“If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.”
― Richard Rhodes

My 14-year-old daughter had only one leg in the car before she fired off the first inquiry.

“Dada, I got a question.” She says, slipping into her seat. “Do school board members or district officials ever visit schools and talk to students.”

“”Sometimes,” I responded, trying to figure out where she was going with this. She’s my rule-following child. At least until she sniffs out a perceived slight. Then step-back.

“Which schools? Which kids?” She fires back. “Because if you are not talking to as many kids as possible, you shouldn’t be on the school board. In my opinion.”

“You should talk to all the kids and get their input. Even those who say detention shouldn’t be a thing. We know that’s not going away”, she says. “But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have good ideas. How do you represent us if you don’t talk to us? I get it, they’ll argue that they primarily represent parents, but ultimately, who do they represent?”

My son had echoed a similar sentiment. earlier in the week, during a fight over his math grades and class participation.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be in that class.” He cried. “You don’t know how I’m treated. You think you do but you don’t.”

My children’s awareness of how schools are run and the perceived lack of alignment between the needs of adults and students has been growing this year.

Earlier in the year she got in the car furious over a wellness class lesson that preached the counting of calories at every meal. She felt that such a message put young ladies at risk for future eating disorders and she was deeply concerned about the impact being made by a seemingly well-meaning but wrong approach. Her teacher was sympathetic, but he wanted to know who to talk to to raise awareness across the district.

This year she’s been frustrated by grading practices employed in response to her participation in Vanderbilt’s Science and Math program. For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a program hosted by Vanderbilt University for roughly 25 participants per high school grade. Participating students attend one-day-a-week classes at the Vanderbilt campus, away from their regular high school. They are expected to make up any work missed. It’s a challenging task, but an extremely rewarding program.

You might think that high school teachers would recognize the value of such a program. Most maybe, but a few are unwilling to make accommodations.

For example, throughout the year quizzes are given on the day they attend SMV. Instead of marking the grade book with an incomplete and only changing it to a zero after a reasonable time has passed, students are given a zero. While that zero is recognized as a placeholder, it does factor into a student’s running grade. If you are a student who takes your grades very seriously, that placeholder becomes a source of additional stress. One day of a sub-par grade is 24 hours too long in their minds, and don’t bother trying to explain to them. You’d have better luck explaining Trump’s surge in the polls to a never-Trumper, or why the ex-president should go to jail to a Trump supporter.

What’s that old saying about teaching a pig to sing?

Logically it may make sense, but emotionally it doesn’t register. You don’t know this unless you actually talk to a student.

“So why do you want to know?” I ask, picking up the conversation.

“Because our school is so great, but it has some real issues that need solving and it needs more support. The principal does a good job, but some things are out of his control.”

Nashville School of the Arts is an art school located on the old Tennessee Preparatory School Campus. It originally began as a small magnet program for arts-interested students in Pearl-Cohn High School in 1993. As time went on, NSA grew to a size warranting its own facility, which was achieved in 1996 on the former Cumberland School campus before moving to its current location a few years later. To say the facilities are lacking would be an understatement. There are numerous physical problems including rodents, broken bathroom doors, and a lack of windows, to cite a few.

The District may recognize the need for a new building and more resources, but change and progress are slow. NSA is near the top of the list for a new school building, but what that means is anyone’s guess. It could be 2 years it could be twenty years.

NSA is home to roughly 550 students, enrolled in nine separate conservatories. Students must audition for one of nine conservatories to gain admission. Roughly half of those students who audition are admitted. Some conservatories – band and visual arts for example – are more popular than others, making admission more difficult.

Transportation is another challenge. Like MNPS’s other magnet schools, there is no district transportation provided. For us, this has been a considerable challenge, costing roughly an extra $500 a month. However I must say the extra time in the car together has provided its own dividends. Still, for many families, this is an insurmountable barrier. That’s probably why only 16% of the students who attend NSA are considered economically disadvantaged.

Some see the words “art school” and assume that academics are sacrificed. You know what they say about assumptions.

Last year the school achieved a 40% success rate, outpacing the district at 21%, and the state at 38.2%. NSA is easily one of the district’s top-performing academic schools.

The school’s graduation rate is 95.2%, higher than the district at 81.6% and the state at 89.8%. Not too shabby.

Being an art school, certain other assumptions are made. Yesterday my daughter shared with me that among the city’s high schoolers, NSA is known as the “gay school”.

Hmmpf…I said. I don’t know about all of that. I do know that the culture at NSA is especially welcoming and nonjudgmental. It provided the perfect environment for my daughter to flourish, and could be equally beneficial to others, gay or not. But more is needed to preserve this school.

Unfortunately, Nashville has arrived at a point where the district doesn’t support magnet schools. Both Hume-Fogg High School and MLK High School have recently come under fire as the district tries to force students back to their zones options. In my eyes, that is a huge mistake.

Nothing wrong with the zoned options, but student needs are so diverse that it’s impossible to serve all in one school. Options must exist for those that need it. If MNPS is committed to truly serving all students it must support options outside of the normal pathways.

Looking at the number of economically disadvantaged students served by the magnets, I would think the district would make an effort to lower barriers, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. But as far as I know, it hasn’t even been studied.

Most of the money supplied to NSA is directed toward the Arts, but building on academic success should be equally important. Unfortunately, that commitment doesn’t seem to exist.

All of what I’ve shared with you is information garnered by talking with my daughter, or I should say, listening to my daughter.

If you don’t talk with students, how do you know what they need?

I’m still mulling over a teacher telling my son last week that he doesn’t know his place. That seems to be a more direct delivery of the district’s overall message – know your place, we’ll tell you what you need.

As my daughter says, “You can’t hear the needs if you don’t hear.”

Yesterday, she wrote her first letter to a school board member. Props to new board member TK Wayne for her prompt response.

In the weeks ahead, she’s planning to speak during public participation.

I advised her to practice her auctioneer speech, two minutes is hardly sufficient to express the needs of her beloved school.

I’m proud of her. Seems like one thing she inherited from her old man is a passion for public schools.

Hopefully, her words will spark some action. maybe more than the old man’s ever did.

Meanwhile, thank you to NSA principal Justin Thomas and all the teachers at NSA for a great freshman year.

Proud to be the parent of a Nashville School of the Arts student.

– – –

Any hopes for a break in the discussion surrounding vouchers have been dashed. Governor Lee and the leaders of the General Assembly have indicated they plan to pursue voucher legislation during next year’s session. Lee is telling folks that he plans to support candidates, in the upcoming election, who support voucher legislation. I’m not sure if that’s a help or a hindrance.

Voucher opponents are being drawn from all sides. You have school board members who serve affluent districts trying to preserve their exclusivity, teacher unions speaking out, while some conservatives are making a different argument.

Gary Humble, who leads the libertarian-leaning conservative group Tennessee Stands, has a different take.

He recently told The Tennessee Lookout:

“Definitely we’ll be prepared to oppose … and when I’m speaking (at events), I’m in strong opposition to vouchers. I know this isn’t going to go away, so I’m quite confident this will be the talk of the session leading into 2025 and on and on until they get something done,” Humble said this week.

Ironically Tennessee Stands grosses less annually than many of these advocacy groups pay their CEO.

Humble’s reasons aren’t necessarily a plea to preserve public education, but rather because “education and teaching regulations are “bound to follow” into private education and homeschools if state money is shifted to those schools, because “strings are always attached to tax dollars.”

In other words, let’s not have vouchers because they’ll fuck up our private and homeschool systems. Don’t bring them other kids over here, because then we’ll have to serve them.

Seems like a different version of an old hit.

TEA President Tanya Coats has weighed in, and argued that the Legislature should spend $7,000 more per student in public schools to move Tennessee out of the nation’s bottom 10 for investment.

“The only choices this program would provide are the choices for private schools to profit off Tennessee taxpayers and cherry-pick the students they want to educate,” Coats said in an association statement.

The cynic in me notes that a portion of TEA’s opposition lies in the difficulty of collecting annual dues from teachers who follow students to private schools. The union is struggling as it adjusts to a recent sate law preventing union dues from being deducted from payroll.

That said, if you are a long-term member who can’t remember if you made the switch to payroll deductions, I’d check that to make sure you did. While I don’t always support TEA leadership, the benefits of membership have great value. Both Professional Educators of Tennessee and TEA offer essential teacher protections. Don’t be caught unprepared.

A few things are becoming clearer as we move into election season.

Don’t expect a repeat of last year with its lengthy debates and discussions.

Don’t expect any bells and whistles.

Expect some committees to be repopulated. Do you know who probably won’t be on the House Education Committee? Sorry, Todd but we need your help on the monument naming committee. That’s reality.

If the votes are there the process will be fast and furious.

That’s the other key and the unknown, how do these elections turn out?

How do the elections for speaker of the House and majority leadership turn out?

I honestly don’t know. I suspect a few things, but we’ll see.

Initially, I suspected that Democrats could claw back a dozen seats, but I have reservations. I’m not sure they are challenging in the right races.

One thing is for sure, if you are serious about passing or opposing vouchers, you might want to spend less time posting on Twitter and more time knocking on doors.

What’s the saying again?

You can’t hear if you don’t hear.

– – –

Another week, and another headline for Tennessee Commissioner of Education Lizzette Reynolds.

Tuesday, Rep. Caleb Hemmer (D-Nashville) filed a complaint with the Tennessee Ethics Commission alleging that Reynolds’ out-of-state travel to conferences in October and November 2023 were paid for by ExcelinEd. The transactions amount to a violation of state laws governing gifts to executive branch employees by lobbying organizations.

“ExcelinEd is an employer of a lobbyist in Tennessee and, therefore, not allowed to pay or reimburse for out-of-state travel of an executive branch employee,” Hemmer wrote in the complaint, adding that the travel “does not meet any statutory exceptions.”

Here’s the best part, and not included in The Tennessean story, the lobbyist in question is new to their position because the previous lobbyist employed by ExcelinEd, Jack Powers, was brought over by Reynolds to serve as government relations for the Tennessee Department of Education. Not only that, Powers brought himself an assistant from ExcelinEd, Amy Owens over with him as his chief assistant. Both previously worked at the TDOE.

Ain’t that some shit?

Since The Tennessean story first broke, Reynolds has amended her state of disclosure filed with the state. Under income, she added a rental property in Austin. She also added roughly $500 in legislative expenses associated with her ExcelinEd appearances.

Executive Order 2, signed by Lee in 2019, prohibits executive employees from accepting lodging, transportation, food or anything of monetary value from any entity that “has interests that may be substantially affected by the performance or nonperformance of the employee’s official duties.”

Hmmm…

It also directs executive branch employees to avoid actions that could give the appearance of “giving preferential treatment to any person” or “losing complete independence or impartiality,” which Hemmer alleges Reynolds is guilty of doing.

Before filing, Hemmer sought the opinion of Lee’s Chief Ethics Officer Erin Merrick who told him:

“I do not provide interpretations of Executive Order No. 2 to those who are not members of the executive branch,” Merrick responded via email on May 10, according to a copy of the correspondence obtained by The Tennessean.

So there you have it.

Some people question the pursuit of Reynolds in light of her actions not being dissimilar to her predecessors. I think what’s happening is that legislators are finally waking up to practices that give non-profits more power while robbing transparency from Tennessee voters.

It seems that legislators are finally waking up and becoming aware of just how much influence outside parties wield. My hope for the last four years is that the General Assembly holds a summer study on the influence on policy held by education non-profits.

Reynolds might not have been able to help with the passage of voucher legislation, but this is something she is definitely helping with – either intentionally or unintentionally.

– – –

One quick note on some pending retirements from MNPS. Gower Elementary Principal Barbara Frazier and Shayne Principal Donna Gill will both retire at the end of the school year. Both have served with distinction, and both will be missed.

– – –

Per usual, I need to rattle the cup a little bit before I head out the door.

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Categories: Education