Tag: Education

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Key Tennessee Education Official Resigns Amid Leadership Transition

Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney has been a fixture at the Tennessee Department of Education since 2008. Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat

The leadership transition at the Tennessee Department of Education accelerated this week with the resignations of two high-level officials, including a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives.

Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney will step down on June 30th, a department spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The departure of Meghan McLeroy, the department’s chief officer responsible for supporting schools and districts statewide, is effective August 1st, the spokesperson said.

A staff member with the department since 2008, Carney currently oversees state-level work involving federal programs, school choice, testing, accountability, school improvement, and the state-run Achievement School District for low-performing schools. She is among the deepest wells of institutional knowledge within the department.

Her resignation comes at a critical time as Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds prepares to take the helm of the department on July 1 after Penny Schwinn ended her four-year tenure as commissioner last week.

Carney — who is one of four remaining members from Schwinn’s original cabinet — was expected to play a key role in helping Reynolds as the new commissioner from Texas faces myriad challenges.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula on July 1st, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left three students and three staff members dead on March 27th. 

The state also is scheduled to start giving A-to-F grades to its 1,700-plus public schools this fall after delaying the new accountability policy for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

A former Tennessee high school teacher and former chief of districts and schools for the department, Carney became Schwinn’s go-to manager to oversee high-level, high-profile programs.

She often stepped in to provide oversight amid employee turnover in Schwinn’s first months on the job. And last summer, when the Tennessee Supreme Court lifted a two-year-old order to let the state resume work on its new private school voucher program, Schwinn turned to Carney to launch the rollout in a matter of weeks.

Carney was viewed as a possible successor to Schwinn, especially after Chiefs for Change, a national network of education leaders, named her in January to its latest cohort of “future chiefs,” considered a springboard for administrators seeking top jobs.

But in May, when Schwinn announced plans to step down at the end of the school year, Gov. Bill Lee went out of state to find his new education chief. Reynolds has political and policy experience in Texas and Washington, D.C., and most recently oversaw policy for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Lee also named Sam Pearcy, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, to serve as interim education commissioner until Reynolds’ arrival. Pearcy was sworn in on June 2nd, after Schwinn’s last day on June 1, said department spokesperson Brian Blackley.

An alum of Teach for America, Pearcy joined the department in 2011 as part of the team overseeing school reform work under Tennessee’s $500 million award for the federal Race to the Top program.

McLeroy, another early member of Schwinn’s cabinet, has been with the department since 2011. She also initially helped to lead the state’s Race to the Top work.

The department plans to reassign Carney’s and McLeroy’s responsibilities to existing staff by the end of June, Blackley said.

Earlier this spring, Lisa Coons, the state’s chief academic officer, left Tennessee to become superintendent of public instruction for Virginia’s education department.

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.

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More Than 25,000 Third Graders Tested Last Week to Avoid Being Held Back

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

More than half of Tennessee third graders at risk of being held back because of their reading test scores took another test last week to try to advance to fourth grade without summer school or tutoring.

The state began offering the retest last Monday. By Friday, 25,304 third graders had submitted a second reading assessment, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the state education department.

Preliminary scores from the initial test in the spring indicated that about 60 percent of Tennessee’s 74,000 third-graders could be at risk of being held back under a new state retention policy for third graders who struggle with reading. But that number is before factoring in exemptions under the law.

The testing do-over marks the end of a pivotal school year for third graders, who were kindergartners in 2020 when the pandemic shuttered school buildings and caused unprecedented learning disruptions. 

A 2021 law enacted a tough new retention policy starting this school year for students who don’t test as proficient readers by the end of third grade. The law also created several learning intervention programs to help students catch up.

Since the 2022-23 retention policy is based on the results of a single test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, retesting using a similar “TCAP-style test” was part of the state’s plan for giving third graders another opportunity to improve their score.

The retesting window continues through June 5th, but schools were expected to complete most of the do-overs this week so families can get their students’ results back sooner.

State officials have pledged that test vendor Pearson will return new scores within 48 hours after submission.

To get promoted to the fourth grade, third graders who who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must either attend a summer program with a 90 percent attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade. 

Summer learning camps start as soon as next week at some schools, although the schedule varies by district. For instance, Nashville’s program starts on June 1st, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools launches its summer learning academies on June 20th.

This week’s retests, via the state’s online Schoolnet platform, started off bumpy in some districts due to technical issues but smoothed out after the first day, Blackley said.

There were “isolated tech issues” last Monday in some districts that were “fully resolved,” Blackley said. “Our testing vendor, Pearson, has been troubleshooting effectively to manage and will continue to do so throughout the entire window,” he said.

Blackley added that technical problems will not delay the return of scores.

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.

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Anti-Black Lives Matter, Vax-Hoaxer, Insurrectionist Gets More Power to Review TN Social Studies Books

Credit: state of Tennessee

The mosque-fighting, anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-CRT, 9/11 Truther, insurrectionist Laurie Cardoza-Moore just got even more power to choose what’s in Tennessee textbooks recently.

In a story first published on the Popular Information Substack, Cardoza-Moore won an appointment this month from Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton to sit on a committee to review social studies textbooks for the state’s public schools. 

The state began a review of social studies academic standards in June. Since then, the public has weighed in, a teacher advisory group worked on the issue, revisions to texts were reviewed by another committee, and then the public was asked to weigh in on those revisions. In August, the State’s Standards Recommendation Committee, to which Cardoza-Moore was appointed, will “submit the final recommendations for standards” to the State Board of Education. 

”The materials we will be reviewing can only accomplish the mission of educating good, American citizens if our Tennessee textbooks are devoid of left-aligned historic revisionism and the toxic material found in the antisemitic Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Social-Emotional Learning and Ethnic Studies,” Cardoza-Moore said in a news release statement from her Franklin-based group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN). 

That release further crafts Cardoza-Moore as a controversial figure who recently ”came under fire for her criticism of Governor Bill Lee’s appointment of Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds as the new Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner.” Cardoza-Moore also beamed in the praise of a spokesman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for her review of textbooks there that ”caught and corrected dozens of books to prevent political indoctrination of Florida’s children.”

Press Release: Controversial Conservative Voice in TN Education – Laurie Cardoza Moore Appointed to Serve on State’s Standards Recommendation Committee

Cordoza-Moore does not shy away from her past controversies in her news release. In 2010, she publicly fought against the construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro. On “The 700 Club” television show, she told host Pat Robertson the mosque was a training camp for terrorists. In her news statement this month, she claimed one person on the mosque’s board was ”actively recruiting Muslims to kill Jews on his MySpace page.” 

Cardoza-Moore once criticized President Barack Obama, saying that after a speech on Palestinian border claims, weather patterns in America changed and tornadoes came to kill hundreds. 

Obama Causes Tornadoes

In 2021, Cardoza-Moore was appointed by Sexton to the state’s Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission. In a confirmation hearing, Senator Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis), asked her about a recommendation from her nonprofit to revise a textbook statement about 9/11. 

The passage from the textbook reads, “on September 11th, 2001, members of al-Qaeda carried out a terrorist attack on New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.” In the PJTN report, the phrase ”members of al-Qaeda carried out” is underlined. The PJTN report said “given the plethora of evidence, the reviewer suggests removing the underlined section of sentence.” 

“This is a highly contested (per architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth, and demolition experts) argument,” reads the PJTN review. “There is ample evidence that refute the ‘official’ story of what was perpetrated that day.”

When Akbari pressed Cardoza-Moore to confirm that these were, in fact, the statements of her organization, Cardoza-Moore said: “What you’re quoting right now, I never would have said that.” Cardoza-Moore then told the committee on the question of al-Qaeda’s involvement in 9/11: “I need to see the quote in the context you’re pulling it from. Is that from a Power Point? I would never say al-Qaeda never participated in [9/11].”

After Cardoza-Moore’s testimony was complete, Akbari said she “cannot think of someone who is more uniquely unqualified to be on this position.”

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MSCS Superintendent Search Stalled as Board Balks at Slate of Finalists

The selection process for Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ next superintendent got derailed Saturday when school board members raised questions about an outside search firm’s selection of three finalists, shortly after their names were announced.

Now, the board is asking the search firm for the names of all 34 applicants, and it put off plans to interview finalists until it gets those names.

Saturday’s meeting was the first time the board deliberated publicly about the selection process since it voted to select the search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates of Schaumburg, Illinois. But instead of discussing the individual finalists, board members peppered Hazard Young officials with questions that made clear they were unsatisfied with the process and the results.

Some of their questions had been raised before by members of a community advisory committee that has challenged the lack of transparency in the process.

“I am not saying we want you to go back,” board Chair Althea Greene told Hazard Young officials during the meeting. “We are not just going to accept this … . We appreciate what you have done, but what I hear is it’s just not good enough.”

The board’s pushback adds a new wrinkle to a high-stakes search for a leader for Tennessee’s largest school district, which is struggling to improve academic outcomes for its 100,000 students and to sustain trust in the community. The previous superintendent, Joris Ray, resigned in August 2022 amid an external investigation into allegations that he abused his power and violated district policies.

Hazard Young, tapped in February to find Ray’s successor, presented the three finalists to board members Saturday: Brenda Cassellius, recently of Boston Public Schools; Carlton Jenkins of Wisconsin’s Madison Metropolitan School District; and Toni Williams, the current interim superintendent of MSCS. (See sidebar below for more about these candidates.)

The response from board members suggested that they expected — at some point during the process — to find out more than just the names of the three finalists, including more information on the full pool of applicants and how they were evaluated. They told Hazard Young President Max McGee and associate Micah Ali that their pushback was rooted in ensuring public trust in the process.

“This is not a restart. This is simply: Give us additional information to be able to validate to this deserving community that the right person will ultimately sit in this seat,” board member Kevin Woods said.

Board member Sheleah Harris said the board felt “unprepared, because we hired you all to do a job, and you did not do it well.”

Tikeila Rucker, a former teacher union leader and current community organizer, said she was frustrated that the board hadn’t raised its concerns with the firm earlier. 

“It sounds like the board is just as lost as we are, and that is unacceptable,” Rucker told Chalkbeat.  

Board member Stephanie Love acknowledged after the meeting that additional deliberation by the board in public meetings before Saturday could have prevented what she described as the “eleventh hour” hitch in the search. 

Applicants for the position were evaluated against a rubric with 16 categories, which included reviews of application documents plus references, “Memphis connection,” and fit with MSCS’ needs, Hazard Young explained. Of the 34 applicants, 21 met qualifications for an interview, and 12 proceeded to the last stage, the search firm said. The three finalists were selected from that group. 

Some board members on Saturday questioned why they were not provided with the rubric earlier.

“I’m not going to say the people that we have here are not the best. But is there a way for us to have a little more input that these are who we want?” board member Joyce Dorse Coleman asked. 

Hazard Young’s contract for the search suggests there is room for more board involvement: It says the firm is charged with facilitating “board discussions to narrow (the) candidate pool after each round of interviews.”

That the board wants to know the names of all the applicants was new to Hazard Young, Ali said Saturday. It is unclear what information the board will eventually receive in response to that request. 

In a statement after the board meeting, Greene said the firm would contact applicants to find out whether they still want to be considered, then release those names publicly “for full transparency.” Under state law, as affirmed by a state attorney general’s opinion, records collected by Hazard Young in connection with the search are subject to open-records laws.

While Greene has previously said the board did not expect to receive a full applicant list, other board members Saturday said they had asked to know who all the candidates are.

Two of the finalists presented, Cassellius and Jenkins, have decades of experience in education. Williams, whose background is largely in finance, rose to the top tier for experience that Hazard Young called “nontraditional,” a term that could apply to applicants who came from a foundation, military, or business background. 

The board’s policy on minimum requirements for a superintendent calls for 10 years of experience in teaching or school administration. Hazard Young said it did not apply that policy to evaluate applicants. 

Harris, the board member, challenged the firm — and the selection of Williams as a finalist — on this point. If the board had given input on the rubric earlier, she said, the search “probably would have some different finalists.” 

Hazard Young told board members Saturday that Williams sought a legal opinion on the policy that found it was “void and unenforceable.” 

Kenneth Walker, attorney for the school board, said that the board’s policy was valid and that it gives the board discretion to choose someone with experience equivalent to the academic experience cited in the policy.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Hanley School in Tennessee’s Turnaround District Will Return to MSCS Control

A 2020 event at Hanley High School celebrating Journey Community Schools’ takeover of four charter schools. Hanley is shifting now to Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ control as it exits the state’s Achievement School District. Photo credit: Caroline Bauman / Chalkbeat

For the first time, a charter school in Tennessee’s turnaround district will exit the state program and return to the Memphis district’s management, Memphis-Shelby County Schools announced last week. 

Hanley School, a K-8 school in Orange Mound, was taken over by the state and placed in the Achievement School District a decade ago to be run by a charter operator. This fall, it will be part of the Memphis district’s turnaround model, known as the iZone. 

The move marks a setback for the school’s charter operator, and another twist in the chaotic unwinding of the Achievement School District, which has been rocked by leadership turnover and turmoil. 

The state district began operating in 2012 and was designed to elevate some of Tennessee’s lowest performing schools by turning them over to charter operators under 10-year management contracts. The schools were to exit the ASD once their performance improved and return to their home districts — either Memphis, home to all but two of the schools, or Nashville.

But state leaders have acknowledged for years that the turnaround effort had failed in its mission. And as some of the 10-year management contracts near expiration, they have scrambled in recent years to figure out how to move schools out of the faltering ASD and get them on a path to improvement. 

The current state policy describes several pathways for an ASD school to leave the district, including some options to stay open as a charter. The policy stresses “school specific” plans to account for each school’s “unique” situations. 

In the case of Hanley, the policy resulted in the current operator, Journey Community Schools, not being able to keep the school under its network, and the transition to MSCS began over the last few months.

As other ASD schools creep up on their final years, Memphis could see a wave of school closures if MSCS doesn’t bring those schools back into the district.

Nickalous Manning, executive director of Journey Community Schools, denounced the way Hanley’s transition is being handled. 

“The children and families in Orange Mound and at Hanley deserve a voice and a say in their children’s education,” Manning told Chalkbeat Wednesday, echoing a common complaint in Memphis that state leaders make decisions and policies affecting local families — like creating the ASD — without their input.

Manning accused state officials of not communicating an impending deadline for Hanley to apply to remain open as a charter school, and faulted them for not holding more public meetings with families. The exit process was unclear, Journey wrote in a letter to the state asking for a waiver of laws that prevent Journey from continuing to operate the school.

The state’s education commissioner, Penny Schwinn, cited state law and rules in denying the waiver. MSCS shared copies of the letters between Manning and the state with Chalkbeat to explain why the district won’t consider Journey’s charter application for Hanley.

The Tennessee Department of Education, where the ASD is housed, told Chalkbeat that all ASD charter operators received information about transition plans in 2020. ASD leaders meet monthly with the charter operators to review school status, department spokesperson Victoria Robinson said. 

Robinson supplied a list of meetings scheduled over the last academic year with Hanley officials about the transition. Parents received a letter about the plans in January, Robinson said, and were invited to a meeting early last week.

Manning, who grew up in Orange Mound, said Journey plans to keep trying to hang on to Hanley.

Hanley will be the first charter school in the ASD to return to MSCS as a traditional public school. Four other ASD schools in Memphis were never operated as charter schools, and transitioned to MSCS operations this school year, also as part of the district’s iZone program.

Others have followed different pathways as dictated by the state policy, which takes into account the school’s test scores, the local district’s test scores, and how many years are left in the charter contract.

In most of the exits, schools where students showed high growth on state tests have swapped from the ASD to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission’s oversight. 

That option wasn’t available for Hanley. Available school testing data shows Hanley’s students haven’t noticeably improved during the state takeover, much like other schools in the ASD. 

Hanley’s reading scores, for instance, are nearly on par with the ASD average this year, and lower than a nearby MSCS elementary school, Dunbar. Neither school had more than 12% of students meeting reading benchmarks.

Only one Memphis ASD school has applied to join MSCS as a charter. The board approved it against the recommendation of the district. In April, MSCS board members will have a slate of five ASD schools to consider reabsorbing as charter schools, including Coleman School, another Journey school in its ninth operating year.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Interim MSCS Leader Outlines Her Vision for District as Superintendent Search Narrows

Toni Williams, interim superintendent of Memphis-Shelby Country Schools, used an annual state-of-the-district address Tuesday to review the results of her six months leading the district and to outline a vision for the future of the district. (Laura Testino / Chalkbeat)

In a speech reflecting on the recent school year and teasing budget priorities for the coming one, interim Memphis schools leader Toni Williams described a district on the rise, with big decisions ahead about improving facilities, literacy, and safety. 

Williams also implicitly made her case to be considered a candidate in the search for Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ next superintendent, a position she once said she had no interest in assuming on a permanent basis. 

The school board, working with a national search firm, has been soliciting applicants for that post since March 1st, and is in the process of narrowing its list of candidates to a small group of finalists. The search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, will interview 12 candidates by Thursday afternoon and is expected to deliver a slate of three finalists to the school board in April. Finalists will be interviewed publicly on April 21st and 22nd.

Williams used the annual state-of-the-district address Tuesday to review the results of her six months leading the district, following the departure of Superintendent Joris Ray, and to outline a vision for the future of the district. 

In the months after she was appointed, Williams appeared to soften her stance against seeking the permanent job. After her address today, she demurred when Chalkbeat asked whether she had applied or been interviewed for the role. 

“I don’t want today to be about me,” Williams said. “I want to just stay focused on, you know, really today’s message.”

She added: “But there will be other opportunities to answer that question.”

Williams’ theme for the address was “triumphant together,” a nod to the district’s calls for community members to help remove the often poverty-related barriers Memphis students and families face outside school. Rather than “Reimagining 901,” a tagline Ray used to describe a facilities and academics plan, Williams spoke of “transforming the 901.” 

“What transforming the 901 is about is a long term, thoughtful, shared vision for rebuilding this community, including wraparound services, community schools, expanding pre-K and after-school programs … . It has to be a community effort,” Williams said.

Williams’ speech at the district’s Teaching and Learning Academy auditorium had the feel of an elevated school assembly, unlike the more lavish hotel ballroom addresses of Ray’s tenure. The house lights stayed on, and attendees went home with stationery sets featuring student artwork.

The setting was meant to show that the district could be a “good steward of the resources that we already have,” Cathryn Stout, the district’s chief of communications, explained during a preview of the address.

Williams spent much of the 90-minute address explaining district plans for issues of interest to key constituencies in the district, in the business community and among Shelby County and City of Memphis leadership. (You can watch the full address online here.) 

For teachers, the district plans to invest $27 million in teacher pay, a move that will bump up starting salaries. 

Williams confirmed a new 10-year facilities plan. The district released a plan two years ago, but Williams had told the Shelby County Commission, which funds capital projects for the district, that the district would provide a new plan when requesting funds for a new Cordova high school. 

She touted new state investments into district career and technical education that would appeal to the business community. 

To improve attendance rates, Williams said, the district has upgraded communication to families about student absences. That includes referrals to community resources. The steps follow a rise in tensions between the district and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who in the fall claimed concerning crime rates were linked to low school attendance. 

With a few months to go in the current fiscal year, district officials still have to prepare and present a budget for next year, which will be the first time the district sees a boost of recurring funds through a new state funding formula, called Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. The funds could ease the transition out of programs funded by one-time federal pandemic funds, but the district will have to assess which programs remain.

An ongoing review of academic programming funded by the millions of dollars in federal aid will help inform which programming makes the cut. Tuesday, Williams pointed to $30 million annually toward “specialized education assistants” in lower elementary grade classrooms and $42 million annually toward reading and math tutoring as successful programming funded by the federal cash influx.

Williams also said the district is looking to scale a piloted school safety program across all district middle and high schools at a cost of $50 million. The technology, according to a video played during Tuesday’s program, sounds alarms at school entrances that aren’t designated for student or staff use. Improvements also would speed up student weapon searches at the start of the school day. 

Williams also announced the finalists for the teacher, principal and supervisor of the year:

Supervisor of the year finalists: 

  • Brian Ingram, Human Resources
  • Sunya Payne, Student, Family and Community Engagement
  • Reggie Jackson, School Operations 

Principal of the year finalists:

  • Keyundah Coleman, John P. Freeman Optional School
  • Renee Meeks, Sea Isle Elementary School
  • James Suggs, G.W. Carver High School 

Teacher of the year finalists: 

  • Thomas Denson, White Station Elementary School
  • Tishsha Hopson, Hickory Ridge Middle School
  • Ollie Liddell, Central High School

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Governor’s Safety Bill Threatens Penalties for Schools If They Don’t Lock Entrances

Gov. Bill Lee delivers his 2023 state address on Feb. 6. The Republican governor pledged to further bolster school security on Tennessee’s K-12 campuses. Courtesy of State of Tennessee

Gov. Bill Lee is proposing sweeping changes to enhance school safety across Tennessee, requiring all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation.

Legislation from the Republican governor, introduced this week in several legislative committees, also mandates several new safety-related drills when students aren’t present; tweaks training requirements for armed and unarmed campus officers; and requires new security features for school buildings constructed or remodeled after this July 1st.

In addition, Lee wants more top law enforcement officials on the state’s school safety team and proposes to transfer its oversight from the Department of Education to the Department of Safety, the agency responsible for homeland security and state troopers.

The governor’s proposal comes after the state fire marshal’s office identified 527 unlocked exterior doors during inspections of about 1,500 Tennessee public schools this school year, according to state officials.

Last June, Lee signed an executive order directing Tennessee school leaders and law enforcement to work together to double down on existing school safety protocols after a deadly shooting in Texas, where a gunman entered an elementary school through an unlocked door and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Lee also promised Tennesseans that state troopers and local police would conduct more unannounced security inspections of schools to make sure entrances are locked to prevent unauthorized access. More than 20,000 doors have been checked so far, state officials said.

Lee’s plan would continue Tennessee’s emphasis on fortifying its school campuses rather than reducing its number of firearms. 

Despite having one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, the state has enacted numerous laws under Lee’s leadership to loosen requirements for gun ownership. In 2021, he signed a law allowing most Tennesseans 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety. 

This year, however, the governor’s administration is opposing several new bills from Republican lawmakers who want to loosen those regulations even further.

The new safety legislation fulfills a promise Lee made at his state address last month. “We’ve done a lot to make schools safer,” he said, “but I don’t want to look up months from now and think we should’ve done more.”

His proposal, outlined in a 14-page amendment, would require schools to keep all external doors locked when students are present and to limit access through one secure, primary entrance. 

The legislation authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to inspect doors — and requires immediate actions to address any infractions. Written notifications describing violations must be sent within 24 hours to the school’s administrators, district leaders, the parent-teacher organization, and state officials in the departments of education and safety.

If a campus does not have a law enforcement officer on site and violates the locked door requirements two or more times in a school year, local school officials would have to post a full-time officer there within 30 days of receiving notice and undertake a corrective action plan. If they do not comply, the legislation directs Tennessee’s education commissioner to withhold 2 percent of its annual state funds, escalating by 2 percent for each subsequent violation, up to 10 percent.

A campus that has a full-time officer faces similar financial penalties for its district or charter organization if it violates the locked door requirements.

“To be clear, the purpose of this proposal is to help schools resolve any security flaws and ensure students and teachers are safe,” said Jade Byers, the governor’s press secretary, in a statement to Chalkbeat on Wednesday. “School funding will only be temporarily withheld while the (district) takes corrective action to resolve the issue.”

Tennessee school leaders have lauded the governor’s prioritization of school safety and, in recent years, taken advantage of millions of dollars in state grants to upgrade building security and hire law enforcement for their campuses. For instance, a grant program championed by the governor in 2019 placed more than 200 school resource officers (SRO) in schools.

But they say that more money is needed to hire more officers — and that the governor’s proposal doesn’t address their staffing challenges.

According to the state’s most recent school safety report, for the 2021-22 school year, fewer than 1,300 of the state’s 1,800-plus schools had a trained SRO on site.

“The attention and focus on keeping our schools safe is appreciated, but financial penalties will not help add the security measures needed,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents organization, which has lobbied for enough funding so every Tennessee school has an SRO.

Money isn’t the only challenge that districts face, according to Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville.

“One of the punishments under this bill is that you might have to hire an SRO within 30 days, but that’s easier said than done,” he said. “Many districts across our state have tried to secure SROs from their local police departments, but there’s a shortage of personnel. Police are losing a lot of officers to the federal government, where they can triple their salary.”

Lee also proposes to add annual drills — without students present — for emergency bus safety, and also to prepare school staff and law enforcement agencies on what to expect in an emergency situation at a school.

State law already requires schools to conduct periodic fire drills and annual armed-intruder drills, plus three additional annual drills to prepare for potential emergencies such as an earthquake or tornado.

Altogether, the legislation serves as “an additional meaningful step to secure schools and further enhance school safety,” said Byers, the governor’s spokeswoman.

But striking the right balance between school safety and educational climate is also a concern, says Winstead, a 2018 finalist for national superintendent of the year.

“We want our schools to be friendly and welcoming to students and their families,” said Winstead, “and we don’t want to make our kids feel like they’re going to school in a prison.”

He says collaborative working relationships between school officials and law enforcement are more productive than punitive ones. He’d also like to see more state investments to support student mental health beyond the governor’s $250 million student mental health trust fund, established in 2021 as an endowment to pay for future services.

“Drills are important, SROs are important,” said Winstead, “but the most important thing we can do is foster strong relationships between students and adults.”

You can track the bill’s progress on the legislature’s website. 

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.

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Providing Safe Spaces

Photo: Cecilie Johnsen | Unsplash

“That’s so gay” is commonly and blatantly used among adolescents in schools. I can’t count how many times I’ve walked through a school hallway and heard this. What’s saddening is that it turns the word “gay” into one that describes someone society should be ashamed of — someone who isn’t “normal.” When name-calling is happening to our queer-identifying youth, who’s standing up for them? The fact that our children are still using the word “gay” as a derogatory term shows that our schools, teachers, parents, and community members aren’t doing enough to provide safe spaces that support our LGBTQ students.

Anu Iyer (she/they), youth volunteer coordinator at OUTMemphis, a nonprofit that serves the LGBTQ community through empowering, connecting, educating, and advocating, speaks on the issue: “There’s a big sense of isolation among LGBTQ+ youth.” Iyer has supervised OUTMemphis’ PRYSM youth groups for years. These are social groups coordinated for queer-identifying youth and allies between the ages of 13 to 17 and 18 to 24. As an intern, and later a staff member at OUTMemphis, Iyer has witnessed first-hand the effects that this sense of isolation can have on both LGBTQ students and their parents.

Iyer explains that due to the lack of safe and affirming spaces, parents of queer-identifying youth have been moving their children out of public schooling and into alternatives such as private schools or online schools. “There are some parents who are concerned about their kids and want to support them” she says. “They want to know how to take action against unconstitutional things that are happening. When kids don’t have a strong support system, it’s a slippery slope to anxiety, depression, and poor coping skills. Not feeling like there’s a sense of hope is probably the most dangerous feeling.”

This “sense of hope” not only depends on students, their attitudes, and responses to queer-identifying students, but it also depends on our schools’ teachers and staff members. A middle-school student in Memphis who identifies as nonbinary expresses that after months of being bullied for their gender expression, along with being name-called for being queer, their teacher did not stand up for them. “I feel frustrated and just nervous,” they explain. “I always feel like I’m on edge.”

Not only is it important to educate youth on how to give mutual respect to queer-identifying students, but it’s also important for teachers and staff to do the same. Part of the problem is that some adults may hold conflicting beliefs that cause them to ignore the topic or disregard what’s really happening. Some adults may find pronouns awkward or controversial, or may not understand that they are, indeed, a part of a person’s identity. Some may witness LGBTQ-related name-calling and bullying but not know how to handle it. Some may not understand why, for example, a nonbinary or trans student may feel unsafe in a boys’ locker room yet unaccepted in a girls’ locker room. The truth is that, quite often, our LGBTQ youth don’t feel safe.

How much do schools feel it’s their responsibility to hold space for topics that involve LGBTQ youth? The answer is that schools are responsible. Some students are queer-identifying. They are “gay,” LGBTQ, and everything else outside of the constructs society has created for us. Iyer says, “It’s important for people to pipe up when they see something happening to a kid. Teachers should be safe zone trained so they can be good mentors, good people for students to talk to if they’re going through something, and spaces where students can feel like their privacy and confidentiality will be respected.”

Safe zone training is recommended for anyone who wants to learn how to create safe spaces for the LGBTQ community and is something anyone can participate in. According to the Safe Zone Project, a free online resource for educators, “safe zone trainings are opportunities to learn about LGBTQ+ identities, gender, and sexuality, and examine prejudice, assumptions, and privilege.” There is no correct curriculum or course for safe zone training, but luckily, OUTMemphis provides such training as LGBTQ+ 101, Transgender 101, Creating a Trans-Inclusive Workplace, and Working with LGBTQ+ Youth and Creating a Safe School Environment.

At the school level, the goal is to work toward progression instead of regression. It starts with teachers and staff taking opportunities to stand up for LGBTQ youth and educate other students. Schools should provide resources for queer-identifying students — resources that they can relate to and find comfort in. As Iyer says, “If I had to say one more thing it would be a call-to-action for teachers, counselors, people who are working at the student level in schools to reach out to us and be the people in school who spread the resources.

“Come to us. Pick up some flyers, business cards, brochures. … We can give you all the literature. You don’t have to spend a dime, just help us spread the word.”

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Private School Voucher and Charter-Friendly Bills Sail Through Tennessee Senate

The Tennessee Senate approved two bills Monday to change or clarify policies for private school vouchers and charter schools. Photo: Larry McCormack for Chalkbeat

The Tennessee Senate on Monday approved two Republican-sponsored bills that would expand and clarify eligibility for students to receive private school vouchers or enroll in charter schools.

Both measures passed 27-5 along partisan lines and now await action in House committees.

Sen. Jon Lundsberg, of Bristol, sponsored the bill to expand eligibility for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. The current law says a student must move directly from a public to private school to be eligible for the program, which launched last fall in Memphis and Nashville.

A second bill, sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga and Rep. Charlie Baum of Murfreesboro, would cap enrollment at charter schools — which are publicly funded but independently operated — at 25 percent for students who live outside the school district that authorized the charter. The House is scheduled to take up that bill on Tuesday in its K-12 subcommittee.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton filed legislation that would let the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approve charter schools to serve home school students, as well as residential boarding schools that are charters. Those charter applicants could apply directly to the state-appointed commission for authorization, without having to go through local school boards.

All measures seek to continue the Republican governor’s push to expand education choices for families. But critics say vouchers and charter schools are vehicles to privatize education at the expense of traditional public schools, which operate under stricter regulations, provide more transparency through their locally elected school boards, and serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Under the education savings account bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Todd of Madison County, voucher eligibility would be extended to students who did not complete a full year in public school after 2019, when the legislature approved the voucher law. 

“The reason we’re doing this is because that legislation was locked up in the courts for a couple of years,” Lundberg said about ongoing litigation that halted the voucher program’s planned 2020 launch before a 2022 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling upheld the law.

Last week, Lundberg told the Senate Education Committee the change would open eligibility to many students who have applied to receive education savings accounts but were denied because they weren’t moving directly from public to private schools. So far, the state has approved 643 out of 1,273 applications, he said.

The voucher program, which provides taxpayer money for families to use toward private school tuition, is open to students in Memphis and Nashville but could be expanded to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools under legislation approved by the Senate last week. That bill is scheduled for its first vote in a House subcommittee on Tuesday.

The charter school bill approved on Monday is backed by the Tennessee Charter School Center, an advocacy organization funded by pro-charter groups. 

Currently in Tennessee, it’s generally up to the local school district that authorizes a charter school, as well as the governing body that oversees that charter school, to determine how many out-of-district students can enroll.

Gardenhire said his bill seeks to address confusion around those policies with a state law that would cap out-of-district enrollment at 25 percent, and give priority to students from within the school district.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, who voted against Gardenhire’s bill, said local school districts should be able to control enrollment policies for the charter schools that they authorize.

“If they’re making that decision for the public schools in their district, that same policy ought to apply to the charter schools in the district,” said the Nashville Democrat. “I think that ought to be a uniform policy.”

Elizabeth Fiveash, chief policy officer for the Tennessee Charter School Center, testified last week that out-of-district student enrollment in charter schools isn’t an issue in the four cities that have charter schools. However, it could be in the future as the state’s charter sector expands.

She told members of the Senate Education Committee that charter schools statewide have a waiting list of over 10,000 students, most of whom come from within the authorizing district.

“This is not an issue that’s currently happening,” Fiveash said, “but we’re trying to make sure it’s clear going forward.”

Sexton’s legislation, which is co-sponsored by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, would mark a significant expansion of Tennessee charter school law.

Under the proposal, the state could authorize charter schools to enroll homeschooled students from within any school district in Tennessee. Those schools would be required to provide classroom instruction at least three days per week, while parents providing instruction the other two days could use remote instruction provided by the charter school.

Lundberg and Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chair education committees for their respective chambers, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about Sexton’s charter school legislation.

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.

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Memphis Critics Take Aim at New 3rd Grade Retention Law

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Many Memphis youths are already struggling to overcome emotional and psychological trauma inflicted or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the specter of being held back in third grade if they can’t pass the state’s reading test will pile onto that trauma, Memphis and Shelby County child and education advocates said during a town hall Wednesday.

“I don’t want my babies that I’m responsible for caught up in this,” said Ian Randolph, board treasurer for Circles of Success Learning Academy charter school. 

“They’re trying their best to meet our expectations as educators, and you put this kind of crap on top of them, after going through a pandemic … now you want to put more pressure on them to meet a state expectation?”

Randolph was among the roughly 50 people who gathered at First Congregational Church to discuss — and to lambaste — Tennessee’s strict third grade retention law, which kicks in this year. The law requires that third-grade students who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency on the TCAP assessment for English language arts participate in tutoring or summer learning programs, or risk being held back from the fourth grade. (Some students are automatically exempt.)

The law, passed in 2021 during a special legislative session that Gov. Bill Lee called to address pandemic learning loss, also included funding for tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling third graders catch up.

But those aspects of the law became unworkable for many families, some attendees said, because of issues ranging from a shortage of tutors to confusion about how progress is measured on the tests the students take after the recovery camps. 

Barring changes in the law, thousands of Memphis students face the prospect of having to repeat third grade. According to data presented by Venita Doggett, director of advocacy for the Memphis Education Fund, 78% of third-graders in Memphis-Shelby County Schools could be held back this year, while 65% of third-graders could be retained statewide.

The figure would be closer to 80% for Black, Hispanic and Native American third-graders in MSCS, and 83% for low-income students.

The implications of those figures resonated with Natalie McKinney, executive director and co-founder of Whole Child Strategies Inc., a nonprofit that supports families and children in the Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis.

The retention law, she said, would have a disparate impact on children in those neighborhoods, where 1 in 3 residents are poor, and 70% of the schoolchildren are from low-income families. 

“They’ve all been impacted emotionally by the pandemic,” said McKinney, who moderated the town hall. The retention policy “doesn’t make any sense.”

Lee and other defenders of the law say that it’s needed to avoid pushing unprepared students ahead, and that holding students back who aren’t proficient in reading is part of the state’s post-pandemic recovery efforts.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” the governor once told Chalkbeat.

But even some of his political allies have expressed concerns about enforcing the law based on the result of a single test. 

Already, Doggett said, 19 proposals have been filed to amend the law — bills that range from nixing the retention requirement altogether to extending funding for summer camps and other aid beyond this year. 

Pending the outcome of those efforts, organizers of the town hall urged attendees to sign a letter they had drafted asking Lee to issue an executive order to waive the retention policy for third graders testing below proficiency this year.

“The current 3rd grade class of 2022 and 2023 were the students who were affected by the pandemic,” the letter reads. “Studies show that a tremendous amount of learning loss occurred due to these students being virtual in the previous grades. In addition, these studies showed (that) to recoup the loss during the pandemic would take years.

“The third grade retention law seems to hold these students and educators accountable for something that was new to this generation for which they had no control,” the letter said.

The letter also urges lawmakers to use more criteria than a single test to determine whether a student should be retained, and to focus on broader solutions, such as partnering with community agencies, to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

Besides sending a letter to Lee, opponents of the retention policy said they planned to pressure their local public officials to push back on the law, as many school boards have. Some called for the MSCS school board, the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission to issue a joint resolution supporting the waiver.

The two MSCS board members who attended the meeting in person, Amber Huett-Garcia and Michelle McKissack, said they intend to push for revisions to the law. 

“Let me be clear: This is not a good law. I do not support it,” said Huett-Garcia, who said she plans a trip to Nashville in early March to talk directly with lawmakers.

“The mood that I have gotten from legislators is that they know that they have not gotten this right,” she said, “but this is not the time to let up pressure.” 

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.