- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- School takeover, funding a new jail, and much more, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists, talking about some of the biggest stories of the week.

Laura Testino is with the The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thanks.

- Kailynn Johnson is with The Memphis Flyer.

- Thanks for being here.

- Yes, thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk about all kinds of stories this week.

One thing we're not gonna talk a bunch about is the storms.

We record this Thursday morning, there were storms Wednesday night.

Memphis was not hit as hard as some other areas, and certainly in the WKNO viewing area, there are gonna be storms Thursday night, Friday morning.

So, other folks are gonna be covering that, we're not skipping over, it's just not something we can do good real time information on.

But we can talk, Laura, another update about the potential school takeover.

I know the sponsors of it don't like calling it a takeover, the change of control, management, and governance of the Memphis-Shelby County School system.

Give us the current update and we'll talk it through.

- Yeah, so we have two different versions of the bill right now going through the House and the Senate, it most recently passed the House Education Committee on Wednesday.

And in that committee, Representative Mark White, who's really led the charge on this takeover action, brought his version of the bill, which would strip the elected leadership of all of their powers and duties and seed all of that to a state-appointed board of managers who would be residents from Shelby County, which Representative White feels is really key to talking about whether or not it's a, that takeover or intervention.

It is modeled after legislation in Texas that allowed for the takeover of Houston's school district.

Also in that bill would allow for charter schools to expand in Memphis in ways that are reminiscent of what the Achievement School District did by converting existing public schools into charter schools if the state suggests to do so.

Notably in the House Education Committee, representative White amended the bill to narrow specifically to Memphis, and that's using the no confidence vote from the Shelby County Commission as a key lever there.

So, this is Memphis-specific legislation now, there's no real question about that, especially in the House side.

Earlier versions of the House bill could have applied to dozens of different school districts with the academic triggers that were there.

The Senate bill is a little bit different and would give a little bit more local authority and say so in how the district would be managed and who would manage it.

But it also would include expansion of the earlier pilot voucher project into some of the most poor school districts across the state.

And that voucher program offers a little bit more intuition than the recent expansion.

So, it would allow vouchers to expand in Memphis in a way that that gives families of any income level more money to take to private schools.

- And on that voucher part, that's over and above the expanded voucher program that was passed earlier in this legislative session?

- That's right, yes.

- And the, you mentioned the Achievement School District, that was a statewide effort of what a decade-plus ago to intervene and what then was Memphis City Schools or then the combined schools, I lose track a little bit of the details, but- - Yeah.

- And put the bottom 5% of schools in the state, most of which were in Memphis, Shelby County, into the Achievement School District, managed by the state.

There were about 20 schools at the peak.

A lot of charter operators, most of the data has come out.

The critics will say that there were not improvement efforts in doing that.

Supporters will still sometimes say, well, but it created pressure.

It shook up the system, it created competition.

- Sure.

- So, the idea of the Achievement School District for some folks is really triggering and really, we don't need to go back to that.

That model of takeover didn't work.

Is that fair?

- Right.

Yeah, I think so, that there's a bill that would sunset and replace the district in the legislature.

When the state officials testified about it, they said six schools exited that status that they were looking to exit of the 33 total Memphis and Nashville schools that were ever taken over.

- Yeah.

- And so new turnaround measures would be placed into that.

But to your point about the pressures, it did create, kind of create the iZone, Innovation Zone within Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond was an architect of and wants to bring back.

It was dismantled last year under Superintendent Marie Feagins.

But we could expect board members to hear in his budget proposal that that would come back.

- Some of the iZone schools, just on a data point of view, were more successful than the ASD schools.

- That's right.

Early data showed that some things started to kind of wane there at the end when additional money wasn't able to sustain some of the additional salary that school teachers were getting in the iZone.

So, essentially it got a little bit too big to be sustainable for what it was doing.

- Yeah, let me bring you in Bill, I mean, we've covered schools since, well, before the show, you've covered schools certainly since the show, it's been a constant topic.

It gives me a little, you know, reminders of the early shows when we were talking about ASD, and iZone, and mergers and so on.

One, your thoughts on this takeover and where it's shaping up, and then it also in some ways overlaps with some potential changes with school board elections and with the groundbreaking of a new high school in Frayser.

- All right.

I think that what strikes me is that there is some discussion now on the County Commission about whether the no confidence resolution that they approved, which was limited to the school board members who favored getting rid of Marie Feagins, whether that triggered the school takeover bill, that we wouldn't be here if the Commission had just left it alone.

I don't think that's the case.

I think there was gonna be takeover legislation of some kind, and it was going to be pointed right at Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

- Is that, sticking with that for a second, I'm glad you brought that up.

Is it that, when that vote was taken, no one, well, it was not public knowledge that that could enable, be used in future legislation to take over the school district, right?

I mean, that what was on the table was, we don't agree with where you're going with this Marie Feagins firing.

- Yeah, so it wasn't like the County Commission said, well, this is in the takeover bill, let's do it no confidence- - Yeah, no confidence in the school board in anything and let's bring in a board of management.

- That wasn't the case at all.

- Okay.

Well, let's stay there.

You and Laura both covered this opening of the Frayser, at the groundbreaking of the Frayser High School.

And again, there's some changes potentially happening on how school board members are elected.

Go into those.

- The Frayser High School, the new Frayser High School is being built on the campus of the original Frayser High School and the MLK Prep Charter School that also was in the school.

This is a really big moment for a new school construction within the city of Memphis.

This project had a lot of delays, price estimates that went from just under $100 million to something like $212 million.

Now, it's at $112 million.

And the most important comment of the whole event, I think, was Mayor Lee Harris saying, "This opens the door to new school construction elsewhere in our city."

- We'll come back to that, but your thoughts, again, MLK Prep which is a charter school and then Frayser High will be a public MSCS school.

Talk about that and you covered it as well.

- Yeah, I mean I think that this school really kind of is a lens for looking at all of the major kind of topics, issues for Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Memphis public education.

The students who will be coming to that school right now all go to Trezevant.

And this year Trezevant doubled in size.

It's the other public school in Frayser, because students from that MLK College Prep went over there when the charter for their Achievement School District tenure ended.

And so you saw that high school, turnaround in high school is really hard if you think about like if you're behind in kindergarten and that compounds over time, when you're entering 9th grade, it's a lot harder to kind of change what your academic performance might look like to get you on grade level.

And so high school turnaround was already hard, but what was happening at Trezevant and the waning years of MLK is that we saw the success of a new pilot project that's actually expanding at the legislature this year that really provided some gains for students at Trezevant.

So, we have this interesting mix right now of two kind of student bodies that's have experienced different turnaround profiles that will eventually be moving into this new high school that if it's a success, as Bill is saying, could really be the milestone that's needed to kind of jumpstart this facilities plan, comprehensive facilities plan that we've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting to hear from, and have on hand from the school district.

- There's more, I wanna get Kailynn in here.

Do you have any thoughts on the schools where we're gonna jump topics to MATA, but any thoughts on the schools and the things we've talked about?

- I'm just excited to see this new school in the community.

You know, when children from underrepresented communities see these things, their confidence is not only improved in their education, but in their cities as well.

- Yeah, you've been covering, we're gonna come back to some school things if we have time, but I want to bring you in, and we've covered MATA, there was news, it was a week ago now, but some folks may not have noticed some changes at MATA, talk about that.

- Yes, so former MATA Interim CEO Bacarra Mauldin has been let go of the agency, and this announcement comes after the board of commissioners and the current TransPro consultants who are the current administrations let the public know that someone is on administrative leave following some things that they found in their financial audits of someone who had control of a American Express card with changes ranging from PayPal, Venmo.

People questioned like I believe a $600,000 sponsorship of the Memphis Grizzlies.

- Six hundred?

- Six hundred thousand.

- Wow, okay, I was outta town.

I missed that, sorry.

Go [laughing] I knew some of this, but go ahead, keep going.

- Yes, no, so those were some of the charges that they found.

So, they said that Mauldin had been let go was later revealed, I believe that that was the team member that they were referring to who had been on administrative leave that was in possession of that card.

- And then some other folks are under review right now for charges on their cards?

- Yes.

- Is that correct?

And all this is coming from who?

John Lewis who's the acting CEO.

Who is that for people not as close to this?

- Yeah, so John Lewis is a consultant from the, consulting agency TransPro, who was hired by Mayor Young to I guess kind of overhaul MATA, kind of run some diagnostics, see where they could improve upon.

After a few draft reports came in, it was recommended that even the board be replaced under that report.

And so he came in after the board voted to let them take over.

- The new board-- - The new board, yes.

- That did replace.

What is the status of funding?

I mean, more than ever, MATA is dependent on the City Council funding in not sort of annual funding, but they're trying to do it sort of in buckets, almost sort of a carrot and stick approach.

Where are we with funding of MATA right now?

- I'm not entirely sure.

I know that one of the main things that the City Council and other people funding MATA are concerned about is the trolleys, because the trolleys was a way for, I guess growth in the city, but also that MATA's primary source.

And it also kind of helped a lot with downtown business as well.

So, right now they're looking to kind of get that funding needed and everything needed from TDOT to get the trolleys back on track.

- Yeah, once they close 'em, I remember talking about this, Bill, I think we did the show, once they closed 'em, the federal law, basically it says without some sort of exemption, you have to be closed for six months or so, any kind of trolley transit, rail, yeah.

- It's an incredibly bureaucratic process that has actually lengthened the process.

Meanwhile, you have this whole debate about whether the trolley should be a priority or whether the priority should be just the basic bus service.

Get that up and running, then worry about the trolleys.

- TransPro did a report that's on The Daily Memphian site, it's probably on the MATA site that was fascinating.

And it really was just eye-opening to all the problems and the under utilization of routes and the relatively high utilization of the trolley although it had come down from pre-COVID time.

The last thing I'll say, I think it would be, we had Reginald Coopwood, the CEO of Regional One on recently.

It was a very interesting show, you can get it at wkno.org, or Daily Memphian or YouTube, but we talked a bit, Bill, about, 'cause we're so negative about MATA, and rightly so.

I mean it's really been a disaster.

But we talked a bit with Reginald Coopwood about when he took over The Med, then The Med, it was a disaster and it felt like maybe it was gonna close, and it felt like maybe it was gonna get taken over.

And it was, and now it's a very, I mean, hospitals and certainly public hospitals are incredibly difficult businesses or operations, but it is night and day from where it was, and people could check that out.

- And there are, in situations like this, there are two ways of looking at it.

It's like it's a train wreck, go ahead and let it plow on the head and do the damage.

The other way of looking at it is, this is a golden opportunity- - Yeah.

- For someone who is really gonna be given free reign to remold- - Yeah.

- This transit system.

- And again, Dr. Coopwood although he was very humble about it, I mean he was the leader that did do that kind of transformation and talked a bit about that on that show about what it took and the people and the trust and the steps you have to take.

So, speaking of problems, let's turn to the jail.

There is a proposal.

I mean the jail has had the, the Shelby County Jail, 201 Poplar, has had a series of both, I mean, what is it?

Some 200 deaths or something plus over the last few years, at some point there were no locks on the doors, there had been no AC, it has been called by its, by many, many people of all political backgrounds, you know, inhumane and just unacceptable.

There's a proposal at the state level, Bill, to help fund a new jail that is maybe moving forward.

- Right, it's basically a penny tax increase is the proposal.

And it appears to have bipartisan support, at least in the Shelby County delegation.

That's a revenue stream for what would be by the estimate of Mayor Lee Harris about a 10-year process from planning to opening the door and then closing it on the jail inmates who come there.

Also about $1 billion.

- Yeah.

- So, it's a massive undertaking.

There are a lot of other questions that arise from that.

If you build a new jail, do you build it on the site of the current jail, or do you move it?

If you move it, you pretty much have to move the courts in the building too, move that with it.

- Yeah, the DA's Office, all the criminal courts are in 201 Poplar.

I think most people think of 201 Poplar as just the jail, but it's also the court system for all that as well.

- So, it's a lot of planning for a jail that is really old.

- Yeah, again, just the details on that, again, it's moving Senator Akbari, a Democrat from Shelby County sponsored it on the Senate side, House Rep. John Gillespie, a Republican, sponsored it on the House side.

So, just to speak to at least some amount of bipartisan support from this, they would increase the sales tax locally from 9.75% to 10.75%, would generate more than $1.8 billion over the course of a maximum of eight years that would be in place.

Let's move to maybe city budget and xAI, I think I can get you to tee that up and how those xAI is the big Elon Musk-funded supercomputer located in what used to be the Electrolux factory.

How is that intersecting with all this conversation about spending and taxes in the city budget?

- It's really not intersecting with the budget concerns.

What it's intersecting with is Elon Musk's national profile, not so much as the head of xAI or of Tesla, but as the guy who's running DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.

Some people are taking the approach that that's national, this is local, and he's coming here and doing this and not asking for tax incentives.

Other people are saying, you can't separate the two.

How do we trust him to do what he says he's gonna do and be open and transparent about it if he's not doing that on a national level?

- And then as part of, and I think Kailynn, if I put you on the spot here, you just tell me, but that you've covered some of this whole question about permitting.

So, when xAI, when that facility opened, to have enough electricity, they had a bunch of gas turbines they brought in and they said, and I guess it was allowed that for 364 days they could run those gas turbines without any permits.

Now, there's a lot of pushback from some quarters, hey, they need these permits.

But what have you heard on that front?

- Yes, so I think there were a few, more than 10, about 15 turbines operating.

And not only were the public pretty upset about this, so they of course went to their elected officials and people speaking on their behalf.

And we found through the County Commission meeting earlier this week that they will be required to have a public hearing as they renew these air permits.

And that's a big win for the people in southwest Memphis as it allows them to be heard, but it also gives the public a little bit more transparency about this process which they feel they've left out of.

- Yeah, a couple last notes on that.

One is that there is some talk that the U.S. EPA could do some exemption to those permit requirements.

Not sure where that's going.

And I'll quote from Mayor Young who got hit pretty hard, I should say, verbally at a public meeting, one of the many town halls he's been doing around town about the kind of issues you just talked about as well as the issues that Bill talked about.

Mayor Young said, "I get why some people are wary "of working with a billionaire "who has a larger than life personality, "but I separate personality from the project.

"Instead of having an empty building contributing nothing to our economy, we now have a $10 billion investment," that's the computers and the chips and so on that have been put in there, "and done so without tax abatements."

He also pointed to the xAI is helping to build this $80 million greywater facility to recycle wastewater for xAI, the Nucor Steel plant and the TVA power plant back down there.

So, all really complicated competing interest, Bill, that are hard to shake out.

- And on top of that, well, first of all, as we speak, Sam Hardiman's series-- - Yes.

- On Elon Musk is currently running, the debut of that series came up I believe Tuesday.

- Yeah.

- So, more on that to come and it's really must-read material.

But the other thing is in the midst of all this, Michelle Taylor, Dr. Michelle Taylor of the Health Department, has used this opportunity to basically say the Health Department needs to be more involved in planning, zoning, and development cases.

And this is Exhibit A for why that needs to happen.

- With just five minutes left, I wanna circle back to some school stuff and you did a profile of the Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond, talk about where that stands, and again, relative to this whole takeover movement that's coming from the state capitol.

- Sure, so he sat down with some reporters in the last couple of weeks to just talk a little, you know, about his plans for moving forward.

He, you know, has pretty much had the support of the majority of the board that appointed him.

And I think that we'll see how much that support carries as the budget process goes, which I would expect to be scrutinized a little bit more this year since it's where so many of the hiccups eventually came out with frustrations about the way that Feagins led the district.

So, he's said that he wants to reorganize the district into four different regions with a fifth region being for those Innovative Zone, iZone, lowest performing schools as a turnaround district.

And then importantly earlier this week, the school board approved a contract for him, his formalized contract since his appointment in January.

A lot of those things are what we would've expected to see in a contract.

He's getting the same pay, which was how the school board handled Toni Williams as interim coming in after Joris Ray.

- Same pay they were getting in the previous position, or as the previous superintendent?

- As the previous superintendent.

- So, Marie Feagins was making 400-plus?

- 325.

- Like I said, 325.

[Laura laughing] Okay, so he was brought to that?

- Yes, so yes, so Dr. Richmond was brought to 325.

A notable absence in his contract, however, is the ethics clause.

This ethics clause came in to Dr. Marie Feagins's contract, was seen kind of as an answer to the lack of tools maybe that the school board had in its disposal to fire former superintendent Joris Ray, and no such contract appears in Dr. Richmond's contract that clause was used when Dr. Feagins was fired.

- Yeah, well, how long is the contract?

- It is for 18 months, which is about how we would expect- - A year and a half, yeah.

- A search to last.

- You mentioned Joris Ray, the 400-plus, I think it was 450 is what the school board paid Joris Ray after they forced him out because of accusations of sleeping with members of his staff.

So, that's where the 450- - That is where the 400, yeah- - I just wanna remind everyone of that.

- Yes.

- Bill, with just a minute left here.

Brent Taylor, Senator Brent Taylor has been, you know, trying to put pressure on and even remove DA Steve Mulroy.

He has changed tacts on that, directions with that up at the legislature.

Give us maybe a quick update on that.

- His original proposal was a call for a bipartisan committee to take a look at how Steve Mulroy has acted as DA, his actions, whether there's any call there for trying to remove him.

Now he says what he's going to do, he said, he actually said this.

He said, "Mulroy has a point, a good point."

He said, "This could be seen as being partisan."

So, therefore he's proposing, he is asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to appoint a panel to report to it on whether there are issues with Mulroy's performance.

He also denies that he has changed the method here because he lacks the votes to pass his original idea.

- Yeah, Mulroy told The Daily Memphian an email said, this is Steve Mulroy said, "Looks like Taylor "doesn't have the votes in the legislature for his removal bill."

Taylor countered, "We had the votes, I was prepared to move forward."

But just paraphrasing, he wanted to go in this other direction.

I thought it was interesting with just a minute left, we had C.J.

Davis, the Police Director on a couple weeks ago, and she talked about changes, what she saw in the DA's Office about how he is responding and the DA's Office is responding to crime and that the implication I took, Chief Davis did not say this, is that the pressure that Steve Mulroy has been under has changed how he's responded to things.

And people can get that interview at wkno.org.

We also talked about, C.J.

Davis spoke about Tyre Nichols, the federal consent decree, and a whole lot of other issues.

Again, also that Reginald Coopwood interview is available at wkno.org.

But that is all the time we have this week, thank you all.

Thank you, Kailynn, for being here, we love it.

Normally we ask Toby at the end for some sort of update on marijuana legislation, but I will not do that to you as it's your first time, but next time, we'll get an update on that as well.

That is all the time we have, If you missed any of the show, go to wkno.org, go to YouTube, go to The Daily Memphian or download the show as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Jennie Robbins from Church Health on next week, don't miss it.

Thanks very much, we'll see you then.

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