With only a week until school starts, local early childhood education nonprofit Porter-Leath needs to fill 250 staff positions and nearly 3,000 student seats as Memphis’ new sole Head Start provider.

Porter-Leath announced last Monday that it’s taking over the five-year contract and the nearly $30 million annual federal grant from Memphis-Shelby County Schools. The district lost the contract after repeated safety violations.

The changeup leaves Porter-Leath with only a week to transition before the school year starts on Aug. 4. And families who previously signed up with MSCS for the upcoming school year need to apply again, said Vice President of Development Robert Hughes. The district didn’t explain how it plans to communicate that to parents.

“Time is a huge challenge,” Hughes said.

Over 700 families applied for acceptance last week, he said, and the organization is throughout the month of August.

Hughes also said Porter-Leath is expanding partnerships with other community organizations like First 8 Memphis to open new Head Start sites “for space reasons.” The nonprofit currently operates five centers of its own.

During the first enrollment event Friday, Family Services Manager Tracy Jackson said over 100 families showed up to Porter-Leath’s American Way center for support before 11 a.m.

For the past four years, MSCS has run the free federal pre-K program for low-income families. But funding from the federal Administration for Children and Families went up for grabs this spring because , according to The Daily Memphian. The district received including teachers who “hit, pulled and grabbed children by the neck.”

In an email to Chalkbeat, MSCS confirmed that it will not receive any Head Start funding this school year.

But the district will still provide “high-quality early learning opportunities” to 3,340 students, the email said, primarily four-year-olds, through funding from the .

MSCS did not say whether it would need to lay off any staff. In an earlier press release, district officials said the transition will affect 23 childcare providers.

“While the loss of Head Start funding has required adjustments to our staffing model, we are working diligently to retain as many team members as possible through reassignment and redeployment into roles supported by [the] Early Childhood Department,” the recent email said.

Last year, Porter-Leath served around 1,500 children in its Early Head Start program for children up to 3 years old and other pre-K models. And until , the district paid the nonprofit around two-thirds of its grant award to serve as a partner in offering Head Start services.

Porter-Leath was one of 13 providers nationwide to be in 2023. Hughes credits most of the organization’s success to its early education staff, and the focus on professional development.

“​​We’re not just like, ‘Hey, you’re hired. Go for it,’” he said. “We’re not asking somebody to rely on what they learned in school 25 years ago with no additional support. And that pays off in the classroom.”

Hughes said Porter-Leath also puts additional adults in its classrooms and centers through outside partnerships with AmeriCorps, including its “foster grandparents” program.

“Having extra adults in the classroom and in the centers makes a huge difference obviously, for our teachers, knowing that there’s a third set of eyes,” he said.

Starting Friday, Porter-Leath will begin hosting job fairs specifically for former MSCS Head Start employees, which will run every Wednesday and Friday through August.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Community backlash is mounting ahead of a pivotal decision this month on the fate of Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins.

The Shelby County Commission is set Wednesday to discuss whether to vote Jan. 13 for a resolution of “no confidence” in the school board after several members , who began in the role April 1 after a prolonged search.

A second resolution on the commission’s agenda would place a 90-day hold on the county’s recent $33 million allocation toward building a long-anticipated high school in the city’s Frayser community.

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A parent advocacy group, meanwhile, , while a prominent Memphis lawmaker says he is pursuing his own meeting with the board to “reset the conversation.”

The activity comes ahead of a Jan. 15 school board work session in which the board will revisit the case against Feagins, which Chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman laid out in a resolution to terminate Feagins’ contract.

Feagins has forcefully denied any wrongdoing, and was expected to submit written responses to the board on Monday. Any vote to oust Feagins would need to happen at a board business meeting. The next one is set for Jan. 21.

At its December meeting, the board on Feagins to this month. Dorse-Coleman cast the deciding vote, saying she wanted to “keep it fair” and allow more time to review the facts.

The resolution contends that Feagins has been dishonest and difficult to communicate with, and that she mishandled or misrepresented district finances on three occasions.

Conflict draws in state officials

The drama in Memphis-Shelby County Schools has gotten the attention of state officials, too.

Rep. Mark White, longtime chairman of a House education committee in the state legislature, is seeking to meet this week with the entire school board and several other state lawmakers from Memphis.

“We need to dial down the temperature,” said the Memphis Republican. “There’s a lot of people in our community who are very upset by this situation.”

White said poor working relationships between Feagins and certain board members are distracting all of them from more important academic challenges facing Tennessee’s largest school system, such as low reading scores, chronic absenteeism, a high dropout rate, and a critical need for stronger workforce development in the Mid-South.

He said he’s not ready to introduce legislation that he drafted last year to give Gov. Bill Lee’s administration the to the nine-member Memphis board. However, that avenue remains an option, White said.

“It took 18 months to find this superintendent, and now some board members want to let her go while she’s still trying to learn the ropes and drinking from a fire hose,” White said. “You don’t disrupt an entire community and call a meeting to dismiss your superintendent without a clear definition of the grievances.”

Feagins has hired Memphis lawyer Alan Crone to represent her in the dispute, while the board has retained Robert Spence, another local attorney.

Nearly a year ago, the board away from a leadership position at the Detroit Public Schools Community District, making her the first outside leader to direct Tennessee’s largest school system since it was created through a merger a decade ago.

According to her contract, she must be paid a severance of $487,500 if the board terminates her contract without cause. However, Dorse-Coleman has said the claims by her and several other board members justify a termination, meaning that Feagins would not receive a severance package.

Funding for new Frayser high school at risk

The “no confidence” resolution before the county body that oversees local funding for public schools is co-sponsored by Commissioners Amber Mills and Erika Sugarman. Mills is the sole sponsor so far of the second resolution, to withhold millions of dollars approved on Dec. 16 toward the $112 million cost of building a new high school.

“Firing a superintendent, no matter who they are, at the beginning of a critical project leaves the County Commissioners with no confidence … regarding the new construction of the Frayser High School and other actions,”

Mills said the resolutions are her attempt to make the school board think deeply before moving ahead with an ouster attempt that she said has “blindsided our whole community.” Freezing funding for a new Frayser school, she added, would be “just a pause” as the commission seeks “clear direction and accountability from school district leaders.”

“A lot of people love Dr. Feagins and are happy that she’s making changes,” Mills said.

School board member Stephanie Love, who voted against postponing the termination vote, said Monday she’s disappointed that the county commission has gotten involved. She said Mills, whose district overlaps Love’s, has not contacted her to discuss the matter.

“It’s unfortunate that another elected body would consider holding off on building a new school in my district,” she told Chalkbeat. “Kids are the most important thing to me.”

Love added: “I will vote my conscience (on Feagins’ future). We are not going to make everybody happy. The public is unaware of the things we have to deal with behind closed doors.”

Dorse-Coleman, the board chair, did not respond Monday to Chalkbeat’s questions about community backlash. But in a Dec. 26 statement, she said she and other board members have tried sharing their concerns with Feagins privately without success.

“She has a pattern and practice of not providing critical information and instead misinforming the Board Members,” Dorse-Coleman said. “I don’t think this is something we can overcome.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

But anyone interested in learning how the district spent that hefty sum might be left scratching their heads.

Until a few weeks ago, a devoted to the district’s management of the historic windfall contained a link purporting to offer a detailed breakdown of how it used the funds. But clicking it took users to an error page with an illustration of a smiling aviator in a red prop plane, with text reading, “I’m afraid you’ve found a page that doesn’t exist.”

In December, a district spokeswoman said the page wasn’t updated properly and that staff were “working to get everything going smoothly.” But nothing happened until June 11, when the district after a 74 reporter asked an official about it. 

The scenario offers a fitting metaphor for the district’s unwieldy approach to the federal aid amid a season of scandal and other miststeps.

last year after an investigation showed he had affairs with at least two women he supervised. A for a new chief — described by one observer as a “game of thrones,” with the interim and deputy chief vying for the job — has dominated school board meetings. Other distractions, notably a move to from board meetings, has eroded trust between leaders and families, and hindered transparency about the biggest pot of federal money the majority Black district has ever received.

“They are going through a lot right now,” said Krista Johnson, founder and executive director of ALLMemphis, a nonprofit that provides literacy training and coaching to teachers. She described her interactions with the district as “swimming upstream”: Emails to officials aren’t returned for weeks, and communication with principals is poor. 

Johnson said the problems hit home recently when she learned that her first grader in the district is a year behind in reading — despite getting A’s on weekly tests and making the principal’s list. As an educator, Johnson understands that it’s harder for a student to do well on a standardized test than a weekly spelling quiz. But she thinks the district could do a better job of explaining these issues to families.

“Nothing works well without strong leadership, and we just don’t have strong leadership now,” she said. “It’s just not an emergency to anyone, and that is shameful.”

With the attention on crisis management, oversight of relief funds has suffered. 

last year showed the district overspent relief funds on HVAC systems — sometimes six times as much — in a rush to beat other districts competing for the same vendors. Prior to the federal windfall, the average HVAC project cost $1 million; afterwards, it jumped to $6 million. 

The district fired its last July after an internal probe showed he approved purchases from a business in exchange for that firm doing work with his own company. 

After a January found “significant deficiency” in the district’s handling of contracts, officials hired FORVIS, an outside accounting firm, to examine its use of relief funds. Both the district and a FORVIS spokesman declined to comment on the status of the audit.

Sheleah Harris, who abruptly resigned from the school board earlier this month, has cast further doubt on how the district has handled the money. In an email to reporters, she alleged that board members and administrators “have directly benefited from certain contracts.” While she didn’t offer specifics, she accused Board Chair Althea Greene of “mishandling” funds. 

The district, which has in relief funds yet to spend, pointed to the audit and its own “” as proof of efforts to prevent impropriety. Greene denied the accusations and said she carries her “responsibility with the utmost integrity.” 

‘Skin in the game’

The litany of flare-ups has tried the patience of parents eager to see results from the federal investment. “We need to know where this money is going,” said Sarah Carpenter, executive director of Memphis Lift, a leading advocacy group. “The board isn’t talking about it.”

On a weeknight, she gathered with parents at the organization’s headquarters — a one-story white bungalow with orange trim in north Memphis, a predominantly Black community. The converted house serves as a gathering spot for families to discuss pressing issues, like a new curriculum or school choice options.

That evening, as children played in another room, at least a dozen parents and grandparents sat around a long table, shared dinner and voiced frustrations about classrooms without certified teachers and student data portals with no grades.

They described themselves as only vaguely aware of how much money the district received in relief funds and how officials were using it. 

“The district has not been very informative,” said Charles Lampkin, a pastor with six children in the Memphis-Shelby schools, from 3 to 13. “I’ve got a lot of skin in the game.”

The communication breakdown is notable given the school system’s place among urban districts nationally, where it experienced some of the in reading and math on last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. Math scores fell 12 points in fourth grade and 14 points in eighth grade. In reading, there was an eight-point drop in fourth and a six-point decline in eighth.

Considering the dismal results, Carpenter wonders whether leaders have made the best use of the money. “When we look up and the money’s gone, will our kids be in the same shape?” she asked. “I’m afraid so.” 

Before the NAEP scores were released, former state education Commissioner Penny Schwinn met with Williams, the interim superintendent, and other leaders in downtown Memphis to brace them for the results.

Memphis-Shelby, she said later, hadn’t “rigorously” communicated with families of students at risk of repeating third grade this fall due to a new state law requiring proficiency in reading. 

The showed that 42% of third graders scored below expectations — the same as last year. 

“Our concern is we will have thousands of kids, predominantly Black children in Memphis, who will be retained — not because they had to be, but literally because there isn’t a structure,” Schwinn said. Officials “are wanting to do all the right things. The implementation is where there’s a lot of struggle.” 

She said district leaders could have spent relief funds to hire a public relations firm to explain the options for students who didn’t reach proficiency. “Outsource it. It’s allowable,” Schwinn said. 

The district held a series of Facebook live sessions on the results, but declined to comment to ����Ӱ�� on steps teachers took to inform parents of their children’s performance. shows 95% of those eligible to retake the test in late May did, but of those, just 8% became proficient.

‘When the storm comes’

Meanwhile, Greene, the board chair, pushed back on the idea that district scandals have caused relief efforts to falter.

“We didn’t get off track. We had and we stuck to it,” she said in an interview. She thinks the board earned the community’s respect when it put former superintendent Ray on leave and ultimately negotiated his resignation. “We didn’t have a manual to say this is what you do when the storm comes.”

Far from fumbling its message, she insisted the district “over-communicates” about relief funds.

“We have a website,” she said in December. As evidence, she pointed a 74 reporter to the site with the error message and bouncing airplane. Contacted again on June 11, she said the site had been updated. The change, it appears, was to remove the link altogether, leaving the public without a breakdown of how the district has spent the funds. The rest of the site remains stuck in the earlier days of relief fund implementation: It features a video with former superintendent Ray and its most recent spending report is from February 2022.

In June, a spokesperson said the website isn’t the primary vehicle to communicate to families about relief-funded programs. She pointed to a , but a review of several issues shows it’s a roundup of calendar items, awards and other updates without any mention of how the district is using the money.

Several parents and community leaders said they were unaware of recent efforts to communicate how the funds have been spent. Terence Patterson, president and CEO of the Memphis Education Fund, voiced concerns that the district was allocating too much — over $400 million — on facility upgrades and deferred maintenance and not enough on academic recovery. Records show the district has spent almost $127 million on “building improvements” and architects. In addition to new HVAC systems, include painting, renovating athletic fields and stadiums, and installing water filling stations and new fire alarms. 

Williams, the interim superintendent, defended those actions. 

“We are a district that’s been around for quite some time. We have over 200 facilities and those facilities are really aging,” she said. “This was a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Tutoring efforts

The ongoing turmoil has tended to obscure what leaders say are important milestones toward getting more students on grade level. 

The district has spent over $40 million on tutoring this school year, reaching 13,300 students, officials said. Only a few schools had waitlists and the majority of parents who requested tutoring received it. Attendance at tutoring sessions averaged 89% and students who participated in at least half were more likely to meet the district’s growth goal each quarter, officials said.

“There are folks who keep the ball rolling,” said Cortney Robinson, CEO of the Peer Power Foundation, a nonprofit that has received almost $3.9 million in relief funds to train high school students as tutors. He called Deputy Superintendent Angela Whitelaw and Shawn Page, chief of academic operations, “heroes” who haven’t let the tensions interfere with academic recovery.

Another $89 million is paying for 750 “specialized classroom assistants” in K-2. They lead small groups of students for practice on specific skills, monitor students’ work while teachers are leading lessons and provide backup in the early grades. 

Jessica Rodriguez, who has a first grader at Willow Oaks Elementary, took the position because she worried about the pandemic’s effect on her son’s learning. 

“I just really wanted to be a support,” she said. “I have a better connection [to the school] than I had before.” 

Williams told ����Ӱ�� the district will evaluate its tutoring and K-2 initiatives to determine if it wants to continue them when relief funds expire. 

“You do not sustain $776 million overnight,” she said. “You have to be more strategic in your thinking on what is really working for students.”

But during a May 9 meeting, Whitelaw, the district’s deputy chief, said the district can’t yet determine whether hiring the classroom assistants was a wise use of relief funds. Some of the assistants led classrooms on their own this past school year because of staff shortages and haven’t been used to “their fullest potential,” she said.

At the same meeting, Harris thumbed through the district’s spending plan. She bluntly called the district “top, top, top heavy, heavy, heavy” and said it was unclear whether the 1,163 positions hired with relief funds supported academic goals. Experts warned districts against using the money to hire staff because after next year, they’ll either have to let them go or find another way to pay them.

She said district officials ought to tell parents in “community-friendly language” where the relief funds are going. Harris thinks that message, three years after the pandemic began, should answer a fundamental question: “Does this tie into making sure our children can read on grade level or above?”