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To dig in to her new job as superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Colleges, Marie Feagins took her seat at a desk.
Not her personal desk at district headquarters, however a scholar desk in a classroom. She sat amid Northaven Elementary College college students studying how you can put collectively and outline compound phrases like “horsefly” and “blackbird,” and later with Grandview Heights Center College seventh graders fixing math phrase issues about super-cold temperatures.
“I actually need to see — and really feel, extra importantly — what the expertise is like for you all,” she instructed a gaggle of Grandview Heights college students in April.
It wasn’t all only for the cameras. Feagins, 42 years previous, got here to Memphis having established a protracted file as an advocate for college kids, beginning with an internship in Alabama serving youth coming into the workforce and extra not too long ago as a prime tutorial official in Detroit’s public college district working to spice up high-school commencement charges.
She’s placing that file to the take a look at in a district that should enhance stagnating tutorial outcomes for college kids and restore the belief that has been eroded by scandals and college board discord.
Feagins has formally been superintendent for under about two months, however has been gearing up for this position for a very long time. She revealed a doctoral dissertation in 2020 that examined challenges for Black ladies in getting employed and succeeding as superintendents. She secured her Tennessee educating license earlier than returning for the second spherical of interviews for the MSCS job, and arrived in Memphis inside weeks after her choice, even earlier than she had a last contract.
She started her official time period with a nine-day college and neighborhood tour, searching for to construct relationships and belief as the primary outsider to run the merged district because it was shaped a decade in the past. She has chronicled her experiences in social media posts and feedback, even responding to others’ posts about her.
She has known as upon a crew of present and former superintendents to information her by means of the transition, and assembled a a lot bigger group of native stakeholders to assist develop a long-awaited strategic plan for the district. And he or she has a crew of about 100 college students advocating for his or her 100,000 classmates throughout the district.
Between her college visits, neighborhood conferences, and the early teambuilding, Memphians are starting to study extra about how the brand new chief will train her energy over Tennessee’s largest college district, how she’s going to construct bridges in a neighborhood the place she has by no means labored earlier than, and the way she’s going to flip analysis and imaginative and prescient into motion and alter.
Michelle McKissack, the varsity board member who nominated Feagins for the job, took early observe of the brand new superintendent’s depth.
“I felt that she captured having imaginative and prescient for this district, and for our youngsters, and bringing individuals collectively. I believe what she has already performed in just some weeks’ time, earlier than she even began formally, that’s precisely what I used to be on the lookout for,” McKissack instructed Chalkbeat in early April.
Feagins is already being examined. She began three months sooner than the board initially deliberate. So her first month coincided with a last-minute announcement of a faculty closure and a contentious Tennessee legislative session that heaped new measures on Memphis. She’s shaking up prime management with open purposes for brand spanking new job titles and is the face of a whole lot of anticipated place cuts and realignments wanted to scale back spending by $150 million.
Although Feagins has had some wins, equivalent to elevated instructor pay, constructing her personal management crew may very well be an opportunity to quell early considerations from some college board members that her management model was based mostly extra on concept than proof. Her district administration expertise is restricted to a current three years in Detroit, the place she held 4 completely different roles.
Supporters from all through her profession stated Feagins’ strengths are her communication and other people abilities. She celebrated her most up-to-date birthday — her fifth day as superintendent — by organizing a Habitat for Humanity construct with groups of scholar athletes.
Feagins, who declined to talk with Chalkbeat for this story, has been open about desirous to be a superintendent. She utilized for the Memphis position throughout the first search in 2023, and has pursued the highest job earlier than elsewhere. A earlier job software impressed Michael Hinojosa, a former superintendent of practically 30 years in Texas and Georgia who was a part of the search crew.
Feagins didn’t get an interview, however Hinojosa thought, “This girl goes locations.” He saved her quantity, and is now main a crew of present and former superintendents, together with Carol Johnson Dean, the previous superintendent of Memphis Metropolis Colleges — who’re serving to Feagins strategize her first strikes.
For all her willpower, Feagins didn’t all the time image herself as a superintendent, she instructed an inquisitive Grandview Heights scholar throughout that April go to.
“I didn’t even know I may very well be a superintendent,” she stated.
“Each superintendent I’ve ever had or seen has been a person, and a person that didn’t appear to be me,” she added. However she knew she needed to be a frontrunner, she instructed the scholars, and run a big group. As superintendent, she stated, she’ll combine the artwork of management with the artwork of educating.
Feagins stood out as an advocate for college kids
Feagins, who graduated from the College of Alabama, started her profession within the South, and has centered on schooling and associated roles, aside from transient stints in enterprise and native journalism. The curated biography she shared notes that she as soon as received a visitor co-anchor place with Katie Couric, and has appeared in movies together with “Selma.”
One in every of her first jobs was with the youth providers division of Birmingham, Alabama, working below one other younger chief, Cedric Sparks, who’s now chief of employees for Mayor Randall Woodfin. She started as an intern, Sparks stated, serving to with programming for college kids coming into the workforce. Inventive and attentive, Feagins took path properly but additionally developed and carried out her personal concepts advocating for college kids.
“You couldn’t put her in a field,” recalled Sparks, who has since obtained common profession updates from Feagins.
Sparks credit his personal rise to somebody seeing and nurturing his potential. Of Feagins, he stated, “I might hope that they might give her the identical grace.”
As her profession superior, Feagins saved up along with her colleagues and mentors, and cited testimonials from dozens of them on an internet site she listed on her resume. Sparks was amongst them, as was Clarence Sutton, Jr., the longtime principal at Central Excessive College in Tuscaloosa, which has struggled with tutorial efficiency and integration.
Sutton, now superintendent of Huntsville Metropolis Colleges, remembers Feagins’ transient stint as a counselor for the best way she might join with every scholar, and expose them to new alternatives.
Feagins arrived within the Midwest in 2017 as an assistant principal at Cleveland’s John F. Kennedy PACT Excessive College. The college’s college students had been predominantly Black and got here from poor households, as with many Memphis colleges, and its tutorial efficiency was among the many lowest in Ohio, in keeping with state information.
Aaron Talton, who was a scholar at JFK PACT on the time, recollects Feagins making a stir at first along with her Southern accent, brilliant clothes and smile, and establishing herself as an advocate for college kids.
Importantly, he stated, she tried to fill of their gaps.
“She got here and he or she dominated the place,” Talton stated, describing a frontrunner who “stood out in ways in which had been controversial” as a result of individuals weren’t used to the kind of accountability in management she displayed.
When college students had been banned from convening after college on the library within the buying heart across the nook, Feagins expanded tutoring hours after college, Talton stated. She helped present him a costume shirt and slacks, making him extra comfy in skilled areas.
Talton grew to become a first-generation school scholar and graduated from Ohio’s Central State College.
Throughout her February interview for the Memphis job, Feagins instructed board members about her efforts to extend mother or father engagement at JFK PACT Excessive, by creating applications that translated schooling jargon to phrases that households might higher perceive. A part of that was speaking information concerning the college’s failing letter grade.
Feagins took over as principal in 2019-20, the yr interrupted by the beginning of the pandemic. Clarke Perkins, who was new to educating and Cleveland then, remembers Feagins having to step into the principal position on the year-round college with out a lot discover.
Feagins provided steering, Perkins stated, however didn’t decrease expectations. She was the sort of chief who needed to make change, regardless of systemic obstacles dealing with the varsity. Collectively, they stayed late to wrap packages with sweatshirts for college kids. They organized Black Historical past Month programming and a mock election.
“I’m telling you, she’s like superwoman,” stated Perkins, who’s now an legal professional.
Feagins capped off her first yr as principal with a drive-thru commencement. She was the final principal of the varsity earlier than it closed and merged into a brand new constructing a mile away.
In Detroit, Feagins pushed for extra college students to graduate
By the subsequent summer season, she was within the Detroit public college district, the place she spent practically three years. Half of that point was in a task overseeing excessive colleges and management, and the opposite half was cut up between three completely different roles, together with as a particular assistant to the superintendent.
Throughout interviews with the Memphis college board, Feagins touted her work in Detroit to enhance outcomes for top schoolers after the pandemic, particularly commencement charges. Detroit’s efforts throughout that interval included shut monitoring of scholar progress and elevated consideration to credit score restoration, the place college students who will not be on monitor to graduate shift to make-up choices for coursework.
The commencement charge, a four-year metric, started to bounce again and got here to 74% for the 2022-23 college yr. That was a couple of proportion level away from the pre-pandemic charge, and the primary couple years of enhancements that the district’s commencement charge had seen in years.
In a suggestion letter written in Might 2022, Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti praised Feagins for the “improved cohesion” she dropped at these reforms.
Feagins started by sharing information with the principals, carefully auditing scholar transcripts, and attending to know the particular tales about why colleges had been behind, so she might assign further employees, she instructed Memphis board members. By monitoring the information every day, Feagins stated, she and college employees had been in a position to make fast enhancements to the variety of college students who had been on monitor to graduate.
Essentially the most profitable technique, she instructed board members in February, was “operation commencement,” which included a last push to the end line: Colleges competed with each other to lower the variety of make-up programs college students wanted to be on monitor for commencement. They had been celebrated with public recognition and a trophy, Feagins stated. The profitable college hosted a basketball recreation between lecturers and employees, whose evaluations additionally included these highschool success metrics.
“I did no matter we would have liked to do to make the work enjoyable, as a result of that’s not enjoyable work,” Feagins instructed board members in February. “I additionally didn’t need youngsters to really feel like as a result of they had been to this point behind that it was not possible.”
The dropout charge declined in 2021-22, however elevated to a current excessive of 16% for the 2022-23 college yr, Michigan information present.
Though the information on four-year commencement charges was promising, Chalkbeat Detroit reported in March 2023 that it got here with prices. Credit score restoration programs helped college students get again on monitor to graduate. However as a result of many had been on-line, they may very well be disruptive to highschool studying experiences. College students who transferred to different colleges to concentrate on restoration programs missed out on golf equipment and different applications at their former colleges.
Feagins seems poised to deliver among the Detroit methods to Memphis, in hopes of boosting the district’s commencement charge from close to 82%. She’s proposed $1.5 million in assets towards growing the frequency of transcript audits, and including employees who can concentrate on freshman and sophomore college students on the district’s lowest performing excessive colleges, and counselors who can assist preserve college students on monitor.
“All of these (profession) experiences have afforded me a reasonably huge lens,” Feagins instructed reporters in Might, “in order that nothing actually surprises me apart from we’re not a bit farther alongside than we’re. And we’re not the place I consider we must be.”
(Ariel J. Cobbert for Chalkbeat)
Feagins’ early steps purpose to rebuild belief in MSCS
Feagins, although new to Memphis, is aware of concerning the significance of building belief — each amongst college board members and the neighborhood. She wrote about that in that doctoral dissertation, noting that lack of belief can immediate superintendent departures.
Already, Feagins has acknowledged that 10% of instructor positions are vacant, sharing a determine that the district traditionally has been reluctant to publicize. Transparency with the varsity board, Feagins present in her analysis, is a method to enhance belief.
“Individuals typically don’t care what’s in your resume, actually,” stated Johnson Dean, the previous Memphis superintendent. “They care about the way you work together with individuals and the way responsive you’re to their wants.”
The flexibility to reestablish belief within the college system was a constant theme throughout Memphis’ tortuous seek for a superintendent to interchange Joris Ray, who resigned in 2022 amid an investigation and scandal.
Feagins, for her half, has sought to fulfill the problem by maintaining a full schedule of college excursions and neighborhood conferences, and by surrounding herself with advisers who perceive town and the job.
And the neighborhood has responded to her openness.
“A change is gonna come,” a refrain of Melrose Excessive College college students sang to Feagins on the morning of April 1, her first day on the job.
The Orange Mound highschool welcomed her with balloons and performances by the band and the cheer crew, and different communities confirmed related enthusiasm. Parking tons overflowed as college leaders and households confirmed as much as see prime college students celebrated and listen to from Feagins, who entered to a Tye Tribbett monitor proclaiming “new, new, new all the pieces.”
“We needed her to really feel comfy, like she’s at house, like she’s strolling into her personal college,” Melrose junior Rhyan Brown instructed Chalkbeat. His friends hope Feagins can preserve alumni concerned within the college, and discover methods to extra meaningfully deal with scholar conduct and produce extra lecturers to the varsity, reasonably than digital instructor options.
It’s early but, however Feagins’ tenure to this point has provided refreshing concord among the many superintendent, board, and neighborhood, stated Venita Doggett, director of advocacy for the Memphis Schooling Fund. Doggett had carefully scrutinized the superintendent search with requests for extra transparency and genuine neighborhood engagement. Now she’s wanting towards the crew Feagins assembles to assist her execute within the position.
Finally, Doggett stated, how she assembles her cupboard and advisory groups “will inform us what her management appears to be like like,” Doggett stated. “Proper now, she feels very inclusive.”
Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Colleges for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Attain Laura at [email protected].
