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List of Nearly 400 Purged Books Circulating Among TN School Districts

Credit: Zetong Li on Unsplash

One Tennessee school district’s list of nearly 400 books removed from library shelves, including titles by authors ranging from Dr. Seuss to Toni Morrison, is being used by other school systems as a possible template to follow.

Administrators for Wilson County Schools directed the district’s librarians to pull the books a month ago. This week, leaders with Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools sent its librarians the same list to consider when reviewing their collections.

A third large suburban district, Rutherford County Schools, instructed its librarians this week to remove around 150 titles — 51 of which overlap with the list in neighboring Wilson County.

The removal there came at the request of school board member Frances Rosales, who told Chalkbeat that she used the Wilson County list and reviews on the website Book Looks as the basis for her request.

The purges come under Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 “age-appropriate” school library law, which lawmakers expanded this year to prohibit public school libraries from having books with “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual content, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

Sponsors of the changes, enacted amid national “culture wars” fueled in part by pro-censorship websites, say their goal is to protect students from obscene content and give families more control over their children’s education.

But the changes have also created a climate of fear, confusion, and self-censorship for school leaders and librarians, prompting some to revise or ignore their own review processes and preemptively pull titles from their shelves.

Graphic novels and books containing LGBTQ+ topics for high schoolers are among the casualties, as are classics like Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, about a young African-American girl who longs for blue eyes, and popular children’s picture books like David Shannon’s No, David! and Seuss’ Wacky Wednesday.

“This law was designed to catalyze book banning,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “We should not be surprised now that we are seeing the mass removal of books in response to this censorial legislation.”

Tennessee law likely faces a constitutional challenge

Tennessee’s original 2022 law, championed by the governor, required districts to publish the list of materials in their library collections and periodically review them to make sure they are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials.” Each community was to define what is considered age-appropriate based on local standards.

This spring’s revisions by the legislature added a definition of what’s “suitable” — including verbiage about sexual content, nudity, and violence that could be interpreted to prohibit literary classics like Romeo and Juliet, historical novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front, and encyclopedias containing photographs of nude statues.

The law is expected to be challenged in court over its vague wording, a lack of compliance guidance from the state, and the uneven way the law is being applied across Tennessee.

Among groups tracking its implementation are the ACLU of Tennessee and some publishing companies.

In Florida, several large publishers sued education officials there in August over a 2023 state law prohibiting sexual content in school libraries. They argued that the law had ignited a wave of book removals in violation of the First Amendment.

‘Creating an unofficial statewide book ban list’

A survey conducted this fall of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles had been pulled statewide under the revised law during the first few months of the academic year.

“I’ve removed 300 books in the first month of school,” one librarian anonymously told the organization.

Since the survey, the number of titles pulled across Tennessee has ballooned “from a trickle to a tidal wave,” said Lindsey Kimery, a Nashville school library supervisor who is one of the group’s leaders.

“If Wilson County’s list is being shared around, and district leaders see it as a cheat sheet so that they don’t have to conduct their own reviews, it’s creating an unofficial statewide book ban list,” Kimery said.

A spokesman for the Clarksville-Montgomery district, which serves about 38,000 students near the Kentucky border, emphasized that Wilson County’s roster was being used “as a resource, not a mandate” for its own librarians.

“We are not directing you to immediately remove all of these titles from your library collection,” curriculum leaders told principals last week, according to talking points from the meetings that the district shared with Chalkbeat.

“However, we are providing this list as an example of books already vetted by Tennessee educators and strongly encouraging you and your library-media specialists to review the list and consider, if you have these titles in your collections, whether these materials violate state law.”

Books in violation must be removed, the principals were told.

In Rutherford County, where 150 books were removed this week, the school board voted Thursday night to give librarians time to review the titles and come back with a formal recommendation on whether they should be permanently removed or returned to the shelves.

“I don’t believe we intentionally have pornography in our schools, but I do believe that some books with questionable content have trickled in,” said Rosales, who told Chalkbeat that she “put a lot of thought and research” into her request to remove 150 titles.

She added, however, that “our librarians are experts, and we need to give them time to review these books and give us a report.”

Other school systems conducting library reviews reported that Wilson County’s list isn’t factoring into their work.

A spokesperson for Knox County Schools said the East Tennessee district is collaborating with its librarians and legal team to identify books for possible removal and will provide its schools with a list in the weeks ahead.

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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At Large Opinion

Voucher Bill

Public education, at its core, should be an equalizer. (Photo: CDC | Unsplash)

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who never lets a chance to try to steer public funding to private schools pass him by, is having a good week. State Senate and House majority leaders filed identical bills to create “Education Freedom Scholarships” that would give $7,075 in public funding for a private education to 20,000 Tennessee students, beginning in the fall of 2025. The plan would grow in scope in subsequent years.

The bill has been opposed by the state’s large city school systems and by legislators in many rural districts, where there are often no private school options, and where getting adequate funding for public schools is often difficult. The voucher bill is also opposed by the vast majority of the state’s public school teachers. 

That’s bad enough, but later in the week, Voucher Bill (see what I did there?) got more good news. In case you haven’t been paying attention, GOP luminaries of all stripes are now urging the abolishment of the federal Department of Education. See, that way, supporters say, the money from the feds would come directly into the state’s coffers, to be dispensed under the supervision of, well, Bill Lee. Shocker, right? It should come as no surprise that Lee is all for killing the education department.

“We know Tennessee. We know our children,” Lee said. “We know the needs here much better than a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., does.”

No you don’t, Bill. What you know how to do — and what you have tried to do for years — is slide public tax dollars into the coffers of private education firms that will then grease the palms of pols such as yourself. If you cared about Tennessee’s children, you wouldn’t want to funnel our tax dollars to well-off Tennesseans who will use it for tuition fees for little Bradley’s third-grade year at Hillbilly Bible Kollege. 

Lee and the GOP have been fighting for vouchers to become law for years, and this time around, given the upcoming change in the White House, they might have the juice to pull it off. If the last election proved anything, it is that the average American is anything but well-informed and well-educated. One of the most googled questions on Election Day was, “Did Joe Biden drop out?” Lawd, help us. 

Here are a few numbers to ponder (and weep over): 21 percent of adults in the U.S. are illiterate; 54 percent of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level; 45 million read below a 5th grade level; 44 percent of American adults do not read a book in a year. So yeah, let’s fix that by cutting public school funding and giving people money to send their kids to private schools. 

My parents weren’t rich, but I grew up privileged. Only we didn’t call it privilege back then because it was so ordinary. In the small Midwestern town where we lived, everybody I knew — Black, white, brown, poor, middle-class, or wealthy — went to the same public schools and attended the town’s single public high school. 

It was a great equalizer, and kids learned — sometimes the hard way — not to get too snooty. I’m not so naive as to think that my Black classmates didn’t suffer negative experiences that were beyond the experiences I had, but we did all manage to get along. And we all had the same opportunity to learn with the same teachers, using the same facilities in the same classrooms, no matter a family’s income level. That is a great and powerful thing about public education — it’s an equalizer. But it needs to be funded and nourished. An investment in educating our youth is one of the best possible uses of our tax dollars. Instead of destroying the Department of Education, we should be funding it better and putting it in the hands of someone with creative ideas to support teachers and inspire students.

I’m not holding my breath, though. I’d put the odds at 50-50 that the Education Department survives the coming administration. And if it does, given the clown-car level of cabinet appointments thus far, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Trump appointed the My Pillow guy to the job. 

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Politics Politics Feature

The Bleat Goes On

A widely disputed graph posted by Lee Mills (Photo: ZeroHedge)

If, in the aftermath of a decisive (if narrow) victory for Donald Trump in the just concluded presidential election, anybody expected Republican-minded folks to put aside their “stop-the-steal” concerns from 2020, that was a premature hope.

It turns out that numerous believers in a stolen 2020 election still believe in it, and a fairly significant controversy regarding the matter continues to fester on social media.

One local believer is former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, who has carried on a brisk online conversation about it on Facebook.

“Now that it’s officially over,” Mills wrote on his page last week, “can we revisit 2020 for a moment?”

Whereupon he reproduced a dubiously sourced bar graph that’s been making the rounds in MAGA circles.

Crude and simplistic, employing blue and red bars, respectively, to indicate Democratic and Republican vote totals, it purports to compare the results for both parties in the presidential elections of 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024. Strikingly, it seems to show the Democratic vote holding to virtually identical levels in 2012, 2016, and 2024, while the Republican vote is represented graphically as steadily rising through the respective campaign years, finally out-distancing the Democratic vote total this year.

The year 2020 is seen as an anomaly, with the blue bar representing the Democratic vote vaulting high above the red bar representing the GOP presidential total. Both bars show an increase over previous years. 

The blue bar is depicted as coming back to “normal” for 2024. The red bar is somewhat lower as well.

Mills feels emboldened to comment: “This is a rhetorical question, but who can explain this anomaly?”

And he supplies some numbers, after a fashion. “So l’m not misconstrued by the Trump haters: The 2020 election saw a huge turnout spike — 159 million people voted, with Democrats getting nearly 80 million votes, which is a massive 23% jump from previous years. Statistically, that’s a total outlier. 

“A big factor was the sudden expansion of mail-in voting, which went from 21 percent in 2016 to 46 percent in 2020.

“Here’s the issue: A lot of these changes were made by unelected officials, bypassing the state legislatures. When you change the rules to allow massive non-in-person voting [sic], it opens the door for fraud to run rampant. 

“While this doesn’t flat-out prove fraud, it definitely raises red flags about how secure the process was with all these last-minute changes.”

Response on Facebook was forthcoming. William Albert Mannecke agreed: “They learned to cheat on an industrial level.”

As did Ellen Ferrara. “They stole 2020, 100 percent.”

Randy Higdon probed a little further: “We will find out he [presumably Trump] won all 50 states. Only states she [Kamala Harris] won were ones that didn’t require voter ID. Then this goes back to 2020. Many, many heads are gonna roll.”

But a demurrer would come from Cole Perry, a local statistician with both solidly Republican bona fides and a well-earned reputation for accurate analyses of election results: “Harris is going to end up with somewhere near 76.5 million votes, and Trump will end up [with] close to 78.5 million. That’s almost exactly the same total turnout as 2020. If they really did cheat in 2020, why did they suddenly forget how to do it?”  

A telling point. Another one is this, apropos the effects, such as it was, of write-in votes, which were disparaged by a suspicious Trump in 2020, the Covid year, but actively encouraged by him for his supporters in 2024.

That might be as good an explanation as any for the supposed “anomaly” of the 2020 electoral outcome. 

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Online Personality Gets 10 Years in Prison in Murder-For-Hire Plot

Credit: @itsashley_graysona via Instagram

A Dallas-based internet personality was convicted to 10 years in federal prison in late October on charges that she hired hits on three online rivals, including one in Southaven. 

Ashley Grayson gained notoriety for her online content related to credit repair. In 2021, Grayson had a falling out with a woman from Southaven who operated an online business similar to hers, according to Reagan Fondren, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. Grayson suspected the Southaven woman of creating fake online profiles that criticized Grayson and her business. The pair never met in person.

In August 2022, Grayson asked a Memphis woman, with whom she had worked in the past, to fly to Dallas to discuss a “business opportunity.” The Memphis woman and her husband went to Dallas in early September 2022 and met with Grayson and her husband.

Grayson offered to pay the Memphis couple to kill three different people: the Southaven woman, Grayson’s former boyfriend, and a Texas woman who had made negative social media posts about Grayson. For each murder, Grayson offered to pay at least $20,000.

In September 2022, the Memphis woman video-recorded a call to Grayson where Grayson confirmed that she wanted the Southaven woman killed as soon as possible and offered an extra $5,000 for the murder to be carried out in the next week.  

Later, the Memphis couple sent Grayson a picture of police lights from an unrelated incident in Memphis to fake that they had attempted to carry out Grayson’s murder-for-hire but were unsuccessful.  They demanded $10,000 (half of the promised price) from Grayson for the attempt. The Memphis couple went to Dallas where they met with Grayson and her husband and received $10,000 from them for the fake attempt. 

Grayson and her husband, Joshua, were indicted for the plot in the Western District of Tennessee. After a week-long trial on March 2024, Joshua was acquitted but Ashley was found guilty. In late October, United States District Court Judge Thomas Parker sentenced Ashley Grayson to 10 years in federal prison, the maximum sentence for the crime.

“This was a 21st-century crime where online feuds and senseless rivalries bled into the real world,” Fondren said in a statement. “The defendant tried to hire someone to murder a woman over things that happened exclusively on the internet.

“Fortunately, no one was physically hurt in this case, but the victim and her family still felt a severe and emotional impact as the result of the defendant’s actions. The proactive response from the investigating agencies and our prosecutors prevented an even more serious crime from occurring.”

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Memphis Sued on Gun Control Measures

Photo: Gun Owners of America on YouTube

As promised, Guns Owners of America (GOA) and others sued the city of Memphis to block from ever becoming law gun-control referenda items passed by an overwhelming majority of voters. 

The gun rights groups promised a lawsuit on the ballot referenda before the election. It filed the lawsuit in Circuit Court in Memphis on Wednesday. 

The suit’s core argument is that the Memphis City Council, who put the questions on the November ballot, did so “in blatant contravention of Tennessee’s preemption law.” With this, the measures are “invalid and void.”

FILED-Memphis-ComplaintDownload

The GOA joined the suit with Memphian Ty Timmerman, the Gun Owners Foundation, and the Tennessee Firearms Association (TFA). Timmerman is a member of the GOA and the TFA. The suit says he carries a handgun for protection in the city and in his vehicle with no permit, which is legal under the state’s permitless carry law. He also owns a number of semiautomatic rifles, especially noting he owns an AR-15. 

Timmerman, the suit says, wants to keep carrying his handguns and collect more semiautomatic rifles. The GOA argues Timmerman will be “adversely affected” by the city’s proposed gun-control rules.

“Tennessee has one of the strongest preemption laws in the nation, and the very reason it exists is to prevent radical anti-gun cities from enacting the very sort of draconian policies Memphis just ‘adopted,’” said Erich Pratt, GOA’s senior vice president. “We are hopeful that Tennessee courts will quickly block this insubordinate violation of state law.” 

City council chairman JB Smiley Jr. said none of the agencies who sued are from Memphis, called the lawsuit “short-sighted and “ill-conceived,” and said it is “not against the city of Memphis, but against the people who call it home.” At best, the GOA’s opposition is based on “flawed” logic, he said. At worst, the suit could lead to “record-breaking homicides.”

“Opposition to gun reform, and consequently this lawsuit, is deadly, dangerous, and disrespectful to the people of Memphis, whom this will directly impact long after these out-of-state entities leave,” Smiley said in a statement posted to X Thursday. “But, here’s what I know — when you come against the people of the 901 and when you try to silence our voice, we stand up and defend our neighbors and our values every single time. We must continue [to] take a stand against anything that would stand in our way of achieving that.” 

Along with the suit, the GOA posted a YouTube video titled, “We’re Suing Memphis.” It shows Smiley saying that should the body be sued, “in the words of our attorney [Allan] Wade, ‘Tell them to bring it on. We’ll fight about it in court.’” The video then shows a photo of Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn Davis set to funky music, and video of Bill Hader dancing and making faces cut from a Saturday Night Live sketch.

“Memphis voters overwhelmingly chose to strip their fellow citizens of their fundamental rights, and now city officials, knowing full well these ordinances will patently violate Tennessee law, are planning to implement them,” said Chris Stone, GOA’s director of state and local affairs. “This is unacceptable, and we are eager to fight back.” 

The suit seeks the blocking of enforcement of the ordinances, a statement making the rules invalid, and damages, court costs, and legal fees.   

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20<30 Class of 2025 Nominations Are Open

The Memphis Flyer is seeking nominations for candidates for the 20<30 Class of 2025. This is our 15th year of highlighting the best and brightest of young Memphis.

We’re asking you to help us identify the Bluff City’s future leaders. Nominate your friends, your colleagues, the outstanding young members of your community. Candidates must be no older than 29 on January 1, 2025. Send a brief bio/summary of the nominee’s work and activities and a photo to under30@memphisflyer.com. Use “20<30 Nomination” in your subject header. Deadline for nominations is January 3, 2025. The 20<30 Class of 2025 will be revealed in the February 6, 2025 issue of the Memphis Flyer.

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Gov. Lee Backs Trump Plan to Abolish U.S. Department of Education

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who has criticized the federal government for "excessive overreach," said Wednesday that the U.S. education department should be eliminated during Donald Trump's second term as president. (TN.gov)

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that he’d welcome closing the U.S. Department of Education under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, adding that states can do a better job of deciding how to spend federal dollars on students.

“I believe that Tennessee would be more capable than the federal government of designing a strategy for spending federal dollars in Tennessee,” Lee told reporters when asked about the prospect.

“We know Tennessee. We know our children. We know the needs here much better than a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. does,” Lee said.

The Republican governor’s comments come as Trump assembles his cabinet after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris last week to win a second term in office. As of Wednesday, he had not named his choice to be U.S. Secretary of Education.

During his campaign, Trump said one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” The Republican Party’s platform also calls for shuttering the federal agency, as does the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Tennessee’s governor called it “a great idea” to dismantle the agency, which was created under a 1979 federal law during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

“I think the federal bureaucracy that was built into the Department of Education starting in 1979 has created just that: a bureaucracy,” Lee said.

Tennessee has a template for spending federal funds

Trump has not provided a detailed plan for what would happen to federal funding or particular programs if the U.S. Department of Education were shuttered — a move that would require an act of Congress.

Lee suggested that education funding could be distributed to states similar to how Tennessee negotiated a Medicaid block grant waiver program with the first Trump administration, giving the state government more control over how it spent the money.

“We saved Tennesseans a billion dollars in taxpayer money over four years,” Lee said, “and we split the savings with the federal government.”

Federal funds typically make up about a tenth of a state’s K-12 budget. For Tennessee, that amounts to about $1.8 billion distributed to local districts for its public schools, most of which supports students with disabilities, from low-income families, or still learning English.

Lee said Tennessee would continue to spend that money to support its neediest students.

“I think that Tennessee is incredibly capable of determining how dollars should be spent to take care of kids with disabilities, to take care of kids that live in sparse populations, or with English as a second language,” he said.

Asked about the federal agency’s enforcement of civil rights protections — which some have suggested could pivot to the U.S. Department of Justice — Lee said the state would have a role in that work, too.

“The complaint process could and would still exist,” Lee said. “We would make sure that it happens in this state.”

Critics question the state’s commitment to special student groups

Tennessee doesn’t have a very good track record of educating and caring for its students who need significant additional support.

It was one of many states, for instance, that once had laws excluding children with disabilities from public schools. The premise was that those kids would not benefit from a public school education. Before the passage of a 1975 federal law establishing the right to a public education for kids with disabilities, only 1 in 5 of those children were educated in public schools.

Recently, the Tennessee Disability Coalition gave the state a “D” grade on its annual performance scorecard that includes education services.

Students with disabilities comprise a significant part of Tennessee’s public education system.

About a tenth of the state’s public school students use an individualized education plan, or IEP, that’s intended to ensure that the student receives specialized instruction and related services for their disability.

Federal laws protecting students with disabilities would remain on the books even if the education department went away, but it’s not clear how enforcement would work or what would happen to funding. The authors of Project 2025 suggested that funding be turned into something resembling a voucher and given to families.

Federal education funding has been hotly debated in Tennessee

Tennessee has gone further than any other state in recent history in rethinking its relationship with the federal government.

A year ago, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested that Tennessee should look into the idea of rejecting federal funds, a legislative task force spent months studying the feasibility of such an idea.

Citing testing mandates, Sexton had complained of federal strings attached to those dollars. And the governor voiced support for the panel’s work and complained of “excessive overreach” by the federal government.

But some critics said the bigger issue was the U.S. education department’s role in enforcing constitutionally guaranteed civil rights protections for students.

Ultimately, the panel’s Senate and House members disagreed about their findings and issued separate recommendations. The Senate report highlighted the risks of taking the unprecedented step of rejecting federal funding, while the House report recommended taking incremental actions to further explore the idea. Nothing specific happened in the ensuing months.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who served on the panel, said the Senate’s conclusions should give the governor pause.

“There are reasons why we have the U.S. Department of Education — to make sure that all kids have the opportunity to receive a public education and to have their civil rights protected,” Akbari said.

She noted that segregated schools existed less than 75 years ago across the nation.

“It’s unthinkable that we would move away from these very sacred and important protections, not just regarding race but gender, children with special needs, the handicapped community,” Akbari said.

Alexza Barajas Clark, who heads the EdTrust advocacy group in Tennessee, said the federal role in education is “to level the playing field for all students,” especially those from rural communities and low-income families or who have a disability.

“Let’s not lose focus about what is at stake,” Clark said. “At the center of every education policy decision is a student.”

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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Teachers Scoff at Bonuses In Gov. Lee’s School Voucher Plan

Credit: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who’s trying again to enact his statewide private school voucher plan, is hoping to win over critics and skeptics with a $2,000 bonus for public school teachers. But many educators who would be eligible for the extra cash are dismissing it as a diversion tactic.

Some are calling Lee’s bonus offer an attempted bribe, or “hush money,” as he seeks to expand policies that provide public funding for students to attend private schools. Others say it’s insulting to teaching professionals who have spent their careers advocating for their students, and for more funding to support them.

“It’s a one-time bonus that’s basically asking us to sell out our public schools,” said Liz Marable, a longtime Memphis educator who is currently president of the United Education Association of Shelby County. “But we are not for sale.”

Details of the latest universal voucher proposal, reached during months of negotiations between the governor’s office and legislative leaders, emerged last week after Election Day. House and Senate Republican sponsors filed identical bills in an effort to avoid disagreements between the two chambers that killed their first attempts this spring in committees, even though Republicans held a supermajority in the legislature.

Some concerns that critics raised about the earlier bills apply to the new package, too. Among them: The program could create long-term funding uncertainty for public schools and set uneven standards for accountability through testing. It wouldn’t guarantee accommodations and services for students with disabilities and would bar undocumented students from participating, in violation of federal law.

The one-time bonus for approximately 86,000 public school teachers is new to the mix. It would cost about $172 million, which could itself be a concern during a fiscal year when state economists project declining or stagnant revenues.

The bonuses, and other public school benefits in the legislation, aren’t intended specifically to win over teachers, of course; they won’t get to vote on it. Rather, they’re aimed at winning over Republican lawmakers, mostly in rural Tennessee, who are wary of vouchers’ impact on their public schools.

These lawmakers have to answer to constituents in areas where public schools are often the only educational option, the largest employer, and the hub of their communities. Lee and Republican legislative leaders are betting that the bonus will make a vote for vouchers more politically palatable.

Lee’s Education Freedom Act also proposes new money to help local districts pay for school maintenance and construction. And it includes “hold harmless” language that pledges the state will reimburse school systems for any lost funding tied to students who withdraw from public schools to accept vouchers and attend private schools.

Educators interviewed by Chalkbeat said that they believe the promised reimbursements would be short-lived, and that the funding would be eliminated from future state budgets, ultimately draining resources from their public schools.

“Teachers aren’t fooled by the promise of a small bonus in exchange for a bill that would lead to public schools closing across the state,” said Tanya T. Coats, a Knox County teacher who is president of the state’s largest teacher organization, the Tennessee Education Association.

The one-year bonus would barely address pay disparities between teachers in Tennessee and those in other states. The average teacher in Tennessee made below $58,000, compared with $69,597 nationally, during 2022-23, the latest year for which national data is available, according to an analysis by the National Education Association.

The governor is budgeting next year to increase the state’s minimum salary for teachers from $44,500 to $47,000, in accordance with his plan to get base pay to $50,000 by the time he leaves office in 2027.

But critics say those increases aren’t rewarding experienced teachers, keeping up with inflation, or attracting high-quality candidates to the teaching profession, which is suffering from sagging morale.

Kathryn Vaughn has been a full-time teacher in Tennessee for 20 years and works two other jobs to make ends meet. She’s unimpressed by the idea of a $2,000 bonus, which likely would be closer to $1,400 after taxes. The underlying goal of Lee’s voucher plan, she believes, is to defund public education.

“If you’re really serious about helping teachers, why not make some sort of systemic change to teacher pay to alleviate the starvation funding we’re operating under?” said Vaughn, an elementary school art teacher in Tipton County.

Linking benefits for teachers to school choice agenda

It’s not the first time the governor has sought to package benefits for teachers with more controversial education proposals.

In 2023, Lee pressed for a bill to guarantee gradual minimum pay boosts for teachers during his second term in office — and also to ban school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues. Teacher groups and many lawmakers objected to the tactic, but the bill eventually passed.

Similarly, Lee’s bonus proposal is tied to the creation of a statewide program to give $7,075 each in public funding toward the cost of a private education for up to 20,000 Tennessee students, beginning next fall.

Lee has pushed for more education choices for families, while also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in public schools, since taking office in 2019. He remains adamant that both policies can complement each other.

“This piece of legislation represents a commitment to education for all children in the state, and that includes public funding, teacher funding, parental choice,” said Lee, when asked by reporters last week why the voucher and teacher bonus measures aren’t decoupled so lawmakers can vote on them separately.

Other governors, especially in predominantly Republican states, have used a similar playbook when pressing for vouchers.

In Arkansas, for instance, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a 2023 law to increase beginning public school teacher salaries from $36,000 to $50,000, while also creating a statewide voucher program to cover the costs of private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, and other educational expenses.

Teachers fear that vouchers will hurt their students

Many Tennessee teachers are skeptical about the new proposal to give them a bonus, viewing it as a ploy to push a policy agenda that they say will ultimately hurt their profession, public schools, and students in general.

“Teachers I am hearing from are very insulted that the sponsor of this bill thought any devoted Tennessee teacher would be willing to erode the future of public education for a one-time, taxed bonus of $2,000,” tweeted National Teacher of the Year Missy Testerman, who works for Rogersville City Schools in northeast Tennessee.

Like Testerman, Siema Swartzel teaches students who live mostly below the poverty level. More investments in public education would help, she said.

“I don’t see how creating a voucher program and adding $2,000 to my bank account is going to make sure my kids have all the things they need to be good learners,” said Swartzel, who teaches music at an elementary school in Cleveland, near Chattanooga. “They are our future, and I’m very afraid that vouchers will interfere with that.”

In Clarksville, near the Kentucky border, Karel Lea Biggs doesn’t think vouchers, as they’re proposed, would end up benefiting any of her middle schoolers, many of whom are considered economically disadvantaged.

Under Lee’s proposal, half of the first year’s vouchers would be subject to limits based on family income, but those limits would still be high: three times the threshold to qualify for free and reduced price school meals, or about $173,000 for a family of four. The remaining 10,000 slots would have no income restrictions.

Lee’s administration acknowledges that many enrollees would be the children of parents who intended to send their children to private schools anyway, and already had the resources to do so.

Meanwhile, Biggs says her public school desperately needs more resources to support students experiencing post-pandemic anxiety and other mental health issues. “A teacher bonus and vouchers,” she said, “just aren’t going to help my kids.”

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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On the Fly: Week of 11/15/24

Grind City Coffee Expo returns this weekend to celebrate coffee culture. (Photo: Mark Adams)

Indie Memphis Film Festival
Midtown Memphis
Thursday-Sunday, November 14-17
Let’s go to the movies! Let’s go see the stars! Cowboy heroes, cops and robbers, glamor and strife, bigger than life! It’s time for the Indie Memphis Film Festival! Enjoy premieres, Q&As with filmmakers, film workshops, and parties at Crosstown Theater and Studio on the Square, before hitting up encore screenings at Malco Paradiso on Monday and Tuesday, November 18th and 19th. A full schedule can be found here. Festival passes are $130, VIP passes are $240, virtual passes are $30, and single tickets are $15 — all of which can be purchased here.

Trans Awareness Week
Through Tuesday, November 20
Transgender Awareness Week (November 13-20) is a time to uplift and support the transgender community. It’s a week to raise awareness about the challenges, rights, and experiences of trans and gender non-conforming individuals. Here’s what’s on this week’s agenda:

  • Queering Masculinity: A Panel on Transmasc Experiences: This panel will feature Jasper Joyner, Malachi Allen, Phoenix Powell, and Will Ryder; moderated by Jessie Claudio | 4159 Willow Blvd., Friday, November 15, 11 a.m.
  • Mid-South Trans Nation Trans Fest: Trans Fest 2024 will celebrate the transgender community by promoting awareness and providing resources to the transgender community. The event will feature a range of activities including keynote speeches, resources, vendor booths, and music. | Lichterman Nature Center, Sunday, November 17, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
  • Trans Girls Rock: Celebrate the strength, resilience, and unique contributions of transgender women. | Timeless Event Center, Sunday, November 17, 6-9 p.m.
  • “I AM” TRANS Empowerment Summit: Enjoy an evening of celebration and storytelling with Mariah DaGoat and Symone Lyons, plus refreshments, music, and vendors. | Crosstown Concourse, Atrium Room, Monday, November 18, 3-7 p.m.
  • Voices of Resilience: Transgender Day of Remembrance: Mourn the lives lost and take collective action to protect transgender lives. You’ll also get a chance to be the first to see a new short film, exploring how My Sistah’s House creates a safe, affirming world through advocacy and tiny houses in Memphis. | National Civil Rights Museum, Wednesday, November 20, 7 p.m.

Science of Spirits
Lichterman Nature Center
Friday, November 15, 6-9 p.m.
Michael Donahue has already dashed any hope that this event will be an exploration of the supernatural world when he wrote about the Science of Spirits earlier this week. Fine. We can handle it. Especially because these “spirits” are the drinkable kind. At the Science of Spirits, guests will enjoy spirits tasting, food pairing, and fun activities that explore the science of making spirits. This inaugural event will feature caterer Bain BBQ, Huey’s, and Graz’n and distillers to help guests discover and appreciate the science and art behind their pairings. The event will also include live music by Mark Edgar Stuart. Tickets ($100) can be purchased here. 

The Wizard of Oz
Playhouse on the Square
November 15-December 22
Before there was a Wicked movie for celebrities to promote, there was The Wizard of Oz. You know it, you love it, and you can see it at Playhouse on the Square, starting Friday. Performances will run through December 22nd, Friday nights at 7 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. The last weekday of performances, December 19th and 20th, will offer evening public performances with a 7 p.m. curtain. General admission tickets are $25, senior citizens, military, and first responders are $20, and children under 18 are only $15. Purchase them here.

Grind City Coffee Xpo ’24
Crosstown Arts
Saturday, November 16, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
Full steam ahead! It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Literally. The Grind City Coffee Xpo (GCX) is back and ready to celebrate coffee culture. During the GCX, attendees will be able to sample various brewing and roasting methods as well as food from local restaurants and bakers. Attendees will be able to meet with 25-plus coffee-centric vendors, attend three discussion panels (“Cupping with Sustain Coffee,” “Cooking with Coffee,” and “Ask a Barista”), and watch three coffee and cocktails demos. Tickets are $44.52 and can be purchased here. The Xpo will also have a Warm Up at Archer Recording on Friday, 6 p.m., where guests can enjoy Byway coffee and Grind City beer ($5/general admission). To wrap up the weekend, on Saturday at 6:30 p.m., the Xpo will host the Grind City Throwdown, which will have a latte art competition and Brewer’s Cup (sign up to participate in those here). Proceeds benefit Protect Our Aquifer. Cool beans, right?

Time Warp Drive-In: Deliciously Deranged – A Hannibal Lecter Double Feature
Malco Summer Drive-In
Saturday, November 16, 7 p.m.
Hannibal Lecter has been mentioned in our paper several times this year … for reasons. So why not mention him once more? This weekend, the Time Warp Drive-In is putting on a double feature of Hannibal Lecter films, screening The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Tickets are $25/carload. 

Spillit Grand Slam: Make or Break
Memphis Made Brewing
Saturday, November 16, 7 p.m.
Spill the tea at Spillit Grand Slam: Make or Break — except, actually, for this Spillit you won’t be spilling your guts. It’s the Grand Slam, which means all the Spillit winners from this year are coming back to find out who will be crowned the Grand Slam Champion. Tickets are $20 and are available to purchase here or at the door on the day of the show. Bring your listening ears. One, two, three, eyes not on you.

Bluff City Fest
Crosstown Arts
Wednesday, November 20, 7:30 p.m.
Memphis’ musical heartbeat comes alive at this festival, celebrating the city’s legendary music scene with a dynamic mix of genres — from rap and contemporary rock to pop, blues, jazz, and classic rock. Eight killer bands from the University of Memphis Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music will light up the stage. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door, and $5 for students.


There’s always something happening in Memphis. See a full calendar of events here.

Submit events here or by emailing calendar@memphisflyer.com.

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Redbirds ‘Committed’ to Memphis, AutoZone Park After 901 FC Departure

Credit: Memphis Redbirds

The Memphis Redbirds organization said 901 FC’s departure from AutoZone Park has “no impact on the Memphis Redbird’s current tenure” but says work is needed on AutoZone Park. 

The soccer club officially announced Wednesday morning it will leave Memphis for Santa Barbara, California. The news surfaced in media reporting Tuesday evening. The team is leaving because the city did not secure it a soccer stadium. 

“From the beginning, we emphasized that a soccer-specific stadium was essential for the long-term viability of professional soccer in Memphis,” reads a statement from the team on X Wednesday morning. “Following the city’s direction, we participated in multiple trips to lobby the Tennessee legislature in 2023 for a $350 million cash grant to fund sports facilities, including a new soccer stadium and renovations to AutoZone Park. 

“While the state of Tennessee fulfilled this grant to Memphis, funding for the Liberty Park soccer stadium and AutoZone Park was unceremoniously left out. In the past year, we have explored additional options, but unfortunately time was not on our side.”

The Redbirds, which manages AutoZone Park for the city, said it was “saddened” by the news, that it will stay Downtown, but more work needs to be done at the park. 

“Since AutoZone Park was not allocated any of the state funding made available last year, the city has deployed approximately $5 million in funds to help start to bring the city-owned facility into compliance with MLB standards before next year’s [Professional Development League] deadline,” reads a statement from the Redbirds. “However, we have communicated to the city that there is still a long list of vital needs that must be addressed in order for AutoZone Park to maintain a Triple-A club, including new seating, painting, bathroom renovations, and concrete repairs, among others. 

“These items must be addressed seriously and swiftly to safeguard the long-term future of AutoZone Park as the proud home of the Redbirds and a premier destination for events in the city.”