Former Indianapolis principal hired to overhaul Memphis charter school office

Tennessee’s largest hub of charter schools has a new director who will build her team from the ground up, replacing the managers who have overseen the growing sector since its inception in Memphis in 2003.

Daphnè Robinson started this week with Shelby County Schools and will manage applications, renewals and evaluations for its 45 charter schools. She replaces Charisse Sales, who has led the office for more than a decade and will stay with the school system in another capacity.

Most recently, Robinson worked three years as a principal at an Indianapolis charter school, where since 2005 she held various positions including enrollment coordinator and director of counseling.

She is also the wife of Memphis Education Fund CEO Marcus Robinson, who joined the philanthropic collaborative last summer and has brought several colleagues with him from Tindley Accelerated Schools in Indianapolis, where his wife also worked. Formerly known as Teacher Town, the Memphis Education Fund invests in the city’s lowest-performing public schools through programs such as the district’s Innovation Zone.

The leadership change in the charter school office comes as Shelby County Schools seeks to overhaul its oversight of the sector in consultation with the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Last year, the group affirmed the work of the three-person charter team but recommended hiring specialists and reorganizing the office as the district seeks to double its staffing.

In a statement this week, district leaders praised Sales and her team and dismissed concerns about the wholesale turnover.

“We are confident that with the institutional knowledge of Chief of Strategy and Performance Management Brad Leon (who has supervised the charter office since 2013), and under the leadership of Daphnè Robinson, the new staffing plan will help ensure we are able to align our work to national best practices,” the statement said.

Colleagues who worked with Robinson in Indianapolis said she’ll bring on-the-ground charter school experience to Memphis.

“She knows which systems that need to be in place for non-negotiables to have a high bar of excellence that become a control across the city,” said Memphis’ Gateway University school founder Sosepriala Dede, who was a Tindley vice principal when she was director of counseling there. “What they specialize in (at Tindley) is exactly what Memphis charter schools need.”