Behind the Headlines Podcast · WKNO/The Daily Memphian

1632: School board elections and superintendent contract 'irrelevant' with MSCS takeover looming, lawmakers say

·32 min·2 clips

Taylor says the Memphis Shelby County Schools audit is "as bad as you could think it could be, it's worse."

Eric Barnes hosts the hour. He is joined by Senator Brent Taylor, Representative Mark White, and Bill Dries to work through Republican priorities at the state legislature. Education comes first. The discussion turns to school governance and the broader Memphis-Shelby County Schools takeover conversation, with the lawmakers treating authority, timing, and local control as the central issue. The conversation stays local. It keeps circling back to who can actually move the pieces, what the next step is, and what those decisions mean for Memphis and Shelby County. Barnes keeps pressing. He and the panel move from broad political stakes into the practical details of school policy and the limits of what lawmakers can force into view. Then the Memphis Safe Task Force comes up. Taylor, White, and Dries talk through a bill tied to the Memphis Safe Task Force and Operation Viper that would require reporting when felony pleas are reduced, charges are dismissed, or prosecutions are declined. Taylor says the bill should be narrower. Barnes keeps pressing the transparency question, asking whether better reporting would make the law unnecessary. The paper trail matters. The discussion turns to how much public information is available now, what has to be dug out through FOIA, and where the gaps still are. The audit problem follows. The guests note that auditors are having to do forensic work because records that should be supplied cleanly are not arriving that way. Nothing here is neatly separated. Education, criminal justice, and records management all sit in the same local frame. The episode ends in a practical place. It is best for listeners who want Memphis politics explained through institutions, procedures, and the people who argue over them.

As heard by us

Local power questions matter more here than the headline fight.

Education and state-legislative questions stay at the center, with the real tension in who sets the terms and how much lawmakers can drag into daylight.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When school politics turns into a question of who still has the authority.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Behind the Headlines Podcast