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A look back at 2025 and a look ahead at 2026, tonight on Behind the Headlines [♪♪♪] I'm Eric Barnes with the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by two journalists from the Daily Memphian to talk about some of the biggest stories of the year and some of the biggest stories, we think for next year.

Laura Testino, reporter for the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here.

-Thanks.

And Bill Dries, also a reporter with the Daily Memphian.

We were talking before.

We have a small group today because it's just scheduling and holidays, but it's great to have you both here and have been here a bunch through the year.

And while I think, you know, unanimously the biggest story of 2025 is clearly the task force and all the ramifications.

One of the biggest stories, if not for that, would have been, I think, Laura and a story you've covered extensively is everything going on in Memphis Shelby County Schools.

And so I wanted to start there and we'll talk some about elections.

We'll come back to the task force.

We'll talk about all kinds of things.

But the legislature is right around the corner in the new legislative session.

Last year they tried to do essentially a takeover of Memphis Shelby County Schools.

They have shifted the election cycle.

And I talk a bunch about elections.

But just give us a lowdown of what happened last year and then segue into what could or will happen next year with Memphis Shelby County Schools 1.9, almost $2 billion budget.

All the students, all the impact.

Go ahead.

-Sure.

So I think we, you know, everyone can remember this time last year, we were sort of in this like six week period of ouster proceedings for then Superintendent Marie Feagins.

It sort of ignited this always looming, but had been kind of dormant idea at the state legislature to initiate a takeover of Memphis Shelby County Schools You really saw some community pushback against what the board was doing that really drove a lot of support for some kind of intervention from the state.

When we get through to the end of the legislature in April, you see, the Senate and the House bills just don't quite align and don't agree on what kind of takeover that should be and what this appointed board should be able to do, or even who should appoint the board.

We know that both lawmakers, Senator Taylor and Rep White, plan to revive that legislation here in the second year of the two year session.

Coming up soon, from everything that I have heard from a handful of sources, it's probably going to be a pretty speedy session.

And I expect this to be a top priority when lawmakers convene early in January.

But, you know, kind of, I think it still remains to be seen a little bit which way that compromise could go.

Once it gets hammered out, you know, it will have to go through all those committee processes again.

And so it could be pretty quick once it happens.

But as of now, it's still not quite clear what you know, who is going to prevail and which framework.

We had, Representive Mark White from Germantown and Brent Taylor from Memphis and East Memphis and Eads and so on.

State Senator, on to talk about this.

I can't remember was with you or you and Bill, but, it seemed clear talking to them that they they can come together and agree on this because they are so set on some sort of takeover.

And Senator Taylor called it a takeover.

Some of the hang up seems, a question you, or maybe for Bill, is the legislature often doesn't mind a bill that targets a given community.

They just don't want that bill to hit everybody the same way that vouchers over the years started in certain only a couple of the cities, and then grew and grew and grew and lots of other legislative action.

People in Memphis often think that the legislature just targets them.

It's not necessarily always the case.

I mean, sometimes it's the cities, sometimes it's rural areas that does that.

Is that still the hang up is how they craft this bill so that legislators who are like, yeah, sure, you can do that in Shelby County.

Just don't do it in my district.

Is that one of the biggest hang ups?

I think it's certainly a factor.

Right.

We had a story in March that laid out, based off of each different bill, just how many other districts across the state would be potentially targets as well, if, you know, were to go into effect.

And, you know, I, I expect that, you know, there will be some aspect of this where, you know, the Tennessee Department of Education may have to decide, you know, it may give authority to a department, state official to determine.

And that that would sort of, you know, maybe alleviate that It's the bill specifically that is saying this is what must happen to these specific school districts, but it gives some of that ultimate determination to the department.

But I think that the other part of it is, you know, how much responsibility and for how long does the state want to oversee Memphis Shelby County Schools?

We've still got the state funded $6 million forensic audit going on.

That contract is going through January of 2027.

If you're using Tennessee State University, and that forensic audit as a precedent, which was done by the same firm, Clifton Larson Allen, you're not necessarily going to get preliminary findings.

-Okay that was going to be my question.

-Do we know anything yet?

So we don't have anything yet, and they're six months into an 18 month contract.

So it stands to reason that, you know, this, this takeover legislation could get to a point where, you know, lawmakers are voting on it for passage or not, without the information.

You know, that both lawmakers who are sponsoring it were hoping to see to explain, sort of what they may be in for if they're assigning an appointed board to be over the budget of the district.

We'll talk a bunch more about schools and vouchers and Roderick Richmond, the interim superintendent.

But I want to bring Bill in and maybe give us the lay of the land on the, the elections of school board members and how that shifted.

And then we'll segue into some other.

It's a big election year on the county state level.

It's not a city election year, but there what County Mayor, county sheriff, county clerk, assessor, county commission.

Lots of legislators.

-Every county office except general sessions, court clerk, juvenile court judge and district attorney general.

-And all the judges, the county judge?

No judges.

But specifically start with the school.

What's going on with them, what was changed because there still will be a school board under both these proposals.

It's just there will be an oversight board, whatever you want to call it, above them.

Well, in October, the Shelby County Commission voted to move all nine school board seats to the same ballot.

And right now we're up to this point.

You have five school board seats and one even year election cycle, and the remaining four in the next even year cycle.

Now by the county commission's action under a new state law that applied only to Shelby and Knox counties, all nine Memphis Shelby County School Board seats moved to the 2026 ballot.

The school board is suing over that, claiming that that state law is unconstitutional.

-And they're suing the Shelby County Election Commission, which.

Is, in essence, to take it off the ballot Prevent that from being put out there that.

Yeah.

So if that lawsuit succeeds, you have four school board races.

If it stands, you have all nine seats on the ballot.

-This makes my head hurt for 16 years of doing the show with you, what are the election cycles next year?

I need to just, like, print it out and keep it in my wallet.

So the school board will be, this will, schools will be on the on the on the ballot what time of year?

Starting with the primaries in May.

On the May ballot.

-And they will be partisan, -So we'll have... -Yes.

And then then the May, then the runoff.

Winners advance to the August ballot for the county general election.

Okay.

Let's say with elections, let's go to some of these other races and we'll circle back to some school stuff with Laura here.

But the other big ones, obviously, county mayor and sheriff is a big one this year.

It seems to me, for those engaged in the kind of civic stuff that we talk about because of the jail, if nothing else, crime is already on the agenda.

The spike in crime through Covid that's come down again.

The task force, which we've done a million shows on the task force and why I'm kind of doing it midway through the show, we'll get more and more into the task force, but we've covered so extensively.

But the sheriff and the jail and whatever and whatever you think of the jail Aarron Fleming on our staff, others have done amazing work on the conditions in the jail, talking to people in the jail, the, you know, the out the days it takes just for intake to get people in there.

Even for the people who maybe think, well, don't commit a crime, you won't go to a jail that has terrible conditions and separate from the fact of you're innocent until proven guilty.

It just seems like just at a coldest, most callous level, the county is at risk of massive lawsuits.

And if you look at the Tyre Nichols situation and the multi-million dollar potential payout that the Nichols family could get for that horrific incident.

Now you've got this jail that is, just almost feels, and I've heard people say, like a ticking time bomb again on the coldest possible level of what could happen on the conditions, separate from the humanity, separate from the legalities of how the, you know, the jail should be treating people.

And that's all under the, the sheriff.

And of course, the funding could come from county commission and whoever else.

-And the jail is, is really the central issue in the race for sheriff, in which you have no incumbent seeking reelection to that or to county mayor.

But the question is going to be, you know, given the fact that it took ten years to build the jail that we have now.

Whoever is elected is not going to be able to, you know, work with others to finance and build the jail overnight.

It's going to take quite a long time.

So the question in the campaign is not only should there be a new jail, but what steps should be taken to alleviate the problems that, at least to some degree, are questions of how the jail is operated as well as the condition the jail is in.

-Yeah.

-And we had County Mayor Lee Harris, who is termed out not running again.

And he talked about how he's open to they just took over a lot of the juvenile detention facility.

He's very happy with how that's going and feel like they're they're treating people better and doing a better job on all the fronts of recidivism and treatment and learning and just conditions.

He's talked about... He floated with us, right?

I mean, the idea of maybe a private contractor coming in, something he's opposed his entire political career.

But he said it's so bad we need to start looking at other options.

That will also involve the county commission and involves a question of downtown development.

You know, is the jail going to move?

They have a proposal to put it up on the Firestone, old Firestone plant in Frayser, I mean, how does that, that's county commission and county mayor making some of those decisions, even though, as we said, the sheriff is really probably the most important person.

A sheriff runs the jail.

Yeah, but this is the same thing as with the school board.

The school board has no taxing authority, right?

Neither does the sheriff.

So the sheriff, the process of a new jail and a reformed jail involves the sheriff, the mayor, the county commission, probably the state at some degree, although the state's going to be a pretty hard sell.

-Yeah.

In terms of getting funding out of them.

And people are talking about $1 billion, I think that's going to be a bunch more than that.

I think that's just a number they put out there.

But again, we'll come back to some of these other races.

But that money that's being sort of talked about for the jail out of the county budget without a ton of state support, and you got Regional One, which we'll try to talk about, and we've talked about quite a bit on the show, of that “billion dollar proposal” for a whole new campus, new partnerships and so on.

All that pushes up against school funding and a lot of really great deep work that you've done on some of the not just the big projects, the new schools that they want to build, but just what they do with old schools and how they sell them off or give them away or keep them from becoming blighted, like talk about the money involved there.

Take that however you want.

-Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, and we've also the county has no bonding authority this year either.

Right?

Like after the state has come in and... -Explain that.

-Comptroller came in and said, slow your horses on it.

Yes.

Essentially after a couple of years of letters saying, hey, you need to get this stuff in order, the the requests for the budget that the state comptroller wanted to see to approve it didn't come through.

They issued this letter.

It's the first time it's been issued to a county in Tennessee.

Some cities have had it happen, but the county cannot go out for bonds.

-For six more months for.

Until the end of the fiscal year.

Right.

And, you know, the bonding documents show they weren't planning to.

And until the next year anyway, but they still have to get those things fixed, under the state comptroller to be able to do that separately from that.

You know, it, the funding is going to be a stretch, right?

The wheel tax's revenues are what they are.

They have been difficult to even predict and keep count of in recent years.

And you also have now for the first time in a long time, a facilities plan from the school districts that we reported on just a couple of weeks ago got the initial draft, to suggest what the school district actually wants to be doing for multiple years down, into the future, which is something that county commissioners have asked for for years before deciding.

Here's how much we actually want to fund you every year.

And so I think that that's certainly going to push the school districts toward some kind of capital campaign potentially working, you know, with, the Memphis chamber to see what kind of like private, donors can jump into this in the way that xAI is beginning to do for some of these upgrades for schools nearby, their companies.

And I would anticipate that that's going to have to be the way of, you know, Regional One and the jail as well, seeking funding outside of what's available in the county.

If we want all of these billion dollar projects to take place over the same ten year period.

-How many, how many this story, again, I should say we're taping this on Tuesday.

It's airing on Friday.

So if anything big happened, we're not just, you know, we missed it because we weren't here.

But how many schools were total to be closed in the most recent plan?

Say that again.

It would be 15 over the next three years is how far this looks out.

-Out of a 260 buildings, give or take 270.

Well out of 150 buildings that the district has control over closing.

-Control over closing.

Okay.

We did.

I did an interview.

You've interviewed her.

Katie Smythe, who's, from New Ballet Memphis, is now trying to do an arts oriented charter school in the old Humes Middle School.

Interviewed her, and it is, and she has done amazing things, and other people in the city and area have done amazing things.

But to hear her talk about that one facility and repurposing it is public money, tens of millions in private dollars and many, many years to get it going.

And then just start with one grade and then add the grades, as often charter schools do.

It was really striking to talk to her about it and how hard it is, because you'll hear people toss around with these empty schools.

Oh, it can be a community center, or it can be a, homeless facility.

It can be all these well-intentioned facilities.

But then when you realize how beat up, and you've done this amazing work on it, but how much work it takes to bring up the code to make them safe, to fix the lights, all that kind of stuff?

It's daunting to think about what's going to happen to all these facilities.

-Sure.

And whether or not that will push whoever is leading the school board or the school district itself to choose to demolish these buildings more quickly than to let them sit and have all of them be repurposed.

Yeah.

Ten minutes here in show, I mentioned Regional One, Bill, Regional One and the proposal that mayor Lee Harris, who is termed out, but he was on the show a few weeks ago and people can go back and listen that at wkno.org or YouTube or listen to podcasts.

You know, he has been a huge advocate for this massive, rebuilding of a new facility and the new partnerships with what UTHSC making a teaching facility.

Other people have raised questions about how do you pay for that, given the context of all these other things, the jail, the schools, you know, the bonding, the the warning shot, if nothing else, that the state, the comptroller said to the state, like you're not going to even if they weren't going to borrow for six months, it was something of a assertion of authority that was we'll reassess at the end of that six months.

Right.

And they're going to have to do some bonding.

The state has not come forward with a ton of money, any money, any commitment to this Regional One facility.

Again, with this election year, how much do you think for county commission and county mayor without Lee Harris pushing that, are other legislators and a future county mayor, is that going to be a big issue to talk to them about?

Or are they going to run away from that and say, I don't know that I want to go there?

-Well, they might, depending on who gets elected.

But I think that what Mayor Harris sees is that if you get a project to a certain point, the person who is elected next in essence has no choice but to pursue that.

And we've seen that with the start of construction on the new Frayser High School, you know, the fact that you have something coming up out of the ground has a tremendous political impact on what happens next.

Regional One is encountering some pretty significant headwinds right now to the degree that Mayor Harris has said during this last year in office, that's his number one priority in Nashville is to secure, bring in the state funding, which governor Lee had tentatively committed to several years ago.

Meanwhile, the hospital itself has now said we're focusing on the $900 million just for the main hospital building.

That's our focus.

The rest, we hope, will follow it.

But that's where our head's at now.

-And the county has voted and committed to, what, 300?

$350 million over several years.

And Lee Harris makes the case.

And and I think I told the story.

I mean, my father was in Regional One back when it was The Med I mean, many, many people in the community have these amazing experiences of the incredible work that the Med, now Regional One, does.

I don't think it's a debate about that.

It's about can the county and the area afford it?

Will the state come in with big money?

Will philanthropy, sometimes?

You know, Memphis has some incredibly generous folks who come forward with things.

And as Lee Harris talked about, are there federal sources or national philanthropies that could come in and help that that plan come to life?

And there is this whole complex arrangement that would essentially make the state a co-owner of what is now a county owned hospital exclusively.

And that involves becoming a medical academic center on all of this as well.

So the question is, where is it in terms of the priority, keeping in mind that with all of these projects we're talking about, timing is critical.

Yeah.

And the only other part that I'll mention will be definitely following is there's been pressure, you know, what about Methodist.

Methodist has some capacity that unused capacity and some of its buildings.

Could Methodist get, be a part of this.

And Lee Harris said and others have said, well, that's just Jeff Warren you know, a city councilman saying that I've heard definitely behind the scenes, lots of the business community and other folks saying, no, no, no, we got to get them together.

We got to.

We have we have more capacity here.

We need to get them to work together.

But we've got six minutes in show And so let me do this with you other things quickly.

I mean, one, one obviously we talked.

It's funny, there was a year ago that former superintendent Marie Feagins that was let go.

She has since declared she's running for county mayor.

So that plays into it.

I don't know if you want to touch on that but also voucher use which is the Feagins thing is interesting and we will certainly be following that.

We had our own, the Daily Memphian, strange run in with Marie Feagins asking, you know, through her lawyer asking for money to take back a story or something.

I it was very strange.

We wrote about it.

All that is interesting.

We'll be covering it.

But in a sense vouchers is probably a more impactful in a lot of ways.

Right?

I mean, in that, now that... talk about some of the writing you've done on that.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I think also just to kind of close the loop on some of the county things, if, you know, is seeing the former superintendent running for the county mayoral seat, I think could certainly change the way that, those priorities fall.

Right?

You have somebody who's very focused on education.

It has only been known as kind of an education-focused person in the county for the year and a half.

She's been here.

So, you know, I expect that to be very interesting throughout the race, to see how sort of these priorities shift.

As far as vouchers go, we know that it's one in a growing component of ways that Memphis Shelby County Schools and now the suburban districts are sort of having to face what school choice can do to the predictability of your enrollment, whether that be in your own specific district or to specific schools.

Which, you know, we'll have some stories about this coming up very soon in the new year.

A lot of people in Memphis choose to go to a school that is not the one that they're zoned to attend, which, if you think about that in the context of a school district with, you know, more than 200 schools for Memphis Shelby County Schools, it's makes it very complicated to determine what to close or what may have more students in the future.

If you know that if you close a school, those students may not go to this new school that you zone them to.

Those students may go to a separate school.

What we know that vouchers has done is, the original program that was supposed to be a pilot program in Memphis that offers a little bit more money per student and has lower income cap, that's being used by about half of the 5000 people in Memphis that have vouchers.

And those are specifically students zoned to Memphis Shelby County Schools.

What we know about the expansion is that most of those vouchers, which are the, you know, any income limit for the most part are more for, you know, students in wealthier zip codes of Shelby County.

The state did not collect data on whether or not those students were already attending private schools, but based off of the way that the, expansion works in the second year, that data will have to be collected this time around, so the initial recipients will get priority.

So we still won't know what that initial round of students, what their background was.

But we will know for the second round whether or not they attended public or private schools.

-I should also add that we did, you and I did an interview with interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond a few weeks ago that was very interesting for people who are into this, of somebody who's like a lifetime person.

As someone said to me afterward, it was kind of it was, I don't wanna say it was boring, but they were sort of like it was kind of boring in a good way.

It was just talking through what needs to be done at the schools.

That's a really interesting interview.

It gets into some of these things we're talking about and all the changes going on.

With just a couple minutes left.

How much Bill do you think?

You know, we've seen so many shows on the task force is why I didn't really lead with it other than it is.

It is obviously the biggest story of the year with all these county, you know, when Paul Young was running for city mayor and the others were running, it was crime, crime, crime, crime, crime, as Paul Young said, bring down the chaos.

A lot of people are feeling the numbers.

A lot of the numbers show that the chaos has come way down.

Will people running for county commissioner and sheriff, county mayor, etc.

even county clerk, which plays a role in this?

You think they'll run on the Memphis Safe task force and the lower crime?

They'll run away from it or will just vary by district?

I think they will make the same detailed distinction that Mayor Young has made.

I think you're going to find that most, if not all, of the Democratic pack are going to say, I don't think the guard needs to be here, but these are federal and state law enforcement agencies that enforce the law.

We need their help, even in the best of times.

They should have some role here.

-Yeah.

-And all it feels like most of the Democrats are going to say, hey, what's going on with ICE?

We don't want, but we I mean, we started the year with Worth Morgan, long before the head of the Shelby County Republican Party, long before the task force was announced, talking about.

Yeah, I'm glad Trump is here, and I'm glad they're going to be cracking down on illegal immigration.

So I think that division of how ICE and others are treating immigrants is going to continue.

I didn't give you enough time.

We're out of time.

We will be doing, though I will say as many election related shows as we can.

Bill and I in the city cycle a couple years ago, we sat down with every, you know, viable candidate for city mayor.

We'll try to do that again with county mayor, with the county sheriffs.

We'll try to get some debates and conversations going.

Justin Pearson, Steve Cohen, another big race, all kinds of big races and obviously a lot more school stuff and community impact that we'll be doing.

But that's all the time we have this week.

If you missed any of the show go to wkno.org, Daily Memphian or YouTube or download the full podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Happy New Year and thanks for joining us.

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