Written By JR Robinson

These are the stewards of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, joined now by an interim superintendent, preserved in power by a judge’s decision that treats their seats as more sacred than our children’s futures.

The ruling to keep the current school board in place is being sold as a matter of procedure and timing, a technical dispute over elections and terms. But for Memphis, this is not a technicality. It is a turning point. It is a choice to lock in a status quo that has left roughly three-quarters of our students reading below grade level, a district mired in mismanagement, and a generation of children on track for diminished lives. The judge did not simply freeze a board; he froze the trajectory of an entire city.

In any healthy democracy, school boards are meant to be the people’s lever — the tool communities use to demand better results for their children. In Memphis, that lever has stopped working. After a disastrous superintendent termination that threw the district into turmoil, amid audits and allegations of financial chaos, our school board has managed to wage an energetic fight for its own survival, but not for our students. They have mobilized lawyers, press releases, and political alliances to keep their seats. They have not mobilized urgency for the third-grader staring at a page she cannot read.

The consequences of this failure are not abstract. A child who cannot read on grade level by third grade is not just “behind.” That child is statistically more likely to struggle in every subject that follows, more likely to drop out, more likely to end up in low-wage work or no work at all. An entire district where most children fall into that category is not just underperforming. It is manufacturing poverty.

This is the context in which a Shelby County judge chose to shield five board members from facing voters, effectively declaring that the stability of their offices outweighs the instability of our children’s lives. The message is unmistakable: the system’s comfort comes before the community’s crisis.

The damage of this decision will not be felt in the courthouse. It will be felt years from now, at job interviews where graduates of Memphis-Shelby County Schools cannot compete, in workplaces where basic reading and problem-solving are missing, in neighborhoods where opportunity never shows up. This is not only an educational verdict; it is an economic sentence.

Consider what it means for a city when most of its young people are not reading on grade level. It means fewer students able to succeed in demanding high school courses, fewer entering and completing college or technical programs, fewer qualifying for the kind of stable, middle-income jobs that sustain families and communities. It means a workforce that employers quietly pass over. It means companies choosing other cities where basic skills are not treated as optional.

Businesses looking at Memphis do not only see tax rates and logistics advantages. They see the faces of their future employees. They see whether a city takes its talent seriously. When our own institutions signal that accountability is negotiable, but adult power is not, we send a clear message to the market: do not count on us for the skilled workers you need.

Over time, that message becomes baked into the city’s DNA. Young adults with weak literacy skills are more likely to cycle in and out of unstable jobs, more likely to rely on public assistance, more likely to end up entangled in the criminal justice system. The cost of that instability is measured in billions nationally: lost productivity, lower earnings, higher healthcare and social service spending. For Memphis, where poverty and inequality already shape daily reality, doubling down on a failing school system is economic self-sabotage.

The judge’s decision makes that sabotage official. It says, in effect, that there is no rush to fix this. That the same leadership class that presided over these outcomes deserves more time, more insulation, more deference. It transforms a crisis into policy.

Defenders of the ruling will say the courts are only protecting order, that sudden elections or structural changes might cause “disruption.” But disruption is exactly what our schools need — not for its own sake, but because the current path is a slow-motion disaster. The real disruption is a child moving from grade to grade unable to decode simple text. The real chaos is the quiet despair that sets in when students realize the system has not prepared them for the world they are about to enter. We should be honest about what is happening in Memphis-Shelby County Schools. There are heroic teachers in these classrooms, pouring themselves into their students, improvising around shortages, trauma, and instability. There are principals trying to build islands of excellence. But they are working inside a structure that has proven it cannot deliver for most children. Policy is not written at the classroom door; it is written on the dais where those school board members sit, eyes trained on their own political survival.

The image of “The Faces of Failure” is not about personal cruelty or individual villainy. It is about responsibility. When you oversee a system in which most children cannot read on grade level, when you fire a superintendent in a cloud of dysfunction, when audits raise questions about money meant for kids, you do not get to claim the mantle of victim when voters ask for change. You certainly do not deserve judicial protection from that accountability.

And yet, that is precisely what this ruling offers: a shield from democracy. While the state maneuvers for a more aggressive intervention — citing audits, mismanagement, and a “nightmare” system — Memphis families are trapped between two distant powers. On one side, a state government that sees our district as a cautionary tale. On the other, a local board more invested in preserving its authority than proving its effectiveness. The party missing from this arrangement is the one that matters most: the children.

The financial future of those children is not something we can postpone until the next election cycle or the next court challenge. Every year lost in early literacy is a lifetime penalty. Every graduating class that leaves our schools without strong reading and problem-solving skills is another cohort locked out of the region’s most promising jobs. The judge’s decision effectively extends this penalty. It fixes the board in place, but it fixes nothing for the students.

Memphis has always been a city of grit and improvisation, a place where people find a way. But we should not romanticize making do with less when it comes to our children’s education. No amount of hustle can substitute for a school system that teaches a child to read, to think, to solve problems, to imagine a future beyond the next paycheck. A judge’s signature that keeps the same failed leadership in power is not a neutral act. It is an endorsement of failure as acceptable.

The future economy of Memphis will be built — or broken — in classrooms today. If we continue down the current path, the city will pay twice: once in the wasted potential of its young people, and again in the higher costs of unemployment, healthcare, and public safety that follow from an undereducated population. That is the bill this decision sends us. It may not arrive in the next budget, but it will come due.

What should scare us most is that this damage is quiet. There are no sirens when a child gives up on reading. There are no headlines when a teenager concludes that school has nothing to offer. But years later, their absence from college campuses, training programs, and competitive workplaces will be deafening.

A strong city cannot be built on weak schools. A thriving economy cannot be built on widespread illiteracy. And a functioning democracy cannot allow a small group of officials to cling to power while the children they serve are left behind. The ruling that keeps this school board in place is not merely a procedural victory for incumbents. It is a profound moral failure.

The photograph in the header of this article “The Faces of Failure” — is not just a provocation. It is a mirror. It shows us what we have allowed to happen on our watch. The question now is whether Memphis will accept this portrait as its fate, or whether we will insist that our children deserve more than a system designed to protect adults from consequences.

The judge has made his decision. The board has kept its seats. But the verdict on Memphis’s future is not yet final. That verdict will be written in the lives of the children walking into classrooms tomorrow, whether they find a system willing to fight for their literacy, their dignity, and their economic future — or one content to watch them fall behind while the adults on the dais smile for the camera.