Our school administration and School board are THE joke of the entire nation. They are getting mired in the minutia, a typical Memphis distraction technique brought on by those who want to continue on as before with no change, those who think they own their chairs, those who take money and subvert education, it is a travesty.
What to do?
Find out what the standards of excellence are and adhere to them or fire the employees. There will be extenuating circumstances, such as aging employees, but, those must be addressed fairly, settlements must be made to move on.
Then there is the union, it must be worked with, they need to see numbers, we need to see theirs.
Oversight needs to be a LOT MORE PROACTIVE in finding issues needing addressing, such as, schools falling apart/lack of maintanance, teachers not teaching yet giving out grades, computers not reflecting accurate grades, email for communicating with schools, and schools should communicate with parents at the first instance of kids not having homework and not wait till they are truants, failing anything including a test, or whatever.
Some elementary schools in Memphis don't have a gym or playground! Are we cultivating heart patients? A school without a playground is a dumb idea. We need to build them at all MCS schools.
Sports are great, but, we seem to have overfocused on basketball and football. Ever heard of track and field or baseball? You wouldn't think so if you moved here from outside.
No one fights at a track meet! It's an olympic sport.
Maybe there should be playgrounds made at empty lots and garden spots.
Maybe RAP isn't the only form of music memphis should be promoting in schools. There are other forms of music, maybe more attention to the orchestra programs in "at risk" neighborhoods is a better idea. Rap doesn't require much talent or education, it's a "lowered bar" that we don't need.
How about a Parks and Recreation department that knows how to perform an astringent national background check before hiring and maybe even develops a program to cultivate the right kind of employees.
A high school program that can cultivate possible recruits for the police department is a great idea, but, if you think that cultivating gang members to join is a good idea, you're dead wrong. Just because Memphis has a large gang population doesn't mean you design programs to capitulate to them. That would be stupid.
There is a lot that can be done, most of will reduce costs instead of increase them. Lawsuits cost more than doing it right the first time.