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***Note from The Tennessee Conservative – this article posted here for informational purposes only.
The Center Square [By Kim Jarrett] –
More results from a Tennessee forensic audit that found $1.1 million in waste or fraud at Memphis-Shelby County Schools will be released on Wednesday as the state attorney general presses for an expedited court hearing over a law that would give the state oversight authority.
Members of the Memphis-Shelby County School Board, Shelby County Government and others sued the state over House Bill 662/Senate Bill 714, which allows the state to appoint a nine-member board to oversee the school system if the system fails to meet four out of six criteria outlined in the bill. Memphis-Shelby County Schools met all six outlined in the bill that includes financial mismanagement, chronic absenteeism and low grades on Tennessee’s school report card, according to the bill’s sponsors.
The plaintiffs said the legislation violates the 14th Amendment, the Tennessee Constitution’s Equal Protection Clauses, and home rule.
A forensic audit conducted by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury shows that $1.1 million in disbursements by Memphis-Shelby County Schools are categorized as waste or fraud, but the findings are based on only 25% of the contracts examined, the auditor’s office said in April. The audit was used as justification to pass House Bill 662/Senate Bill 714.
U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. ordered the parties to “maintain the status quo,” which attorneys for the state said does not mean the judge issued a temporary restraining order.
“Plaintiffs now insist that the Court ‘grant[ed]’ their TRO,” the state said in a Thursday filing. “But the electronic docket shows no such ruling – it only contains an order preserving the status quo.”
The state is also asking for a hearing this week or on Monday that addresses only the temporary restraining order.
The plaintiffs asked for July 24, 26 or 27.
“During the meet and confer, Plaintiffs also unveiled an extensive discovery plan, seeking to depose the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education as well as two non-parties, and to demand various documents from the Commissioner,” the state said. “And while Defendants did not reject Plaintiffs’ requests for discovery, Defendants did question the discovery’s relevance to Plaintiffs’ actual claims – their Fourteenth Amendment theory or their Tennessee-constitutional challenges involving home rule, the ‘anti-ripper’ clause, retroactivity, or separation of powers.”
The law was debated by the General Assembly before passing on the final day with broad Republican support. The Democrats proposed a plan that would place a district that did not meet three out of the four criteria under an advisory board. The district would fall under the Republican plan if it failed to improve in at least one of the four areas.
