- (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.

- The Tyre Nichols verdict, xAI, the future of the schools, and much more, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists, starting with Kailynn Johnson from the Memphis Flyer.

Thank you for being here.

- Yes, thank you for having me.

- Laura Testino is with The Daily Memphian.

Thank you for being here again.

- Thanks.

- And Katherine Burgess is with MLK50.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you.

- Katherine, we'll start, you were in court, as we record this on Thursday morning, you were in the courthouse at the Tyre Nichols verdict.

Your initial reactions, I mean, people know the news now, but your initial reactions as you sat there.

- Yeah, I think you could hear a pin drop in the courtroom when the judge read out the verdict, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, seven times not guilty for each officer.

And I think the majority of people in that courtroom, and probably the majority of Memphians, were shocked.

And I think what shocked me in particular is that, again, there were seven different counts for each officer.

So if they didn't wanna go for second degree murder, it went all the way down to official misconduct and they decided not guilty on all of those.

Additionally, each of those counts has other charges contained within it.

So if they didn't want to go a second degree murder, they could have gone with manslaughter.

And again, none of those happened.

They were not guilty on all counts.

And that was, I think, a surprise to a lot of people.

- I had to remind myself as I got the alert, as I think it maybe went through our Slack and then hit The Daily Memphian, and I had to remind myself, and this is not to take away from the shock that I think I universally heard, and I guess maybe not everyone was universally shocked, but that's what I heard across the board, was that this was just three of the five officers, right?

And for people not following this as closely as obviously you did and we did at The Daily Memphian and other people did, there were two officers who some would say, and I think the defendant said, really did the most of the violence, right?

And they are gonna go to jail for a long time, and all of them are gonna go to jail, it looks like under federal charges that will be, that were the convictions last September and the sentencing in June.

And so there was this initial sense of, "Wait, I watched those videos, how did," and I mistakenly thought, "How did those five officers were they found not guilty of anything?"

That was my 30-second immediate reaction.

And then you step back and you realize there's all these complications, even if it is still shocking.

- Yeah, that's absolutely true.

They will all face time, they were all found guilty on at least the three who went to trial were found guilty on certain federal charges.

And then the two who I think the prosecution and the defense both agreed were the most culpable, pled guilty, so they're gonna do very significant time.

And that in itself created a complication for the prosecution that District Attorney Steve Mulroy pointed out, which was that the allegedly most culpable person was not in the room.

So that really allowed the defense to point fingers.

I think also what I had to think about when I took a step back is that if you look at the vast majority of times when people have killed black men in this country, whether it be officers or just regular citizens, they are not found guilty the vast majority of the time, even when it's captured on video, even when it's particularly horrifying.

- One more, and I'm kind of editorializing, I guess, but I will, you know, having watched those videos when they came out, because we did a kind of second-by-second breakdown of a number of the videos that I was involved with putting together.

I am actually, even if legally, and I'm not a lawyer, you could say, "Well, the second degree or the manslaughter, or something, all that was off the table."

It's just, it is sort of like common sense, hard to believe that there wasn't some misconduct, not just, I mean, there were a lot of people there, a lot of people standing around for a long time.

And I actually was always, on a certain level, I know lots of people were reprimanded, lots of people lost their jobs.

There is a certain level of punishment in that.

But to really watch those videos, and I know a lot of people who did not because they're horrific, but we had to because that was part of our job.

You just do kind of go, "Well, wait, if that's not misconduct, what is?"

I don't understand the standard, and I'm not putting that on you to answer that question, but even when I stepped back and looked at it, I thought, "How can there not be something "about what those three officers were doing that they were found some kind of misconduct?"

- Yeah, and I certainly can't answer the question, but what I will say is if there was no official misconduct in this circumstance, that says something particularly horrifying about policing in Memphis and policing in this country.

- Yeah, yeah.

I don't know, other thoughts from anyone, Laura, I mean, you've not really covering it.

Any thoughts that you wanted to drop in on this?

No, go ahead.

- I mean, I think, I guess what I have thought about in seeing this verdict in particular separate from the federal trial, when I did cover this, when it happened, I wrote a story where I sort of asked some people in Memphis to look forward and look and say, you know, when we play this out, what changes?

- Yeah.

- And I think that even then, part of the frustration with what happened was that it was hard to see given just kind of the culture of what happens in these instances in our country, that it would be really hard to see something different happen here.

- Yeah, yeah.

We had CJ Davis, the police chief on some months ago now, but she did actually talk a bit about some of this at the end of that show, you can get that at wkno.org or YouTube, you can get the podcast wherever you get the podcast.

It's interesting in light of this, you know, she talked about changes and systemic changes in the police department that they feel like they've made.

But it is still, again, something shocking not to see some kind of guilt there.

I'm sure there are people listening who feel otherwise, but we will move on.

We're not legal analysts, we'll be doing more reporting, I think all of our publications will, as things play out as a result of this, and the sentencing, as I said, of all these officers on the federal charges come in, I think mid-June.

Let me turn to you, Kailynn from Memphis Flyer.

You've been covering all of the stuff around xAI and the big data center, the big supercomputer down on President's Island, another data center supercomputer going in near the border with Mississippi.

Give people an update on xAI.

- Yes, so the Chamber announced this week that some of those temporary turbines would actually be leaving within the next few months and that's kind of off the heels of not only the Shelby County Health Department having their public comment period about these air permits for the turbines, but of course the public being able to talk about what they felt like they weren't seeing and all of these different things.

Also, on the County Commission, there was a resolution introduced for TVA and MLGW to give regular updates about the time that xAI would need to connect to the grid.

So that's being heard in the County Commission right now, but I think they said they're entering phase two now of xAI connecting.

So we're gonna see what's happening with that, I know the turbines were a really big area of controversy with all the power that they were emitting to those residents in southwest Memphis.

- MLGW came out this week and said that I think the xAI, the plant is mostly, the first 150 megawatts are connected to the grid, so they're not using the turbines for that ostensibly.

And they're gonna remove some turbines, and then the next substation, the next 150 megawatts, they're looking to get done by December with a substation that xAI is building, and then I think gets turned over to MLGW.

Were you, I mean, some of the public meetings around this have been really heated.

I mean, there's been a tremendous pressure and frustration on the use specifically of these turbines.

Do you think people are satisfied that they're starting to turn off these turbines, but they're saying they're gonna continue to use 'em potentially as backup power?

- I don't think they are happy with that.

I know State Representative Justin J. Pearson was even telling us that residents in southwest Memphis had these fact sheets that they had been sent, saying that they're not dangerous but you can see the anger and frustration of people at those public meetings.

It's not so much as, are these dangerous, you weren't telling people about this or they're put in a community that's always disenfranchised, are always a second thought.

So even with the public forums, the webinars that people are hosting, I still think there's a lot of anger and distrust in the system, even if they are telling those people these things.

- And Paul Young, you've been covering this too, I should just stop talking, your thoughts on where we are with them turning off some, moving some, removing some turbines, you know, doing some things that people point to of like the big economic development incentive.

They're talking about building a water treatment facility that would mean all the water that get used on President's Island by the steel plant, by the power plant, by xAI could be recycled water, not pure aquifer water.

It is a complicated situation, I mean, on all sides.

- Yeah, it is complicated.

I mean, tax revenue, we know we need it.

A water recycling facility, we know we need that in Shelby County.

So those are good things.

But when you consider that this is a community, as Kailynn mentioned, has been disenfranchised, has dealt with industrial pollutants for decades, the people in that community don't trust what's being said.

And I think I understand why, when you first hear there's maybe 15 turbines, and then the next thing you know we find out there's 35 and we don't find that out from xAI, we find that out from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

And then they say, "Oh, only a certain number are on."

Then the SELC gets footage that appears that more are on, there's a lot of distrust.

So now when they say they're going to take some of them down, that the 15 they're requesting the permanent permit for are only gonna be used in emergency situations, I don't think people buy that.

And I think they need to know, they want to see actual concrete proof of what toxins are being produced by these.

Again, there's no air monitor in that particular area of Shelby County, so they wanna know what toxins are being produced to actually see actual concrete proof of that and see actual concrete proof of when the turbines will still be used and how many there are.

- Yeah, other thoughts from you, Kailynn?

I mean, what are you looking for next as you continue to cover xAI?

- I think I like to talk to, I guess, what steps citizens are taking.

I'm really liking to see not only people in the environment that the facility is in, but I'm seeing students at University of Memphis, they're welcoming people with open arms.

They're saying that, you know, they have all eyes on this.

So looking to see how, I guess, community moves forward in this and what steps they're willing to take with people power.

- Well, you all will be covering, we'll continue to cover it.

Sam Hardiman on our staff did a big, you know, kind of a five, three, four, five-part series on the xAI, how it came here, how the Chamber got it, all the complications, and so on.

So it is a very complicated story that we'll continue to cover.

But speaking of complicated stories, Laura, you have been doing stories including one that came out yesterday today on the building, Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the buildings.

And the headline in part on the story was, "Sell, Lease, Donate, or Demolish," which it's not necessarily like a witty pun of a headline, but it really captures the really complicated decisions that the school system in all its various forms has been dealing with for some time, but now really seems like it's become even more front and center.

What happens with all these unused, empty, and underutilized buildings that Memphis-Shelby County Schools owns?

- Yeah, I think, you know, there's a deadline on it finally, right?

So the school board approved a resolution that says, you know, Interim Superintendent Richmond, we want from your administration a plan for our footprint by September 1st.

And, you know, this is something that previous administrations since 2019 have promised in different formats over time.

And so, what's different also about this version of what the plan will be is that it can include these thousands of pages of facility assessments that say, you know, everything from the roof to the back door to the cracks on the sidewalk.

Here's what you're looking at to upgrade these things.

With that coming up for buildings that are mostly occupied by students, the district has also said, "We're gonna get a little bit more serious "about our vacant buildings "and buildings that we don't plan to use.

"And we already know, you know, "don't have a full life ahead of them and sort of figure out what we're doing there."

So that real estate plan came out at the very end of Dr. Feagins' tenure and has been, you know, slightly revamped, but we've got offers that are coming to the district and school board for decision by the end of June.

And so, we'll see some of these, about half of these are buildings that will either be leased or potentially purchased by charter schools that are already in them.

A lot of those are Achievement School District schools, so they were ones that used to be with MSCS and then got turned over for low academic performance.

And the charters that were there had success in large part and have been able to stay.

Charter schools will be able to have their buildings from these purchases.

Some going to warehouse, some that haven't been used in areas that maybe, you know, you're not expecting student population to grow could be demolished.

But I think Humes is a really interesting example, it's on the National Register of Historic Places, Elvis Presley's Alma Mater, also a former ASD School that the district didn't really make a decision about what to do with until the very end of the school year last year.

New Ballet Ensemble is interested in making the school a performing arts school, which is something that even district administrators have floated in that school area for years and years.

But we have, you know, they're the only ones who've made an offer on the building, but it's under the appraised value.

And so, district and board are sort of figuring out, do, you know, do we give this to them for this offer or do we try in court a little bit higher?

- And even when they, so they've got an appraisal value on say Humes or any of these buildings that they have.

Heard you report on some of it at the school board members saying, you know, "Look, if we can just get this building off our books "for a dollar, we should go ahead and do that "before it gets blighted, "before it's hurting the neighborhood, in that sense, "it sits underutilized and we still have some responsibility to maintain it," even though in many cases it seems there's not a lot of maintenance going on of these empty buildings, right?

There's photos and videos that people have taken of buildings where the copper's being torn out.

There's water damage, not good for the facility, not good for the value, and not good for the neighborhood.

And so that complication, who gets a building for a dollar, what are the criteria?

Is it just the ones we like, "Oh, everybody loves New Ballet, but they don't like X and so we're not gonna give it."

Can the new owner take it and actually have the funds, resources, and ability to do something with it, or do you just transfer it and it becomes vacant and blighted?

I mean all these things are incredibly complicated on a case by case basis.

- Yeah.

Well, and I think what you see with Humes too, right, is like the district decide to keep Caldwell-Guthrie open, which is just up the road and about a mile from another elementary school.

When they turned it into a K-8 building where kids from Humes could go to middle school around the corner, and that's not necessarily a neighborhood where you expect a huge population.

And so to the district, you can't demolish it, it's a historic place.

It's got a lot of value for the community.

And so, you don't expect more students to go there.

But how do you still, I guess, you know, and I think Joyce Dorse-Coleman said this in an interesting way.

You know, "you have a lot of people "who are saying we need to improve access for students "for afterschool programs and other kinds of things.

"We have somebody who's wanting to do this.

Like, we need to let them do it in this instance."

The other piece of that I think that you see other school board members saying, not that they don't want to also donate the building, but if we're gonna go and ask the County Commission for a bunch of money to make all these improvements that these assessments say that we need, what are we doing to show to them that we are doing the best that we can to generate revenue in the ways that we can, which is selling some of these buildings?

- Yeah.

And, you know, you think about Northside High, which is, we've reported on, I think we've even done a show on it, a $40 plus million project to renovate that into all kinds of things of community center, there's some office space, there's a performing, they're gonna use the auditorium performing arts.

That took some of the biggest developers, biggest money, biggest effort in the city to get that done over many, many years, including, I should disclose, Roshun Austin, who's a board member of Daily Memphian was integral to that.

That's one school, with a huge historic, a great history, and a lot of meaning to the neighborhood.

That's one.

And what that took and all these others that people are talking about out of, let's do the scale and we can kind of move on, but how many total buildings in the Shelby County School Zones, Memphis-Shelby County School Zones?

- We're a little over 200.

- And how many, give or take, are unused right now?

- I mean, the list should be fairly comprehensive, so 15 or so.

- Okay, and then a lot that are underutilized and then the amount of deferred maintenance.

I mean, I think what your analysis found of this report was that it's something like $1.4 billion in building upgrades over the next decade.

- Yeah.

- It seems unlikely that's gonna happen, given budget constraints, and so on.

Right?

And that's the hypothetical.

And $40 million in immediate needs at a time when county budgets are really stressed.

- Sure, yeah.

- You've been doing great reporting on it.

I'm not just saying that 'cause you work at The Daily Memphian and you're doing more so people can get into the details and specific schools and maps and all that kind of stuff at Daily Memphian, but let's, with eight minutes left here, let's stick with the schools.

And although the takeover or the changes in board oversight didn't happen at the state and we are trying to get Mark White and Brent Taylor on the show to talk about where they kind of settled at the legislature this year, that should be coming up in the next month or so.

There is movement to change some things at the board, at the Memphis-Shelby County School Board by the County Commission.

Tell us about that.

- Sure, yeah.

So there was other legislation that did pass sponsored bipartisan by Rep. Tory Harris and Senator Brent Taylor that essentially said if you have a charter form of government, your county commission can decide to sync up your school board elections so that they're no longer staggered, in a way, specifically taking aim at Shelby County in some ways.

And so, but the question was, you know, is the County Commission going to have the appetite to this?

Because the legislation also makes it very clear that you're imposing term limits on school board members by doing this of two four-year consecutive terms and you can abridge terms to do this, right?

So rather than waiting until 2028 to sync all of these up and letting voters elect some school board members to a two-year term, we're saying that people who were elected on the basis of a four-year term are actually just gonna have two years before they're back up for election.

And so County Commission Chair Michael Whaley said that he plans to present a resolution to bring this in to effect.

And so, you know, don't know that we've seen a lot of opposition to it.

And so, you know, potentially very much could happen, which means that this very big 2026 county ballot already that has all 13 County Commission seats on it, county mayor, sheriff, other county offices, and at least four of the school board seats could very well have all nine school board seats on it also.

- Is it, mean, maybe this is just the politics, is it an effort to get rid of school board members or is it an effort to get more votes?

Because that was one complaint that came up in all this discussion about the firing of Marie Feagins, and then all the moves at the legislature is that some of these school board members were voted in by some thousands, single-digit thousands people.

I think there's some county commissioners that were probably voted in by single-digit thousands.

I mean this is not unique to, I mean, 25,000-plus voted for Memphis Mayor Paul Young, and he won.

So this is kind of a bigger problem than just the school board.

But what is the intent politically?

Is it, again, we can get rid of 'em faster or is it, "Hey, if everybody's on the ballot at the same time, we'll have better turnout and more accountability"?

- I think it depends on who you ask, right?

Like, you'll say if it's a bigger ballot and you don't have to send people out specifically just for school board that you're gonna have a better turnout.

We also have the Republican party saying that they wanna make these partisan races now.

So we're gonna turn into a primary as well for school board elections in Shelby County, which we haven't seen with Memphis-Shelby County Schools ever before.

And then, you know, it is a recall effectively for some of the people who really wanted to see that, most of the newly elected school board members who wouldn't have been up could now be on the ballot again.

And, you know, and then I think, you know, just because you brought up former Superintendent Feagins, she is not gone, she's very much still in Memphis and hosted an event at the University of Memphis last week where she was saying, according to audio and video that I obtained 'cause I was not able to go inside, that she, encouraging people go take some seats, pay attention to the county ballot.

And so, you know, I think that that could still very much play a factor in how people vote next year.

- To turn it into a partisan race at the school board level, does that take a legislative action?

The state legislature or the County Commission can do that?

- So the state legislature already did that.

So there's partisan races in other school boards across the state of Tennessee, Shelby County kind of been a holdout in that for the last couple of years.

- So did they do the enabling legislation that the County Commission now has to vote on or is it gonna happen that way?

- All that had to happen was that the Republican party has said we want these partisan.

- Okay, there we go.

- And Bill Dries has reported on that.

- Yeah, okay, okay, thank you.

That's a lot, with just a few minutes left, maybe Katherine, a quick update on MATA and we're in city budget season, there's not enough money to go around as usual, what's going on with MATA?

- Yeah, city budget season is always a matter of stretching dollars as far as they can go.

MATA officials were surprised to learn that the mayor plans to allocate $30 million to them, which is what was budgeted for the fiscal year that we're in, but less than they actually received, they actually received about $35.6 million.

So then MATA officials, including the interim CEO John Lewis have said that that decrease in expected funding means they cannot rebuild the routes that were secretly cut, which I believe we've talked about on this show before.

There was a plan to rebuild them to hopefully have them fully, like, fully built back out the published schedule and they can't do that anymore.

So they're going to, as long as funding stays at that $30 million, which of course it could change, the City Council could change something, but as long as funding stays at that, they're going to have to stick to roughly the same schedule, which is with 54 buses and which pretty much everybody acknowledges is very, very far from meeting the needs of Memphians who use public transit.

- Okay, you've been reporting at MLK50, we'll be reporting on that as we go through, but with just another couple minutes left, I think, Kailynn, the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Memphis, they closed a bunch of offices, a bunch of the clubs, talk about that, you wrote about it.

- Yes, so they'll be closing their high school sites, a few of those by the end of the school year.

And that was because funding that was issued to them from COVID relief funds that ran out and they found this out I believe last year, but they had enough money to keep them going.

And so now they're still kind of focusing on the middle school sites and I guess like showing up in the high schools so that they can still have that representation.

But they were having workforce development training, they could even get certifications in these programs for high school students.

You know, different ways for them to see different avenues, either they were going to college or different, like trade school options.

- Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis over the years is one of, especially through the COVID years, was one of the organizations, Jim Strickland very much would always talk about this is an answer, this is an answer to our problem or crime problem or youth problem.

But so many politicians I've had on the show and that we've quoted in the paper over the years have pointed to them.

So it was a little startling.

But the COVID money running out, I mean, it's hitting everyone, right?

I mean, it's hitting the schools, it's hitting the city, it's sitting in the county.

Next week we have a show where folks from MIFA and the Aging Commission and they're talking about how COVID money is running out on top of potential federal government cuts, there's a lot of threats to some of the programs that help seniors in this area.

But that is next week on the show.

We are done with this show.

Thank you all for being here, I really appreciate it.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full episode at wkno.org, The Daily Memphian or on YouTube.

You can also download the full podcast of the show from iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Again, next week is MIFA and Aging.

Recently we've had DA Steve Mulroy, Josh Spickler from Just City, Bill Gibbons from the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission.

And I mentioned I think CJ Davis some months ago, still a relevant interview.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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