Next leader for ASD must live in Memphis

The Tennessee Department of Education uses 319 words to sum up its Core Values. Among those words are students, teamwork, achieve and goals.

Nowhere to be found are the five words that represent the essential ingredients for the teamwork required to help students achieve goals: parents, teachers, principals, schools and local.

We hope state education leaders in Nashville will keep those five words in mind as they choose the next superintendent of the Achievement School District. They can begin by requiring that the next ASD superintendent live in the same community that hosts nearly all of the district’s students, parents, teachers, principals and schools. That would be Memphis. Let’s be honest. The ASD’s monumental task of turning around the state’s lowest performing public schools is fundamentally a Memphis challenge. Of the 32 ASD schools, 29 are in Memphis. More than 11,000 of the district’s 12,000 students live here.

Vanderbilt University has about 12,000 students, Tennessee State about 9,000. Would it make sense for either college’s president to live in Memphis? Of course not. Then why would the ASD superintendent live in Nashville?

Memphis has all 16 ASD elementary schools, seven of 10 middle schools, all four high schools and both alternative schools. Nashville has three ASD middle schools with about 800 kids.

By comparison, the five suburban school districts in Shelby County – Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Arlington, Millington and Lakeland – have 41 schools combined. All of their superintendents live in those communities.

The ASD’s first two superintendents, Chris Barbic and Malika Anderson, both lived in Nashville. Current interim Supt. Kathleen Airhart lives there, too.

The next one should be required to live in Memphis, and not just because it would be much more affordable and, therefore, less costly to taxpayers.

The district’s children live in Memphis. They go to school in Memphis. Those who know and care the most about those children are, in order: The parents (or caregivers) in their Memphis homes, the teachers in their Memphis classrooms, and the principals in their Memphis schools.

Administrators in Nashville, no matter how smart or caring, can’t possibly begin to understand the social, cultural, political and educational issues, forces and daily challenges that face Memphis kids and schools. A school in Frayser or South Memphis or any Memphis neighborhood isn’t the same as a school in any Nashville neighborhood.

A superintendent tasked with dramatically improving the academic, social, emotional and physical growth and development of Memphis children and schools must know Memphis.

That message was delivered loudly and clearly here last week when one of the finalists for ASD superintendent came to Memphis and met local folks at the Frayser Exchange Club.

The finalist, Stephen Osborn of Rhode Island, was asked several times if he would live in Memphis or Nashville. That shouldn’t be an option.

“If you’re going to have a meaningful relationship with Memphis,” said Shelby County Schools board member Stephanie Love, who represents Frayser, “you need to be here.”

Being here. That should be a core value of any Memphis school leader.