(The Center Square) – While Democrats and Republicans differed on how to improve things for Tennessee students, they both emphasized a desire to help the state’s more than 900,000 students in the 147 public school districts during the General Assembly’s 2026 session.
On the final day, a bill that would affect just one school district dominated the debate.
House Bill 662/Senate Bill 714 allows the state to take over school districts that fail to meet four of six criteria. Using the metrics, the bill applies only to the Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
Once signed by Gov. Bill Lee, a nine-member oversight committee would be formed quickly, according to the bill. The committee will have the authority over the school district’s budget. It could also determine if any schools should close.
Some called the bill an “intervention.” Others called it a “takeover.”
Memphis Republican Mark White has served in the House of Representatives for 17 years and served as chairman of the House Education Committee for the past 12 years. He sponsored the bill in the House. Sen. Brent Taylor, also from Memphis, sponsored it in the Senate.
While the legislation would apply to any school district, White admits he focused on Memphis.
“Being from Memphis and loving this city, what I continually see is that we are not moving the needle in proficiency,” White said in an interview with The Center Square. “Only one of our four is graduating proficient in reading, and one out of five is proficient in math. It comes to point where you have to say why are we not turning things around? It’s year after year after year.”
Senate Minority Caucus Raumesh Akbari is also from Memphis. She and her Democratic colleagues did not deny that Memphis schools needed improvement. The minority conference report took a different approach, using Hamilton County Schools as an example, she said.
Local and state officials in that county did not want to become an achievement school district, an academic intervention program targeting low-performing schools that ends with the 2026-27 school year.
“They formed a special network within the school district, and they had a board of advisors made up of philanthropic community members, business community members and kind of provided advice and guidance, focusing on those five schools,” Akbari said in an interview with The Center Square. “So that really is the alternative that we wanted to present to the General Assembly.”
A district that did not meet three out of the four criteria would be placed under an advisory board under the Democrat plan. The district would fall under the Republican plan if it failed to improve in at least one of the four areas. The minority conference report did not pass.
Democrats also wanted the General Assembly to recognize the district’s progress. The 2025 Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, which measures student growth, showed improvements in all end-of-course work in all subjects for the district’s high school students. The assessment still showed issues in other areas.
“When they say give us time to fix it, my question is when is it going to happen?” White said. “Since I’ve been education chair, we’ve had a whole generation of kids go through first through 12th grade. And I know because of the data I study day after day, too many of our young people are coming out of our city schools not proficient, where they can go into the workforce.”
The bill was not just about academic performance. Two of the criteria focus on administration turnover and finances. A forensic audit of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which is only 25% complete, shows $1.1 million in disbursements have been categorized as waste or fraud, according to the comptroller of the treasury.
Akbair said other school districts are close to meeting the bill’s criteria.
“There are a lot of districts in this state that are dealing with pretty significant issues and findings, and that’s just from a regular audit, not a forensic audit,” Akbari said. “Also, at least seven of the school districts in the state meet three of the four academic metrics that are listed in the legislation.”
Unless Memphis officials can get the courts to intervene, the school district will operate under the oversight board for four years without a provision to exit early if the metrics are met.
Despite a law signed by Lee that bans a school district or public charter school from using state funds for legal actions challenging accountability measures, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners attempted to pass a resolution on Monday night that would have set aside $200,000 for a court challenge. The measure needed a two-thirds vote, eight of the 12 present commissioners to pass. It failed 7-5.
“Quite frankly, we should want school districts, regardless of if they’re a small district or large district, urban or rural, to be able to sue when they feel that they are being wronged or that there is some sort of grievance,” Akbari said.
