“Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse

Now that election season is over, we can stride confidently into winter. Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and Christmas is nipping at its heels.

Before we know it, we’ll be firmly entrenched in winter.

Along with shorter days and holiday bills comes another gathering of legislators. The 2027 session opens shortly after the new year, bringing fresh faces, familiar agendas, and another opportunity to find out whose priorities actually matter.

I’d suggest keeping a coat handy.

New faces, familiar business

By my count, the House will have 26 new members, six of them Democrats. That’s enough turnover to make things interesting, though new faces don’t necessarily translate into new ideas.

Our favorite subject, vouchers, has already surfaced. A quick survey of members seems to indicate that expansion is off the table for this year.

We’ll see.

There’s a difference between what legislators say before they return to Nashville and what happens after they settle into their offices and start hearing from lobbyists. Priorities have a funny way of shifting once the doors close.

For now, I’ll take the apparent reluctance as an encouraging sign. I’m just not ready to confuse it with a guarantee.

If expansion really is off the table, perhaps lawmakers can spend some time examining what they’ve already approved. How is the program working? Who is being served? What information will the public receive about the money being spent?

Those questions don’t disappear because another election has passed.

Neither does the need for answers.

Who gets the commissioner’s office?

There’s a fair amount of chatter about who the next education commissioner will be. Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds holds the position, and there has been talk of keeping her around.

However, there’s a wrinkle. There usually is.

The version circulating is that Governor-elect Marsha Blackburn got nervous during the final month of her campaign and sought additional financial and political support. Now, according to that same chatter, some of those supporters want a say in the administration.

That’s the street talk. It isn’t proof of a deal, and it shouldn’t be mistaken for one.

One name coming up is Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk.

At a glance, my first question concerns experience. Rysewyk began his superintendent tenure in June 2022, which puts him at just under five years when the new administration takes over. That doesn’t erase his earlier work in education. It does make the jump to statewide leadership worth examining.

Knox County is a large district with its own mix of communities and challenges. But leading Knox County and overseeing education across Tennessee are different jobs.

What works in Knoxville won’t necessarily address the needs of Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, or a small rural district struggling to keep teachers.

I’d want to hear how he understands those differences before getting carried away with the appointment chatter.

There’s another question: whose policy agenda would the next commissioner bring along?

Tennessee has spent years welcoming ideas promoted through the Chiefs for Change and ExcelinEd orbit. In my view, the state has too often served as a laboratory for policies whose biggest champions are comfortably removed from the classrooms affected.

The experiment gets a press release. Teachers get the implementation.

Parents get to figure out what changed.

Rysewyk isn’t a Chiefs for Change member to my knowledge, while his counterparts in Nashville and Chattanooga have been associated with the organization. Whether that distinction means anything remains to be seen.

I just don’t see Jeb Bush’s policy network closing the laboratory door without a fight.

Maybe Rysewyk is the preferred candidate. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe the next commissioner will surprise us all.

I’d still advise watching the people doing the recommending as closely as the person being recommended.

A familiar collection of names

On a side note, I spent some time this week perusing the Chiefs for Change alumni files.

Depressing reading.

Looking through those names, I was reminded how often education leadership rewards movement rather than results. Leave one position, land another, update the biography, and let somebody else sort through what remains.

Some of those résumés look considerably better than the public record, at least to these eyes.

Former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn wasn’t among the names I found in the alumni pages I reviewed. An older Chiefs for Change page still identifies her as a member of its third Future Chiefs cohort, so I wouldn’t read a missing listing as evidence that she’s been expelled from the club.

Still, it brought to mind an old friend who got kicked out of the Allman Brothers Band because he partied too much.

That’s a statement.

The broader concern survives the website search. These organizations continue to influence who gets elevated, which policies get promoted, and what counts as success.

If they want that influence, they ought to welcome a little scrutiny of their track records.

Mark White and the testing question

Memphis state Rep. Mark White is another person worth watching.

White has long been a central figure in the House’s education work. His close reelection contest raises a familiar political question: who helped him keep his opponent at bay, and what will they expect going forward?

A close race doesn’t establish an obligation. It does make the next round of decisions worth watching.

White’s relationship with SCORE has long been part of Tennessee’s education-policy landscape. His work around national assessment policy also deserves attention as lawmakers revisit testing.

A distinction matters here: NAEP is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal assessment program behind the Nation’s Report Card. It isn’t a private advocacy organization like SCORE. The National Assessment Governing Board sets policy for NAEP.

That distinction doesn’t settle the debate about testing. It helps us have the right debate.

What are we measuring? How often do we need to measure it? How much instructional time does the process consume? And what happens when the numbers arrive?

I’m hearing that at least one legislator intends to introduce a bill reducing testing. Until legislation is filed, the details remain an open question.

But the conversation is overdue.

There’s a difference between using an assessment to inform instruction and organizing instruction around an assessment. Teachers and parents have been living with that difference for years.

Could make things interesting for White.

Right now, much of this remains speculation and rumor. Over the coming weeks, the picture should become clearer.

Keep an eye on appointments, committee assignments, and the actual language of legislation. That’s where the chatter starts turning into something families have to live with.

Another evening with the MNPS board

This week, I watched the Metro Nashville Public Schools board meeting so you don’t have to.

You’re welcome.

A couple of weeks ago, a state legislator told me that if MNPS board members weren’t careful, they were going to make themselves irrelevant.

I pushed back that they’d already accomplished that.

Tuesday’s meeting did little to change my mind.

It ran a little over an hour, and it felt like 90 percent was devoted to fawning over Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Battle. Listening to board members, you could be forgiven for thinking everything was sunshine and roses.

Talk to parents and educators, and a different picture emerges.

They have questions about the fidelity of data, discipline policies, hiring practices, and employee relations. Raising those questions doesn’t mean every allegation is true. It means the board has work to do beyond congratulating the superintendent.

That work should be visible.

Instead, uncomfortable matters too often seem to get swept under the rug while board members reach for another compliment.

There are accomplishments worth recognizing. Nobody should begrudge students and teachers a moment of celebration.

But a board meeting ought to leave room for the people whose experiences don’t fit the presentation.

Engagement meets public comment

The irony wasn’t lost on me when Dr. Elisa Norris delivered a lengthy report about increased parent engagement and serving every child.

Then came public comment.

Student Lilith Pipkin returned to tell the board she was being denied an opportunity for a second appeal of her expulsion. She disputed the evidence underlying the decision and challenged the board’s response to her request.

As transcribed in my notes, the sophomore told board members:

“You have the right to deny me, you have the right to overturn the expulsion. But you don’t have the right to ignore me.”

That last sentence deserves some attention.

I’m not pretending a public-comment appearance gives us access to the complete disciplinary record. It doesn’t. Nor does it allow outsiders to settle the merits of an expulsion.

But a student standing before the board saying she cannot get an answer ought to complicate the evening’s celebration of engagement.

What does engagement mean when somebody disagrees with the district?

Does it include helping a family understand the available process, even when the answer isn’t the one they want? Does it include acknowledging a request and explaining what comes next?

It should.

A district can report increased participation and still fail an individual family trying to navigate its bureaucracy.

The board ought to be interested in that gap.

The fan club returns

Apparently, the previous meeting’s public comments hit close to home, because this week brought appearances from two founding members of Dr. Battle’s fan club: former board chairs Dr. Sharon Gentry and Christiane Buggs.

Buggs, who went on to lead PENCIL, heaped praise on Battle and pleaded with her never to leave us.

I understand appreciating someone’s leadership. I’m less comfortable when the conversation begins to suggest that a public institution depends on one person staying forever.

MNPS belongs to its students and families. The superintendent’s office is a job, however demanding and important that job may be.

For her part, Gentry reminded everyone that we’re on borrowed time and said Battle had doubled the average tenure of a Black female superintendent.

That’s a claim worth examining in its proper context. The pressures facing Black women in district leadership deserve serious consideration.

They also don’t remove a board’s obligation to ask difficult questions.

Then Gentry made an assertion that caught my attention: the next superintendent is likely already employed by MNPS.

I assume she was referring to Deputy Superintendent Mason Bellamy. That’s my interpretation, not an announcement from the board.

Still, it lends weight to concerns I’ve already raised about succession.

I sure hope my cynicism is leading me wrong, but it felt like an early warning that the fix is in.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with an internal candidate. There is something wrong with treating a future selection as settled before the public has an opportunity to understand the process.

At some point, the board floor has to become a place for honest conversation.

Praise can be part of that conversation. It can’t be the whole thing.

An $87 million question to the south

South of Nashville, Williamson County is moving forward with funding for a new middle school carrying a price tag of nearly $87 million.

The distinction matters: this is a middle school, rather than an elementary school.

The project is intended to address capacity pressures affecting Woodland, Sunset, and Mill Creek middle schools over the next two to four years.

For families facing crowded schools, movement toward additional space is welcome news.

It’s also a substantial public investment, deserving a clear explanation of enrollment projections, attendance boundaries, construction costs, and the alternatives considered.

Growth doesn’t arrive evenly across a district. Available seats in one community don’t automatically solve overcrowding in another.

That makes planning harder. It also makes explaining the plan more important.

Williamson County families deserve that explanation, just as Nashville families deserve answers about discipline and Tennessee families deserve clarity about the next commissioner.

Winter is coming.

The meetings will continue, the presentations will look polished, and somebody will assure us everything is under control.

Keep asking questions anyway.

If you find value in Dad Gone Wild, consider throwing a little something in the tip jar. Watching these meetings, digging through documents, and asking the questions nobody seems eager to answer takes time. Your support helps keep this work going and is always appreciated. You can contribute through Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10 or Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber. For other ways to support the blog, reach me at Norinrad10@yahoo.com. And if money is tight, sharing a post helps, too. Thanks for reading and helping keep the questions coming.

Dad Gone Wild — Nobody reads it, but everyone quotes it.

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Categories: Education