So, let’s make sure we’ve got this right.
So, what if under a new unified school district, students in Germantown will attend the same schools and have the same principals? The curriculum comes from State of Tennessee. So, what reason is there besides race that strikes such fear into the hearts of Germantown parents?
Code words are already being bandied about. Things are said with no self-awareness or explanations about the all-white county school board and the political machinations to make sure it stayed that way. They make no apologies for plans to move African-American kids out of Germantown schools and to recreate schools that are essentially all-black. If there’s any subtext to the incendiary(some say ignorant) comments by right-wing extremist Shelby County Commissioners Wyatt Bunker and Chris Thomas, it is that. On second thought, it’s not subtext. It’s the only text.
There’s really no other reason besides race for Germantown “leaders” to stampede into creation of their very own school district. They make no pretense of even trying to consider what other scenarios there might be or what they could get from being in a position of strength to negotiate with the new district. The most telling evidence for us that it’s about race is that Dr. Fred Johnson, former county schools educator, is a member appointed by Memphis City Schools to the committee guiding the merger of the city and county districts.
It’s Income, Stupid
Rather, their rhetoric is based about as much on the facts as Dick Cheney’s memoir. They trot out familiar talking points about smaller being better and under-performing districts as if Shelby County Schools isn’t an average district on its best days when compared to comparable districts. They offer up glib explanations about effective leadership as if the overriding factors for student achievement aren’t the socio-economic status of its kids. There are no magic answers in county school classrooms despite propaganda to the contrary.
All of this reminds us of the time years ago at a Leadership Memphis meeting when a former mayor of Germantown told the class that Shelby County Schools simply had “the answer” to student performance. It was about leadership, and because of it, he said if the principal of Germantown High Schools was moved to Northside High School, the city school would have the same student achievement as the suburban school.
The class laughed so loudly that it was hard to hear the rest of what he was saying, but it’s pretty obvious that Shelby County Schools believes that it knows the secrets to better education. We just don’t understand why school experts from around the country aren’t flocking there to find out their answers.
Struggling for Explanations
Recent collegiality and cooperation by the county district feel most of all like an exercise in misdirection. While Shelby County Schools Board Chair David Pickler offers up his new, improved persona, he’s helping behind the scenes as the towns work to set up their separate but equal districts. While Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris pretends that the ruling by U.S. District Judge Hardy Mays validated his interference into local educational decision-making, he works quietly as an enabler to suburban separatist tendencies.
All this was on full display last week when Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald and Collierville Mayor Stanley Joyner did their best to find a cogent justification to explain why they are hellbent to create their own school districts before even learning more about the new unified district’s plans.
Mayor McDonald movingly talked about how he could not gamble his grandchild’s future to a new countywide district. Left unsaid was why he could gamble it with a new district encompassing his town. Mayor Joyner graduated from Collierville High School a couple of years after Shelby County Schools was sued to integrate its schools and seems to draw his opinions from those days of all-white and all-black county schools.
Myth-Making
Unfortunately, for many people in this community, this feels all too familiar. About half of the people in Shelby County were alive when white flight became a defining factor in the life and history of the community, fueled by the belief that a mixed racial district and diverse district leadership would provide inferior academic instruction and lack of discipline.
As researchers have concluded, a prime motivator in white flight is the desire by white parents, despite all protestations to the contrary, to keep their children out of integrated schools for fear of their contact with African-Americans.
In other words, we’ve seen this play before, or as Amy J. Barger wrote (edited quotation follows) in her honors thesis, The Cost of Myth-Making: Racial Tension and School Desegregation in Memphis: “In an effort to preserve a favorable public image, leaders adopted a rhetoric of evasion that allowed them to hide their segregationist sympathies. Leaders held Memphis in its conservative past by initially cloaking racial tension and then by subtly feeding suspicion between the races. White leaders’ call for moderation produced a cautious hope in the black community. Wisely, however, blacks refused to place their faith whole-heartedly in promises of progress.”
All that said, for a group that purports to be thorough and savvy in its decision-making, the suburban leaders seem oblivious to the opportunity to open negotiations with the new countywide district, perhaps in pursuit of commitments for new schools and promises of maintaining the status quo. The small portion of ADA capital funding that will flow from county government to a towns’ district will leave a significant balance for its taxpayers to make up.
Optional Schools
In addition, if the towns contend that their interests are in autonomy and accountability and not power and control, charter schools could be an answer. After all, each charter school is given broad autonomy from the district in return for more accountability in its results, and each charter school has its own governing board and could set up the kind of cost-sharing arrangements now being proposed for the new towns’ district.
An unwillingness to consider other options besides a new district for the towns is clear indication of the race and isolationism that lie at the heart of their real motivations.
Although I am not for the Germantown separate school system idea, and while I agree that some people’s support for such a system is motivated in some degreee by racism, whether they want to admit it or not, its usually not a good idea to make broad generalizations about a group of people, white or black. There are plenty of people of good will who live in Germantown for reasons that have nothing to do with race, and there are plenty of people of good will who might decide to support a separate system for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with race. It is possible, in other words, to live in the burbs and not be a racist, and to write posts that suggest otherwise does nothing to foster an intelligent dialogue on these important issues or to promote that unity which you claim is so important to the region’s future. If voters in Germantown are to be convinced that they should not create their own system, few will be convinced by people calling them racists.
It is possible, but not probable.
Mr. Steffens is saying that it is “not probable” that people he has never met are not racist solely because of where they have chosen to live. I find it odd that people like Mr. Steffens, who would rightly decry broad generalizations made about other groups of people with whom he sympathizes or with whom he agrees politically, are so eager to generalize about those with whom they disagree politically. Until both sides stop calling broad categories of people with whom they disagree names, and ascribing motives to a vast group of people, we aren’t going to get very far. African Americans aren’t all criminals and/or bad parents who don’t help their kids in school, residents of the burbs arent all racist tea partiers who want to wall themselves off from the world. Until people like Mr. Steffens are at least willing to agree with that sentence, without qualifying his agreement with some snark that its “not probable”, what possible chance is there for us ever to be unified? How do we have a meaningful dialogue under such circumstances?
Anonymous: We’re not trying to convince them. We’re just calling it like we see it. And there is a strong vein of prejudice running through this as shown by common comments. And we’re certainly ready for the people of good will in Germantown to stand up tall and say enough division and prejudice is enough. Then again, we didn’t say that anyone is racists to live in the burbs. We simply pointed to race as an underlying force in the rush to create new district for the townies. You don’t have a “meaningful dialogue” until reality is put on the table and dealt with. Then there is dialogue that can be healing and helpful.
Researcher: A 150,000 student school district is too large to be successful.
SCM: C’mon Researcher, it’s really about race isn’t it?
Researcher: Studies say mega-districts underperform, academically and financially.
SCM: You cherry-picked that research. It’s really about race.
Researcher: Here’s another study; “Sheer size is one problem. Central office staffs are large, highly specialized, and remote from schools, so that superintendents deal with education only indirectly.”
SCM: Another cherry. It’s really about race, isn’t it?
Researcher: Germantown High School has been majority minority for over 10 years. City leaders never mentioned municipal schools until the mega-district was imposed on them. Isn’t it clear that this is about local control of public education?
SCM: You can continue with the mis-direction. We all know it’s really about race.
Researcher: Okay SCM, you win.
SCM: You admit it’s really about race then?
Researcher: No. I admit that its tiresome to listen to a piano that can only play one note.
SCM: That’s exactly what I would expect a racist to say.
Thanks for your regular piano lesson which so often ignores the past track record, the current talking points, and the broad range of research on this issue. As we said last time you commented, educational issues are like Bible verses. There’s something for everybody to justify what they already believe. Yes, Germantown HS is majority minority and that will change with the town districts. It’s always been something that Germantown leaders wanted to get rid of and this gives them their opportunity. There’s a reason that Germantown is the only municipality where black population is declining. That too says volumes about the tone of the politics there.
My kids will go to a new Collierville district if it’s formed, but if they go to the same school and nothing else changes, I don’t care what the administrative structure is. I know that with good teachers, kids from families with higher incomes, and leadership from the principal, everything will be fine.
I am a grad student in education at U of M. There’s nothing written in concrete about student achievement except that income and school readiness matter more than anything and so does a highly qualified teacher in the classroom. That’s the right discussion to be having, not the red herrings presented by people who fight to keep “white schools.”
SCM,
I have never known you to intentionally put out bad information. Your point about the African American population in Germantown IS an error.
From http://www.census.gov
2000 census – 869 black or African American – 2.3% of total
2010 census – 1,387 black or African American – 3.6% of total
The black population in Germantown is NOT declining, it increased 60%.
Please cite your “Bible verse”, I would like to read the studies with alternate views.
Researcher:
Thanks for the correction. We were using the interim estimates and should have checked 2010. Check the percentage of black kids in Germantown and the percentage of kids in the schools. It’s hard for us to get around the fact that there is a move to make these percentages smaller. After all, that goal has been spoken out loud by Germantown officials at a county school board meeting.
As for the Bible, pick a verse. If there weren’t alternate views, we wouldn’t have so many different religious flavors on every corner. As the old saying goes, even the devil can find verses for his work. Then again, many people read the Bible and don’t believe in the devil. Goes to show.
We had a researcher/professor friend call and he made this point: It’s not that the large school districts under perform because of their organizational structure. It’s that the large school districts are where you find the most at-risk students. He said it’s facetious to think that the size of wealthier suburban districts is a motivating factor in students’ performance. He added that if there was convincing research that school structure mattered, the leading foundations would be putting their money on it and all researchers would be proposing it “since educational magic bullets often come from people behaving like lemmings.”
Wow that is a pretty bold allegation. What Germantown officials have spoken aloud of the goal to lower the percentage of African American kids at school?
We wrote about it extensively at the time.
I must have missed that. Who was it?
No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.
— George Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres In The Nineties (1930)
Thanks, Suzanne. Good philosophy for our times. We seem to be dividing into special interest groups and swayed by talking heads with no real plans.
Anonymous: We wrote about the racial motivations of the board when the comments were made and we also wrote about it with the creation of the essentially all-black schools south of Germantown.
Why won’t you just tell us who in Germantown made the comment to which you refer? In the alternative, just provide a link to the specific article in which you identify the individual who made the comment.
This is what you call journalism. Exceptional writing Smart City Memphis, I think everyone feels a lot better now that you have called it like it is (joking obviously).
Like most of your posts it is simply a rehash of the same old we hate suburban people, give me give me give mentality that readers here are accustomed too. You simply do not understand you can not force people to be your friends. You can not force people to raise your children. You can not force people to give up their success to support your failure.
If you push too hard, people will leave. They will go to either to private schools or to a different county. Maybe even leave Memphis all together. It will be interesting at that point what card you can still play in Memphis… maybe you will have to focus your time on building people up instead of tearing others down.
Some numbers from the Tennessee Report Card:
Shelby County school system is 38% black and 52% white and 37% economically disadvantaged. Germantown HS is 46% black, 44% white, and 23% economically disadvantaged. Southwind HS is 94% black, 1% white and 77% economically disadvantaged.
In 2007, federal judge Bernice Donald found that Shelby County had some racially identifiable schools, but her proposed remediation was overruled. (In 2007, Germantown HS was 60% black before hundreds of black students were shifted to Southwind HS when it opened.
My points: The Southwind district (which is supposed to become an MCS school in 2013)was drawn with full awareness of the demographics and annexation plans, as SCM, has written many times. Developers, judges, parents, planners, and school board members knew what was going on. Second, it’s a misperception, if anyone still has it, that Germantown HS or Shelby County schools are overwhelmingly white. There are only about 32,000 white kids in the combined city and county systems, and whatever happens in the next two years there will be several all-black schools. Third, SCM has written about this when others, for whatever reasons, haven’t. Good for SCM.
John Branston
as I have stated, Memphis has not, will not join the 21st century in many respects
and NO, every other city DOES NOT have the same level of obvious problems that Memphis has with “race”..
That’s why Memphis wil continue to fail, and people will get out, refuse to be transfered, and decline moving their families to such a primitive environment IF they have other great cities from which to choose
I could not advise anyone to come here…and/or stay for long !….WHY would any professional or family be exposed to such a crappy “climate” if they didn’t have to ??
crazy
Blah:
We’ve worked as a journalist, have a journalism degree and write for a magazine. Here’s the thing: try reading this again for comprehension. We criticize the racial undercurrent that lies at the base of this push to create the towns’ own districts. As we have written before, city and town living in any part of Shelby County is valid. The towns, unlike those in other places, were not created as simply bedroom communities for Memphis, but were towns whose histories run nearly as far back as Memphis. And why would you not be friends with Memphis? Where’s that hangup come from?
The current racial breakdown of county schools, but those are irrelevant if the town districts are created. irrelevant. By creating its own own district, Germantown will manage to get rid of about half the black kids that now attend schools there. That’s a prime motivation and has been for years. There were plans that would have balanced the racial composition of the all-black schools in Southeastern Shelby County and they were summarily discarded by the county board. The more balanced student enrollment would likely have stayed in place for more than a decade.
Last anonymous: You’ve got to be kidding. If you don’t think other cities have race-based issues just like Memphis, you don’t understand other cities. It’s a copout to blame Memphis’ economic challenges on race. They are structural and can be corrected if all of us get serious about dealing with them.
And all we’d like to know is who in the Germantown government said that a or the primary motivation behind a new district is to kick out African American students. Please identify them, or direct those of us less informed to a place where those individuals are identified. It would be quite helpful in fighting Germantown’s effort to separate their schools to be able to finger someone in the leadership who has expressed such a motivation. So please help us fight this effort and identify this person or these people you have referenced several times.
We believe that you know. But we’ll return to the subject of this person soon. It’s not the primary focus of this post. It’s asking the question of why Germantown or any town would want a new district if its students will attend the same schools with the same teachers and same principals. For now, we’d like to concentrate on that. Stay tuned for the other.
Since you don’t know me, I don’t understand how you think I know. But I don’t. And since you refuse to provide what would be pretty relevant and impactful information, a reasonable reader of this conversation would be justified in concluding that you were not telling the truth when you claimed that someone in the Germantown government said that one reason to break off and form their own school system is to exclude African Americans. After all, you did also falsely claim that the African American population in Germantown was declining. Please don’t let your agenda drive you to make false claims in the future. False claims of racism don’t help the cause.
“Why won’t you just tell us who in Germantown made the comment to which you refer? In the alternative, just provide a link to the specific article in which you identify the individual who made the comment.”
I live in Germantown and I’ve heard people talk about the racial makeup of GHS in a very negative light. MANY times over the years in fact. I don’t believe most people in Germantown are bigots, but there is a definite undecurrent going on in some of these discussions as to what the makeup would be if the city had its own system.
If the city gets its own system, my kids will attend it; if it stays SCS, they’ll attend that system. I’m not too worried about, as long as the teachers and school administrators stay.
That is an entirely different discussion. I am very aware that there are people in Germantown who are motivated to do this out of some silly fear that the inner city kids will be bused to Germantown or something. But the allegation here is that someone in the Germantown government leadership, not just “people”, actually said out loud that the or a motivation for forming a separate school system is to kick out the African Americans, or at least drastically lower their numbers. All I am asking is for SCM to actually back up that allegation with the name or names of those Germantown leaders who said that. This should be that hard, if it is true.
Everyone knows that Goldsworthy mentioned it frequently and that the school board discussed it in a meeting. In fact, that’s what was posted on this blog when it happened as I recall.
Anonymous:
You are right. It is an entirely different discussion, which is why we’re trying to stay on point, which is to pose the question of why, if nothing changes in the school curriculum or school leadership, why anyone would be stampeding to create a new district.
Concern about the number of African-American kids in Germantown schools has been going on for years, and a town district would allow for the removal of several thousand black kids and transfer them to the new countywide district’s schools. Parenthetically, we’ve been wondering if the new countywide district could keep a school in Germantown if it made sense as the hub for the area, but as you say, that’s another discussion.
As for the African-American population of Germantown, we explained that we looked at the Census 2009 estimate, which showed the reduction.
Next you’ll try to tell us that white flight was all about people wanting the bucolic living of the suburbs.
Can anybody read right these days? Anonymous now says “And all we’d like to know is who in the Germantown government said that a or the primary motivation behind a new district is to kick out African American students.” I didn’t read that it was primary motivation but that it is a factor involved in all this talk about districts. Only a deaf person hasn’t already heard that before. Check Chris Thomas latest “baggy pants” statement.
No but you see Frank SCM said this – Check the percentage of black kids in Germantown and the percentage of kids in the schools. It’s hard for us to get around the fact that there is a move to make these percentages smaller. After all, that goal has been spoken out loud by Germantown officials at a county school board meeting.
Ok, so I stand corrected in that what SCM said was that some Germantown official spoke about the goal of reducing the number of African American students. (which sounds the same to me as it being a motivation, but whatever). So the question remains – what Germantown official spoke of this goal out loud at a meeting? SCM brought this up, not me. I just want to know who it was so that when it comes time to argue about this in Germantown, I as a Germantown voter can stand up and specifically call that official out.
This plays to a continued underlying them found at this blog: taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. I cannot claim to have enough knowledge on the topic regarding the position of Germantown officials especially where areas of ethnicity are involved.
At what point does a known outcome, whether mentioned or not, become important? If it is well established that a municipal school system serving Germantown will be defined by a student population that is (let’s assume based on census figures) 90% Caucasian in a county where the population is 52% African American then can we at least admit that a consequence of such a district (whether intentional or not) will be ethnic segregation? If it is, then the leaders and residents of Germantown should be ready to state whether they are in support of such an outcome. It does not matter what one’s intention is, realizing what the consequences will be and taking responsibility for them is what is critical. As the aphorism based on St. Bernard’s original comment goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
The leaders’ stated intentions coculd make a huge difference 1) in swaying public opinion (residents of good will would be hard pressed to support a separate system if a leader and proponent can be proven to have said a goal is to segregate. Its one thing to shut your eyes to unspoken motives, its another to ignore a motivation when its put out in the public debate. More people will be against this if it has been explicitly pushed for racial reasons);
2) legally. It would harm Germantown in any court case that arose from this if one of their leaders were quoted as having an explicitly racial motive.
So your point is well taken to a degree, but the fact is that SCM has made a pretty important allegation – not that the motivation is just out there, but that it was given voice by a person in a leadership position. We need to know who this was, and it seems a small thing to ask SCM to identify the person, if it really happened. If it didn’t happen, then SCM should be willing to just walk it back.
We stand by the facts as were widely known at the time and we also stand by our position that we’re not going to let you wade us into the weeds at this point. When and if we get to a more fully formed proposal, we may return to this subject. We’ve written about this before. It’s not the topic here and we’d be glad to discuss the question that you seem to be avoiding: Why should Germantown – if the teachers, schools and principals are unchanged — create its own district?
Look, you brought it up, I asked you to identify the person. You won’t, your perogative. Sounds to me like it just never happened. Whatever.
And I’m not avoiding that question because I don’t think it was ever posed to me. But I don’t think Germantown should form its own district, at least now or in the near future. I live there and will vote against it and will speak against it. Not for the reasons espoused here so often – that we all need to be “in this together” or to prove we aren’t a bunch of racists – but because until we know how and by whom the new county system will be run, there is little reason to think one is needed.
Yep, you’re right. It is our prerogative. The question was posed in the post itself. We just choose not to play the game on this post since we’re trying to stay on point. We’ll watch this debate unfold and then decide if we want to reprise the unseemly discussions that have taken place over the years as mentioned in past posts.
By the way, the author of this particular post lives in Germantown too.
I’m not playing games. I asked a question, which was raised by an unsolicited statement you made in the comments. If we were sitting around a table having a conversation, and you made a bombshell assertion, I’d keep asking till you backed up what you said, as would anyone I would think. It would hardly be a legitimate answer to say that you don’t have to answer because it wasn’t the original point you were trying to make. I don’t know why it should be different here, unless the point of your comments section is simply to have people agree with you. So it seems to me likely that this comment you referenced was never actually made, but will go back and read all your previous posts to see if its really in there.
I think we understand each other’s positions. If were sitting around the table, we’d say the same thing. We want to stay on point and this is a rabbit trail, in the worlds of a former county mayor. We’ll get back to it, we suspect, but at this point, we’re not. You can believe it or not, at your pleasure, but we urge you to watch for the code words and the underlying forces at work on this issue. We’re not here to convince you. We’re here to share our opinions based on what we know from the facts and from our experience. Like all media, traditional or new, you can take it or leave it, and based on your comment, you have chosen to leave it.
Look, I understand the use of code words, and have heard many people unconvincingly claim that their position on this issue isn’t racially motivated, only to have their racially based motivations become apparent in about 2 minutes of conversation. Its not that hard to spot. I don’t deny that racism is alive and well in Midtown, Downtown, Bartlett, Germantown, and all points in between. But not everyone who disagrees with you about the schools issue is racist. I think people on your side of this argument are a bit quick to pull out the racism card and play it without any real basis against one person or, worse, an entire group of people to try and win an argument without really having an argument. And I think your original post and this discussion have been a pretty good example of that phenomenon.
We didn’t say everybody who disagrees with us is a racist. We’re quick to pull out the racism card when it’s so clearly staring in our faces and when we know the deck is in play. By the way, the author of this particular post lives in Germantown. We have an argument and you seem to share it: people should gather all the facts before being stampeded into paying for a new school district when little is going to change in their local school. And people should reject any shadings based on prejudice or bias whenever they see it, and they will see it during this discussion. We’ve been writing on school districts – both city and county – for six years so maybe we’re asking a lot for readers to have that context and that data for our posts.
Two thumbs of for Anonymous calling out the promotion of outright misinformation on this website.
What else are you ‘making up’ SCM?
Again, you read what you want to read. No one has shown any outright misinformation although we know you’d like to believe that’s the case. We’ll choose when and how to report more details, but if you aren’t aware of the county school district’s continued machinations to interfere in issues ranging from racial to religious, you’ve just not even tried to pay attention.
We got an email today that said we must be doing something right, because MCS supporters were complaining several years ago when we challenged their rationale and decisions. Part of the problem that we’ve seen in the suburban towns is that its leaders don’t really want fair play or facts. They want preferential treatment, as shown in development of recent economic development organizations, and disproportionate influence over Memphis as shown in the MPO.
Someone should ask Fred Johnson, who was once former county superintendent and now a city appointee to the transition committee. He knows what the motivation is and that’s why he signed on to help Memphis.
Did you ever notice that it’s people without any informtion that claim everyone else is misinformed? Blah, blah, blah,don’t confuse me with the facts or other points of view.
Why Is This Man Smiling?
via polar donkey by polar donkey on 9/6/11
Picture from the Commercial Appeal
The new school board district boundaries came out recently and I only a got to take a look at them a few days ago. When I did, I noticed something interesting. Take a look at the map below. Do you see it?
Notice district 1. It lies on the poplar corridor. Now look at districts 2, 5, and 6. Notice anything about them in relation to 3, 4, and 7. Seems like all the black voters are packed into 2, 5, and 6, and all the white voters into 3,4, and 7. That means district 1 is the battle ground, but is it really?
I looked at all the voters that took part in the August 2010 primary. Just shy of 24,000 people voted who live in the new district 1. Over 17,000 were democrats and over 6,500 were republicans. That is to be expected, but when you look at the racial breakdown, it turns out to be around 10,000 black voters and almost 14,000 white voters. So the new school board will be majority white and it will remain like that for the next 20 years.
If you combine the city and county school systems’ populations, you will have 153,000 students that are nearly 65% black. If those towns in the county break off into separate schools districts it jumps up to around 80%. The question then arises, if those separate schools systems form, do those voters still take part in school board elections and maintain a white majority school board of an overwhelmingly black population school system?
Back to the picture at the top, I can figure out why Pickler is smiling, but what is Jones excited about? You thought you would get funding and control. Yet the majority population of Shelby county will not have control of the system their kids attend and without control you aren’t going to get that funding either.