In this episode of Whole Child: Personalized Tiered Supports, host Naren Balasubramaniam welcomes Dr. Sally Parish, Vice Provost and Director of Schools at the University of Memphis, for a conversation about what whole child support looks like when a school district is built inside a university. It is the show's first conversation with a leader who works across both the higher education and K–12 spaces.
Sally shares how University Schools grew from roughly 300 students into the state's first Innovative School District serving about 1,500 children across early childhood sites, two elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school that graduated its first class this past May. She explains why her team opened schools first and built the district structure around them, how the university's nursing, social work, psychology, and teacher education faculty become part of the student support model, and why success at University Schools is defined as every child reaching their personal best rather than a single proficiency benchmark. That definition extends past academics: her staff know whether a student had dinner last night, whether the power is on at home, and whether something is happening in the family that would change what a child needs that day.
Listeners will also hear how the district's Wellness Center gives families one entry point instead of a phone tree, bringing social work, psychology, nursing, speech, and special education practitioners to the same table alongside the university interns they are training. Sally and Naren dig into bridging the traditional silos between academics, attendance, behavior, and health, why leadership in a whole child system is about influence rather than position, and how teachers manage classrooms where students span several grade levels in both directions. She also describes what it takes to make whole child support a durable operating model rather than a person-dependent one, and closes with the challenge on her mind for the next six months.
Key Moments
04:23 Growing from 300 students to 1,500
07:13 Opening schools first, then building the district
11:30 Defining success as every child's personal best
15:22 Inside the Wellness Center model
20:32 Bridging academic, attendance, and behavior silos
23:23 Leadership as influence, not position
31:40 Teaching classrooms with every ability level
37:29 Designing schools with parents at the table
Why You'll Love This Episode
If you have ever watched a family get handed off between the nurse, the counselor, the school psychologist, and the classroom teacher, this episode offers a concrete alternative. Sally describes a support model that is unified at the point of entry, staffed by practitioners who know the children by name, and backed by the research capacity of a major university. Her perspective is especially valuable for superintendents, principals, student services and MTSS leaders, and anyone working to connect academic, behavioral, and wellness supports into a system that holds together when individual people move on.
Connect with Our Guest
Dr. Sally Parish Vice Provost and Director of Schools, University of Memphis District Website: https://www.memphis.edu/universityschools/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sally-g-parish-34313013b/
Connect with Us
Metamorphix, Inc. Website: https://www.metamorphix.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/metamorphix-inc./
About Whole Child: Personalized Tiered Supports
Whole Child: Personalized Tiered Supports is the podcast where district leaders, school teams, and practitioners share how they are personalizing MTSS to support every learner. Hosted by Naren Balasubramaniam of Metamorphix, Inc., each episode dives into real systems, stories, and strategies for delivering the right academic, behavioral, and social-emotional supports at the right time—so all students can thrive.