they're going to have a major impact without understanding these underlying conditions that help to create, for example, truancy or a lack of educational preparedness in the home. They're not talking about that. It would be great if some of the people on this oversight board did understand that and incorporated that into what they want to do, even beyond what the legislators and the governor want, but again, we'll have to wait and see on that.
BLANK: Lawmakers expected Shelby County schools to sue them. And so they passed a bill making it illegal to sue them using taxpayer dollars. And yet the school board this week said we are going to sue you. We're going to take this to court. Obviously, they'll have to find the money somewhere. But what do you think the outcome of that might be?
SANFORD: Whether you like them or not, and whether you think some of them are qualified or not, they were duly elected just as the legislators were. There are a lot of legislators who are not qualified to hold the positions they have. It could be that they will try to seek some outside funding for the litigation, but I think they have already talked about this, or at least thought about it.
