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Scenes from a Memphis job fair: How one veteran teacher is struggling to return to the kindergarten classroom
NEW TRI-STATE DEFENDER — here’s still three weeks before school starts in Memphis, but on a recent afternoon, the parking lot at Hickory Ridge Middle School was packed. Veteran kindergarten teacher Sandra Jenkins pulled up at 3:17 p.m. and parked her sage green Toyota Corolla along a curb on the campus outskirts. At Shelby County Schools district’s biggest job fair of the year, other prospective teachers had already taken every spot before the massive hiring event officially started at 3 p.m.
By Kathryn Palmer
There’s still three weeks before school starts in Memphis, but on a recent afternoon, the parking lot at Hickory Ridge Middle School was packed.
Veteran kindergarten teacher Sandra Jenkins pulled up at 3:17 p.m. and parked her sage green Toyota Corolla along a curb on the campus outskirts. At Shelby County Schools district’s biggest job fair of the year, other prospective teachers had already taken every spot before the massive hiring event officially started at 3 p.m.
Ninety-seven percent of district positions are already spoken for. But like every year, a few positions in every grade and almost every subject remain open. This is the fifth teacher job fair in the region Jenkins has attended in the past 12 months. So far, she’s only been able to land substitute positions, but she’s hoping to go home from this hiring event with something more permanent.
For schools with vacancies, this time of year is “crunch time,” said Desmond Hendricks as he set up an interview table in the school gymnasium. He is a social studies teacher at Raleigh Egypt Middle School and was waiting to field candidates for five open positions in math and English. “It’s all about finding the right fit,” he said.
That’s why he joined about 75 other district schools in the gymnasium and cafeteria, prepared to interview candidates and make tentative hiring offers for dozens of vacant positions in Tennessee’s largest district.
Jenkins, 60, is hopeful she’ll be a good fit for one of those schools. The Memphis native is just one of the 224 people who showed up at the two-hour event, hoping to nail down a full-time job before school starts in mid-August. But her silver-streaked ponytail set her apart from the mass of relatively young-looking, recently certified teachers — many of whom were probably born after Jenkins started her first long term substitute teaching job at Whitehaven Elementary in 1981.
“We didn’t have job fairs back then,”Jenkins recalled, as she carefully walked through the parking lot in her marshmallow-white tennis shoes and compression socks. “We just applied to the district and got hired. Now it’s all politics and paperwork.”
As she opened the heavy double doors to start her job hunt, Jenkins passed a young, well-dressed woman skipping back into the parking lot, gleefully proclaiming, “I got the job!” into her cell phone.
“It feels like they only want young ones now,” said Jenkins, who has more than 30 years of classroom experience in Memphis public schools.
Jenkins’ age and experience level make her an outlier in the Memphis teacher workforce, which is plagued by high turnover that creates a pool of inexperienced educators. In the 2015-16 school year, approximately one in five Tennessee teachers were in their first or second years of work, according to data that schools reported to the federal government. Those figures were even higher in Memphis.
Jenkins came armed with a manilla folder containing a stack of resumes and a pitch about herself. Helping young students reach their highest potential is her broad goal, but her specific goal is to get back to teaching kindergarten. She did that for 22 years until a car accident forced her into an unexpected, early retirement from her position at Holmes Road Elementary five years ago. She took some time off to be with family and care for a now-deceased neighbor.
“I’m trying to get back into teaching, but it’s been hard,” she said.
For Jenkins, who has no children of her own, kindergarten is the only grade she can see herself teaching. “They are like my kids,” she said, as she waited in line to check in with district staff and verify her certification. “Some children that I have taught were complete blank slates when they walked into my class. I like molding them, shaping them, building their confidence.”
A district employee hands Jenkins a printout of the job openings, directing Jenkins to the school cafeteria for K-8 openings.
She scans the list looking for kindergarten openings while she walks down a corridor toward the lunchroom. Instead of sandwiches and juice boxes, job ads and interview questionnaires are strewn across the circular tables. School personnel are seated on the built-in benches, ready to interview teachers, ready to make offers.
Jenkins snakes through the maze of teachers and administrators. “I knew I’d see a bunch of people I know,” she said, smiling after spotting an old colleague, Sarah Hamer, who now works as a personal learning coach for White Station Elementary. Hamer’s looking to hire for first grade — not quite what Jenkins is looking for. “I get it. When you’re a kindergarten teacher, you’re a kindergarten teacher for life,” Hamer said to Jenkins. “If you change your mind, we’d love to interview you.”
Jenkins drops off a few resumes at other tables, careful not to interrupt interviews. Then, finally, she gets invited to sit down at the Sheffield Elementary School table for five minutes. The school has an opening for kindergarten, but they’ve already interviewed a few other candidates. They said they’d keep her resume on file.
“If people don’t like me, I move on,” Jenkins said. “Rejection doesn’t hurt me. I was one of the first black students to integrate Whitehaven Elementary in 1967. I got spit on, called names. I don’t take it personally.”
The big round clock on the white cinder block walls ticks to 4:55. By that point Jenkins had handed out almost every copy of her resume, and the crowd is thinning.
On her way out, she bumped into another former coworker, now-assistant superintendent Rodney Rowan. Jenkins told him the day hadn’t gone as well as she’d hope.
Rowan seemed surprised. “I would hire a seasoned teacher in a heartbeat,” he said, “because they don’t require as much training.” He said Jenkins could list him as a reference and he’d tell the schools: “You love children. You work hard. You stayed until the job was done. You didn’t watch the clock.”
As of 5 p.m., when the job fair ended, district recruitment and staffing associate Sheilaine Moses said they’d received 40 hiring recommendations, pending district approval. Jenkins’ name wasn’t among them.
“There’s still a few weeks before school,” Jenkins said as she walked out to the far end of now-emptied school parking lot. “It will happen if it’s supposed to.”
The post Scenes from a Memphis job fair: How one veteran teacher is struggling to return to the kindergarten classroom appeared first on Chalkbeat.
This article originally appeared in the New Tri-State Defender
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of May 14 – 20, 2025
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 14 – 20, 2025

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High Court Opens Door to Police Accountability
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected a judicial doctrine that for years shielded law enforcement officers from civil liability in police shooting cases by allowing courts to assess force based only on the final moments before an officer pulled the trigger.

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected a judicial doctrine that for years shielded law enforcement officers from civil liability in police shooting cases by allowing courts to assess force based only on the final moments before an officer pulled the trigger. In Barnes v. Felix, the high court struck down the Fifth Circuit’s “moment-of-threat” rule, which had been used to justify the 2016 killing of Ashtian Barnes, a Black man shot during a traffic stop outside Houston. Officer Roberto Felix fired two shots into Barnes’s moving car after stepping onto the doorsill. The lower courts determined that only the two seconds before the shooting—when Felix was holding onto the vehicle—mattered in deciding whether the use of deadly force was reasonable. The Supreme Court disagreed. Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice Elena Kagan made clear that determining whether an officer’s use of force is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment requires an analysis of the totality of the circumstances, including all events leading up to the shooting. “A court deciding a use-of-force case cannot review the totality of the circumstances if it has put on chronological blinders,” the Court ruled.
The victim’s mother, Janice Barnes, brought the case under Section 1983, alleging that Felix violated her son’s constitutional rights. The ruling sends the case back to the lower courts for reconsideration under the broader standard set by the Supreme Court. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), the Court’s ruling solidifies that police do not have special constitutional status and should be held to the same accountability standards. “The moment-of-threat rule is entirely unsupported by the Constitution’s text and history,” said Nargis Aslami, a fellow at CAC. Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod added, “The Court took a small but important step toward greater accountability for police officers who violate the Fourth Amendment by inflicting unnecessary violence during their encounters with the public.” The ruling comes as data continue to show disproportionate police encounters and violence against Black Americans. A NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet revealed that a Black person is five times more likely than a white person to be stopped without just cause. Black men are twice as likely to be stopped as Black women. Meanwhile, 65% of Black adults say they have felt targeted because of their race.
Each year, between 900 and 1,100 people are shot and killed by police in the United States. Since 2005, at least 98 non-federal law enforcement officers have been arrested for fatal on-duty shootings. Still, only 35 have been convicted—and just three have been convicted of murder with the convictions upheld. Recent data from the Prison Policy Initiative show that while white residents are most likely to initiate contact with police—for reasons like reporting crimes or seeking help—Black, Hispanic, and Asian individuals are more likely to be on the receiving end of police-initiated contact, including street stops, traffic stops, and arrests. Traffic stops, which remain the most common form of police-initiated contact, are also among the most lethal. According to Mapping Police Violence, over 100 police killings occurred during traffic stops in 2023. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 62% of Black people whose most recent police contact in 2022 was initiated by officers were drivers in traffic stops. That compares to 56% to 59% among other racial groups. Black drivers were searched or arrested at a rate of 9%—more than double that of white drivers and significantly higher than Hispanic or Asian drivers. “The Supreme Court’s decision in Barnes v. Felix is crucial not only for police accountability but also for broader constitutional protections,” the North Star Law Group wrote in a post. “If the Court upholds the ‘moment of threat’ standard, it could make it even harder to hold officers accountable for excessive force. However, if it reinforces the ‘totality of circumstances’ standard or adopts a hybrid approach, it could create a fairer system that protects both civilians and responsible police officers.”
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Workplace Inequity Worsens for Black Women
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Meanwhile, they remain underrepresented in high-wage fields like tech, law, and executive management—even when they hold the degrees and credentials to qualify.

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Black women remain the backbone of the U.S. labor force—working more, earning less, and bearing greater burdens across nearly every sector. Even as the country added 177,000 jobs in April, Black women lost 106,000 positions, the steepest decline of any group. Their unemployment rate jumped to 6.1%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the losses go far deeper than a single month of data. Research shows Black women are not only overrepresented in low-wage industries like care, cleaning, education, and food service—they are also consistently denied advancement and paid significantly less than white male peers, even with the same credentials. In its July 2024 report, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) found Black women working full-time, year-round earned just 69.1 cents for every dollar paid to white men. That figure drops to 49.6 cents in states like Louisiana. “Black women consistently have higher labor force participation rates than other demographics of women,” officials from the National Partnership for Women and Families wrote. Yet those higher participation rates have not translated into pay equity or job security.
The earnings gap grows wider with age. For example, Black women aged 56 to 65 working full-time, year-round, earn just 59.3 cents for every dollar paid to white men in the same age group. Those in leadership roles report disproportionately high dissatisfaction with pay and access to advancement, with 90% of women of color in management saying systemic barriers hinder workplace progress. Additionally, according to a 2022 Health Affairs report, more than one in five Black women in the labor force are in health care—more than any other group. However, nearly two-thirds of them work as licensed practical nurses or aides, and 40% are in long-term care. These roles are among the lowest-paid and highest-risk in the industry, often involving grueling schedules, poor benefits, and unsafe conditions. Beyond health care, the National Employment Law Project found that more than half of Black women work in jobs where they are overrepresented, such as childcare, janitorial work, and food preparation. Meanwhile, they remain underrepresented in high-wage fields like tech, law, and executive management—even when they hold the degrees and credentials to qualify.
In Boston, Charity Wallace, a 37-year-old biotech professional, and Chassity Coston, a 35-year-old middle school principal, both say they’re leaning heavily on community and mental health strategies to cope with workplace challenges. “It’s a constant fight of belonging and really having your girlfriends or your homegirls or my mom and my sister,” Wallace told NBC News. “I complain to them every day about something that’s going on at work. So having that circle of Black women that you can really vent to is important because, again, you cannot let things like this sit. We’ve been silenced for too long.” Limited opportunities for promotion and sponsorship compound the isolation many Black women feel in their workplaces. In 2024, writer Tiffani Lambie described the “invisible struggle for Black women” at work. “The concept of ‘Black Girl Magic’ contributes to the notion that Black women are superheroes,” she wrote. “Although the intent of this movement was to empower and celebrate the uniqueness of Black women, the perception has also put Black women at greater risk of anxiety and depression—conditions that are more chronic and intense in Black women than in others.”
She warned that workplace conditions—marked by fear, lack of support, and erasure—threaten to push more Black women out of leadership and career pipelines. “If left untouched, the number of Black women in leadership and beyond will continue to decline,” Lambie wrote. “It is incumbent on everyone to account for these experiences and create an equitable and safe environment for everyone to succeed.” The Urban Institute recently spoke with a Black woman who transitioned from part-time fast food work to a full-time data entry role after completing a graduate degree. The job offered her better pay, health insurance, and stability. “It gives you a sense of focus and determination,” she said. “Now, I can build my career path.”
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