Production funding for Behin the Headlines is made possible i by the WKNO Production Fund, the Endowment Fund, and by viewers l Thank you.

Schools, Regional One and much more, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

I am Eric Barnes with The Daily Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonigh by a roundtable of journalists talking abou some of the biggest stories of t Toby Sells is news editor with Memphis Flyer.

- Thanks for being here again.

Thanks for having me.

-Laura Testino is a reporter with The Daily Memphian.

-Thanks for being here again.

Yeah -And Bill Drie is a reporter with The Daily Mem We'll talk a ton about schools.

We'll talk about Regional One, we'll talk about Wanda Halbert and $7 million that didn't get charged.

We'll talk about a bunch of thi but Laura, you have been all ove set of stories at Memphis, Shel schools, without having to go ba I mean Marie Feagins was fired.

That has happened.

Let's start with what happens next, maybe in There's an interim, so what doe and is there going to be a searc and all the kind of forward-loo because the story's not over, se above the fact that Marie Feagi is likely suing for back pay and We can put that aside but in terms of kids, learning, the board, the superintendent, what happens next?

Yeah, so we have interim Roderi Richmond in place as superintend He seems poised to be the super for the rest of this school year He talked about making a 100 day that supposedly then if he gets to apply, gets to be appointed to be superinten that would take effect a 100 days from now, we're in Ma So we're past testing for school We're really essentially at the of the school year at that point and for the rest of the school y that means that he wil probably have quite a bit to say in terms of what the budget loo for this upcoming school year.

We also know that the county com is counting on the district to produce a facilities plan so should he want to move on tha he seems poised to be able to ha a strong voice there.

And a little bit about who he is He's been in the district for a 30 years as an education adminis Got to central offic just before the merger and he's about his aspirations to be supe for most of that time.

Has been a finalist in Jackso and Nashville for their school d as recently as 2020 and was rumo to be in the wings if you were, Dorsey Hopson was selecte after Kriner Cash resigned in 20 -Dorsey Hopson, a former superintendent.

Yes former superintendent.

The first of the merged district So this is a role he's wanted fo and there will be some big decis for the next three months.

Eric Barnes: Was he in the mi in the round that hired Marie Fe Was he a finalist?

He was never a finalis for the most recent rounds of Me searches, but he did apply.

- Has the board said they're going to do a searc not do a search?

Do we know?

-They have not said.

They have said that they will de that publicly in some way, but that's certainly a departure from two and a half years ago when Joris Ray exited the distri almost immediately.

Michelle McKissack, who was cha at the time said, "We are doing a national search and we are sta - Yeah.

So many questions.

Let me go to Bill because you'v education off and on for many ye We've had many superintendent at this table back to Kriner Cas and Dorsey Hopson and others, Jo Marie Feagins.

I guess maybe you did that with but your take before we go into some more det about vouchers and state takeove just your take about how this we Where they're going next?

- Well the school system, let's b clear, has had storms in the pas has had stormy meetings in the p This is still a new territory th In the pas you had superintendents leave wh maybe didn't want to but they got a contract buyout.

That was the case with Kriner Ca That was certainly the case with Joris Ray.

Under fire for accusations of poor behavior with staff members In the case of Joris Ray, in the case of Kriner Cash, you just had a new combined school boar that didn't see things the way t he did.

- Well come back to you.

Lots of talk about the state tak Cameron Sexton the speaker of the House, other leadership at the state have tal we may need to intercede.

Bill and I interview for a show Mickell Lowery and Britney Thorn two members of the county commis both of whom talked about they don't want the state to tak but they are very interested in the county commission having more responsibilit and more power over what they ca We had some Republican member of the county commission on befo Marie Feagins was fire who are not happy with that proc I've heard very few people who are happy with the proces even if they like the outcome.

So where do you think things st terms of the state and county co It seems like a shakeup of who's in charge.

I don't know if it's inevitable, but it's very much under discussion.

- Sure.

I mean talks of takeover of Mem district, even national school district have percolated amongs the legislature for a really lon I think that what we're seeing is that this is more acute and m the highest support that it would have local Typically, you say state takeov and people are going to say no.

Local control local school syste But in Memphis, people are real frustrated with what has happene And so what Mark White has said that he will introduce potentially two pathways, one that would mirror legislation in Texas that allowed for the t the Houston Independent School D With that you see the ultimate t control ceded to the state's commissioner of here, that's Lizzette Reynolds r And then establishing a state appointed board of peop who he says will be Shelby Count or Memphis residents that are an advisory board that okay, now is the time to take ov and we're watching.

Another piece of that would just allow the state to directly appoint school board members or superin and that mimics legislation that lawmakers cal that nuclear option back in 2022 that ultimately didn't make it out of the committee.

And again, we're going to try to get some board member from Memphis, Shelby County scho in the coming weeks, so we hope to have them.

Toby, your take on where we are, where we're going, the whole situation - It seems like a dangerous prec especially for somebody who love local control.

I think state lawmakers, they have a wa when they look at the federal go And I just think that we've see and again how state lawmakers wa in Memphis and boy, this would b really stepping in to give, not only guidance and help but a total takeover.

I think it would be probably emb for a lot of folks.

And who knows what that would lo and how it would be run?

But I mean it sets a dangerous for every school district down t so I'm looking out for it.

Yeah, Bill - The interesting thing about th something els that the takeover talk is causin and that is Lee Harris the county mayor, went to Nashvi to basically try to talk White out of it.

- Mark White, the state-- Mark White, the state House spon It didn't work, but it's kind o put other options on the table.

The talks around this are probably going to be broader than jus who would get appointed to it.

They're going to be things like vacant schools.

Could those possibly b freed up to charter operators?

And what we heard on the show that will air next week.

- Yeah, those vacant buildings when you've got county commissio who have vacant building or potentially vacant buildings, they can become blighted they could be put to other use.

When we had Marie Feagins the former superintendent on the they were getting close to the big multi-million dollar assessm inventory of all the buildings, empty, used, underutilized and that's been a topic as long been doing this show, this state So what next?

- I mean, yeah, so the district approved under T Williams $2 million to do a complete assessment of all of the buildings to basically say here's how wel the roof is, here's how much it to replace it and get it up to at every single school building.

That was completed in about a we board members initiall put up the resolution to suspend I asked her, "Will you release set for the community to see bef you release a plan for closing and consolidating sc And she said, "No."

She said she would release those together.

And so perhaps that will change unde superintendent Richmond.

Perhaps we will see what that da I've certainly requested to loo but we will know more about that What already exist in recent years in the legislati is that the district has to off right of refusal of its vacant b and even underutilized buildings to charter operators.

And so that's somethin that they have to submit every y to the state and charters ca then know what they might be abl in terms of the district's build assets.

- We also, a few more...

There's a bunch more education s We won't get to all of it and you've been telling it, writing about i and other people have been writi about and covering these things and we're not going that...

I mean people aren't clea what happened to Marie Feagins.

You've written about extensively We've done shows on it so we're not going to go there, but which of you wants to take s vouchers?

Do you want to start, Toby?

- Education expert, no way.

No.

Okay.

So we're going back to Laur on school vouchers passed as we this Thursday morning, passed th almost certainly, I mean highly unlikely it won't pass th later today or tomorrow.

What does the school vouchers pr This has been an absolute priori Lee since he was elected.

He started a pilot program.

This is a bigger one.

What does it mean for Memphis an County?

Yeah, so the expansion will take some income caps that exist in the pilot program that's currently operating in Shelby Count and Davidson and Hamilton Counti and it will just also be larger so you'll see more people eligib The fiscal note on the bill anti that about 66% of the users are who are already in private schoo So this is not limited to you h been in a public school already.

And then related to that, the bill supports $2,000 bonuses, one-time bonuses to teachers, but in a bit of political maneuv will require should this version pas that school boards past resoluti in support of the voucher legis in order to get those one-time f We saw across the state, school in urban, suburban, rural settin almost completely passed resolu against this legislation last ye So to ask them to turn back aro and write these resolutions in s in order for public teacher to get bonuses is really notable The voucher is wort what to a family that's eligible I believe $7,100 first go around which is similar to the base amo that a student would generat in funds, state funds under the funding formula - And the suburban school distri were not in favor of thi but seemed in the last week to o that this is an inevitability.

That's an impact.

They had really fought against i because they could see drain to private schools from their cl I mean MSC...

I mean in all the feuding and f I assume the board and the admin was opposed t this as well of the big school district of vouchers?

- Yes.

They've come out against it.

They've sued before it the first time.

Okay.

All right, midway through the show, more on that.

You'll be covering, we'll be cov Flyer will probably covering all that.

There were other things that ha in the schools, but turn to The Memphian, wherever you get your in, you can read about some othe problematic things that have bee that we will continue to cover.

Let's stay with the state Toby, and go to immigration.

Obviously immigration became... We don't d a lot of national kind of stuff, the priority for the Trump admin the new Trump administration and already talking about trying to get local law enforcement, I think Chicago is one of the p where they really press, but see all throughout the country to get more local law enforceme involved in rounding up and depo illegal immigrants whatever that criteria is unclea The state kind of jumped in this to support those initiatives.

That's right.

And what was once just bluster behind a podium at somewhere is turning real.

You've got state just like Tennessee all over the that are starting to figure out how to mobilize to get whatever President Donald Trump' this is going to be.

And in Tennessee that looks like Governor Bill Lee wants to put together basically an ICE im enforcement agency for the state of Tennesse and they're talking about it rig in that state voucher special se that they're having up there, how to get this thing funded.

I think it's like $ million is the fiscal note on th what that looks like.

Who would Would it be that money go to local law enforcement and set up agencies inside that Would it be its own special thin We don't know exactly what that yet, but it's becoming real.

This thing that again, that we thought, man, that sounds awful and other peo worried about and folks are worr You look around on the internet you look at different advocacy g for immigration around Memphi and people are starting to make decisions and plans based on what's coming.

They don't know what that i and I think that's pretty scary.

And to be clear, again we don't do a lot of national st but I've read and been following and there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, I mean p deported under the Biden adminis under the first Trump administr under the Obama administration.

What's going to be hard to see is how much of this is more of t with some initial... A lot of noise and a lot of fear and a lot of examples, or is it just going to be a cont I mean, is i going to be a whole new level?

Yeah, and if you look at what happened here when Trump took office in the first term in 2017, you had two very large protests One of them was the Women's Mar which was part of a national eff The other significant march here was among the immigrant populati who were number one, really scared about Trump coming because of statements he made then about immigration.

So this is round two.

- Yeah, we'll be tracking that, again, with the local impact.

Lots of people covering obviously the national what's going on with the new pre Let's go to Regional One.

Bill, Regional One has been purs Reginald Coopwood the head, the CEO of Regional On been pursuing a sort of billion investment of rebuilding the campus excuse me, the Regional One camp more ties to the UT Health Scien and then kind of seemed to me at suddenly out of the blue they bought a site on Unio and they're now talking about bu this rather than renovating the very old buildings, building a new facility on the s where the commercial appeal used to be located.

- Right, 495 Union.

As most of us- - Have you been there?

I forgot.

Have you been in that building a in your career?

I don't think I would be allowed now.

- No sir.

But yes, and Laura may be familiar.

- Were you ever in the building?

- I actually wasn't, no.

It had moved down to Front Stre by the time that I started in 20 Well, rebuild has been the key p when talking about this whole pr The rebuild is off the table along with four other parcels in addition to the two that the county commissio put up the money for this week, that would be 16 acres and that would contain the entire project now.

Yeah, they paid $22 millio I think for the building and the About 24 onc you throw in the closing cost.

Okay they're going to tear that down.

So there's a strange history not just the history that you ha and other journalists in town have of that being a commercial appeal building, but it was sold.

The Corps of Engineers in COVID not as a hospital, but it was kind of built or seemed to be- - It was an overflow.

It was an overflow facility in case they needed it during CO I mean I think even on the show that we taped this morning that will air next week, Britne voted against buying the CA buil because one, she felt like it wa and they didn't have enough det and two, they may have paid too And I think that's one of those that people are going to get int You're paying more than the prio owner had paid for it.

They put a bunch of money in it.

Other thoughts on that - This came up rather suddenly and what it involve is the warehouse part of the bui where the enormous press was, a three-story high printing pres that was being converted to self-storage unit and was actually about 70% compl and scheduled to open later this year in the fall.

And so there were negotiations o and that was called off to make this happen.

The overall plan for the Regiona which is a multi-year plan, I mean the county has committed I think 500 million over 10 year towards this rebuild.

Reginald Coopwoo seems surprisingly open and conf that they've been lobbying the s for 400 million over two years a I think as we quoted him, seemed optimistic that they wou getting some significant amount Then in 12 to 16 months, Coopwo to have architectural engineerin for the new site.

And the build time and this is not happening around the corne is something like five to seven that is shorter than what was ex if they were going to be redoing the Regional One e facility.

Right, and the stat funding, the original thought wa that that was going to be in this year's state budget.

It wasn't, and in an interview on this show, Coopwoo actually said the reason it wasn was because the Lee administrati decided to go for excise tax ref which were an enormous amount.

Speaking of excise tax refunds, and I'll throw this to Toby, it's kind of like a volleyball l tossed over the net, that there was Wanda Halbert the county clerk who came out th Sam Harmon and our staff I thin the story that $7 million in cit that had gone from 30 to $60 in that was approved in the summer to mitigate some of the big pro tax increase has not been charge And so there's $7 million that hasn't been charged.

I don't know.

I think they've starte charging on commercial vehicles.

I don't think they're doing individual vehicles.

Wow.

- Yeah, not yet.

This is a press sho and I will just say to Sam Harmo I think he got the quote of the easily when he quoted Wanda Halbert saying, "I'm the collector of fees, and this is a story about how t aren't getting collected."

And I think a lot of people looked at that story and thought, man, okay, ye this is your job.

You saw the city council planni for months and months and months put this fee in place.

Why didn't you already contact that third party vendor?

Why didn't you contact this enti and that entity to make sure that when it was re that the fee was there?

And she deflected and said it wasn't her fault.

Yes, please.

And especially sinc this is the second time this hap When the county commission raised the wheel tax fee by $25 Halbert was part of those discus and actually said, "You need to give me more notice," while this great public debate is going on, and she missed about the first t or three months of that fiscal year - And I just wonder about recour I mean, we missed $7 million.

I know we can move funds aroun and make the budget whole and al but who's holding the buck here?

Who's going to stand up and say, there was miscommunication.

This was actually my fault.

I'm going to take some of this b and make it okay.

Or are we just okay with this me I know we've tried to... A lot of folks have tried to re Halbert from office a couple of I'm not saying that necessarily, but let's have some consequences in whatever happened.

I don't know what that looks lik I'm not that smart, but I do know that I want to se somebody have to stand up and sa yes, this was me.

I mean, if we're shooting for e here in Memphis, I mean we can't allow mediocrity to be passable, I think.

It is interesting too, when you back to state takeover the schoo David Bradford, county commissioner was on the show some weeks ag and we were talking about possib takeover at that time and he brought up, yeah, the state tried to intercede on county clerk Wanda Halber and we're still in the same boat and this was before the tax thing came out.

Two different special prosecutor type situations have come in.

I don't think it was technically a special prosecutor, but two attorneys were brough in, both cases were thrown out.

The state has not been able to r or make change or have recourse accountability - The attorney in the second is appealing.

- Is appealing.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

It's still going on, bu it was an interesting admission the state can say these thing but not always do what they set Same thing we've talked with Steve Mulroy, Taylor, the effort by Brent Tayl to get DA Mulroy removed.

There's lots to talk about the l of, well, are we really going to do that t and remove one person?

They might.

I mean, it could certainly happe but it's interesting.

One elected person.

- And Wanda Halbert elected by an overwhelming numb a second time even when some of things were happening in her fir Also, awful story of Memphis Animal Se had a distemper outbreak, led to 100 euthanasians.

They've not been able to bring new animals into the facility.

I think Jody Callahan covered th I don't know.

I bring it u because it's just such a depress as it is - Well, this is another agency that has certainly had its share of problems recently leading up to this.

- With a minute left here, Flyer stories, other we've missed here that you guys You had Sam & Dave, right?

Sam from Sam & Dave covered this - Past.

That was last week, and a great music story from our music editor Alex Green, did a great job on t Right now we looked at another hard hittin cover on podcasters in the city.

You won't believe how many podca are out there in the city.

Everything from - You didn't talk to me.

I have - Okay, Toby.

I tried.

It was our editor.

I haven't - It's been fun having you on th roundtable.

Boy, it's too bad you can't be here again.

Everything from Grizz cemeteries, local politics and n I mean, if you wanted, it's out It's great.

- Laura, I mean, what are you looking for next from the school in the schools?

That's an impossible question to One where you have great source and I'm not asking you to give a but it's just sort o what next of Richmond's term I g I mean I think that the public response is certainly going to be looking what happens at the legislature but also what they do with the s Are we going to get dragged through that process or are we going to have an appoi - Yeah.

One last thing with a minute lef I've been out and about and a number of people have ask me, Bill, and we talked about th Your voice has been roughed up.

You actually took about a six we I think in the fall.

You are fine.

You are healthy.

Your voice is roughed.

- Yes.

It's my vocal cords.

It's an inf I'm taking drugs, legally.

We even had a scan of my neck.

It showed there's nothing in my but I appreciate it too.

The home remedies, I think I'm going to hold off on some of those for now if it's okay.

Well really it's been from a pl that people have asked me is Bil Is anything wrong?

And so not to get too personal w but I thought it was wort telling people that you are doin and your voice is roughed up but it's actually getting better Yeah, this is better.

- This is better.

Believe it or not.

- This is better.

Again, I mentioned county commis come up next week.

We've recently had Mulroy.

We had Brent Taylor, London Lama We had some city council folks o We had other county commissioner You can get all those at WKNO.o or you can look for Behind the H on YouTube.

You can also get the shows as p through wherever you get your po Because I'm sometimes known as a podcaster, I just didn't know you knew that I also have a podcast on WYXR.

Next time - Anyway, that's fine.

It's okay That's all the time we have.

We'll see you next week.

Thanks.