Dancing To The Right Notes At School

Interim Superintendent Dan Ward was right.

It was just hard to hear him over the “don’t confuse me with the facts” approach of Bill O’Reilly. Mr. Ward said on Mr. O’Reilly’s cable network program that the Mitchell High School students who were caught on tape simulating rape as part of a dance should not become the faces of the 113,000 students of Memphis City Schools.

We thought of that Friday night as we watched 20 young people dance at the “open house performance” at Dance Works in the Southwest Tennessee Community College Theater.

Art Works

They danced to the music of Bartok played by the strings of the Germantown Symphony Orchestra; to Mingus played by long-time Memphis talents, keyboardist Tony Thomas and alto saxophonist Gary Topper and to an original jazz composition by Jeremy Shrader played by the composer on trumpet and Gerald Stephens on piano.

It was a 90-minute reminder about the profound impact that arts can have on students, but more precisely, it was a reminder that students are searching for – and responding to - positive and creative ways to express themselves. Friday night, they found expression in pirouettes and tendus.

It was light years from the message conveyed by the Mitchell High School video, and although the Dance Works performance was taped, it’ll never make the evening news. That’s not to say that it shouldn’t be, because the performance offered timely reminders about students on so many levels.

Credit Where Credit’s Due

It also was a lesson that should be reinforced by Memphis City Schools, which, unlike many similar districts, does not give these students class credits for the hours of practice, discipline and commitment that precedes a recital like this one. That is equally true for the young ballerina who will spend her summer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and School in New York, but can’t get high school credits for her success.

It’s an egregious oversight by our city schools. If students can be earning credits during a day that includes a “rape dance” and can be earning credits for bowling, we can only hope that someone at the district will investigate ways in which students like these – and others engaged in artistic pursuits all over Memphis – can be rewarded for their extra effort.

For us, what we watched Friday night wasn’t so much students who had learned to dance as students who had a positive vision for their lives and had taken the steps – sometimes difficult and courageous - to make it happen. If public education can’t find a way to recognize them and encourage them, it is myopic and rule-bound to a degree that it suggests that its culture is incapable of change.

Positive Reinforcement

We know that most of the members of the board of commissioners are strongly supportive of these kinds of after-school artistic programs. We also know that most of them are unaware that other districts give credit to students engaged in similar programs. In the wake of the Mitchell High School controversy, it’s hard to imagine a better time for them to send a message about who better represents Memphis City Schools.

Our friend, George Lord, recently reminded us recently about how important the arts are, and why actions that deemphasize them are short-sighted if we are truly interested and committed to the development of fully-formed young people.

He pointed out that young people who regularly participate in comprehensive, sequential and rigorous arts programs are four times more likely to be recognized for academic performance, three times more likely to be elected to class office, four times more likely to participate in a math or science fair, three times more like to win an award for school attendance and four times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem.

Life Lessons

The arts provide children with different ways to process information and express their knowledge, the ability to think creatively in areas like math and science and the ability to be independent and collaborative.

The arts also teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships, to celebrate multiple perspectives showing students that there are many ways to see and interpret the world, make it clear that the limits of our language do not define the limits of cognition and help children learn to say what cannot be said.

Yes, it’s true that we only saw about 20 students at Dance Works. But it is equally true that we can change the future of this city 20 students at a time.

Real Heroes

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote:

“Like so many unsung people in our city, she worked with the simple nobility that seems to characterize the real heroes of Memphis – the people without titles and without celebrity – who, without regard for recognition or for headlines, day in and day out simply try to make this a better place.”

We were reminded of that kind of simple nobility at Dance Works as well.

For 21 years – 16 of them at Southwest Tennessee Community College – it has been working in the trenches of arts education to provide an accredited ballet program that has a Canadian cultural exchange program. Supported by grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission and ArtsMemphis, it is directed by Karen J. Zissoff who is assisted by Sondra Brooks Whitfield, who also qualify to be called heroes.

Superintendent Search Defies Predictable Script

And then there were three.

Would the last person standing please run Memphis City Schools for us?

If superintendent-wannabe Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton had written a script to move him toward the helm of the district, he couldn’t have done it any better.

All of a sudden, it seems a real possibility.

The Factors

First, there’s the oft-stated opinion that the next superintendent should be an African-American man. There’s only one candidate left who fits that profile – Kriner Cash, chief of accountability and systemwide performance for Miami-Dade Public Schools. The other African-American man in the final five was Buffalo Superintendent James Williams who bowed out after his baggage there became too much for a trip to Memphis for an interview.

Second, the Florida candidate is said to be most interested in the vacant Cincinnati superintendent’s job, but the finalists for the June interviews for that position haven’t been announced yet. The conventional wisdom is that if given a shot at the Ohio job in his hometown, Mr. Cash is likely to bow out of the Memphis hunt.

Third, that would leave only one African-American man with a stated interest in the Memphis City Schools job and the educational credentials that could finally put him at the front ranks of people to run the schools – Mayor Herenton. And, is there any city in the U.S. with a track record for conducting “national searches” and then picking an insider from Memphis?

The Favorite

While he has repeatedly said that he’s not interested in the job, Mayor Herenton’s closest advisers continue to say that if given the chance, he would snap up the chance to have the superintendent’s job book end his terms as mayor. In fact, he reportedly continues to fine tune his strategies for turning around the district.

At this point, however, Mr. Cash seems to be the prohibitive favorite for the Memphis superintendency. Most board members were impressed by his answers to their questions, albeit mostly softball ones, during his recent interview – equal parts assertive, philosophical, inspirational and confident. Of course, the fact that he’s been an understudy to school reformer and 2008 National Superintendent of the Year Rudy Crew also gets him major points (although we wonder what would happen if a Calipari-style proposal was put to Mr. Crew himself).

Mr. Crew – well-connected in political and educational circles across the U.S. and who lost his job as head of New York City Schools for the best of all reasons, opposing private school vouchers – speaks glowingly of Mr. Cash, who has worked for him for three years at the nation’s fourth largest school district.

Casting A Shadow

We predict that the board, in response to concerns about Mayor Herenton’s shadow casting a large shadow over their process, will step up the process as much as possible to find a superintendent as quickly as possible. This may effectively force a decision from Mr. Cash who may be unable to wait until the smoke clears in Cincinnati to weigh his options.

Already, Memphis City Schools’ chief of staff is collecting money to buy Interim Superintendent Dan Ward his good-bye gift, and although she suggested that his last day may be at the end of May, Mr. Ward appears to have a mid-June date in mind. At any rate, all of this puts even more urgency behind a process that was already moving at a quickened pace.

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati superintendent search has the potential for delays as a result of its board’s wise decision to create a 20-member search committee that includes grassroots leaders and organizational representatives. Already, some members are saying that the mid-June deadline for identifying finalists is too ambitious.

Detouring

It seems highly possible that both candidates who have withdrawn – Mr. Williams and Montgomery County (Virginia) Superintendent Tiffany Anderson – were well-aware of Mayor Herenton’s specter over the process, and if they are media savvy at all, they knew of his television interviews about the kind of superintendent needed here as the interviews began.

Mr. Cash seemed especially savvy about such things as a result of his experience in the political cauldron that is the Miami school district. We’ll know just how smart he is if, by the time he returns for his follow-up interview, he has talked directly with Mayor Herenton, because it is well within the realm of possibilities that the mayor would be impressed and endorse him.

As the process takes a detour caused by the candidates’ withdrawals and that creates a sense of discomfort among some board members, it’s worth saluting them for launching a national search in the first place and for sticking with it. In the beginning, there was widespread suspicion that the fix was in and that a majority was determined to drive the process to select their favorite son candidate, academic director Alfred Hall.

Educational Balkans

Apparently, there will be several weeks between the departure of Mr. Ward and the arrival of the new superintendent, and if there are any hopes still harbored for Mr. Hall, they may surface in the appointment of Mr. Hall as the interim interim superintendent.

As the board determines what it wants from the next superintendent, the board will also have the opportunity to determine what it wants from itself. Perhaps, the board – as city and county governments are in the process of doing – will consider much-needed changes that can improve decisions of Memphis City Schools.

Chief among them should be a shift from district-based elections that create a balkanized board preoccupied by patronage issues. While we believe that a mayor-appointed board would be preferable to the present structure, citywide elections would be preferable to the current arrangement.

Getting The Focus Right

Other reforms are equally needed, because as Richard Elmore, education professor at Harvard University, has said, “it would be difficult to invent a more dysfunctional organization for a performance-based accountability system” than today’s public education system.

To that point, elections of members by district distract the board from the overall vision for the district as they address and respond to school loyalties and constituent services from a small part of the city, fragmenting the focus of the board, dividing its effectiveness for overall district policy-setting and injecting them into issues from teacher assignment to principal appointment to school facilities that rest more appropriately with the school administration.

In other words, elections by these districts create political connections that run into the district bureaucracy and often cloud the clear decision-making of the board itself. This is not an indictment of the current board or administration, because it is has existed for years as the nature of the structure itself.

The Right Focus

Of course, there are other board responsibilities even more important – such as a laser-like focus on performance-based, data-driven accountability measured by graduation rates, increased enrollment in college, ability to obtain and keep good jobs and not just merely by test scores.

Most of all, it is the board’s responsibility above all others to make sure that jobs are held by people based on what they know, not who they know. In this regard, in pursuit of greater transparency, the board should insist that the nepotism forms required by district policy are actually being filed.

No one should need reminders that this is a history-altering moment for Memphis City Schools, and by extension, for Memphis. But history doesn’t just happen. It requires leaders who step forward to set in motion new thinking that can define a new destiny. Every decision made in Memphis City Schools – particularly selection of a superintendent – should be made on this basis.

This Week On Smart City: Transportation, Capital Punishment and Chattanooga

Why is it that we typically separate planning for highways, transit, and trains in the U.S.? Worse, why do we plan for transportation and land use as if they don’t relate to one another? Those are subjects we’ll explore this week with Shelley Porticia, president and CEO of Reconnecting America. She’s working to integrate transportation systems and the communities they serve.

We’ll also talk with Dr. Scott Phillips about some disturbing disparities he’s found in the way we apply capital punishment to blacks and whites in America.

And Dr. John Schaerer of the Enterprise Center will tell us about a novel system Chattanooga has adopted to keep community organizations working together.

Smart City is a syndicated, weekly hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life: the people, places, ideas and trends that affect us all. Host Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, talks with national and international public policy experts, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others on the pulse of city life for a penetrating discussion on urban issues.

Smart City is broadcast at 6 a.m. Saturday and Sundays on WKNO-FM, but it is also webcast and podcast. For the webcast, times for the broadcast in other cities and to sign up for the podcast, visit our website.

Trafficking In The Answers For A Better Downtown

It seems the perfect time to revisit two ideas about downtown streets that deserve new life.

One deals with Fourth Street from Union to Beale and the second is Main Street, which is neither main nor a street.

During the design of FedEx Forum, it was suggested by Looney Ricks Kiss – probably our most nationally known architectural firm and well-known for its place-making – that Fourth Street should be realigned from Union Avenue to Beale Street.

Sense Of Arrival

The firm’s charge was to design a downtown arena that was unsurpassed in the U.S., and as part of that work, the firm recommended that the intersection of Fourth Street be moved about 150 feet east of the current intersection at Union. The concept was for Fourth Street to become an attractive boulevard that would move pleasantly at a southwesterly angle toward Beale Street.

The new Fourth would have given not only FedEx Forum a sense of arrival, but it would have done the same for the east end of Beale Street. While the idea may have been driven by esthetics, there was also the thought that the new alignment could give new prominence to the Fourth and Beale intersection, which has been the death knell for so many business ventures.

Conventional wisdom on Beale Street is that the Fourth Street end of the street is just seen as being too far removed from the activity on the street, and the floundering businesses on that end of the street give weight to that opinion.

Bonus Points

However, the real bonus of the new alignment was that it would eliminate several eyesores - including the dingy hotel and the deteriorating, frequently empty building - across from Autozone Park. There also was the potential for removing the abandoned bus station that stands on the southwest corner of Fourth and Beale today.

Unfortunately, some powerful downtown interests had other ideas, and the idea died. Some opposed the plans because they had plans of their own for the bus station, and others seemed intent on making as much traffic as possible go by Peabody Place. In the end, it was a lost opportunity that would have linked the baseball stadium and the arena in an attractive and resourceful way.

Another reason for the realignment was that Union Avenue was seen as a major connection point for MATA and this would encourage basketball fans taking the bus to their college and pro games. Of course, no one knew then that the Forum allegedly would have its very own multi-modal transfer center.

Modest Proposal

As for Main Street, former design director for the National Endowment for the Arts Jeff Speck said in his recent presentation about 12 modest proposals to improve Memphis design and connectivity that for $50,000, we could put traffic back on our moribund pedestrian mall.

It may sound like too little too late. After all, the mall has already strangled the life out of what Main Street used to be and turned the teeming street into modest pockets of activity in an area begging for vibrancy and animation. Is it only a pipe dream that traffic would inject some renewed economic life into a street whose only retail store between Union and Poplar is the beloved peanut shop?

We didn’t come to share Mr. Speck’s opinion easily, but at this point, it just seems like it’s worth a try. After all, it’s not like he proposed turning Main Street into the autobahn or even turning it back like it used to be. Rather, he recommended two lanes of slow-moving traffic.

Failing To See Failure

Also, as co-author of Suburban Nation and a founding adherent to New Urbanism, it’s not as if he is hostile to walkable, dense downtowns and a high quality public sphere. If there is a monument to faddish planning trends, our Mid-American Mall is the poster child.

While some editorial writers opine that 30 years may not be enough to consider the pedestrian mall a failure, it’s long enough for us. We’d like to think that we’ll actually have the chance to see signs of life on Main Street before we have to use a walker to get up there.

Maybe we are just too old. We remember when Main Street bustled. There’s no question that it would have in time been transformed by the shift in consumer loyalty to suburban malls, but like subsequent trolley construction, mall construction and reconstruction often killed off the very businesses that it was designed to support.

All About Convenience

Shoppers abandoned downtown pedestrian malls across the U.S. as inconvenient and inaccessible, and Memphis was no exception. In our defense, we were not the only city that chased the pedestrian mall as the answer to our downtown’s ability to compete with suburban malls. About 200 cities flirted with malls for a few blocks and some like us consummated the relationship with our entire main downtown shopping district.

While a few pedestrian malls remain and are thriving, they seem to be largely located in college towns. In big cities like ours, the trend is much more to returning some traffic to the malls.

In a study of malls built in the 1960s and 1970s in Santa Monica, Eugene, Oak Park, Sioux Falls, Vicksburg, Baltimore, Ithaca, Memphis, Miami Beach and St. Joseph, it was found that 70 percent of them were successful for a few years but then business declined. By 1989, half of them had either totally or partially opened up their pedestrian malls to traffic and two more were thinking about it.

Real City Center

It’s worth remembering that the trolley system itself was a recognition of the fact that our pedestrian mall just wasn’t working. Of the cities that reopened their malls, all reported gains in business.

We’re not Pollyannish about this. The return of downtown to a real city center with retail stores and boutiques will be slow and arduous, but it seems worth a try to return cars to the street and see what happens.

The most we’d be out, according to Mr. Speck, is $50,000, and we’ll spend a heckuva lot more than studying what our next magic answer will be.

Worth A Try

We don’t have to make a final decision today. We can return traffic to Main Street for six months and just see what happens. Right now, we all have our own opinions, but if we are willing to experiment, we can actually see what will happen.

Here’s the thing. Mr. Speck is just the latest urban expert to recommend the return of cars to Main Street. In fact, a couple of weeks before he spoke here, the Center City Commission’s retail consultants arrived at the same opinion. And there were others before them.

We know that we Memphians don’t handle change well, but we owe it to ourselves to find out if this idea can really work. It’s not as if much is at risk anyway since Main Street is now largely abandoned storefronts punctuated by an occasional restaurant, and on non-baseball nights, the inactive streets cause safety concerns that keep many visitors from walking even a couple of blocks up the mall.

Getting At The Answer

It’s been about a decade since Chicago ripped up the pedestrian mall that was strangling State Street to death. Without cars, the street had a deadened fell like a ghost town, city officials said.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley rode one of the jackhammers in a pavement-breaking ceremony and said the pedestrian mall was so unpopular no one would even take credit for its invention.

That same fact may tell us all we need to know about our own pedestrian mall.

Music Plays On In Lightly Regarded River Town

What do you do with a gritty city lagging in economic growth and with a decades-old music heritage as its main claim to fame?

No, not that one.

We’re talking about Liverpool, England.

If we were in charge of putting together a delegation to visit cities with important lessons for Memphis, that’s a place we’d want to go. And not just because we’re Beatles fans.

Culture Capital

It’s this year’s European Capital of Culture, and for the past five years, it’s been getting ready for the celebration. Smartly, Liverpool is defining culture in the broadest possible terms to embrace traditional arts and high culture, but also sports, street music and the character of its people.

The European Capital of Culture program began 23 years ago when Athens was designated as the first city and there have been three dozen since then. Conceived by the European Union as a way to increase the bonds of community between its countries, it has become the catalyst to major investments in public space, public facilities and public engagement.

That’s where Liverpool comes in. For decades, the waterfront city has been denigrated and derided, often used as the punch line for way too many jokes. Dingy, deteriorating and far out of the mainstream, most observers assumed that its fate was sealed.

No Laughing Now

But there was always something different about Liverpool. Its people – who call themselves Scousers after a popular local stew - like their city because it wasn’t homogenized like so many other cities. They like their city precisely because it was out of touch with the times and seemed to have its own quirky personality and rhythm. They even like their city’s generally grim weather.

That civic attitude is just as much of a fundamental part of the culture being honored as the museums and the Victorian mansions. Maybe even more so.
When Liverpool was selected as the Capital of Culture for 2008 – its 800th anniversary – some commentators laughed it off. But it’s hard to laugh at Liverpool now.

Music To Our Ears

It’s shed any hints of civic lethargy and embarked on an agenda that’s honoring its heritage while building some impressive new assets for the future and billions of dollars of new development – a former airport terminal is now a new Marriott and a former match factory now is now upscale office space. There’s even a fancy new cruise ship terminal that’s a long way from the city’s “ferry across the Mersey” days. Of course, anytime your city can trot out the remaining two Beatles to punctuate the importance of a celebration, it sure doesn’t hurt.

Long disregarded as a tourist attraction, Liverpool is suddenly pulling in visitors by the droves, and with no Disneyfication of the glory days of the Beatles in sight. Most of the places immortalized in Beatles’ song have no neon to mark them or hawkers selling souvenirs. They are merely there, some the worse for the wear after the almost four decades that have passed since the Fab Four sang about Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields.

And yet, the strange, tough cauldron that was Liverpool did more than breed one mammoth rock group. There were also Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, Badfinger, Elvis Costello, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Merseybeats, Searchers, Billy Fury, Echo and the Bunnymen. They just were overshadowed by the four-man group that changed the course of music.

The Music Plays On

But, in the intervening years from the British Invasion until today, Liverpool has regularly reminded England that it’s a hub for indie rock, and the best news is that the local music scene still thrives.

All in all, it’s an impressive reminder about how a city can build its revitalization and future on heritage and culture. Liverpool is hoping this year to see results like those recorded in Cork, Ireland, the 2005 European City of Culture, which saw dramatic investments in redevelopment, the facelift of commercial districts and an increase in tourism.

To be chosen as the City of Culture, cities must first submit applications to their own governments and the winner is decided by a 13-member panel. The selected city gets 1.5 million Euros and can apply for other grants. That’s one thing we’ve always loved about European countries – they are serious about funding think tanks, policy papers, research and urban design.

Events Calendar

So far, Glasgow seems to have set the standard for these celebrations. It had 3,539 events with performers and artists from two dozen countries, 656 theatrical productions, 3,122 musical performances (including Frank Sinatra and Luciana Pavarotti), 1,091 exhibitions and 157 sporting events. It even hosted the Bolshoi Ballet for its first UK visit in a theater built for it.

Liverpool’s schedule of events may not be that ambitious, but its list of concerts, plays, poetry readings, dance, art exhibits, sports competitions and 50 festivals, offering a menu of events every week. As it continues its activities, Liverpool’s City Council set six objectives:

• To create and present the best local, national and international art and events in all genres

• To build community enthusiasm, creativity and participation

• To maintain, enhance and grow the cultural infrastructure of the city

• To increase the levels of visitors and inward investment of the city

• To reposition Liverpool as a world-class city by 2008

• To provide efficient and effective management of the Liverpool Culture company (the organization set up to organize and deliver the program)

Cultural Cachet

All in all, it’s not too bad for a former tired, unsophisticated river town. It’s also a source of inspiration for Memphis as we consider ways for our culture to become a competitive advantage for the future.

Memphis: American Capital of Culture has a wonderful ring to it. There is an organization that awards that designation in the Americas, but so far, it’s never selected a city in the U.S. or Canada. It’s also never managed to have quite the cachet of the European program after which it’s modeled, but it’s worth exploring.

Regardless, we know one international company in Memphis that invented international commerce that would be the perfect sponsor for such a designation, or for the creation of a more vibrant program to be a catalyst for progress, for showcasing our city and for building on our distinctive character and culture.

District Faces Opportunity To Dance To New Tune

Poor Dan Ward.

Surely the suggestion that the interim Memphis City Schools superintendent should appear on Bill O’Reilly’s national cable show was groupthink gone terribly awry.

Surely, nobody in the Memphis City Schools communications office or on its leadership team really thought this was a chance for the district to shine. After all, the subject was the “rape dance” video that was taken at Mitchell High Schools and that’s been so widely played on WREG-TV.

More Than Image Problems

The irony didn’t escape us that a few hours before Mr. Ward’s appearance, Memphis City Council was killing off Memphis Police Department’s appearances on A&E’s “The First 48” because of concerns that the series cast our city in a bad light. It’s always interesting how one city – say, Baltimore – can be the location for some of the most disturbing crime dramas on television, and another one like ours thinks that controlling the image is the same as controlling the problems depicted in them.

City Council Member Wanda Halbert was quoted as saying Memphis isn’t much different from other large cities in the amount of violence here. First, we need someone to send her the data, because she is badly misinformed. That said, we actually think the A&E show painted a positive portrait of MPD and the homicide officers that spend so much of their lives in the underbelly of our city seeking justice for murder victims. Based on the program, our opinion of MPD actually rose.

Unfortunately, Councilwoman Halbert seemed to suggest that it’s all just an image problem. She was quoted in The Commercial Appeal as saying, “Right now, I think Memphis needs to focus on cleaning up the image of our city.”

Actually, we’d be smarter to focus on changing the reality. The image will follow.

Positive Thinking

While we believe that Memphis needs to have a more positive self-image and about what makes it distinctive, we are admittedly troubled by the notion it’s all just a marketing problem that we need to solve. All the bumperstickers and slogans in the world will count for nought unless we accompany it with measurable improvement in some troubling indicators, and that’s why we are encouraged by the city’s high-tech Real Time Crime Center (if city government can walk the thin line between crime prevention and Big Brother).

But back to Mr. Ward. Actually, we feel for him. He’s much too old school, mannerly and measured in his approach to have a chance with cable television’s biggest blowhard, Mr. O’Reilly. Not that anyone trying to explain the outrageous conduct at Mitchell High School would have done any better. In the end, Mr. Ward looked like a man taking a beating for the good of the team.

The Spin

The O’Reilly website summed up his appearance this way:

“Students at a Memphis high school dance simulated various sex acts as teacher ‘chaperones’ stood by and did nothing. Memphis Superintendent of Schools Dan Ward entered the No Spin Zone and gave his reaction: ‘We have 112,000 kids and this activity is certainly not indicative of what they do. But it is a disaster and I'm not making excuses for anyone. We're dealing with it, and we expecting the principal to get the situation to where that never happens again.’ The Factor urged Ward to mete out appropriate punishment to school officials. ‘Teachers and administrators were watching overt displays of sexuality, and it looks like there is no discipline at this school whatsoever. There is something fundamentally wrong in the school.’"

This incident is despicable on so many levels, but we have no real grievance with Mr. Ward’s official statement on it: “To say that we are troubled…would be an understatement. We are shocked and disappointed by the behavior of students shown in the video clip. These images demonstrate a serious issue that educators, parents, and community stakeholders alike must focus on – the need for a more productive partnership between schools and homes to ensure children understand how to act as responsible, mature young adults with a sense of self-respect.”

Losing Ground

The district didn’t do as well with a second official response: “Pop culture, the Internet, and mainstream media greatly influence the activity and behavior of today’s youth. We trust that our partners in education – parents, guardians, and school families will continue to reinforce to children the appropriate way to conduct themselves before, during, and after school hours.”

The good done by Mr. Ward's outrage was eroded in a party line that seemed determined to point the finger at everybody but the principal and administrators of Mitchell High School. However, this was an issue that wasn’t going away, especially at this ratings-conscious time for our TV news teams, so in time, the Mitchell HS principal, John Ware, issued a statement accepting “full responsibility for inappropriate content in one of the acts in a talent show, and understand we should have taken immediate action and ended that performance.”

For now, however, it appears that the district’s communications strategy is to weather the storm and stonewall the media, but we predict that this storm is headed to hurricane status until and unless administrators are held as accountable as the students who were disciplined as a result of the “rape dance.” Mr. Ware has acted professionally in accepting “full responsibility,” and now, he has to accept the discipline that goes with it.

Paying The Piper

We loathe the fact that this places us on the same side of an issue as Mr. O’Reilly, but surely this is one that knows no political differences or partisan positioning. It was simply wrong, and if no action is taken against administrators who saw the “dance,” it is tantamount to sending the message to the 16,000 employees of the district that no one is ever really held accountable for their actions in Memphis City Schools.

We don’t believe that is the intent of Mr. Ward or the Board of Commissioners, but in the end, they have to prove it if this controversy has the chance of ending in an instructive way for the district.

Otherwise, it only validates Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton's contention that the district can only turn itself around with a Joe Clark-style tough guy who is willing to make the tough decisions that are needed right now.

Traumatizing The Public Records And Public Meetings Laws

State Rep. Ulysses Jones must have been frightened by sunshine while he was in his crib.

Only a childhood trauma could have given him such an obsession in eroding the transparency and openness of government with his amendments to weaken Tennessee’s open meetings (Sunshine Law) and public records laws.

Every Tennessean should be up in arms. This isn’t about journalists having a harder time to report on the inner workings of government. More to the point, it’s about erecting obstacles to the public’s right to know.

With the state’s urban schools in turmoil, health care in chaos and economic growth flat-lining, we’re pleased that Rep. Jones can keep his eyes on what’s really important – making it as hard as possible to get public information.

It’s not just “public” information because it’s held by a public agency, but because it’s the public that pays for it.

In a state version of Beltway Fever, Rep. Jones seems to forget on a regular basis that he works for us, not the other way around. Hopefully, there will be a time when the public rises up to oppose the cult of secrecy that is taking hold in both our federal and state governments.

In the end, there’s a better course of action for Rep. Jones if he’s discomforted by public records and public meetings requirements – don’t run for office.

Beale Street Needs Signs Of The Times

It’s always interesting compare the hyperbole about Beale Street with the reality of Beale Street.

In a recent article in The Commercial Appeal about new security on the street, this statement jumped off the page. It was made by the head of the private company that manages the legendary music street as he talked about how important it is to make sure “we’re doing things the way a world-class entertainment district should.”

Every time we see a Beale Street official use these high-flown phrases, we immediately think about the barricades that block the street to traffic. They look like someone’s first shop class project in high school. If they are world-class, it is in the category of the most amateurish signage in a famous tourism area.

The Beale Street street barricades look like something that was slapped up temporarily and were never replaced. After 26 years, it’s not too much to think that the management company could come up with something that actually speaks to the quality of the experience on the street.

We guess we’ve grown accustomed to the hodgepodge of newspaper vending machines and trashy looking garbage cans that seem to send the message that too little attention is being given to the overall appearance and atmosphere of the street, but these barricades need to go.

City Employment Numbers Just Don't Add Up

In time, we suspect that the controversy over the growing payroll in City Hall will be tempest in a teapot.

A week ago, Memphis City Council members cross-examined Memphis Chief Administrative Officer Keith McGee about a budget document that showed that the number of employees growing from 5,162 in 2006 to a requested payroll of 6,573 in the coming fiscal year.

It makes absolutely no sense, and when the smoke clears, we predict that a miscalculation by a clerk in personnel is responsible for this political dust-up.

For example, we suspect that one number might be employees paid by the general fund, and the second might be total employees – general fund and grant-funded.

After all, the number of employees at City of Memphis has been listed at more than 6,000 for about a decade, and in 2004, researchers at the Memphis Regional Chamber said that city government had 6,680 employees.

It’s impossible for us to imagine that by 2006, the payroll had dropped by about 1,500 employees, much less that the proposed budget would add 1,500 new employees to city government.

This is one time when City Hall’s lack of interest in the media is taking its toll, because this confusion should have been explained and cleared up within hours.

Putting A Price On The Suburban Commute

The Tennessee Legislature is flirting with the idea of toll roads to fill the gap in road funding.

We cast our vote for Highway 385.

It’s the most expensive gift ever given in this county to developers and to sprawl, and it’s time to make them pay a fair share of the costs associated with it.

The opening of the 54-mile suburban loop (if your version of suburbs includes the southwestern fringe of Fayette County) will be $450 million of fuel that will power sprawl ever eastward. Just as its gravitational pull will extend development, it will also erode the core city and increase the pricetag that the public pays for government services.

The existence of 385 speaks to the curious nature of government and its love affair with asphalt. There’s always a seeming urgency to satisfy the needs of the development industry and to enable the flight of citizens away from areas where public investments are already paid for.

There’s almost a blind obedience to the car. Somewhere along the way, because of the power campaign contributors and road builders wield, an overriding purpose of government morphed into making people mobile at the expense of neighborhood, the urban core and the public pocketbook.

Why was Highway 385 needed? It’s hard to say with precision, because its genesis lay in the Tennessee Department of Transportation where the building industry has long driven the agenda.

For 385, there was the obligatory traffic engineering study which inevitably shows that the growth of development demands this new road looping way out east and then up to Arlington and around to Millington. Of course, the problem is that there is no counter-balancing study of the economic cost on the core city or the neighborhoods that are being hollowed out. There is no fiscal note that tells the cost of abandoning existing infrastructure or the social costs of declining neighborhoods and the problems incubated there.

As for 385, already, the daily traffic count is about 250,000 vehicles. In the future, with much of Highway 385 serving as I-269 - the unjustifiable circumferential interstate for I-69 – that number will only skyrocket. For years, city and county governments advocated strongly for an I-69 route that followed the interstate through the heart of Memphis, but like water dripping on a stone, slowly but surely, development interests had the eastern I-269 route added, primarily as justification for it extending through DeSoto County and certain real estate interests.

This future combination of Highway 385/I-269 can be lethal unless Memphis and Shelby County turn their attention now to preventing more unbridled sprawl. There’s not much time left.

In an article in The Commercial Appeal, an Arlington landowner hailed the coming highway: “As every piece comes together, pretty soon, you will have something with 385 like the loop around Atlanta…Now you go up there (the Atlanta beltway), and there are hotels everywhere and apartments and office complexes by the thousands. It’s just another layer of city out there.”

Of course, that’s the problem. The layer of city out there is not the result of population growth, but population movement, and as we’ve seen, the cost of that to the public sector is financially unsustainable.

Right now, with a $1 toll, the Highway 385 toll road would generate $87 million a year, and in a perfect world, it would be split between state government to pay for alternative transportation, between Shelby County Government which foots most of the bill for sprawl, and Memphis City Government which is left to contend with the problems of neighborhood decline.

Council Member Offers Winning Funding Idea

Finally, a City Council member suggested the obvious: tenants for Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium should help pay for the $7.6 million in upgrades that they will benefit from.

Savvy Council member Jim Strickland, after listening to labored justifications for a new home locker room, moving the visitor’s locker room, a new room for officials and some ADA improvements, sent an encouraging signal that business as usual is dying a quick death with the new Council.

He suggested that the two organizations who accrue the benefits of the new, improved arena should consider helping pay for them.

Here’s the magic number: $500,000 a year. That’s the amount that’s needed to pay the yearly bond payment for the improvements.

After all, the University of Memphis’ athletic department budget is north of $25 million a year. The Liberty Bowl Festival Association regularly rings up $6 million in revenues, and we’re told that it recorded a $2 million fund balance in 2007, all while paying about $1.7 million a year in “management fees.”

The Liberty Bowl Festival Association reports to the IRS that its purpose is “to promote the social and economic welfare of the Mid-South and its citizens.” We think it could do precisely that if it helped pay for these improvements and took the burden off taxpayers.

Getting The Comparables Right

Some opponents of the Beale Street Landing project – which is vitally needed to reinvigorate a riverfront ready for embalming – have recently taken to asking how Memphis City Council can justify spending $29 million on the project while considering the closing of libraries and community centers.

It sounds like a no-brainer. After all, $29 million is about 15 times the amount needed to keep those facilities open.

Unfortunately, it’s misleading, because the $29 million for Beale Street Landing is in capital funding and the $2 million needed for libraries and community centers is in general funds.

As a result, while $29 million may be the total cost, the bond payments are about $1.2 million a year.

More to the point, great cities don’t make choices between quality of life and libraries and community centers, because they recognize that to be successful, they have to invest in both.

Aiming Higher For Our HBCU

We’d feel better about our public tax money being funneled to a private college – Lemoyne-Owen College - if we were getting some signals that it’s making the kinds of strides that will set it on a new financial and academic foundation.

One such indication would be that Lemoyne-Owen College was included in the significant funding of the United Negro College Fund. A few weeks ago, it provided about $6 million in grants, and regrettably, our HBCU wasn’t on the list.

The regular rescue missions for the college have focused on getting it out of another financial ditch when the primary attention should be focused on considering how to make it part of the so-called “ebony tower,” the select historically black college and universities that make up the African-American ivy league.

But it can be done. Case in point: Clark Atlanta University.

Created 20 years ago through the merger of two historically black colleges, it shook off a reputation for easy admissions and now accepts about half of the students who apply. With a focus on engineering and science and the aggressive pursuit of federal grants, the university has risen from average to being frequently mentioned as one of the best HBCUs.

All of this is to say that it’s not impossible for Lemoyne-Owen College to become one of the nation’s best, but it’s going to take more than infusions of crisis-related funding and volumes of political rhetoric about failed leadership and petty politics. In fact, if anything, this approach to addressing the college’s future does nothing but devalue it, relegating it to nothing more than a political pawn rather than a center of quality education.

A Speck Of Hope For Better Design

After working about a year to get former National Endowment for the Arts director of design Jeff Speck to Memphis, we were unfortunately unable to attend his presentation last week.

More unfortunate was the fact that his presentation – replete with specific insights for improving the quality of life in Memphis through better design and architecture - did not get the headlines that it deserved.

Our colleague Carol Coletta originally conceived of Mr. Speck’s three-day intensive tour of Memphis, and we were pleased that a number of prominent local organizations responded to our requests for funding to bring him here. In the end, a prior engagement in Liverpool, England, prevented Ms. Coletta’s attendance, and the rest of us were regrettably unable to make it either.

Design As A Priority

However, more to the point, we are fortunate that a cadre of leading citizens recognized the value of this unique opportunity to obtain important perspectives about our city.

Much too often, here, urban design is seen as some elitist interest with little importance to Memphis. Mr. Speck powerfully reminded us of why this is not so, and that we continue to ignore design issues at our own peril. We see the results of this benign neglect all around us, and Mr. Speck laid out a dozen recommendations to change the face of our city and the course of our history.

As we expected, Mr. Speck was honest and insightful, but most of all, his suggestions were actionable and now become an indispensable and invaluable foundation for the work of the Memphis Regional Design Center.

Getting Started Right

It’s hard to imagine how the fledgling center – much-needed and with great potential – could have a better guide as it sets out on its urgent journey to improve our city.

To learn more about Mr. Speck’s presentation, we recommend a May 4 post by one of our city’s best bloggers, Gates of Memphis, and an article in last week’s Memphis Flyer by one of our best urban observers, Mary Cashiola.

We won’t repeat the content of their reports, but when this presentation was envisioned, it was not so much intended to be a single event as the launching of a movement built on what we need more – recommendations by nationally-recognized authorities.

As a result, the proof of Mr. Speck’s presentation is yet to come, but based on the prominent sponsors who brought him to Memphis, there should be immediate momentum to make sure that recommendations do not merely become a cogent report on some prominent shelves around the city, but become a blueprint for the future of our city.

To follow up his presentation, Mr. Speck will write a report which will elaborate on his recommendations and give more details, but in the end, it’s not just up to the sponsors of the presentation to implement them but all of us who care about the livability of Memphis.

This Week On Smart City: Alan Mallach And Donald Johanson

This week on Smart City, the wave of foreclosures hitting many American cities are challenging many communities to wonder, “What’s next?” Can these neighborhoods be revived? And if so, what will it take? Those are questions we’ll ask Alan Mallach whose new report on Managing Neighborhood Change comes just at the time when many communities are needing that help.

And we’ll also talk about a subject that may at first seem far removed from cities, but actually is at their center. Our guest is Dr. Donald Johanson, a paleo-anthropologist whose discovery 30 years ago of Lucy set him on a life-long study of human evolution.

Smart City is a syndicated, weekly hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life: the people, places, ideas and trends that affect us all. Host Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, talks with national and international public policy experts, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others on the pulse of city life for a penetrating discussion on urban issues.

Smart City is broadcast at 6 a.m. Saturday and Sundays on WKNO-FM, but it is also webcast and podcast. For the webcast, times for the broadcast in other cities and to sign up for the podcast, visit our website.

Fishy Project Wastes Pyramid Potential

We’ve made no secret of our disdain for plans to use The Pyramid for a massive Bass Pro Shop.

In a sentence, it’s an abysmal use of a civic icon and sends a message to every person driving by it about the low expectations and even lower ambitions of our city.

While some City Council members worry about the $600,000 a year in maintenance and utilities that is now spent on the empty arena, we worry more about the negative perceptions from putting a giant Bass Pro Shop as the welcome mat to our city. That cost is incalculable.

Asking The Right Question

As we’ve mentioned before, we seem to have come to this point because city and county officials have worked so hard for so many months to answer the wrong question. The real question is not what can we put inside The Pyramid, but what can we do that sends a positive message about Memphis and its future?

When you ask the wrong question, you inevitably come up with the wrong answer. And that's what Bass Pro Shop feels like to us.

As we posted on February 24, even a novice to the ways of government could tell that Greg Ericson was getting the runaround with his idea for a theme park in the building, and although we can’t be counted as strong supporters for that proposal, we do think that local government has shamed itself with a process that has been characterized by a total lack of objectivity, transparency and accountability.

Buffalo’ing Us

We have frequently chronicled the store’s manipulations in Buffalo with a project strikingly similar to our own and Bass Pro Shop’s proven ability to wring tax money out of local governments under the guise of incentives for jobs.

That’s about to happen here to the tune of about $30 million, and it just seems that if the business proposition for the megastore makes sense, we wouldn’t have to entice the store to do it. There is no justification or logic to putting public money into a retail project.

Meanwhile, the so-called development agreement with Bass Pro Shop is so one-sided that it is a monument to the difficulty that government lawyers have in negotiating tough business deals. Memphis City Councilman Shea Flinn and Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz have pointed out these failings in detail.

Driving The Deal

Bass Pro Shop was in the driver’s seat when this whole sad display began three and a half years ago, and nothing has changed. To this point, the retailer has made no serious commitment to the project while local government has thrown more and more into the deal as sweeteners.

Because of its architectural stature, one thing should be true about The Pyramid: it should symbolize our confidence as a people and speak to our ambition as a city.

Can we really say that our city’s ambition is truly captured in a Bass Pro Shop in the signature building on our doorstep?

Flashback

All of this conjures up flashbacks to the Shlenker Era, and what slow learners we must be.

What is the main lesson from those day?

It’s simply this - it wasn’t Mr. Shlenker’s cleverness or his charisma or his guile that conned us into giving him the keys to the Pyramid. Rather, it was our own neediness and feelings of unworthiness, which manifested itself in the deadly notion that we have no right to deserve the best.

Great To Good

Instead, good is always just good enough for Memphis, and we think we’re lucky to get it. Our city fathers profess to have great ambitions for Memphis. This is their chance to prove it. This is their chance to aim high.

Right now, with yet another push by local government for Bass Pro shop, it unfortunately is beginning to feel like the same old Memphis to us.

All in all, Bass Pro Shop in The Pyramid is a dreadful decision, but then again, maybe others are capable of conjuring up pride in a skyline adorned with the 3,000 square foot logo of a leaping bass on all four sides of our signature building.

At that point, it would be a 55-year symbol that we have gullibly swallowed the latest big promise hook, line and sinker.