For Shreya Ganesh, Thursday was supposed to be a day to focus on planning senior class events like the student body election. Instead, she and other students at White Station High School were dealing with the aftermath of another night of violence in Memphis — this time, a shooting spree across the city that left four people dead and three wounded.
But along with the shock, fear, and grief that reverberated through the school, Ganesh said, there was a feeling of comfort in watching students and staff come together to support one another through productive conversations.
The morning began with an announcement from her principal, who told students that resources were available for anyone who was struggling. Ganesh and her fellow seniors discussed the incident at length during their meeting, and her teachers brought up the incident during every class period.
“I feel like our school has a really large support system,” Ganesh said. “The way that it was such an open conversation and we talked about it in a group, it just makes you realize you’re not in it alone and everybody’s having the same fears that you are.”
On Thursday, activists, school officials, and city leaders alike called for the community to similarly come together to find solutions to the violence that has flared across Memphis.
The series of shootings Wednesday paralyzed parts of the city as police searched for a suspect over several hours. Police later arrested and charged Ezekiel Kelly, 19, with killing one man, and said he is a suspect in the other deaths, according to The Commercial Appeal. He had been released from prison just six months earlier.
The shooting spree came just days after Eliza Fletcher, a pre-kindergarten teacher at St. Mary’s Episcopal School and mother of two, was kidnapped and killed during an early morning jog Friday.
In a message posted to social media Thursday morning, Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ interim superintendent, Toni Williams, sought to reassure families and employees. The district increased safety and security measures at all schools — including at Southwind High School, which was the target of a threatening social media post — and Williams promised officials would “continue to monitor and provide additional support to our schools.”
“We understand that our students and staff may be upset and confused by what occurred — I believe the whole city is shaken — and we will encourage thoughtful discussion with a focus toward healing,” Williams wrote. “We have counselors, social workers, and mental health supports to assist our students and families.”
And in a tweet late Thursday afternoon, Williams encouraged the city to “channel our fears and frustrations following recent events into actions and solutions.”
Daniel Warner, a government teacher at East High School, began his classes Thursday by handing out small pieces of paper to all his students and posing a simple question: Given the recent events in our city, what are you bringing with you today?
Students were free to write down some of the emotions. Warner didn’t collect the papers. He let students decide what to do with them: throw them away, keep them, or hand them to him if they needed help or support. They closed the exercise by saying some affirmations together.
“I just wanted to give them space to process whatever they were feeling,” Warner said. “Learning how to tend to their own hearts and spirits amid troubling events is something that’s going to really sustain them in their life.”
MSCS board Chair Michelle McKissack called for a comprehensive approach to crime and violence in Memphis. A day after district officials hit back at Mayor Jim Strickland for linking rising truancy and declining school enrollment to juvenile crime, McKissack suggested local elected officials should convene an emergency summit to explore solutions.
“It’s not just the one problem of getting guns off the streets or tackling truancy — it’s all of it,” McKissack said. “We’re operating too much in silos. We should not be making national news time after time.”
Board Vice Chair Althea Greene also said the district is focused on collaborating more with the county, Juvenile Court, and other organizations.
But on Thursday, Greene focused on Memphis students and families. She started her day at Promise Academy-Hollywood, where she said she witnessed a somber school drop off.
People looked tired, Greene said. Many parents waited in the car with their students until the school doors opened, rather than sending them off to line up in front of the school. One parent in a car was crying because she had lost two family members the night before.
Wednesday’s shooting spree was all students were talking about. That was also the case at the three other schools Greene visited Thursday morning during breakfast and in between lessons.
“They weren’t talking about reading and math today — they were talking about what happened in our city,” Greene said. “That’s just not the culture and climate we want for our students. So we’re going to have to work together as elected officials to change that and to make sure we put the correct policies and laws in place.”
Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
On a large colorful rug, several schoolchildren sat with their legs crossed. Others stretched out on their stomachs. All were poring over pages and unraveling words and stories from books like “Pete the Cat,” “Time for Breakfast,” and “The Tiny Seed.”
It’s reading time in Tahna White’s kindergarten classroom.
Her self-funded library collection anchors a joyful and eye-catching corner of her teaching space at Lowrance K-8 School in Memphis. Minutes earlier, her students were browsing through blue, purple, and green book bins sorted by themes like llamas, plants, feelings, and stories written by Eric Carle.
“They absolutely love going through these books,” said White, who has a master’s degree in language and literacy and has amassed about 500 children’s titles during her 20 years of teaching.
Still, White is prepared to box the books up and take them home if Memphis-Shelby County Schools directs her to catalog each one under a new state law aimed at school libraries.
“The task would be enormous, and I don’t know when I’d have time to do it myself,” she said. “Pretty much all my parents work, so it’s unlikely they’d have time to volunteer and help.”
Teachers and school leaders across Tennessee are trying to figure out how to satisfy recent state guidance on the 2022 library law. The statute requires public schools to scrutinize their library materials for “age appropriateness” and publish the full inventory for parents to view online.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee said the purpose was to “ensure parents know what materials are available to students in their libraries.”
But an Aug. 11 memo to district leaders said that under the law, a library collection is not limited to materials found in a traditional school library. It also includes “materials maintained in a teacher’s classroom,” wrote Christy Ballard, general counsel for the state education department.
Soon after, several school systems, including large districts in Chattanooga and Murfreesboro, instructed their teachers to begin cataloging their classroom collections by title and author, along with a brief description of each book — just as the new school year was beginning.
“So most teachers have hundreds of books,” said third-grade teacher Sydney Rawls, whose viral TikTok video showed her spending one Saturday creating an inventory, book by book, at Mitchell-Neilson School in Murfreesboro, south of Nashville.
Rawls described how her students beg to read from her collection after they finish a test or assignment, “and I have to say no, you can’t, because I haven’t had a chance to go through all of them to catalog them, to write them all down.”
For White and other educators who may face the same task, the answer may be just removing the books they’ve personally curated for their classrooms. It’s an option that some teachers have discussed on social media.
Removing reading materials to comply with a state law would be an ironic twist for a state that has been trying for years to help its children become better readers.
Only one-third of Tennessee fourth-graders earned a proficient reading score in 2019 on the most recent national tests conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card.
In Memphis, home to the state’s largest district, nearly 80% of students aren’t reading at grade level.
The same legislature that passed the governor’s library proposal, dubbed the “Age Appropriate Materials Act,” approved a raft of measures the prior year aimed at improving students’ literacy skills.
As a result, all K-12 schools have adopted phonics-based reading instruction, while colleges have revised their training accordingly for aspiring teachers. Also, beginning this school year, one controversial new law increases the likelihood that schools will hold back students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade.
The prospect of children losing access to books because of teachers balking at cataloging their collections is something the governor and the law’s two GOP sponsors — Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth — aren’t talking about.
None responded to questions or accommodated interview requests from Chalkbeat.
Others involved in the library law’s development say they were taken aback by the state’s broad interpretation of what constitutes a school library.
“We don’t think that was the legislative intent,” said Dale Lynch, who leads the state’s superintendents organization.
“It obviously means a whole lot of work for teachers.”
Lindsey Kimery, past president of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians, said the governor’s chief of staff and policy adviser never mentioned classroom collections when discussing the legislation with representatives of her group earlier this year.
“It’s exactly the kind of thing that we were afraid of,” she said of the law’s expanded scope. “At the end of the day, this creates one more barrier to easy book access for students who have no problem accessing things like video games or cellphones.”
State Rep. Sam McKenzie, who serves on a House education committee, doesn’t recall classroom book collections being discussed during debates about the legislation.
The Knoxville Democrat plans to propose his own legislation next year to clarify that the library law does not extend to classrooms.
“This is a classic example of government overreach,” he said. “We need to get out of the way and let our teachers teach.”
Tennessee was already under a national spotlight last school year for several high-profile book bans.
Then lawmakers passed several bills aimed at restricting the kinds of books that students can read. In addition to the governor’s library review law, one measure lets the state textbook commission overrule local school board decisions and remove materials from school libraries statewide if they are deemed “inappropriate for the age or maturity levels” of students.
Tennessee was also among the first states to enact a law intended to restrict classroom discussions about the legacy of slavery, racism, and white privilege.
“What’s driving the whole debate is a push to get rid of books about race, gender, and sex,” said JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.
But fourth-grade teacher Karolyn Marino worries that, based on how educators are responding to the state’s definition of a school library, classic books will get pushed out of classrooms.
“Somehow, this law went down a rabbit hole that’s gone too far,” said Marino, who teaches in Williamson County, south of Nashville, and also serves on the board of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.
“It’s not that the ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ will end up in a trash can; it’s that Huck Finn will end up somewhere in a box,” she said.
Marino’s district, Williamson County Schools, is still determining how to comply with the law and new guidance, as are most school systems across Tennessee.
“Metro Nashville Public Schools was already in compliance with the new law based on the classic definition of a school library,” said spokesman Sean Braisted, noting that district leaders are developing a plan to address the broader interpretation.
“We will seek to do so in such a way that minimizes any burden placed on teachers who are rightfully focused on providing the academic instruction and support to their students,” he added.
That could mean giving teachers a tool to create a listing of their classroom collections without typing it out by hand. With the right resource, they could just scan a barcode on each book to automatically fill in the title, author, and description.
But such tools don’t come cheap. Kimery, who coordinates library services for Nashville schools, priced one system at $64,000 a year.
Others, like Williamson County’s Marino, say the state should pay teachers a stipend for any additional work required under the law.
The legislature’s fiscal analyst didn’t identify such potential costs when studying the governor’s proposal. The bill’s fiscal note said schools and districts “will be able to comply with the proposed legislation using existing resources during the normal course of business; therefore, any fiscal impact to state or local government is estimated to be not significant.”
In Memphis, White is ready to pack up her books if her district doesn’t come up with a workable plan for complying with the law. But for now, she is using them every day to help her students with reading, which is considered the foundation for learning and success in all subject areas.
“Our goal is to create lifelong readers,” White said, “but you can’t do that without books.”
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
The chief financial officer of Memphis-Shelby County Schools will serve as interim superintendent during the search to replace Joris Ray, who resigned last week while under investigation over claims that he abused his power and violated district policies.
The board voted unanimously Tuesday to name Toni Williams to the interim role.
Board member Althea Greene, who nominated Willams, emphasized her long track record of success with the district and said the board wanted to nominate someone as interim superintendent who had no intention of seeking the job on a permanent basis.
“We heard the public,” Greene said. “We heard your cry.”
The announcement of an interim superintendent was the expected next step in the school board’s effort to restore public trust and find a new leader for the state’s largest district at a time when students and educators are trying to recover from the pandemic’s toll.
It was also one of the final actions taken by the current board. The newly constituted board, with two new members elected Aug. 4, will begin its term on Wednesday.
Ray appointed Williams as finance chief in October 2019. A graduate of Memphis’ Whitehaven High School, Williams has held several roles with the district, including as a senior accountant, manager, and director of budget and accounting and reporting.
Williams also has served as chief financial officer in Millington Municipal Schools, a neighboring suburban school district in Shelby County, and has held leadership and financial positions with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She returned to the Memphis district to take the chief financial officer position on an interim basis before taking the job permanently.
“Even though she is a number cruncher, everything that guides those numbers is a full understanding of what makes this district move forward for children,” board Chair Michelle McKissack said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Addressing the board after the vote, Williams said, “We will stay committed during this time keeping our students interested in the forefront of everything we do. Challenges and different decisions will come, and I promise to manage them with honesty, transparency and collaboration.”
Williams also pledged to involve community members in the work of improving Memphis Shelby County Schools.
“I listened to community advocates as of last week, and one said: ‘You can’t do this work alone.’ And I agree. I look forward to listening to community advocates. I look forward to creating those opportunities, and most importantly, to students, parents, you have done great work … we have academics trending in the right direction … .”
At least one community group, Memphis LIFT, had long sought Ray’s resignation. It made numerous appearances at board meetings during the summer.
In mid-July, the board launched an external investigation into Ray and put him on administrative leave following allegations contained in divorce filings that he had adulterous affairs with women later identified as district employees. Chalkbeat confirmed that two of the women Ray’s wife alleges that he had affairs with were people he supervised before becoming superintendent in April 2019.
Last week, the board voted to approve a severance package with Ray that will pay him the equivalent of 18 months’ salary — about $480,000 — plus some benefits. The deal also ended the investigation into whether Ray violated district policy.
The board’s attorney said Ray approached the district about a separation agreement, saying the investigation had “become distracting to and constraining for the district.” The district has said it will pay former U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III, who was appointed to lead the investigation, $19,000 for his work.
Under the terms of the severance agreement, neither Ray nor the district admitted any wrongdoing.
A school district policy last updated in August 2021 “strongly discourages romantic or sexual relationships between a manager or other supervisory employee and their staff,” citing the risk of actual or perceived conflicts of interest, favoritism, and bias. The policy also states that “given the uneven balance of power within such relationships, consent by the staff member is suspect and may be viewed by others, or at a later date by the staff member, as having been given as the result of coercion or intimidation.”
In addition, the policy requires parties to reveal any such relationships to managers. Chalkbeat filed an open records request asking the district whether Ray disclosed any such relationships. The district later responded that no such documents exist.
Ray denied violating any MSCS policies.
After Ray was put on leave, deputy superintendents Angela Whitelaw and John Barker shared duties leading the district — a role that will end with Williams’ appointment.
Ray was named superintendent in 2019 after the MSCS board decided against searching nationally for the district’s next leader. Board members said at the time that they thought Ray, a longtime district employee who had been serving as interim superintendent for months, was an “exceedingly qualified candidate,” and said a national search was unnecessary and would cost the district valuable time and resources.
The district has promised to share details about the next search in the coming weeks.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
For the first time in seven years, Memphis-Shelby County Schools received the state’s highest rating for academic growth, another sign of an upswing after the deep learning losses caused by the pandemic.
Tennessee’s largest school district received Level 5 ratings for literacy, numeracy, and composite student growth as measured by end-of-year testing in the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, known as TVAAS. It’s a significant jump from previous years: The state Department of Education has deemed MSCS a Level 1 or 2 school district for the last four school years.
In a news release Monday, MSCS also announced that 75 district-managed schools and 28 charter schools earned individual Level 5 composite ratings. MSCS has nearly 160 district-managed schools and about 55 charter schools.
“We are proud of this honor, because it affirms that our strategies and teachers are helping students make academic gains,” Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support, said in a statement.
The district’s TVAAS scores come a week after more than 100,000 students returned to classrooms across Memphis for the new school year, which students, educators, and administrators hope will bring more recovery and a return to normal, despite some abnormal circumstances.
The MSCS school year began without its leader while Superintendent Joris Ray remains on paid administrative leave pending an external investigation into whether he abused his power and violated district policies by engaging in relationships with subordinates. Deputy Superintendents Whitelaw and John Barker are leading the district in Ray’s place.
Meanwhile, district-level scores from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP, show that the district has made progress in terms of student proficiency rates in key academic areas, though it still has a long way to go. The latest scores show nearly 17 percent of Memphis students in grades 3-12 performed at or above grade-level expectations in math and English on state standardized tests in 2022, an increase of about 6 percentage points from the previous year and a near return to pre-pandemic levels.
But the TCAP results also underscored that some of the most vulnerable student groups — such as children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — continue to lag behind their peers academically.
While TCAP gauges proficiency, TVAAS measures students’ academic progress over time, regardless of proficiency, and a Level 5 rating indicates that students’ growth over the previous year exceeded expectations.
Fewer than 30 percent of districts across Tennessee — including the state’s two largest school systems in Memphis and Nashville — received a Level 5 rating, according to statewide data also released Monday.
To MSCS officials, the district’s Level 5 TVAAS rating signifies that while “not all students start at the same place,” they are “rebounding from the negative impacts of the pandemic, our teachers are effectively helping students to reach academic goals, and our curriculum plan is getting results,” the news release says.
Administrators also touted gains in literacy — a top focus at MSCS for the last several years — with 87 percent of district schools earning a Level 3 TVAAS rating or higher in that area, and 58 percent of schools receiving a Level 5.
With the new school year already underway, the district is focused on continuing the strategies adopted last year to boost COVID recovery, such as increased tutoring, smaller early elementary class sizes, improving teacher retention, and expanded summer programming.
“Memphis-Shelby County Schools is trending up,” said Barker, deputy superintendent of strategic operations and finance. “We’re working to continue those trends this year.”
Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
State Capitol (Credit: Tennessee State Government)
Opponents of Tennessee’s private school voucher program went to court again Friday in another attempt to block its launch as a rapidly growing number of families and private schools signed up to take part.
Lawyers behind one of two long-running lawsuits asked judges to halt the state’s work on its education savings account program, which aims to provide families in Memphis and Nashville with public funding to pay for private schooling. Lawyers in the second lawsuit, representing parents in those cities, were expected to file a similar motion later Friday.
Gov. Bill Lee has ordered his education department to roll out the program for the school year starting in early August, prompting the latest flurry of legal activity.
As of Friday, about 1,500 families and at least 76 private schools had submitted forms this week indicating their interest to participate, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the state education department.
“None of these have been vetted for eligibility; the next steps are formal applications,” Blackley said.
The state “plainly will stop at nothing to see this Act implemented,” said the 45-page motion. “The fallout will be disastrous, and it will be irreparable. A temporary injunction is the only solution.”
A spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment about the latest filing.
That same panel will hear the latest legal challenge. The judges are expected to decide quickly — maybe as soon as next week — whether the program will proceed or pause while lawyers challenge the law’s constitutionality based on several remaining claims in the case.
Meanwhile, the number of families and private schools interested in participating essentially doubled in three days.
On Wednesday, before Lee flew to Memphis to meet with private school leaders there, he told reporters near Nashville that the response had been swift and that 600 families and 40-plus private schools had completed online forms published a day earlier to show “intent to participate.”
The state education department has scrambled since the order was lifted, and Lee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, told Chalkbeat earlier this week that “we’re really trying to catch up and meet the governor’s office’s expectations on this.”
On Friday, the department hosted a webinar for families interested in applying to move from public to private schools.
While the law allows up to 5,000 participants in the program’s first year, Blackley acknowledged that the expedited launch is challenging because the state must manually review applications to ensure families and schools meet the state’s eligibility standards.
It’s likely that families who want to participate immediately will have to start the 2022-23 school year in public schools, then pivot to private schools if they’re approved for the program.
“This process is moving rapidly, and we are doing the best that we can to handle it,” Blackley said.
The state also must set up systems and processes for redirecting public education spending in Memphis and Nashville, the only two cities where the program is operating, to private schools and vendors.
Research on the effectiveness of vouchers is mixed. Recent studies have found that using a voucher tends not to help — and may even harm — students’ test scores, especially in math. Other studies, though, have found neutral or positive effects of vouchers on high school graduation and college attendance.
The two lawsuits challenging the program cite provisions in the state constitution that guarantee equal protection under the law. They argue that while the state is obligated to maintain a system that provides for substantially equal educational opportunities for its residents, vouchers would create unequal systems by targeting two counties and diverting funds from their public school systems to private and home schools.
“The General Assembly intentionally and unapologetically excluded every other school district in Tennessee from the Act’s application to ‘protect’ those districts from the Act’s harmful impact,” the motion said. “And it did so without any justifiable rationale and without tailoring the program to any educational goal.”
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Less than a week after judges allowed Tennessee to resume work on its long-stalled private school voucher program, the program’s website roared back to life, and forms are available online for families and private schools in Memphis and Nashville interested in participating.
By Wednesday, Gov. Bill Lee announced, some 600 families had completed the form, and 40-plus private schools in the two cities had committed to making seats available for them when the school year begins — just three weeks from now.
The July 13 court order lifted an earlier order that blocked the program from launching as originally planned in 2020. Within hours, Lee directed his administration to speed ahead to roll out the program, despite the tight schedule and looming legal efforts by voucher opponents seeking to block the start again.
“There was an urgent need for school choice in 2019, and finally, parents in Memphis and Nashville won’t have to wait another day to choose the best educational fit for their children,” Lee said in a statement.
Lee, who met with private school leaders in Memphis on Wednesday, surprised even his own education department by announcing last week that work would resume immediately “to help eligible parents enroll this school year.”
The flurry of activity shows Lee’s determination to swiftly enroll as many students as possible — up to the 5,000 allowed in the first year — after two years of delays and fierce legal battles over the state’s voucher law. Tennessee lawmakers had debated vouchers for more than a decade before a GOP-controlled legislature passed Lee’s 2019 education savings account proposal with a dramatic, razor-thin, and controversial House vote.
Tennessee has been a battleground in the national fight between those who want to use taxpayer money to give parents more education choices and others who say that approach diverts money from already underfunded public schools.
Leaders of the pro-voucher American Federation for Children have been key allies of the Republican governor in lobbying for the state’s voucher law and promoting the program, including organizing Wednesday’s meeting between Lee and about 45 private school leaders from the Memphis area.
The gathering was at St. Benedict at Auburndale High School, a Catholic campus located in the mostly white and affluent suburb of Cordova, east of Memphis, and where tuition costs over $13,000 a year. The average taxpayer-funded voucher would provide about $8,000 this year to help families pay expenses including tuition, fees, textbooks, computers, exams, and tutoring services at approved private schools.
Asked later by reporters how families might fill the gap, Lee said that “every school has a different strategy” for financial aid and that many already provide scholarships to students needing help.
The governor added that his education department was still working through a lot of the details.
In an interview earlier Wednesday with Chalkbeat, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn acknowledged that her department faces a heavy lift with the expedited launch, starting with getting students and private schools to sign up, then making sure participants meet the state’s eligibility standards. The state also has to set up systems and processes for redirecting public education spending in Memphis and Nashville, the only two cities where the program is operating, to private schools and vendors.
“We’re really trying to catch up and meet the governor’s office’s expectations on this,” Schwinn said, “and to do so with a very clear focus that we will roll out when we feel like we can meet our commitments to families.”
State officials hoped to roll out the full program at the start of a new school year. But the timing got tricky when the state Supreme Court upheld the voucher law in May, and a lower court cleared the way for work to resume on the program just weeks before the Aug. 8 start of classes.
Lee’s administration settled for a rolling launch that gives families and private schools that want to participate three possible start dates to choose from.
“I think the timeline in July is very challenging for us,” Schwinn said, “and so right now, we just want to know how many parents are out there that might want to participate, and do they want to do it this August, this January, or next August?”
Managing the program is another challenge, and Schwinn is looking to Eve Carney, her chief of districts and schools, to oversee the application process and financial systems. The commissioner expects to hire an outside vendor to help with that oversight in the 2023-24 school year and said the department will seek bids for that work in the next few months.
The department already oversees a statewide private school voucher program for students with disabilities, but it is small in scope and had more time to launch in the middle of the 2016-17 school year with 36 families. Even so, the program has experienced some glitches responding to participating families as it has grown to 284 students amid staff turnover in the department.
Another challenge is the capacity of private schools to accommodate families who want to participate.
For the original launch planned for the 2020-21 school year, 62 schools had signed on to participate. But the pandemic has created tremendous enrollment shifts, as more students than usual moved from public to private schools, especially in Nashville and Memphis, where districts stuck with remote learning and mask mandates the longest. Students in early grades pivoted the most, essentially filling up those private sector seats.
As private school leaders try to work with Lee’s administration under the expedited timeline, not everybody will get what they want, they say.
“Capacity will vary by individual schools,” said Sarah Wilson, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools. “Some schools, particularly in the Nashville area, may only have room in one grade, if at all. Other schools have the capacity to add several students and are interested in doing so.”
Brad Goia, who leads a coalition of independent schools in the Nashville area, said “the likelihood of adding students now is not great.”
“Private schools by and large have benefited from a relatively strong economy and the popularity of Nashville, with lots of people moving in,” said Goia, who is also headmaster of Montgomery Bell Academy. “Most, if not all, private schools are close to capacity. I’m sure some schools would view this as a good opportunity to perhaps enlarge their base of diversity. And a few would look at it as a way to fill some seats.”
His counterpart in Memphis, Bryan Williams, said enrollment is “pretty much set for the year” at the city’s most competitive schools. But a small number of slots could be available at some schools, he said.
“There’s definitely some room for students to come in through ESAs, but that will vary from school to school,” said Williams, head of Christ Methodist Day School and director of the Memphis Association of Independent Schools.
Williams said his school could accommodate between five and 10 students at some grade levels. “If you spread those numbers across 30 schools, it can add up,” he said.
Admissions processes for private schools generally kick off a year before students enter, with most students applying by December and the most competitive schools setting their enrollment for the following school year by mid-March.
“Right now, the ESA program isn’t matching up with how private schools do admissions and enrollment,” Williams said.
Voucher opponents behind two lawsuits against the state are expected this week to seek a court order blocking the program for a second time while they challenge the constitutionality of the law based on several remaining claims.
Both groups asked for an expedited schedule for the judicial panel to consider their motions.
Asked Wednesday about the prospect of another bruising legal fight, the governor suggested that his administration will take matters one at a time.
“There’s been talk that that could possibly happen,” he said, “but we’re just working on the high-quality implementation of the plan right now.”
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
The Tennessee Supreme Court has declined to reconsider its recent decision upholding the state’s 2019 private school voucher law.
In a brief order issued Monday, the high court stood by its 3-2 ruling on May 18 in favor of the state and against the governments of Metropolitan Nashville and Shelby County, the only two counties affected by the law.
The decision marks another legal win for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program, the signature legislation of his first year in office, although other court challenges loom.
The program aims to provide taxpayer money to pay toward private education for eligible students in public school districts in Memphis and Nashville, but it has never launched because of the fierce legal battle.
In 2020, a judge overturned the law on the grounds that it violated the Tennessee Constitution’s “home rule” clause, since it was imposed on the two counties without their approval. But on appeal, the high court disagreed last month and said the home rule clause governs the actions of local school districts, not the counties that sued, even though they help fund those schools.
Attorneys for Nashville and Shelby County quickly asked for a rehearing, arguing in part that the home rule clause should apply because Nashville’s school system is part of a metropolitan form of government.
But the court declined to wade again into their claim.
“The court previously considered the issues raised in the petition in the course of its resolution of the appeal,” the court wrote in a four-sentence order.
A spokesman for Nashville Mayor John Cooper expressed disappointment over the order, while Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz said his office is “evaluating next steps for the remaining claims in our lawsuit.”
Litigants behind a second lawsuit in the case say they intend to press ahead with up to four remaining claims challenging the law’s constitutionality. And Dietz and his legal team are considering a similar move on behalf of local governments based in the state’s two largest cities.
In addition, a program with the complexities of vouchers requires significant preparation before a rollout and likely could not be ready before the start of the new school year in August.
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Gov. Bill Lee signed an executive order Monday directing Tennessee schools and law enforcement to double down on existing school safety protocols in the wake of a shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school.
But the Republican governor said restricting access to guns is off the table, and he called for continuing the state’s “prioritized practical approach to school safety.”
That means greater fortification of schools to make it more difficult for an intruder to enter them — a policy that former Gov. Bill Haslam, another Republican, stepped up in 2018 after a shooter killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
At a morning news conference, Lee said school communities can expect more unannounced security inspections to make sure all doors are locked so that visitors have only a single point of entry when the new school year begins.
The governor directed the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy to work with the state safety department to evaluate training standards in active-shooter situations, and announced required training for security guards at private schools. He called on state troopers to familiarize themselves with school patterns and school communities in their regions to become more involved in school safety.
And he directed the state education department to seek federal permission to use federal COVID-relief funding to conduct independent school safety assessments that identify needed building upgrades.
“There are things we can control, and there are things we cannot,” Lee said after signing his order. “And one of the things that we can control … (is how) to improve the practical, pragmatic steps to making a school safer.”
Democrats, however, characterized Lee’s order as a photo opportunity that won’t lead to meaningful change.
“I reject the notion that we are helpless against confronting gun violence,” said state Sen. Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis.
“Tennessee families believe in responsible gun ownership, and they support laws that would deny firearms and weapons of war to people who can’t pass a background check,” Akbari added. “That’s not radical. That’s just common sense.”
Lee’s four-page order comes two weeks after an 18-year-old legally purchased an AR-15-style rifle and opened fire on a classroom filled with children and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, before being killed by law enforcement.
And over the weekend, a string of shootings left at least 15 people dead and more than 60 others wounded in eight states, including in Tennessee, where three people were killed and 14 were injured early Sunday morning outside a nightclub in Chattanooga and two people died of gunshot wounds in southeast Shelby County.
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, who described himself as an “avid hunter” and gun owner, called on Congress to enact “common sense regulations” such as mandatory background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines that let shooters fire dozens of rounds without having to reload.
But Lee rejected those ideas when asked whether Tennessee would seek to issue its own regulations.
“We are not looking at gun restrictions or gun laws as a part of a school safety plan going forward,” he told reporters.
Tennessee has one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, including murders, suicides and accidental shootings. But the state has loosened restrictions on gun ownership since 2019 under Lee’s leadership. Last year, it joined more than a dozen other states that allow most adults 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety.
Asked whether the rise in gun violence constitutes a public health crisis, Lee called it a “serious and rising problem” and added that his executive order is a “first step” in addressing it.
“If we work together and implement the things that we have put in place in our state and strengthen those things — and we will be strengthening them over the next months — then we can work together to ensure that our schools are in fact safe places,” Lee said.
He added that he wants every Tennessee K-12 campus eventually to have a school resource officer and noted that his 2019 grant program has helped place more than 200 officers in public schools.
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Tikeila Rucker, then president of the United Education Association of Shelby County, speaks during an anti-voucher rally in front of the state Capitol in Nashville on April 8, 2019. (Photo by Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat)
Whether characterized as an assault on public schools or a pathway for more education choices for families, this week’s Tennessee Supreme Court ruling in favor of the state’s embattled school voucher law stirred a torrent of public feedback.
Reactions to the 3-2 decision split largely along partisan lines, bringing cheers from many Republicans, including Gov. Bill Lee, who said that the ruling “puts parents in Memphis and Nashville one step closer to finding the best educational fit for their children.”
Wednesday’s ruling revives Lee’s education savings account program, which lets eligible families use taxpayer dollars toward private school tuition or other private educational services. But it doesn’t guarantee the program’s survival.
The decision overturned lower court rulings in favor of the governments of Shelby County and Metropolitan Nashville, which argued that the 2019 law violated the Tennessee Constitution’s “home rule” provision, because it applied only to districts in Memphis and Nashville without local consent.
But several other legal avenues remain open to challenge the law, including a second lawsuit filed in 2020 on behalf of 11 public school parents and community members in Memphis and Nashville based on their students’ constitutional rights to adequate and equitable educational opportunities.
The plaintiffs in that case “have asserted these constitutional claims from the beginning of the litigation challenging the voucher law, and intend to vigorously pursue them,” said a joint statement from the Education Law Center, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU, which are collaborating on the litigation.
Local governments in Shelby and Davidson counties also could pursue other legal claims.
Here’s what Tennesseans are saying about this week’s long-awaited ruling:
Memphis-Shelby County Schools: “The recent ruling is an unfortunate roadblock on the path toward progress and makes serving students in the state’s largest urban district even more challenging.”
Adrienne Battle, director, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools: “Private school vouchers undermine our public schools and have failed to support the learning needs of students who have used them in other states where they have been tried. We strongly disagree with the court’s opinion, which undermines the principles of local control and will harm Davidson County taxpayers who will ultimately be on the hook to pay for the state’s voucher scheme.”
Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis: “Our first priority in government is to build strong public schools. But where that is not available, school choice should be an option.”
Kay Johnson, director, Greater Praise Christian Academy, Memphis: “I am overjoyed by the court’s ruling. This program gives students in poor-performing schools the opportunity and support to attend the schools that best suit their needs. That is a win for them, their families, our communities, and our state.”
Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville: “This could not be worse for Tennessee children in tandem with the bill to transition our entire education program into evangelical hedge-fund schools. This is terrible news for our state.”
Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis: “The fact that Davidson and Shelby County taxpayers are singled out as the only counties in the state of Tennessee where the taxpayers are forced to use their tax dollars to fund private school enrollment is absurd and discriminatory. And even more dangerous and disturbing is the precedent this decision sets for the Tennessee General Assembly to continue, with the backing of the highest court in the land, to dump other shit legislation only on the people of these counties.”
John Patton, Tennessee director, American Federation for Children: “The Tennessee Supreme Court made the right decision by declaring that the Education Savings Account program does not violate the HomeRule Amendment. These programs encourage both private and public schools to create new and better options for all students.”
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III: “The Education Savings Account program has always been about helping Tennessee students — giving eligible families a choice in education, an opportunity they currently do not have. It challenged the status quo, a move that is always met with resistance. … While there are further court proceedings that need to take place, this is a major step forward.”
Beth Brown, president, Tennessee Education Association: “This ruling is not the end of the fight against private school vouchers. We’ve seen the privatization industry’s playbook come to life in other states and witnessed the damage caused to students and public schools. They start a small program, then expand it, and then expand it a little more, until public education funding is obliterated.”
Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus: “In this decision, the Supreme Court erased constitutional protections for local control and years of precedent. Not only does this decision usher in a terrible education policy, but it invites more political meddling that surely results in local governments losing freedom and independence from state interference.”
Raymond Pierce, president and CEO, Southern Education Foundation: “There is a long and well-documented history of school voucher programs in the South being used to avoid integration by siphoning public funds out of public schools. … While this law stands for now, the Southern Education Foundation will continue to fight school privatization efforts that would take our nation back to the days of a segregated and inherently unequal education system.”
Justin Owen, president and CEO, Beacon Center of Tennessee: “We are so pleased that the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed what we have always known: the ESA law is not a violation of the Tennessee Constitution’s Home Rule Amendment. We are fully confident after this decision that families in Nashville and Memphis will finally get the choice opportunities that they deserve.”
Victor Evans, executive director, TennesseeCAN: “A student’s ZIP code or neighborhood should never dictate their future, but without the options and resources that those from wealthier areas enjoy, that is too often the case. Tennessee’s Educational Savings Account program will help address this glaring inequality and need.”
TJ Ducklo, spokesman for Nashville Mayor John Cooper: “We’re disappointed by today’s ruling but will continue to vigorously fight this law through all possible avenues.”
JC Bowman, executive director, Professional Educators of Tennessee: “Legal experts will continue to debate this case on its merits for many years, and it may still face additional legal challenges. The Tennessee Education Savings Account will ultimately be defined by the students who participate in the program and their academic success or failure. Public schools will remain the choice of the vast majority of parents in our state who believe their child is receiving a high-quality education.”
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
As the sun set one dreary Monday in late April, a group of about 15 activists, parents, teachers, and community members gathered in an old church building on N Graham Street, less than a block away from Kingsbury High School.
The agenda: How to save a school and neighborhood they all love.
The concerns they raised about Kingsbury were wide ranging — from a lack of communication with school administrators to escalating violence in the community and fears that the needs of the school’s growing population of Spanish-speaking immigrants aren’t being met.
The catalyst of their meeting, though, was the late March announcement of what Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials call a “fresh start” — requiring teachers to reapply for their jobs in order to return next school year. District officials say the initiative is part of an ongoing process of reevaluating school culture and climate and, in turn, improving academic performance.
Many members of the Kingsbury community have complained that the decision came suddenly and without community input. And at the April gathering, attendees voiced little confidence that a district-led purge of teachers, with the risk of more instability, would help solve Kingsbury’s problems.
Rather, they agreed, real change would have to come from a broad coalition of parents, students, teachers, activists, and community members, all determined to counter decades of disinvestment in the school and their neighborhood.
Zyanya Cruz is working to assemble that coalition. An organizer with the Center for Transforming Communities, Cruz called the meeting in the old church building as part of an effort to form a Kingsbury parent-teacher-student association that would help reconnect the school with its community.
“The school is the heart of the neighborhood, and if you have an unhealthy heart you can’t have a safe and happy community,” Cruz said. “Families are feeling disillusioned and unheard; like they’re not being valued as people. The school is meant to serve them, and it feels as if they’re not being served.”
Archived stories from The Commercial Appeal about Kingsbury’s early days in the 1950s and ’60s painted a rosy picture of a beloved school that Memphians were proud to say they attended.
Kingsbury students often made published listings of the honor roll, and stories in the newspaper documented times of athletic prowess for the Kingsbury Falcons. Kingsbury’s alumni included Mike Butler, who went on to become a star basketball player at University of Memphis and play in the pros.
Integration of Memphis City Schools began in the 1960s, and a wave of African-Americans were elected to local government, Daniel Connolly wrote in his 2016 book “The Book of Isaias,” about a Kingsbury graduate who had migrated from Mexico. But the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. outside Memphis’s Lorraine Motel would “harden racial resentments for decades,” Connolly wrote, leading to white flight and the decline of downtown Memphis.
By the 1990 U.S. Census, Memphis had become a majority-Black city, Connolly wrote. At the same time, “thousands of immigrants began arriving in Memphis, many coming directly from Mexico.”
From 2000 to 2010, Memphis’ Hispanic population soared, primarily in two neighborhoods: Hickory Hill and the area around Kingsbury High. But the community lacked political clout, because many immigrants weren’t eligible to vote. In 2007, Connolly said, the city office dedicated to helping immigrants had just two employees, and neither spoke Spanish.
Today, Hispanics make up just over 55% of the high school’s population, according to the state Department of Education.
Jose Salazar, a local activist, fondly remembers the high school for its diversity and supportive community as he and his family settled into Memphis after emigrating from Mexico.
One memory stands out from his senior year in 2009, when he was part of the Kingsbury soccer team’s historic first run to the state tournament.
Although the season ended with a loss in the state quarterfinals match, a Commercial Appeal article recounted the team’s struggle to fund the trip to the tournament — and the way the community wrapped its arms around the underdog team.
Kingsbury alumni and community members ultimately came up with $15,000 and a coach bus for the trip, ensuring “this team of internationally diverse student-athletes from Liberia, Sudan, Mexico and China would get its chance to compete for a state championship,” the article said.
But Salazar’s experiences at Kingsbury weren’t all positive. Gangs and violence were part of the neighborhood, Salazar said. And those issues have only become worse.
“Kingsbury has always had its problems,” Salazar said. “But I don’t think it’s ever been this bad before.”
Salazar has moved out of the Kingsbury neighborhood, but his mother still lives there, and he tries to continue serving the school and community as an activist.
After a late October shooting outside the nearby Streets Ministries left three teens and an adult injured and the community fearful of escalating violence in the neighborhood, Salazar helped organize a candlelight vigil and advocated for more police patrols after school.
Since then, students, teachers and community members have noticed an increased police presence both inside and outside the school, more searches of students, and multiple lockdowns.
The elevated police presence has only made Crystal Oceja, a ninth-grader at Kingsbury, feel less safe and less valued at school.
Earlier in the school year, Oceja said administrators picked two students from each grade and interviewed them about how to make the school safer. Oceja shared concerns about having more police in school with administrators, but said she doesn’t feel that perspective was heard or taken into consideration.
In many ways, school these days is suffocating, like a prison, Oceja said. Uniformed and armed police officers are in Kingsbury’s hallways throughout the day, Oceja said, escorting students to class to ensure they don’t skip. On several occasions, administrators have involved officers in student discipline, Oceja said.
Oceja was also among those who advocated to remove Shelby County sheriff’s deputies from Memphis school buildings in the fall. Despite efforts by “Counselors not Cops” activists, the school board ultimately voted to keep deputies in schools in November.
“A lot of stuff goes down that’s very traumatic in the hood, and if you’re going to a school where you’re not valued, it’s going to affect you even more,” Oceja said. “You feel like no one’s listening to me, my voice doesn’t matter, so why should I speak out? That’s something I’ve noticed in a lot of my peers.”
Another example of how community voices go unheard is the bathrooms, Oceja says. Toilets often get clogged and overflow onto the floors, she says, and the bathrooms are not adequately cleaned afterward.
“A lot of times I purposely hold it until I get home because of how nasty the bathrooms are,” Oceja said. “I can’t ever focus when that happens. That’s all I can think about.”
Oceja aired these concerns to district leaders, including MSCS board Vice Chair Althea Greene, whose district includes Kingsbury, but change has been slow to come.
Greene said she’s heard the community’s complaints about Kingsbury’s bathrooms and the police presence. She’s one of several school board members currently speaking out against unclean school buildings and advocating for changes to the district’s proposed custodial services contract.
And while Greene understands how students feel about police in schools, after the shooting near Kingsbury and “so many incidents with guns” across the district, she said she didn’t see any alternative.
Maria Alejandra Oceja, the guardian of her sibling Crystal, said she first learned of Kingsbury being “fresh started” while scrolling through Facebook.
Maria Alejandra Oceja said she doesn’t believe the fresh start is the solution to issues at Kingsbury. She has echoed her sibling’s complaints about the heightened police presence on campus and the poor conditions of bathrooms to school officials and Greene, but has yet to see changes.
“We didn’t ask them to fire the teachers. The teachers are not the problem — they’re the ones who have been holding it down through the pandemic,” Maria Alejandra Oceja said. “To me, it’s the leadership that is the problem, and they’re deflecting responsibility.”
In an interview with Chalkbeat last month, Superintendent Joris Ray said that the “fresh starts” at Kingsbury, as well as Hamilton High School and Airways Achievement Academy, are the continuation of a districtwide restructuring that yielded dozens of new central office leadership positions and school principals — including at Kingsbury and Hamilton.
“I think the fresh start is going to make the schools better and the students are definitely going to benefit,” Ray said. “When you’re a leader, it’s not about making adults comfortable. It’s never about making myself comfortable — each and every day, I’m uncomfortable. The easiest thing to do is what people want you to do, but students will not benefit.”
Greene, the school board member, stands by the decision to ask all Kingsbury teachers to reapply for their jobs, but she also acknowledges that the district “dropped the ball” by not holding a meeting to communicate the decision to parents. After speaking with several concerned students and parents and seeing the chaos and confusion the lack of communication caused, Greene said, the district is now planning that meeting.
“When you ‘fresh start’ a school, I think it’s important that you also ‘fresh start’ the community,” Greene said. “They’ve got to be part of this process in order for it to work.”
The announcement that they will have to reapply for their jobs has rattled Kingsbury teachers who have already been dealing with the pandemic, violence, lockdowns, and years of administrative turmoil.
In 2018, a Kingsbury principal, Terry Ross, was suspended due to allegations of harassment of teachers and improperly changed grades. Then, last spring, principal Matt Smith was suspended after being accused of sexual harrassment. A month later, Ray appointed Shenar Miller as Kingsbury’s new principal as part of an academic restructuring, and he remains in the position today.
In the weeks following the “fresh start” announcement, several Kingsbury educators told Chalkbeat they’ve felt increasingly frustrated and underappreciated.
“It was definitely demoralizing to get the fresh start notification,” said one teacher who has decided not to apply for her job and plans to leave MSCS at the end of the school year. She asked not to be named out of fear of retribution during her final weeks.
“I’ve struggled the last few years trying to decide if (teaching at Kingsbury) was the best choice for me — mentally, physically, and for my family — because I’m pouring a lot into my students and it just takes a toll on me,” she said.
The educator, who’s been teaching at Kingsbury for several years, also worries what effect continued turnover will have on Kingsbury. The school seems to be in a “constant state of fresh start,” she said.
Amid a nationwide teacher shortage, the situation only worsened this year, the teacher said, leaving many overwhelmed. Two math teacher positions and an English as a second language teaching position were not filled until January — an especially concerning problem given Kingsbury serves the largest proportion of English language learners among MSCS high schools. Nearly 35% of Kingsbury students receive ESL services, according to state data.
And the population continues growing: In February alone, the teacher said, Kingsbury got at least 12 new students who had just moved to the U.S.
“We’re in a whole different ballpark than what’s happening at other schools,” the teacher said. “We need more resources and support and training to help with that, not a fresh start.”
In a statement, MSCS officials confirmed that the vacant teaching positions were filled Jan. 3, and said they “work to support classrooms with qualified individuals when teacher vacancies arise to ensure there is no disruption to learning.”
Kingsbury’s counseling and ESL departments help ensure students’ needs are met with limited resources, but it’s far from ideal. In addition to lesson planning and grading for all of her students, the teacher also must write individual learning plans for each of her 40 ELL students.
“It’s not that we shouldn’t have to do that. We should; it’s helpful and (the students) should have that type of support,” she said. “But the sheer amount of planning time we have does not allow us to get all that paperwork done.”
Greene said she’s working with district officials and neighborhood organizations like Streets Ministries to ensure ELL students and families at Kingsbury and throughout the neighborhood are able to access the resources they need.
“Schools can only do so much, but because of the language barrier in that neighborhood, I feel like we need to be doing more,” Greene said.
Salazar, the Kingsbury graduate turned activist, said there seems to be a lack of hope and a sense of apathy in the community, perpetuated by poor communication and understanding between the school, students, and parents. For real change to happen, he said, Kingsbury needs more community engagement.
That’s why Cruz, from the Center for Transforming Communities, is striving to launch a Kingsbury PTSA. So far, Cruz has held four meetings to kickstart organizing, and she strives to make them as accessible as possible for families: They’re bilingual, held in the evenings, and include free dinner. The April meeting was at Su Casa, a nonprofit housed in an old church that offers English language lessons and other resources for Memphis’ Latino immigrant community.
After providing English classes to adults for several years, Su Casa expanded its offerings in 2016 to a bilingual preschool program for children in the neighborhood. Executive Director Michael Phillips said he hopes the investment in early childhood education, like the formation of a PTSA, will help build a more engaged community.
“What’s possible,” he asked, “if we really inject some resources into developing leaders today — the young kids, the kids that are in high school right now — knowing that it’s going to take us a generation to really reap the benefits of that?”
For now, Cruz hopes parents and students will feel safe at these meetings voicing their concerns.
And that’s exactly what activists, teachers, and families did at Su Casa in April, as they munched on tacos, talked about Kingsbury’s challenges, and laid out their next steps for forming the PTSA.
In the minutes before they left Su Casa, amid the chatter and goodbyes, the attendees expressed excitement about their momentum — and hope for Kingsbury’s future.
Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
