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Former Memphis-Shelby County school board chair Billy Orgel will chair the new Memphis schools oversight board as it prepares to take over most major decisions from the locally elected school board.
The oversight board met for the first time at the state Capitol in Nashville on Thursday to elect officers and form standing committees. The board’s work officially begins on July 1, marking a new era in Tennessee public education where political appointees will control budgets, leadership, and broad academic controls in certain underperforming school districts.
Orgel said Thursday the new oversight board can demand change from the school system, which “will have to answer to us.”
“We answer to the students of this community and our responsibility to them,” Orgel, who served on the MSCS board between 2011 and 2022, said.
Memphis, the state’s largest school district, will now operate under two governing bodies, the new oversight board and the existing, elected school board. But the oversight board has the authority to essentially overrule the elected board on most major decisions, in addition to exerting control over the superintendent’s contract and other staffing decisions.
Though the first meeting was largely procedural, Orgel signaled the board may consider accelerating school closures in the district, noting underenrolled schools are limited at what they can offer their students.
Current Superintendent Roderick Richmond has spearheaded an ongoing plan to close 15 schools by 2028.
“That’ll be up to us to decide if that’s quick enough,” Orgel said.
Richmond’s plan is a more conservative approach to underenrollment and languishing facilities issues than some district leaders, including new oversight board member Dorsey Hopson, have recommended. Hopson, who served as superintendent of the district while Orgel was on the school board, recommended the district close almost 30 schools. That plan was never implemented after Hopson left the district.
Two recent state takeovers in Texas, which Tennessee proponents have often said they want to use as models for MSCS, led to early school closures.
The new board will soon have a comprehensive plan to make needed changes in the district, according to Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower. The Tennessee-funded external audit of district finances and governance is nearly finished, Mumpower said Thursday, and he expects the full 700-page audit to be released in the coming weeks.
Mumpower and Republican lawmakers released interim findings this spring from the ongoing audit, in part to accelerate the pending state legislation that established the new oversight board.
The audit, which was only 25% complete when the interim results were released in April, found more than $1.1 million in contract and payroll transactions that auditors say are “consistent with waste or abuse.” Another $1.7 million in transactions violated district policies but did not rise to the level of waste or abuse, according to the comptroller’s office.
That total is less than 1% of the Memphis district’s operating budget over the three-year period the audit covered.
A lingering question for the new oversight board is whether it is considered a state board or a local board, which will affect certain rules around meetings. State officials did not have an answer at Thursday’s meeting, though it mirrored a state board meeting in a Tennessee Capitol conference room.
Supporters of the new board, including Lee and other Republican lawmakers, have argued the new board represents local intervention into the state’s largest school system. All but one of the new board members are longtime Memphis residents, and at least four members have teaching or administrative experience within the school system.
The oversight board members can be removed from the board at any time, for any reason, by the governor and two legislative speakers. The governor and lieutenant governor are both leaving office next year.
The board committed to holding future meetings in Memphis, making them more accessible to MSCS families. It is eyeing July 7 as the next meeting date, though the board has several large administrative tasks to tackle to become fully operational.
The board has the authority to hold its meetings in the MSCS district office building. Nisha Powers, who was named the board secretary, questioned if it was “appropriate” to begin meetings on district property, a nod at potential tensions between the new board and an elected school board that has vowed to sue over the takeover.
Still, the new oversight board was applauded on Thursday by several community groups including parent advocacy organization Memphis Lift .
“Y’all are going to have to get rid of some folks, point blank,” Memphis Lift Executive Director Sarah Carpenter said. “Y’all need to know the community is going to cover y’all.”
The new oversight board members are:
- Chair Billy Orgel, a local developer and former Memphis-Shelby County school board member.
- Vice-Chair Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees.
- Secretary Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents.
- Dorsey Hopson, a former district superintendent.
- Dedrick Brittenum Jr., a Memphis lawyer and former councilman.
- Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
- Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.
- David Mansouri, the sole board member who is not a Shelby County resident. Mansouri is the Nashville-based leader of one of Tennessee’s most influential education advocacy organizations.
- Karen Vogelsang, a former Memphis teacher and 2014 Tennessee Teacher of the Year who now runs a literacy nonprofit.
Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.
