MSCS is about to pick a new superintendent. Here's what finalists said in last interviews

Roughly a year-and-a-half after Joris Ray resigned amid scandal, the Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board of Education is poised to name the district's next superintendent.

On Feb. 9, its members are slated to come together in a public meeting, to discuss the three finalists and select one to be the district’s next leader. And they’ll do so after a stretch of events and interviews held on Thursday and Friday, which were meant to help guide the last leg of the decision-making process.

During those two days, the three finalists ― Yolanda Brown, Marie Feagins, and Cheryl Proctor ― took a tour of Memphis. They attended a meet-and-greet reception open to members of the public and conversed with more than 30 community organizations that signed up to have discussions with them. They had two-hour interviews with the board, in which they were evaluated not just by board members but by the public as well.

And when it meets this Friday, the board is set to be presented with qualitative information about how the candidates fared during the two days of engagement. This will include board members', community members’, and public’s thoughts on the finalists.

But don’t expect the information to be numbers-reliant, like the results of the December interviews that narrowed the slate of candidates down from five to three.

“It’s not going to be an easy, ‘this was the first, second, and third,’” said Tomeka Hart-Wigginton, the founder and principal of the HarWigg Group, the consulting firm that has supported the board in the search process. “Really, it’s going to be a narrative.”

That narrative is expected to be a determining factor for the board as it selects the district’s next leader. And though we don’t know exactly how what it will look like, we do know how the finalists responded to board members’ questions during their two-hour interviews, which touched on key challenges the district is facing.

Here are some highlights.

Yolonda Brown

Chief academic officer; Atlanta Public Schools

Literacy is a key priority for MSCS as it looks to the future. Last year, 23.6% of third graders earned proficient results on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program English Language Arts tests, and the district wants that number to grow to 52% by 2030.

So, naturally, the subject came up in interviews with the finalists, as board members wanted to know what experience they had in implementing methods to strengthen students’ reading abilities.

In her interview, Brown emphasized the importance of phonics, asserting that the “science of reading starts with phonics and phonetic awareness.” In Atlanta, she noted, she and her team initially implemented 30 minutes of phonetic instruction in every elementary school for first and second graders, then expanded this to third graders.

“That is the first thing we’ve done around literacy, is explicit phonics instruction, that is aligned to the science of reading,” she said.

But she didn’t end there, also emphasizing the importance of providing phonetic practices to middle and high school teachers, who have students who might not be reading at grade level.

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Academic success is something Brown touted in her interview, describing her three-prong academic recovery plan that was implemented amid learning loss due to COVID-19, which included student screeners for reading, math, and behavioral health support, and 30-minute interventions that varied depending on the student. Struggling students, for example, received a form of academic intervention, whereas higher-performing students were more likely to receive an enrichment course. Tailored interventions also went to English language learners.

“That intervention block met the needs of every student,” Brown said. “We thought of every student to make sure that no child is left behind.”

The recovery plan seemed to have success, with the district experiencing notable gains in literacy and numeracy. But literacy improvements are just one of the goals of MSCS, which is also preparing for an end to federal relief funding and considering a significant realignment to prevent a $150 million budget gap in fiscal year 2025.

Board members wanted to know about Brown’s experience managing budgets, and how she’s handled having to make difficult decisions ― including reductions in staff sizes.

Brown noted that she “drives academic strategy” for Atlanta Public Schools’ budget of $1.6 billion, which isn’t wildly far off of the budget of around $2 billion MSCS is operating with. She also noted that she manages a $55 million academic budget for the district, and $107 million the district received from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) ― which is the federal funding source MSCS and districts around the nation are preparing to lose.

She explained that her district is “always having to reduce cost at the district level,” and that “it’s difficult because everyone wants more support to go to schools and you have to have those conversations.”

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She emphasized, however, that when you do have to make budget cuts, the “last place you start is the classroom.

“We had to downsize at Atlanta Public Schools but started with the central office,” she said. “We started with spending on stuff that we don’t necessarily need, where we can get grant money, and [what] we can get partners to help with.”

Brown was also given the chance to assuage the fears some Memphians have about hiring someone from another city for the superintendent post. And she assured those present that, if hired, she would arrive in the district focused on initially listening and learning. She wouldn’t immediately be making sweeping changes.

“That’s not good leadership, to come in and turn over the apple cart,” she said. “You listen and learn, and then the next phase is to open up the hood and see what’s there.”

Marie Feagins

Chief of Leadership and High Schools, executive director of high school transformation, and special assistant to the superintendent; Detroit Public Schools Community District

Early in her interview, Feagins was asked about what challenges and threats she thinks MSCS is facing.

She mentioned school vouchers ― which she passionately denounced ― and teacher vacancies. But literacy, she said, was the foundational issue that “affects all other issues.” And like Brown, she was asked to provide details on how she would tackle reading challenges students are facing.

For her, it’s not necessarily about overhauling the approach. It’s about improving the approach the district already has.

“I’m not sure it’s about doing more, (it's) about doing what we’re doing, and doing it better, doing it consistently, doing it with the fidelity it takes to see the outcomes,” she said. “From an external view, we have the right approach.”

She did provide more detail, noting that high-dosage tutoring can be effective and that it’s important to start focusing on literacy before third grade, which is the grade most brought up when literacy efforts are mentioned (it’s considered the grade when students go from learning to read to reading to learn).

“We also know that you don’t just not know how to read in third grade, that takes place before, and it shows up well before a student is in third grade,” she said. “That’s about doing a better job in our pre-K ― actually birth. We know about expectant families.”

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Feagins has been credited with raising the graduation rate in Detroit from 64.5% to 71.1% ― this was the first time the graduation rate had risen in nearly a decade ― and it was brought up in her interview as well.

But she, like Brown, was also posed questions about her experiences with budget and finance, and she admitted that the budget she’s managed is dramatically smaller than the one welded by MSCS leaders. Though she’s had a hand in the arrangement of Detroit’s overall school budget, the largest budget she’s individually overseen initially amounted to a couple million dollars then had several more million dollars tacked on for summer school improvements.

“How do you think you’re going to address a $2.1 billion budget when you’ve only had access to a couple million?” she said, acknowledging the discrepancy. “It's tougher to do a lot of work with a little money.”

Emphasizing her experience with working with limited resources, she explained that she’s had to make tough decisions. And she at one point noted that top portions of MSCS’ central office are “pretty bloated,” and that she believes “some shifts have to take place, in order to make the work move as we need it to move.”

“I’m just thinking about how we redeploy some of the work, closer to our schools, and how we better organize that,” she said, “so we can be about the work of providing the level of excellence that every space should have.”

Excellence is something she believes MSCS is on the brink of attaining, stating in her closing remarks that the district has “nibbled around it” for "far too long." She believes she’s the person who can guide the district into the future ― and she impressed upon the district the importance of selecting the correct person.

“It is not lost upon me what it means to be seated with you,” she said. “I’ll just leave you with this. The future of our country hinges on the success of public education and public schools. The future of our city depends on Memphis-Shelby County Schools having the right leader at the helm.”

Cheryl Proctor

Deputy superintendent of instruction and school communities; Portland Public Schools

In March 2023, Proctor was poised to be named a finalist for the superintendent position. But when a family member had a massive stroke, she knew she couldn’t make a move to Memphis. The person’s health was declining, and Proctor was responsible for facilitating her care. She was certain she wouldn’t want to be alone.

So, three days before the finalists were set to be publicly announced, she called Max McGee, head of the search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, and told him to withdraw her name. At the time, she thought she had passed up on the opportunity; she felt compelled to.

But on May 2, her family member passed away, and in August, she received an email and phone call, and was asked to apply for the superintendent post again.

“This thing is still around?” she thought.

The search process had been paused and relaunched. Proctor had another opportunity. But before deciding to apply again, she visited Memphis, to ensure it was where she wanted to be, and became convinced that it was.

“I believe in the divine authority; nothing has happened by accident,” she said. “I see now that she [the family member] had to transition, and I see that this process had to transition as well.”

She, like Brown and Feagins, addressed school literacy.

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Proctor noted that during her tenure in Portland, she and her team arranged extensive reviews of instructional practices. After observing over 230 lessons and examining student work, they realized that they needed to invest in instructional learning for teachers, to improve their skill sets.

The science of reading, she noted, was also important. But it wasn’t the “end all be all.”

“It has to be paired with high-quality texts and high-quality instructional materials,” she explained.

In Portland, she found that new curriculums had not been adopted in over 10 years in certain areas. To mitigate this, she explained, the district immediately sought out high-quality curriculums, which were paired with development and training for teachers.

These strategies showed success, in not just English language arts, but math, too. In 2022 and 2023, they were able to raise proficiency in both subjects in grades three through eight ― which represented back-to-back years of double-digit increases over the state average.

She, like the other finalists, was also asked about budgets and difficult decisions and changes she’s had to help make.

Initially, Proctor pointed to the sizes of the budgets in the three different school districts where she’s spent her career. Broward County Schools in Florida ― where she started in education and spent 17 years ― has a budget of over $6 billion. Philadelphia Public Schools ― where she spent six years and held an assistant superintendent post ― had a budget of about $4 billion. And Portland, where she’s currently employed, has a budget of about $1 billion.

She then described how Portland dealt with the end of federal ESSER funding that MSCS is grappling with. The district found a partner to do a research management audit across its district, which came with significant benefits.

“Our partners were able to support us in understanding where it was where we were overspending compared to like districts of like size, across our country,” she explained. “We also wanted to understand where we were underspending. Out of that came recommendations where we can better align our investments and resource management.”

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: MSCS to pick new superintendent. Here's what happened at last interviews