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Amber Huett-Garcia began her term on the Memphis-Shelby County School Board four years ago during a superintendent resignation scandal and ended it last month amid threats of a state takeover of the district.
That’s left her with one key takeaway as she transitions to her new role on the Shelby County Commission: Stable leadership is the foundation for meaningful change.
“If your top position has a lot of turnover, it’s very hard to have that, I don’t want to say accountability, but it is,” Huett-Garcia said in an exclusive exit interview with Chalkbeat Tennessee. “I worked with four different visions in four years. You can’t even get through a performance cycle in that.”
Huett-Garcia took her seat as District 8 representative in 2022, right after former Superintendent Joris Ray quit amid misconduct allegations. She was one of three board members who voted against the January 2025 ousting of former Superintendent Marie Feagins.
Huett-Garcia says she’s optimistic that the current school board and Superintendent Roderick Richmond are on the right track to improving outcomes for Memphis students. But a state-appointed board of managers, currently tied up in federal court, could upend district leadership again this year by usurping power from the elected school board.
The state and MSCS leaders should collaborate more, Huett-Garcia said.
“But my line in the sand is removing elected officials’ power,” she added. “My concern with the overall plan is, where do you go from there if it doesn’t work? We want to do it all at once. But the danger in that is if it fails, how do you identify what went wrong?”
Huett-Garcia said she ran for a seat on the Shelby County Commission to influence larger systems such as public health and housing opportunities that are deeply interconnected with education.
“When I was on the school board, the number one concern wasn’t academic achievement; it was the way our buildings looked and the safety of our buildings,” she said. “And a lot of what I learned on the school board is that long-term affordable housing is our number one challenge.”
Huett-Garcia told Chalkbeat that MSCS officials and the county commission need to collaborate to better utilize and allocate physical resources. But that’s not the only way they can work together to help students and families, she said.
Editor’s Note: The following responses have been edited for length and clarity.
You mentioned that your time on the school board made you realize affordable housing is the biggest issue in Shelby County. How did you see that playing out in education?
Chronic absenteeism. Our students are highly transient. We have identified, I think, roughly 3,000 students who are experiencing homelessness, and those are the ones we know about. There are levels of homelessness that don’t get reported, like sleeping on a friend’s couch permanently is also not a permanent home, right?
So, how do we build wealth for individuals so they do have the opportunity to buy a home? I hope, and I believe the whole commission will do this: create a strategic plan. I think I knocked on 20,000 doors over the last year. The number one thing I heard was not feeling like you could get ahead. ‘I have three kids. My husband and I both work with $82,000 a year, and we live paycheck to paycheck.’ Everybody feels like everything is rising except for their income.
Do you think there are ways that the commission could be better interacting with the district and vice versa?
Absolutely. I think the biggest opportunity is, as the funding body, to look at how we can bring in additional dollars, particularly to help with the huge capital need. I think the biggest conversation that we need to have ongoing is our footprint. Shelby County is facing this too, and MSCS knows this, but we have too many buildings.
And that’s not just a brick and mortar challenge. Open teacher positions will also be significantly reduced. I’m not worried about teachers losing jobs. We have open jobs, right? But the fastest way to get to improved educational outcomes, the most significant thing you can do, is put a highly qualified teacher at the front of the classroom.
We just don’t have enough money to go around, and that infrastructure conversation and how we’re maximizing state funding, I think, should be our two priorities.
I often hear from advocates for the state takeover that local boards aren’t equipped to make school closure decisions because of political and constituent pressure. Do you think that’s true?
My last year on the board was the first time we really faced any closures and consolidations, and we made hard decisions. We put a real estate plan together and sold millions of dollars worth of land and empty buildings, and that money goes right back into additional capital.
The majority of the school district’s budget is fixed and mandated costs, and so if you can’t reduce the number of people you employ or your building footprint, you’re really not going to save meaningful money. But you’re also going to struggle to get a lot of things better for kids because it’s not just about the building — it is about what you’re able to offer and give them access to outside of curriculum.
So I felt like the board got it, and really those decisions had been delayed for years. But there comes an urgency, right? And declining enrollment is part of it.
Let’s talk about the state takeover and its role in the next iteration of the MSCS school board. Do you think there are ways the state can help the local district, outside of the current takeover model?
I think modernization of systems would be an excellent state support, looking at our internal processes, the things that were cited in the (state) audit. And a lot of that was related to turnover.
Retaining teachers and supporting teachers would require significant support from the state. Whatever survey you do, you ask high-performing teachers what matters the most, and it’s pay. It’s pay and benefits. That’s how you retain great teachers.
And we have a structure where it does not matter how good you are at your job, you do not make more money at it. There are very few other professions through which your outstanding performance is not rewarded. So how do we figure that out?
And then I do think there is a facilities component. We, in Shelby County, not just for our school system, we need a massive cash infusion from state and federal sources. It’s school buildings, it’s hospitals, it’s jails, and the math doesn’t make sense without suddenly a huge infusion of external private or public dollars.
You served on the school board through a pretty significant period of mistrust. What do you think the current board can and should do to win back the public’s trust?
I think it’s radical transparency, and I think they’re doing it. I think this is a small example, but Dr. Richmond presented on why we closed schools on Monday. And that gave the really nuanced version of all of the operational decisions that led up to that decision.
And I think something to practice after committees and business meetings is giving a recap of what happened. And you want people to have every incentive to not sit through your four-hour meeting. So give them a preview, and if they have thoughts, they can come share them. Like ‘Here’s what’s coming in committees next week. We will be voting on them the following Tuesday.’ Make it easy to engage in the process.
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
