Lt. Gov. Randy McNally announces appointments to MSCS oversight board (original) (raw)

Updated May 26, 2026, 6:47 p.m. CT

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include information about one of Cameron Sexton's appointees.

More names of those who will oversee the Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board have been announced.

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, announced his appointments to the board on May 26. Billy Orgel and Dedrick Brittenum Jr. will serve as the Senate appointees on the board.

Orgel is the current president and CEO of Tower Ventures, a wireless communications infrastructure company, and previously served on the MSCS school board. Orgel was elected to the Shelby County School Board of Education prior to the merger. He served on the MSCS school board after the merger and left the board in 2022.

Brittenum is a local attorney and former Memphis City Councilman. He served on the Memphis City Council from 2005 to 2007.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, annouced one of his noimnees later in the day.

On May 22, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced his appointments to the board of managers. Per the law, the governor has the authority to appoint five of the nine members.

Lee appointed the following members:

• Tyrone Burroughs, chairman, First Choice Global and Founder, The Burroughs Foundation.
• Dorsey Hopson, partner at City Fund and former MSCS superintendent.
• Shanea McKinney, senior advisor of product management at The Cigna Group, a healthcare and insurance company, and a member of the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees.
• Nisha Powers, founder and president of Powers Hill Design, a Memphis-based civil engineering firm.
• Beverly Robertson, co-founder and COO of Trust Marketing and Communications, former president of the Greater Memphis Chamber and former president of the National Civil Rights Museum.

After McNally's appointments, the only appointments left to be announced were from Sexton.

Sexton announced one of his two appointments to the state board hours after McNally. David Mansouri is one of the two appointments Sexton made, and is the sole appointment that is allowed to reside outside of the Memphis area.

Mansouri, who resides in Nashville, is the president and CEO of State Collaborative on Reforming Education, SCORE. He also serves on the board of directors of the Policy Innovators in Education Network and previously served on the board of Nashville Classical Charter School, according to SCORE.

"It has been my privilege to have worked over more than a decade and a half in supporting student-centered innovation and best practices in schools and districts all across the state, including in Memphis and Shelby County," Mansouri said in a statement. "This is an opportunity to take a comprehensive look at the public education system and make certain it delivers what every student and family in Memphis deserves: a world-class education, strong outcomes, and a clear path to success."

Sexton has yet to make his final appointment to the board. The final member of the nine person state board must reside in Shelby County, in accordance with the legislation that was passed.

Why did Tennessee take over MSCS?

On April 22, both the state House and Senate approved legislation that would effectively strip much of the power from the locally elected school board of Tennessee's largest district. The vote, in both chambers, was split along party lines.

The takeover of MSCS has been a topic of conversation for years, especially in the immediate aftermath of the ousting of former Superintendent Marie Feagins in January 2025. State Rep. Mark White, a Republican from Memphis, and state Sen. Brent Taylor, a Republican representing Eads, Shelby County and Memphis, pushed for state intervention in both 2025 and 2026.

After the two legislators failed to come to a consensus on how the state takeover would look in practice at the end of the 2025 legislative year, they vowed to bring it back the next year after the release of a state-funded forensic audit.

A preliminary report from the forensic audit was released on April 1. GOP leadership then moved swiftly to appoint a conference committee to hammer out the final details of the bill. The conference committee appointments were made on April 15 and 16, and the bill was finally passed on April 22.

The legislation doesn't just apply to MSCS; it could loop in other districts that meet specific metrics.

For the state to take over a local education agency, the district has to meet specific metrics. Some of the metrics are similar to those posed previously, but some are new.

School districts could be taken over by the state if they meet four of the following metrics:

• 50% or more of students are not proficient in both math and English Language Arts testing;
• 50% or more of the schools receive a D or F from the state letter grade system;
• 25% or more of students are chronically absent;
• One or more schools are identified as a priority school, or have maintained priority status for each of the five immediately preceding years;
• The Commissioner of Education makes the determination that the findings of an audit conducted by the comptroller show deficiencies in management, accounting or internal controls, or finds waste, abuse or financial mismanagement; or
• The Commissioner of Education determines that there have been more than two interim superintendents over the course of four years.

According to the Tennessee Department of Education, there are seven school districts around the state that meet three metrics, meaning they are only one measure away from being taken over by the state.

MSCS meets all six requirements for takeover, but school districts in Campbell, Cocke, Lewis, and Madison counties, Tennessee Public Charter Schools and the Achievement School District all meet three of the requirements.

Brooke Muckerman is the education and children's issues and politics reporter for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at brooke.muckerman@commercialappeal.com.