Memphis: A District Under Emotional Renovation

By Jessica Portner

Memphis

Architectural terminology glides easily off Barbara Jones' tongue. Metaphors of renovation come in handy, the associate superintendent of the Memphis public schools said last fall, when she began a campaign to systematically knock down the administrative barriers that stand between students and their emotional needs.

The students in this district are generally poor, estranged from the health- care system, and living in neighborhoods plagued by gang warfare. The suicide rate among Memphis teenagers is above the national average. When and if they arrive at school, students need help with more than their reading, writing, and arithmetic, Ms. Jones said.

"We have to get a grip on kids to keep them from falling through the cracks," she told more than 200 school psychologists, social workers, principals, and teachers at a training session held earlier this school year to explain the district's ambitious remodeling plan. "If children don't have a sense of emotional stability... if they have been exposed to trauma, they can't just come in and...