- This month on The Spark, our theme is centered on education.

We'll learn more about an urban college-prep elementary school, providing students with a challenging Christ-centered education.

A university training medical professionals, and ensuring the public has access to medical care.

And a Law Firm investing in youth, and STEM-learning opportunities.

We'll also share a special moment from our Spark Awards, 2021.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb & Pitts Insurance has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity, and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement, and leading by example to power the good.

Lipscomb & Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The Spark.

- (male announcer) Additional funding for The Spark is provided by ECOP, the Memphis Zoo, My Town Movers, My Town Roofing, My Town Miracles, and by Meritan.

- Ever been excited by a new idea?

Inspired by watching someone lead by example?

When we talk about creating change, we start by sharing the stories of everyday heroes who are making a difference in their own way, so we can learn and do the same.

I'm Jeremy Park, and this is The Spark.

[uplifting music] They're an elementary school providing students with the challenging Christ-centered education, we're here with the Head of School for New Hope Christian Academy, Lionel Cable.

And Lionel, let's start out, give us a little history for New Hope Christian Academy.

- All right, New Hope Christian Academy was founded 25 years ago by Stephen Carpenter, Head of school.

Basically he has a heart from Memphis, and he understood that there was power in high-quality academics.

And then also eternal power in terms of the gospel.

He wanted to pair those two, because academics here in Memphis, as you well know, there's been a struggle for quite some time.

So he created a school where teaching, learning, and discipleship, those are our three keys.

And if we stick by those three keys, we obviously would have fantastic results.

- Talk about where you're located.

- So we are located in Frayser, in the heart of Frayser.

We started downtown, but then as the population began to shift, the school needed to figure out where we were needed the most.

And Frayser is where it has been for the past 20 years.

- And then I think another thing that makes you very unique is private school, Christ-centered, but you have kids coming from all over, so many different zip codes.

So talk about the student makeup and the DNA.

- Yeah, absolutely, so we serve children from 38 different zip codes across Shelby County.

So we're just very blessed to have a really broad reach, to be able to pour into kids' lives all over Memphis.

But 38 different zip codes, we service all over Memphis.

- And I think that's part of it, is all the different cultures, and so many different pieces coming together.

And talk about then the classroom sizes, the teachers, some of the other things that make you very unique.

- Yeah, so 80% of our children have to be on free and reduced lunch.

The other 20%, obviously they do not have to be, but we try to open up the door of opportunity for high-quality Christian education, just for families that otherwise would not be able to afford high-quality Christian education.

So our tuition is on a sliding scale.

Ninety-nine percent of our families receive really strong financial aid so that we can make it affordable.

Some families pay, the majority of our families, excuse me, pay as little as $40 a month, or $400 a year, when our actual tuition is $13,000.

So something that makes us unique, again, is our sliding scale.

And then us really being intentional about serving individuals who want a high-quality Christian independent education, but cannot afford it.

As for our teachers, we have really, really strong teachers who love to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Since 80% of our children are on free and reduced lunch, I mean, technically we serve the exact same children that Shelby County Schools, they serve.

However, we're able to pour into our kids with strong relationships with their parents, and then strong academics through our experiential learning.

And then obviously, our farm and our forest, which we've talked about before on the show.

And again, get phenomenal results, Nintety-nine percent of our kids cross that finish line, in terms of graduating high school.

Seventy percent of our kids will pursue, as well as obtain, a college degree.

And we are just trying to change Memphis, the face of Memphis, one child at a time.

- You mentioned the forest and the community garden.

I think it's a powerful way to not only engage the students with the learning, but also, too, the community as a whole.

And so dive in deeper on the community garden, and the ways that you're also giving back to the community and the neighborhoods around you.

- Yeah, absolutely, so here in Frayser, it's ground zero, in terms of being a food desert.

Where we are located, we don't have a supermarket that's got fresh vegetables that's really near.

So about 10 years ago, a vision of Mary Leslie Ramsey, a teacher here, we had about 3.5 undeveloped acres, there was nothing on it.

And she just woke up one day and said, "Hey, God gave me a vision that we need to start an urban farm and an urban forest."

Because you know children who are typically in the inner city, they don't often get the opportunity to go outside, or to explore nature, go camping, do all of those types of things.

So over the course of that 10-year period, we slowly developed an area that's called Our Farm and Our Forest.

The Farm is absolutely gorgeous this time of year, and our horticulturist, who is full-time, very intentional about working with all of our students, in terms of planting crops, and actual crops from... You know, some seasons it's been corn, some seasons it's been watermelon, to cabbage, to strawberries, blueberries, you name it.

The Farm produces quite a bit of fresh produce.

So a way that we give back, on top of just using that as our hands-on approach for our kids, we also have what's called our "pay what you can" stand.

So since we are not near a grocery store, and fresh veggies and fruit, especially this time around, it's pretty expensive.

Our parents, every Friday, it's an opportunity for them to come to campus, and they literally pay what they can for as much produce as they would like.

So that is a tradition that we have held strong, really over the past 10 years since we've had The Farm and The Forest.

- Wrap up with contact information: your website, social media, phone number.

Where do we go to learn more and get involved?

- Fantastic, you can certainly visit our website, www.newhopememphis.org, or all of our Facebook handles, Twitter handles, they are all the same, and that is @NewHopeChristianAcademy.

- Lionel, thank you for all you and your amazing team do, thank you for coming on the show.

- Oh, thank you so much, and thank you for having me.

[uplifting music] - They are training medical professionals, and ensuring we all have access to healthcare.

We're joined by the Chancellor of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Dr. Peter Buckley.

And let's start one, welcome to Memphis, and two, what attracted you to this position?

- Thank you very much, Jeremy, I'm delighted to be with you today.

And I'm absolutely delighted to be in Tennessee, and specifically in Memphis.

This came up at just the right time, you know, serendipity usually plays a lot in these, role in these kind of situations, so came up with the right time, it was very attractive.

I was fortunate to be able to survive a highly competitive national search, and I was fortunate to be selected.

So I was attracted to the caliber of the institution, and on another level, Jeremy, I felt there was a lot of work to be done here.

So while Tennessee is a fantastic state, and our institution is the main provider of the clinical workforce for the state of Tennessee, quite frankly, the health of the state of Tennessee is not where it should be.

And it harbors at 41, 42, in national metrics, we've high rates of obesity, high rates of hypertension, high rates of diabetes, high rates of mental health problems, dental problems.

And so our organization, our university, provides the workforce for today and for tomorrow.

So I found that as a really great attraction to hopefully work with all the people in Tennessee, and with our institutions, to make a difference.

And then the final thing is, although we're based in Memphis, really our campus is all around Tennessee.

And so that was very attractive to me, both because if you're gonna make a difference, make it across the state, not in one area of the state, it's a bigger canvas to work on.

So I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

And then also Memphis is an amazing city to be involved in.

- So talk about the different degree programs, you mentioned statewide, so there's a lot to dive into, but give us an overview of the different paths.

- Yeah, so thank you for that.

So we've six colleges, nursing, in no particular order, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, graduate studies, the health professions, and medicine.

And so there are degrees in all of those areas, health professions is rather broad.

It has things like occupational therapy, respiratory therapies, health informatics.

The rest are kind of self explanatory, dental and dental hygiene degrees, pharmacy degrees, various nursing degrees, and then also a medical degree.

And so they run the gambit from one, two, and three-year, up to four-year programs.

And then of course we have the opportunity to give people other training.

So to tie back to your original question, about excited to be here, the portfolio of our university is fantastic.

- That also carried forward into access, and ensuring that all citizens have access to medical care, and especially working in rural areas.

And so talk about some of the unique things you're doing to make sure that everyone has access to healthcare.

- Yeah, so thank you, you're right on the money on that.

So how can you have access to healthcare if there aren't the healthcare providers, period?

Or if the healthcare providers are all in Nashville, or all in Knoxville, or all in Memphis, but they're not in rural Tennessee?

So let me give you two examples.

So first is dentistry.

So I've told you that we're behind the 8-ball on national metrics for dentistry.

Here's the workforce metrics, there are, per 100,000 of the population, in general in states across America, the average number of dentists is 60 per 100,000.

Tennessee, it's 50 per 100,000.

So we clearly don't have enough dentists in general.

But then when you look at Appalachia, this is a staggering figure, 4 per 100,000; four dentists per one hundred thousand.

So we're very fortunate that the legislature with the Department of Health has funded a five-year project.

The upper end, of which, at the 5 years, if it all goes through, will cap a $53 million initiative, it's called A Healthy Smiles initiative, how could it be anything other than that?

And that's to provide more dentists, and to provide more dentists throughout the state.

So we're increasing the number of dental students here in Memphis.

We're increasing the number of faculty to train dental students, but then we're also increasing the number of sites for dental training.

Because again, if people train back in areas that they have family, or areas that they get comfortable with, odds are they may stay there.

And so that's one example.

And then another example that I'm very excited about is our university, University of Tennessee, for the first time in 50 years, has created a new campus.

And the campus is in Pulaski, which is very rural Tennessee, as you know.

And it's called UT Southern.

They have a nursing, BSN nursing training program, but it's fairly small.

So we are now partnering with them, and we're gonna have a joint training program, and increase the number of nurses.

And of course we want the nurses to be able to work back in rural Tennessee, in Pulaski.

And so there's another example of using the full breadth of the opportunity and our resources, to impact, statewide, the health of Tennesseans.

- So wrap up with contact information, website, social media.

Where do we go to learn more about the University of Tennessee Health Science Center?

- So our website is easily accessible at www.uthsc.org, and we look forward to you contacting us.

We're always available, we are a state public asset.

- Well, Dr. Buckley, thank you for all you do, greatly appreciate it, thank you for coming on the show.

- Always, thank you very much, Jeremy.

[uplifting music] - The Spark Awards annually recognizes and celebrates individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the community.

The 2021 recipient of the Education School Award is Kirby Middle School.

[mellow piano] - At Kirby Middle School, we're actually a turnaround school.

Green Dot Public Schools took over Kirby back in 2016.

We're a grade level 6 through 8 school, and we serve about 450 students.

We were almost shocked by the number of students who were actually getting online, logging into every class, and really taking their education seriously throughout the pandemic.

And I think that speaks to, not only the prep work that went into protecting instructional time, and making sure academics stayed as the top priority for our teachers, but also it speaks to just the strong teaching staff that I have here.

There's an extreme teacher shortage right now, and so I'm grateful to be able to say that we have certified teachers in every classroom.

We're really taking this thing from an asset-based approach this school year, knowing that kids are coming back, there are gaps.

Even though we had a strong distance learning program, it did not replace the power of being with students in person, and making those daily connections, and building those relationships with kids.

And so we're really excited to be back in full swing this year, where we know kids have these gaps, but we also know they are super resilient.

They're super strong, they're coming back, and there are strategies that we put in place to keep them focused on academics as the main thing.

The work that we do with social-emotional learning within our advisory program, the work that we do just to truly prepare students for a success in college leadership, in life, it really plays out in a number of different ways.

And we have so many parents, and students, and community members, that really just praise us for some of the initiatives that we've taken on here at Kirby Middle School.

I'm proud to say that we have a team of people here who are dedicated to meeting those needs of students, and it's showing in the data that kids love it here.

It's really powerful to be able to say that we have a culture and a climate here, where adults and students clearly want to be.

And that's something that I don't take lightly, especially now.

[uplifting music] - They're a Law Firm giving back to the community, supporting students, and education here in the Mid-South.

We're here with the owner and the founder of the Reaves Law Firm, Henry E. Reaves III.

Let's start with a little bit of your background, serving in the military, coming out and going to law school, and moving back to the community to start this Law Firm.

Give us a little bit of the history for the Reaves Law Firm, Henry.

- Oh man, you hit the highlights.

After the military, I ended up coming back to Memphis, prior to going back to law school.

And when I got back, I was at the insurance defense company downtown.

I was there for a couple of years, but basically what I was doing there was making sure that the insurance company's interests were protected.

So I was going against, basically, the every-day man and woman here in Memphis, and that just didn't sit right with me.

I wanted to be on the other side, I wanted to make sure that I could actually defend the people who were hurt against the insurance companies.

Interviewed at a lot of places, and I didn't get the opportunity, but sometimes God closes doors for other doors to be opened.

So I started the Reaves Law Firm, I wish I could sit back and brag on myself and say, "I had this big plan and this vision and I mapped it out."

But it was really just a situation, something that was born out of necessity.

You know, we had to feed our children.

And since I wasn't able to get a opportunity, I was basically forced to create my own opportunity.

- Talk about where you are today, though, you're expanding, and you also have a team that's ever growing.

So talk about number of team members in all the different markets.

- Oh man, I know last I checked, I wanna say that we're probably getting close to being north of 100 now, with over 19 attorneys that we have.

And lots of paralegal, an intake department.

We've recently opened up a office in Jackson, Mississippi.

We really focused here in Memphis for the first 10 years of the business.

We really wanna make sure that we had our processes and our systems down right, prior to expanding.

And so we entered into the Jackson, Mississippi market last June, and we don't really have any plans on stopping.

- When you look at the different areas, talk about the different areas.

And also, too, around tenants, I think that's an interesting area that you play a vital role in, is protecting tenant rights.

So talk about the different areas of focus with you and your team.

- Yeah, so as far as for the tenant rights, there might be things that we do on a nonprofit side, as far as donating or things like that.

But as far as our practice, the things that we focus on is primarily is gonna be personal injury.

Now, we do say "tenants rights" in a aspect of we do do lots of premises liability.

So if there are people who end up getting hurt at these apartment complexes...

I know if you've seen in the news, you see a lot of these stairways giving out and things like that.

So basically what's happening is there are people who are out of state that own these large apartment buildings, these apartments.

I don't wanna name any names, but a lot of these, the majority of these large apartment buildings are owned by out-of-state entities.

And unfortunately, I feel like there's still a lot of, almost slumlord, sharecropping-type mentality, where the entire focus is, "Let's go ahead "and see how much money we can pull out of this property, "and let's put as little money as we possibly can into this property."

So when they do that, you see things manifest, like higher crime rates, because they don't have gates, and they don't have lights, and they don't have the proper security guard.

You see injuries coming from structural things, because they tried to save some money.

So instead of pouring the proper amount of concrete, they just did this amount.

Or instead of doing the update that they had to do, they decide to put that money in their pocket and give it out to their shareholders.

And the thing about it is, what the city of Memphis has to realize is, we're allowing these out-of-state investors to really create areas of danger.

Like these places become a cesspool, and an attraction for crime, and it's right in our own community.

So for me, when we speak of tenant rights, that's exactly what I'm thinking of, is going after these slumlord people.

And I say that you can come to Memphis, and you can do good business and do right by people.

Like, it is not mutually exclusive like... You can make lots of money here in Memphis in real estate and be a responsible landlord.

- Let's switch over and talk about your community support, and let's start with education and a STEM Center, and a recent pledge to support the Whitehaven High School STEM Center, so talk about that.

- Oh yeah, well, the Reaves Law Firm, we're not the ones who are behind this STEM, so I wanna make sure that I'm not taking all the credit.

They have lots of people working very hard to make this project happen.

They came to me with an ask, and when it's our community and it's Whitehaven, it's Memphis, the children are really our future.

So to have an investment, to invest in our children, I don't think that I would be able to get a better ROI anywhere that I put my money.

So we pledged $150,000, and we're hoping that with this pledge, the ROI we would get is we would get a few more doctors, we get a few more scientists, we would get some CTOs, we would get a few more engineers.

And our hope is that once they go out and they get whatever education they get, that they come back when they pour into Memphis.

We really have a brain-drain going on here, a lot of our most talented, smartest individuals, they're getting pulled away to Atlanta, and Dallas, and Houston, and Chicago.

And anywhere you go around the country, some of the brightest people are Memphis people.

And so if we can find any type of way to keep some of that talent here, to keep some of that braintrust here, we will be in a completely different city.

- You also support initiatives around eyeglasses, and I know that's near and dear to your heart.

So talk about the support of eyeglasses.

- Oh yeah, so my son, he was having issues in school, and we were trying to figure it out.

And long story short, it came out that he needed glasses.

And when we went to go get the glasses, it ended up being a bill of $400-500.

And immediately to myself, I was like, I know that there's not a lot of...

I know that there's a lot of parents that couldn't afford to have something like this just pop up on them, and have this extra bill of $400, $500.

So we've been doing Glasses and Classes for a while now.

And basically what we're trying to do is just put optometrists and mobile optometrists together, along with these kids, to come out to their school, help them out, do some eye exams.

And then the biggest thing is financially support them in order for them to get glasses.

Once again, the pattern we're looking at is an opportunity to invest in the children.

And so I feel that we're gonna get a great ROI if kids have glasses and they can actually see, and they can learn to read.

I think that for our city, it's gonna be the best thing for us in the future.

- Wrap up with website, where do we go to learn more about the Reaves Law Firm?

- Hey, you can find us online at www.beyourvoice.com.

- Well, Henry, thank you for all you and your amazing team do, thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you.

[uplifting music] - According to cityobservatory.org, the single most important factor driving urban economic success is the educational attainment of a city's population.

So for our city to succeed, we need to be centered on education.

Education creates empowerment, knowledge, confidence, and new opportunities; it can change lives.

So we're fortunate to have so many individuals and organizations in our city centered on education.

Schools like New Hope Christian Academy are educating our youth and taking a holistic approach to student success; encompassing body, mind, and spirit.

We have world renowned institutions of higher education, like the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, that is training the next generation of medical professionals and leaders, while ensuring that all citizens have access to medical care.

And we have businesses like the Reaves Law Firm that give back in so many different ways to support students and education.

Yes, good things happen for our citizens and our community when we're centered on education.

So thank you for watching The Spark.

To learn more about each of the guests, to watch past episodes, and to share your stories of others leading by example, visit WKNO.org, and click on the link for The Spark.

We look forward to seeing you next month, and we hope that you'll continue joining with us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb & Pitts Insurance has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity, and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement, and leading by example to power the good.

Lipscomb & Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The Spark.

[uplifting music] [acoustic guitar chords]