Memphis City Schools new superintendent Dr. Kriner Cash joined the Tri-State Defender Editorial Board in an hour-long Q&A on Monday, just prior to his formal reception at the MCS Teaching and Learning Center. After expounding on his leadership model, he noted four literacies necessary to make our students the “new Memphis nexus” — personal literacy, civic literacy, academic literacy and occupational literacy.

Here is an edited version of the conversation.

Dr. Cash:  I wanted the Tri-State Defender in here early, try to give them my framework for addressing the challenges that today represent Memphis City Schools.

Now, here’s my mantra…. Breakthrough leadership … at all levels…city…state…county. Breakthrough leadership –  responsible, accountable, intelligent decision-making based on accurate information, timely information.

It’s got to be a different model of leadership than may have been the case historically, in recent times or whatever.

I hear a lot about politics…. That’s not breakthrough leadership. Breakthrough leadership is not about politics as much as about getting it right, getting it right for the issue at hand.

In this first year, I have to go into vision and strategy. I’m going to have to reform and upgrade and repair some of the things that need to be fixed. I can’t jump to equity, access, and sustainability until I take care of business. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

Breakthrough leadership — I’m going to model it. I’m going to practice what I preach…. This is authentic. Another word for it is wise – reasoned, thoughtful, considered leadership.

Then at the Avery office, everyone who is in charge of a bureau or of a function at Central is going to show … breakthrough leadership for the field. The field means the principals at each school, teachers in every classroom because the teacher is the leader of his or her classroom. The principal is in charge of his or her school. And then, it goes in a circle back to the student.

Now the student will have breakthrough leadership of his or her own education…. Setting his or her own goals… that’s the model he’s in. He’s in the new Memphis nexus, the new Memphis leadership nexus.

…I’m talking about showing leadership as a media outlet. Then the issues are brought to bear, the community can make informed decisions about it. They can go in and elect officials who they feel will help them with those issues and help them solve them and so forth.

So it’s a continuum all the time where, when it breaks down, it breaks down for the kids, too. And that’s what I meant by ‘when you see kids running around, when you see kids behaving badly,  nine times out of 10, behind that or in front of that, you’ve got adults behaving badly.’ So this is a community…. This notion of breakthrough leadership…. It’s going to take about three to four years to get where I want to go.

There’s a framework. There’s a way in which I go about the work….It’s based on accumulative understanding of how this kind of work for young people should unfold.

First, it has to do with what you find on two axes. There’s an axis of knowledge, from lack of knowledge or knowledge of an organization that is low in knowledge and shared into an organization that is high in knowledge and shared. What I found now was an organization right now where it is difficult to obtain knowledge, difficult to get good data. Knowledge is not readily shared and easily shared. It is a closed system for the most part.

And I am going to move that along the axis to a place where knowledge is easily available.… And you help one another. You say, “Look, this is what I’ve done with this process. We found it helpful, and you might want to look at it.”

And so, we do a lot of that internally. It becomes a learning community. Memphis – the school level, the classroom level, the organizational level, the city level – anywhere you control your environment.

Dr. Kriner Cash makes a point to Yalaunda Taylor, a second-grade teacher at Coleman Elementary School during a reception at the MCS Teaching and Learning Center. (Photo by Tyrone P. Easley)

Next is this axis of instability to stability. And right now, we’re finding a relatively unstable organization. So I’ve got to move that along the axis to a stable organization….Now when knowledge and unstable intersect, you get a tipping point. And when you start to get to that tipping point, you’ll know it. There will start to be a lot of resistance to it because these children will start to know more, learn more, have their head up, have their aspirations up, not going to settle for shipping and delivery and moving the boxes. They’re going to want Fred Smith’s job.

See, that’s how I want them to start thinking…. Our kids don’t have that vision for themselves right now. So that comes through the kind of literacies I’m going to have  infused in a curriculum.

We’ll be at the tipping point of this organization, for this city... public school system in 18 months to two and a half years…. It’s not about bad people or good people, bad kids or good kids – it’s about organizational dysfunction. And we’ve got to straighten that out.

So that’s the theory of action….This is a competitive, fierce, global economy. So I want them to be prepared for that.

Now what we have is... the products in the system are highly valued now. The programs are highly valued….The kids are highly valued and respected, and you can tell now by the kinds of articles and things that are continuously printed. And I want to see that promoted in the papers because I’m going to inundate you with the good news stories and the literacy as I start to see these kids show what they’re really made of and what they’re naturally about.

In this first year, I have to go into vision and strategy. I’m going to have to reform and upgrade and repair some of the things that need to be fixed. I can’t jump to equity, access, and sustainability until I take care of business.

You hear about funding. Here is how it intersects. Once we get the reform and the upgrade. Once I address and make sure that we have first thing first, which is safe, orderly environments in every school. Most of them are, but the few that aren’t – a handful – they’re very noticeable, very visible, and they kill us because things are happening in there all the time. So it looks like the whole system is chaotic….We’ve got to own that because you know perception is 80, 90 percent reality. So we’ve got to fix that perception, but there’s a clear strategy for that. That’s number one.

Number two is facilities. Some of these facilities are out of Brown vs. Board of Education. They’re back in the 1800’s.

So facilities, safe and orderly environments. Then we can start getting the academic and the curriculum and the instruction ratcheted to where it needs to be. It’s all simultaneous now, but this is first to create that base so that the other can be rich and get stronger.

And the four literacies I’m talking about enhancing this test-driven curriculum are personal growth and responsibility, first, personal literacy. See, we’ve got to build that in our young people. It used to be we were taught it…. and it was reinforced every step of the way.

So we need to teach that about personal habits, personal responsibility, personal respect. Little things like handshake, smile, look in the eye, you know, shoulders back, head up, proper etiquette when you eat. Speak, don’t interrupt…

Question:  Will it be like a class?

It’ll be infused. I’ve got a curriculum designed for it.

A second important literacy is civic literacy and civic awareness. A lot of the kids, not just in social studies… they’ve got to learn how this government works, learn about the newspaper – what its historical role is and should be and can be and what they can do to get involved in volunteering in service to help others.

A third part is academic literacy, which is not just your writing, math and science. It’s also your enrichment. There’s an enrichment piece that’s been squeezed out of the curriculum because it’s so much emphasis on – I guess here it’s called TCAP…. We’re way off track here. So even when you pass that test, so what? What can you do? What do you know?  And it’s not just Tennessee. It is a national thing. It’s just the adverse effects of No Child Left Behind because you leave them all behind when you don’t have high standards and enrichment. So, we have to become “demand parents” when it comes to enrichment.

The fourth literacy is occupational or workforce literacy for a global economy. I’m not talking about the warehousing economy that thrives here in Memphis. And that’s why I want to transform these high schools into academies that prepare for licensure in a particular occupation such as logistics.

Fred Smith has a huge warehousing issue. I’ve talked to him. It’s not the boxes but the logistics – going all over the world. Whoever is putting that in the computer and getting that set up….That’s a skill…engineering level stuff…. Our kids should be learning about how to do that.

Medical supplies, biotech – this is an epicenter for hospitals and for that kind of industry. So we can teach and have students come prepared for the applied health sciences.

I came up on W.E.B. (DuBois.) My dad, a great man, got two Ph.D’s. But I know that all kids are not going to Harvard and Stanford and Yale and Princeton. But they are very bright. And we have to help them find their pathway. So in short, I want multiple diploma options.

Question: You have plans for all these initiatives, but you’re dealing with a funding dispute. Is that hindering you from jumping right into the work?

You can’t let it hinder you. I came into this bickering and this mess here at this hour. I don’t have any question that the more I learn about Memphis being a special, special, special city for 75 or 100 years and giving this money when they were not obligated. We need to get that solved…. And even if we get it taken away, I’m not stopping the initiatives.

Question: How would you get parents involved in the education of their children?

I’m going to Binghampton…. I’m going to Foote Homes and talk to the lead minister or ministers. And I’m going to say, “We respect you. We give you baseline respect. We’re coming to ask what you would like, what do you need from us? What can we do to get better here? So that that child will come to school, be at school, and pay attention so we can start to get in his head.”