Weekly Update: Unveiling our pre-K funding plan

Friends,

Tomorrow is a significant day for the future of the city we all love.

Tomorrow, we plan to announce our proposal that can lead to fully funding needs-based pre-Kindergarten across Shelby County for the first time in our history. This has been a personal quest of mine for a number of years; you may remember my involvement as a leader in the 2013 sales tax referendum.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to have a plan before us that can make this happen.

We’ll share details of how this will work at a news conference tomorrow morning, and you’ll be able to read more by visiting our website and our social media profiles.

There is no more crucial moral calling of our time in our city than positively affecting our young people. You may know this already, but only 20 percent of our third graders can read at a third grade level. Drastically improving that number over time can be a game-changer when it comes to positively affecting all of our challenges.

That’s a reason why we’ve invested in literacy programming in our summer camps. That’s a reason why we have after-school programming in our community centers. That’s a reason why we’ve increased what we do in our libraries.

And that’s why we’ve developed this plan that could lead to the expansion pre-K for all.

Stay tuned.

Be alert: MLGW wants you to know about the latest scam involving utility payments. Some customers have reported receiving calls from people claiming to work for MLGW and requesting payment. But MLGW does not request payments over the phone. Here are more details.

Get the app: It’s always a good time to remind you that MLGW has a useful iPhone and Android app -- particularly useful during outages. Find it on the iTunes or Android stores.

Thanks, FedEx: As the late, great George Lapides often said, where would Memphis be without FedEx?

We saw yet another example of FedEx’s might this week, when it announced a $1 billion modernization of its Memphis hub. That’s right -- one billion dollars. It’ll make the Memphis hub the most state-of-the-art cargo hub in the entire world.

FedEx is a big part of our momentum in Memphis, even more so after this week’s amazing announcement. According to Cushman & Wakefield, some $13 billion in development is planned, under construction or recently completed in Greater Memphis.

Our best days continue to be ahead of us. Speaking of, I hope you’ll read this commentary from WREG-TV’s Otis Sanford on that very topic.

Yours,