“I suspect the most we can hope for, and it’s no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide With Me

Round here, Fall Break is coming to an end.

It was a good week. Just one that moved a little too quickly.

Every year, we promise we’re going to travel. Every year, pets, sports obligations, and work schedules conspire to moor us to home. The bank account, with a little less money in it these days, usually casts the deciding vote. Somehow, a week that looked wide open gets filled before anybody puts a suitcase on the bed.

Still, there’s something to be said for a break in the daily grind of the school year. A little less rushing. A little more breathing room.

Now the alarms get reset, backpacks come back out, and everybody prepares to get back to work.

Including, apparently, the people who oversee Nashville’s public schools.

They’ve got some homework waiting.

A blueprint for losing your seat at the table

On October 9, as expected, the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approved the appeals of Music City Academy and The Gate School, overturning the MNPS board’s denials.

The commission concluded that both proposals offered worthwhile educational options. Music City Academy’s model connects academics and career exploration through sports. The Gate School proposes a middle school built around discussion and academic rigor.

State commission executive director Tess Stovall described Music City Academy this way:

“A particular strength of the application is the alignment that we saw throughout the academic plan, around the mission, the vision and the school’s culture.”

“The school has developed a comprehensive culture plan, centered around team over self, passion to purpose, and wellness for life.”

Approval is a beginning. Both schools still have to deliver.

But the decisions carry consequences beyond two proposed campuses.

The commission will authorize the schools for ten years. More immediately, the reversals trigger a provision allowing prospective Nashville charter operators to apply directly to the state for the next five years, bypassing MNPS’s application process.

Operators can still apply locally. They now have another door.

Given the reception they’ve received at the first one, I suspect some will be happy to try the second.

MNPS leaders have repeatedly argued that additional charter schools would harm district finances. Those concerns deserve examination. Buildings don’t get cheaper to maintain because a few students leave.

But a fiscal argument needs evidence demonstrating the impact. Repeating a projected loss of funding doesn’t automatically settle whether that loss meets the legal standard.

The commission rejected MNPS’s case for these schools while upholding its denials of two other applicants.

That matters. This wasn’t an afternoon when everybody who showed up received a school.

MNPS’s own approval record helps explain how we arrived here.

The board last approved a new charter application on July 13, 2021, when Aventura Community School’s revised application passed 5–3. Its dual-language model addressed an identifiable need.

Contemporary reporting described Aventura as the first local charter approval in more than five years. Earlier approvals were reported in 2015.

By that timeline, Aventura stands as the lone new-school approval in roughly a decade.

That’s a blueprint for being removed from the conversation, and MNPS executed it beautifully.

You can oppose charter expansion. You can believe the state’s policy is misguided. But once the law establishes a process, a board has to consider the consequences of how it uses its authority.

At some point, a predictable answer invites people to find somebody else to ask.

Will the floodgates open? Maybe not. Facilities, money, staffing, and enrollment remain real obstacles.

Still, independent operators now have reason to believe their applications might receive a fairer hearing elsewhere.

That changes the calculation.

For MNPS, the practical question becomes how to respond. More families may have more options, and district leaders need a better answer than insisting those options should never exist.

When district leaders make decisions difficult to defend publicly, they give the state an opening to take those decisions out of local hands.

Fewer students, another executive

Enrollment pressure already hangs over the district. Any comparison needs consistent definitions, especially when district-authorized and state-authorized charter students are counted differently.

But nobody should pretend the enrollment question disappears because the accounting requires care.

Student numbers affect staffing, building use, and the money available for instruction. Underused schools can eventually become school-closing conversations.

Those conversations land on families and neighborhoods.

Against that backdrop of declining enrollment and growing financial challenges, MNPS now has a deputy superintendent earning $265,000.

Dr. Mason Bellamy holds the position, according to Rachel Wegner’s recent Tennessean reporting on district pay.

That ought to come with a readily available explanation.

Why this position? Why now? What responsibilities moved into it? What measurable benefit justifies the expense?

I have not located a public promotion announcement or the original posting for the job.

That is a statement about what I have found. It doesn’t establish that neither document exists. If MNPS has them, producing them should be simple.

The district’s leadership page confirms Bellamy moved from Chief of Special Projects to Deputy Superintendent. An organizational chart dated May 1, 2026, also lists him in the position.

Neither tells the public when the decision was made or why.

Nor have I verified a previous MNPS employee who held this exact title. Earlier administrations used titles such as Chief Academic Officer and Chief of Schools.

So I’m not declaring the position unprecedented based on a Google search. I am asking the district to explain where it fits in its history and current needs.

We shouldn’t need a decoder ring to understand the organizational chart.

And we shouldn’t have to wait for a salary story to start asking what a senior executive does.

The return deserves an explanation, too

Bellamy’s path back into MNPS raises another set of questions.

In July 2024, the district publicly announced his departure for the corporate sector. Renita Perry would take over as Chief of Academics and Schools.

After the Antioch High School shooting, he returned as Chief of Special Projects.

Then came Deputy Superintendent.

That is a significant sequence of personnel decisions. The public deserves the dates, job descriptions, salary authorizations, and hiring rationale.

Teachers reading this will understand why.

Employees who work directly with students are accustomed to rules, deadlines, and consequences. When somebody leaves and returns to a senior position, people reasonably want to know how the rules were applied.

The district’s resignation and rehire procedure lays out notice requirements and restrictions on returning, including a one-year waiting period in certain circumstances. Teachers have to weigh those rules when deciding whether to leave. Bellamy, meanwhile, left for the corporate sector and returned within months to another executive position. That apparent contrast deserves an explanation: Were the circumstances different, did different rules apply, or was an exception granted?

If an exception was granted, who authorized it?

Put the explanation on the table.

Bellamy’s experience includes elementary education, serving as a middle school principal, and working as Clarksville-Montgomery County’s Director of High Schools.

What particular preparation qualified him for the responsibilities assigned after Antioch, including any work on security?

Educational leadership and security expertise overlap in some places. They aren’t interchangeable.

Explain the assignment. Explain the qualifications. Explain how success is measured.

At a quarter-million dollars a year, those requests ought to be routine.

Public schools have long presented transparency as an advantage over charter schools. That argument loses force when a senior appointment requires this much detective work.

Once again, the “public” in public schools starts looking like it belongs in lowercase letters.

Scarcity depends on where you’re standing

This summer, the board declined to fund a proposed pre-K program in the Hillwood cluster while working out how to cover approximately $470,000 for a Metro Council-ordered performance audit and other budget priorities.

Notice who ends up in the conversation when money gets tight.

Young children. Teachers. Support staff.

Somehow, the organizational chart rarely seems to face the same urgency.

Bellamy’s reported base salary exceeds half that audit amount. That doesn’t mean eliminating or postponing his position would automatically produce $265,000 in net savings. His previous compensation, reassigned duties, and any replacement costs matter.

But those are precisely the calculations the district should provide.

If another senior executive is essential, demonstrate it with the same specificity expected when a school requests another employee.

The Tennessean’s Andrea Williams put the broader issue plainly in her July column:

“It’s a trick of modern industry – and education is a capital-I industry – to create a false sense of scarcity that convinces poorly paid underlings to fight for scraps while well-paid administrators, too far from the ground to have any measurable day-to-day impact, sit back and watch it all play out.

“After all, if MNPS money is so tight, and early childhood education is on the line, do central office employees who already make $100-, $150- or $200,000 a year need an annual step increase, every year?

“Since the board just doled out a historic settlement, as well as $165,000 for Battle’s office suite remodel, could they have peeled away the $470,000 audit fee from the top of the organizational chart, instead of taking from the students at the bottom?”

Those questions haven’t expired.

Teachers and support staff deserve better compensation. Their work is the daily operation of public education.

Putting their needs into competition with student services while treating executive spending as settled business creates a very convenient argument for the people furthest from the classroom.

Show us the alternatives considered. Show us the savings attached to each.

A budget is a set of choices. Parents deserve to see more than the choice administrators prefer.

Who gets the next turn?

There’s another reason this promotion deserves scrutiny.

It feels like a possible succession plan. I have no document showing Battle intends to leave or has selected Bellamy to replace her. But the public should understand how this appointment could shape what happens next.

Battle became interim director in 2019 and permanent director in 2020. If she leaves, a deputy superintendent could be a candidate for interim leadership, gaining experience and visibility that strengthen a bid for the permanent job.

The board still makes that decision. But the field can take shape long before a search is announced.

Access, relationships, and familiarity count. So does already sitting in the chair when the board starts discussing who belongs there.

That is why the deputy position deserves public vetting now. What authority comes with it? What happens during the superintendent’s absence? Has the board discussed succession expectations?

Put the position on a public agenda with the job description, reporting relationships, compensation, and explanation of how it improves services. Let board members ask questions in front of the people paying the bill.

If Bellamy is the right person, that conversation should strengthen his standing.

A parent shouldn’t have to become an amateur personnel investigator to understand who sits directly beneath the superintendent. And the board shouldn’t treat curiosity as disloyalty.

Its responsibility includes asking whether the administrative structure fits the district it actually has. Those questions become more urgent when families are being told there isn’t enough money for something their children need.

Nashville has the state’s attention

These questions arrive at an uncomfortable time.

The $6.5 million settlement involving five former administrators remains part of Battle’s leadership record. A settlement does not, by itself, establish every allegation made in a lawsuit.

It does establish a substantial public expense and leaves legitimate questions about how personnel decisions were handled.

Battle has been effective at telling a compelling story about district progress. District leaders point to academic growth and graduation gains, and those results deserve examination alongside the problems.

But criticism too often becomes a referendum on whether somebody supports the superintendent personally.

That shuts down the conversation we need.

Now state Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, is making clear that Nashville has his attention.

Asked on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN whether school officials understood they weren’t performing at the necessary level, he replied:

“If they didn’t, they do now.”

Cepicky described a closed-door meeting with Battle and a board vice chair:

“I said, ‘The way I focus my job is I have to look at my worst performers and get them to improve better. For me, being your problem, you have to focus on your worst performers,’” Cepicky recalled.

“And they kind of looked at me like, ‘Well, who?’ I said, ‘I’ll give you three right away: McGavock, Antioch, and Pearl Cohn.’”

That is his account. When WKRN sought a response, MNPS said it had no details or information regarding the meeting.

Cepicky also discussed a proposed forensic audit:

“I am asking the Speaker to do a forensic audit on Nashville to start the process of looking at taking them over. We’re going to get the comptroller involved, financially. She had a big settlement, the bathroom incident.”

There is nothing especially subtle about that.

The proposed state forensic audit should not be confused with the Council-ordered performance audit. They are separate matters, and a lawmaker calling for action is not the same thing as an authorized takeover.

But the political intention is clear enough.

State intervention deserves its own scrutiny. Distance from the classroom doesn’t suddenly become wisdom because somebody holds legislative office.

I’ll admit there’s irony in watching leaders who micromanage teachers face the prospect of being micromanaged by people even further removed from classrooms.

Teachers might recognize the feeling.

Unfortunately, they and their students would also live with the consequences.

Defending local control gets harder when local leaders make basic accountability so difficult. Every unanswered question gives somebody else room to claim they should be in charge.

Back to work

As Fall Break ends, families return to the familiar business of getting children where they need to be.

Teachers return to classrooms and the work that makes every organizational chart worth funding.

Administrators ought to return with some answers.

Explain the deputy superintendent position. Produce the posting or identify the process used. Document the compensation and responsibilities. Clarify the rehire decision. Describe the succession procedures.

Then explain how the district plans to earn families’ confidence as educational options expand.

None of that requires another slogan.

It requires public officials treating the public like people entitled to know.

The students are getting back to work.

Let’s hope the administrators work half as hard as the children they oversee.

Dad Gone Wild — Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

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Categories: Education