Parents get a ‘LIFT’ with their children’s education

'LIFT' parents include Carmelita Hernandez (left), Victoria Kirkwood, Tonya Sevion-
Cole and Marquita Finnie. (Photos by Wiley Henry)

Since parental involvement is sorely missing in the public schools system, The Memphis LIFT (TML) is on the move to make sure that more parents are involved in the education of their school-aged children.

Last year, a team led by John Little, TML’s surge director, knocked on nearly 11,000 doors throughout Memphis to inform parents about school choice, the radical changes in public education, and to build widespread demand for high quality schools.

TML is a parent-focused advocacy group designed to “educate, engage and empower.” “We’re making a difference,” said Little, a community organizer who first joined LIFT in March 2015. “We have a long way to go. It’s only a drop in the bucket, but we have to keep adding drops.”

Sarah Carpenter, director of The Memphis LIFT.

Little is one of 20 staffers at TML, a non-profit with varied resources to help parents. There is a director of choice counseling, director of operations, and director of Public Advocate Fellowship (PAF) – each working in tandem to give parents the tools they need to improve the quality of education for their children.

Dianechia Fields is the director PAF, “a revolutionary program designed by and for parents to increase the number of parents who participate in the public conversation about education in our city.” TML offers the program free of charge.

“We used to do 20-25 parents a class, which were two classes one day a week,” said Fields. “Now we will have four classes two days a week. We’re looking at reaching 62 parents. The four classes will start Sept. 12.”

“The only way we can save our kids is to educate our parents,” said Sarah Carpenter, TML’s new director and longtime community activist fighting for children. “When you educate parents, they can go to the schools and know the right questions to ask. That’s what we do here.”

Carpenter also said, “We got to meet people where they are and take them to where they’re trying to go, and that is to educate and empower and engage the parents. We’re trying to reach that powerless parent and make that parent powerful.”

Marquita Finnie is the mother of five children. All five are in school. “I have gained more knowledge of what’s going on in the school system than what I knew,” said Finnie, who volunteered each day at Whitney Achievement Elementary when school was in session.

Finnie is now aware that there are options and choices available in public education that will improve her children’s performance. And she’s using the best of TML’s tools to make sure that her children are attending the right schools.

Carmelita Hernandez has six children; three of them will be attending school when the doors open on Aug. 8. Hernandez didn’t know anything about TML until Carpenter gave her the lowdown on the work the advocacy group has been doing to help parents.

“I try to focus on Hispanic parents who don’t say anything, because they think this (education) is better than anything,” said Hernandez, who is advocating for Hispanics at Raleigh Egypt Middle School. “Here (Shelby County Schools), education should be equal no matter where you come from – but it’s not always that way.”

Hernandez said the language barrier sometimes keep Hispanic parents uninformed and out of the loop when they have questions concerning school placement and the tools they need to educate their children.

“You got to push. You got to ask for something. It may be no, but later on it may be yes. That’s what I tell them,” she said.

TML is available to all parents – black, white, Hispanic – whatever their needs are, Carpenter said. “If we empower the parents, we’re on our way.”

(For more information, contact The Memphis LIFT at 901-276-0850 or by email at info@thememphislift.org)

Low enrollment among reasons school board decided to close Northside HIgh School

Phyllis Randolph, a Northside High School graduate and retired schoolteacher
who once taught at the school, is fighting to keep her alma mater from closing
(Photo by Wiley Henry)

     Phyllis Randolph and Michael Adrian Davis had three minutes each to convince the Shelby County Schools board to keep Northside High School open during a special call meeting on Tuesday night, June 21. But their passionate plea was not enough to stave off the inevitable.

Northside’s doors will not be open for the 2016-17 school year. The board voted 5-3 to close the school, reversing a one-year reprieve the board granted in May. Students will be rezoned for Manassas High School, a little more than a mile away.

Board member Scott McCormick motioned to close Northside immediately, citing a number of reasons for reversing the board’s decision to keep the school open for a year: the transfer of all but four teachers; an enrollment of 36 students verses 190 in 2015.

“For these reasons, I asked the board to reconsider our decision to close Northside…and to go ahead and make it effective for this year,” said McCormick, noting that the delay of Northside’s closing had become a recruitment tool for charter schools.

“We have to think about the best interest of all the students,” said board member Chris Caldwell, who asked Supt. Dorsey Hopson a hypothetical question about finding “quality” teachers and more students should the school remain open.

Hopson said there would be serious operational challenges, such as making sure the seniors have the course offerings and the staff necessary to graduate. “You can have a scenario where you have a school with less than 100 kids,” he said. “While the decision [was] to give the community another year…it did create serious challenges.”

The superintendent said he didn’t see a credible path in trying to staff the school, knowing the school was going to close.

Northside was one of three schools the board voted to close during a meeting in April. Carver High School was given the axe in June and Messick Adult Center was booted from the district in February. The board’s decision to close the schools was based primarily on declining enrollment.

Randolph said the school she graduated from in 1970 could have been spared the proverbial axe that’s being used to close “schools in the black community.” The closing of Northside could have been adverted, she said, if vocational classes were re-instituted.

“What happened to all the vocational classes that Northside once had? They need to bring those vocational classes back,” said Randolph. “Everybody is not college-bound or college material. But that doesn’t mean students can’t be successful.”

 “Northside has a lot of promise. North Memphis has a lot of promise,” said Davis, a 1982 graduate. “The Bible talks about iron sharpening iron. And when you take away the iron, it leaves you with rust. The rust can be cleaned. It can be made useful again.”

Davis encouraged the board to change its mind about closing Northside. “Once you’re in these seats, in these kinds of meetings, it’s not really to hear what we have to say,” he said. “Basically, it’s to tell us what you’ve already decided.”

The handful of Northside alums in the audience gasped when board chair Teresa Jones rendered the expected verdict. “Northside will close at the end of this school year,” she said. Jones had asked the board for the one-year reprieve.

“I made the recommendation because the community implored me as their representative to do so,” she said.

“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” said Randolph. “And I don’t hear her singing.”

The closures could save the district more than $3 million.

Juneteenth 2012 salutes African-American educators

Juneteenth is a jubilant celebration marking an end to slavery in the United States. It is an annual celebration now in dozens of cities and states -- including Memphis, where the Juneteenth Freedom & Heritage Festival marks its 19^th year in historic Douglass Park June 15-17 -- that recognizes the long-fought battle over African-American bondage and the long wait for freedom.

But this sordid epoch in human history only reminds us that we have come a long way and yet have a long way to go to achieve equity, parity, justice and freedom for all God’s children. For example, African Americans were prohibited from reading and writing for fear it would encourage revolt, improve their comprehension abilities, and thus improve their lot in life. That’s why we’re saluting African-American educators for their tireless work in education and their commitment to improving the lot of African-American children and others in the school system here and elsewhere.

Would you believe there were anti-education laws on the books that prohibited the teaching of slaves? Case in point: There was a law in Alabama in 1832 that fined a person $250-$500 for educating a slave. And then there was Brown v Board of Education (1954), a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. This landmark case overturned Plessy v Ferguson (1896), which allowed state-sponsored segregation.

Today, as it was then, an educated person -- whomever he or she is or whatever creed or color he or she happens to be -- stands a better chance of weathering storms of resistance in the struggle for civil rights, human rights, human dignity and respect, and the pursuit of education. African Americans have made significant accomplishments and gains in education both as teachers and students: Marva Collins, who founded the Westside Preparatory School in 1975 in an impoverished neighborhood in Chicago; Booker T. Washington, an author, orator, political leader, educator and reformer who presided as president of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University); and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and civil rights leader who started a school in Daytona Beach, Fla., that became Bethune-Cookman University.

Educators today have much to contend with. While African-American educators such as Collins, Washington and Bethune were instrumental in creating educational opportunities for African Americans, they succeeded in spite of the turbulent racial climate of the day by making gallant strides to ensure their students’ educational attainment. 

Education reform is now sweeping America. In the recent past, No Child Left Behind undoubtedly was the most significant reform efforts in the United States, which determined success by good scores on standardized tests in reading and math and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on student test scores. Now in Memphis, many teachers are feeling the anguish and the possible termination of their jobs when Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools officially merge during the 2013 school year. 

Educators are necessary in society if the people are going to move forward. We all owe a debt of gratitude to teachers who spend six to eight hours in the classroom teaching the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic so our children can become productive members in society. So this year we salute African-American educators for enriching our minds and enabling us to compete in a world still wrought in inequity. In many cases, the playing field is still uneven.