New SCS leader will have to deal with old problems, old logic
If one was to judge the success of Shelby County’s schools under Superintendent Dorsey Hopson by glimpsing headlines earlier this month, it wouldn’t be its best look.
Nine Shelby County schools had to close for an entire day or part of the day when their heating systems were no match for freezing temperatures, leaving parents and students frustrated.
But that problem, one which stems from $500 million worth of deferred maintenance costs, existed before Hopson took over in 2013.
And it resonates more as a footnote than as a headline to his tenure.
Hopson announced his resignation after six years of guiding a system that lost 40,000 students to six new suburban districts and the state-run Achievement School District, which took over the academically struggling schools.
There was the grade-tampering scandal at Trezevant High School, changing achievement standards at the state level, and the perpetual challenge of educating children in a city with the second-highest poverty rate in the U.S.
Yet Hopson did much to wiggle out of the handcuffs of past neglect, budgetary constraints, changing standards and structural poverty.
Among other things, he bolstered the Innovation Zone — Memphis’ answer to the ASD. That homegrown turnaround program added another hour to the school day and pays teachers more to work in struggling schools.
It has worked so well that Vanderbilt University lauded it in a study, and state leaders recruited its leader and Hopson’s second-in-command, Sharon Griffin, to head the ASD.
On top of that, Hopson championed a $15 per hour minimum wage for Shelby County school employees.
‘He was a visionary’
Those accomplishments, plus efforts such as the Summer Learning Academy, are what new School Board member Joyce Dorse-Coleman especially liked about Hopson’s leadership.
“He was a visionary,” said Coleman, who also said she was surprised by Hopson’s resignation. “Whoever replaces him will have to take us forward, and will have to be invested in, and have a desire to see all our children succeed.”
Still, said Coleman, the next superintendent will have to grapple with the deferred maintenance problems that dog Shelby County’s schools.
And Shelby County Commission Chair Van Turner said it is prepared to give it that push.
“Infrastructure and deferred maintenance is the biggest challenge,” Turner said. “That’s going to be the most significant concern for us.”
Turner said he’s optimistic that the state will work with Shelby County on that issue. In fact, he said, Hopson’s endorsement of Republican Bill Lee, Tennessee’s new governor, might have eased the way for that.
“I know Superintendent Hopson caught a lot of grief from a lot of people for that, but it could have been a visionary move on his part,” Turner said.
Future of SCS
Regardless of who the next superintendent is, that person will not only have to continue the progress that Hopson started, but will have to do it at a time when public school systems are being subjected to wild experimentation that diverts attention from basic things such as, well, maintenance costs.
“There are so many tensions in a district which has most of the ASD schools,” said Zachary Casey, a Rhodes College education studies professor whose research centers on educational equity. “Charter schools are going to be a major challenge to get a handle on…” Then, there’s this. “A new superintendent is going to be up against an old logic that sees all schools in Memphis as poor and failing, and one that is perpetually underfunded and has to sue the state every year (for adequate funding),” Casey said.
It is that old logic that, in many ways, fuels old problems like poorly-heated and crumbling schools. Problems that a superintendent has no direct control over but must navigate nonetheless.
Problems that involve seeing to it that the students in one of the nation’s largest 25 school districts are learning. And staying warm at the same time.