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The Memphis-Shelby County Faculties board has known as a particular assembly for Tuesday night to debate terminating the contract of Superintendent Marie Feagins, who formally began within the place simply eight months in the past after a protracted search.
The board in February voted to rent Feagins away from a management place on the Detroit Public Faculties Group District, making her the primary outdoors chief to direct Tennessee’s largest college district because it was created by a merger a decade in the past.
Nevertheless, tensions emerged rapidly between the board and Feagins over staffing points and plans to shut and consolidate colleges as a part of a sweeping amenities plan.
The particular assembly — scheduled for five:30 p.m. Tuesday — caught a minimum of one board member off guard.
“I’m simply as surprised as the general public,” stated Michelle McKissack, who represents District 1 and has been a robust supporter of Feagins. “I realized about this at about the identical time as everybody else. There was no dialogue, a minimum of with my presence there, to warrant this assembly.”
Different college board members couldn’t be reached or declined to remark Monday evening.
One other management shakeup might be a jarring setback for a district that took greater than a 12 months to decide on and set up Feagins and faces a collection of great tutorial and monetary challenges.
It additionally may put the board at odds with neighborhood leaders, lots of whom have been glad to see Feagins taking steps to shake up a district they considered as top-heavy and in want of great reforms.
After Feagins began, tensions with the board developed rapidly over her resolution to get rid of round 1,100 positions over the summer season, her allegations of extra time abuse by some district staff at a value of $1 million, and her administration’s slowness to handle air-con and different college constructing wants earlier than the beginning of this tutorial 12 months.
There have been additionally missteps over college security in August, simply after the college 12 months started, as Feagins narrowly averted a walkout by college useful resource officers and accepted the resignation of the district’s new safety chief simply days after he began.
The relationships didn’t appear to enhance after college board elections that changed 4 of the board’s 9 members.
Tensions grew over the amenities plan Feagins’ administration was growing to shut or consolidate colleges — a blueprint that possible would have an effect on almost each board member’s district.
There was additionally anger after the Memphis Metropolis Council rejected the district’s deliberate website to construct a brand new highschool in Cordova to switch Germantown Excessive College underneath a 2022 settlement with Germantown and state officers. A number of board members stated Feagins ought to have leaned extra on board members to foyer council members for the brand new website.
Feagins got here to Memphis effectively conscious of the dangers of a strained relationship with board members. Her 2020 doctoral dissertation, Chalkbeat reported in Might, famous {that a} lack of belief can immediate superintendent departures.
At a tense college board assembly on Oct. 21, after a short dialogue with members about constructing challenges, Feagins grew to become emotional when board member Amber Garcia-Huett requested her what she was most happy with thus far in her transient tenure.
Her voice breaking, Feagins stated: “Folks — leaders who preserve exhibiting up each day, dedicated to one thing they will’t see.”
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.