Chalkbeat

How Tennessee’s expansive, expensive school voucher law made it to the finish line

2025-01-31T21:15:03+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and fellow school voucher proponents have finally claimed their ultimate prize: a state law that will ultimately allow for families all over the state, rich and poor, to use taxpayer funds to send their children to private schools.

The Education Freedom Scholarship Act, approved by the legislature in a special session of the legislature Thursday, will launch this fall with up to 20,000 students statewide, and continue to grow each year, with income limits disappearing after the first year.

In the special session, the bill sailed through committees stacked with voucher supporters, and cleared the House and Senate with comfortable margins. Lawmakers batted away amendments seeking to strengthen the bill’s accountability provisions and protections for disabled people.

But Tennessee’s embrace of school vouchers for all was never a foregone conclusion. Slimmed-down versions of the idea died many times in the legislature before one finally squeaked through on a controversial vote in 2019. A group of parents and local governments sued to block it, and the courts initially declared the plan unconstitutional.

The detractors and skeptics continued to push back on the plan when Lee proposed the expansive program in 2024, with more than 50 school boards on record opposing it. That bill stalled last year in the Senate finance committee.

Also, the research hasn’t supported the case for vouchers as a way to improve academic outcomes. Recent studies find little evidence that vouchers improve test scores. In fact, they’ve sometimes led to declines. Polls show that public support for vouchers in Tennessee is generally split.

Even now, after its passage, big questions loom about the cost of the statewide program, and whether it meaningfully advances the cause of school choice. The Education Freedom Scholarship Act is projected to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next five years. And because of the high income thresholds, 65% of the vouchers will end up going to students who already attend private schools, the state projects.

Meanwhile, students of color, kids from low-income families, and those with disabilities are often left out of school choice programs due to the locations and supply of private schools, transportation challenges, and the high cost of tuition, national data shows.

So how did vouchers take on an air of inevitability in Tennessee, just a few years after they were staring down defeat?

It was a combination of political swings, judicial shakeups that led to a string of court victories, and a pandemic that ignited culture wars and shook faith in public schools. Also, credit behind-the-scenes lobbying and political maneuvers and heavy influence from out-of-state groups with deep pockets.

In 2019, for example, a questionable parliamentary move led to the passage of the limited program, prompting several calls for a federal investigation. Two years later, the death of a Tennessee Supreme Court justice, just months after hearing arguments in the case, tipped the high court’s balance of power, likely contributing to the ruling that upheld the law.

At the center of the effort was Lee himself, who was determined to get universal vouchers across the finish line before the end of his second term in 2027. The governor used hardball tactics and welcomed spending from deep-pocketed out-of-state groups seeking to influence the outcome. He also loaded the bill with more spending to mollify public school advocates, and bundled funding for his plan with money for disaster relief and immigration in the wake of Hurricane Helene and President Donald Trump’s election.

Below is a closer look at where the march to universal vouchers began, and how it arrived at its destination in Tennessee:

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Project credits:

Photography and illustrations: Elaine Cromie
Editing: Krishnan M. Anantharaman, Tonyaa Weathersbee

Editor’s note: This project has been updated with developments from the 2025 legislative session.

Few third- and fourth-graders are being retained under Tennessee reading law, data shows

2024-11-22T01:14:36+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Some 60% of Tennessee third-grade students scored below proficiency in English language arts on 2024 state tests. Fewer than than 1% of them were retained under the state’s reading and retention law, and about 2.5% are no longer enrolled in public schools, according to new data.

Among fourth graders who had been promoted by receiving tutoring during the 2023-24 academic year under the same law, just over 1% were held back this school year, while at least 4% have left their public school.

The findings, presented by Tennessee’s chief academic officer to the State Board of Education on Thursday, show some of the effects of Tennessee’s 2021 reading intervention and retention law aimed at accelerating learning after the pandemic.

The controversial statute was pushed by Gov. Bill Lee, who said he wanted to draw a hard line to “stop the cycle of passing without preparation.” The legislature has since approved several revisions to loosen the policies and provide more pathways to promotion for students who don’t test as proficient readers.

State leaders are ‘encouraged’ by tutoring and summer program data

The big question is whether students are becoming better readers with the state’s interventions.

That includes summer programming, which began in each school system in 2021 to mitigate the effects of disruptions to schooling during the pandemic. About 121,000 students went that first year, and participation has leveled off to about 90,000 in subsequent years.

Chief Academic Officer Kristy Brown, in her presentation to the board, said attendance rates improved for recent summer programs, indicating that parents are finding value in them.

As far as academics, she said: “What we’re really seeing is the effects of decreased summer slide, or the lack of it, for students who are participating, compared to those who are not.”

Summer slide, referring to when students’ academic proficiency regresses during summer break, is a common phenomenon, especially for historically disadvantaged populations.

As for required small group tutoring, which younger students receive weekly during the school year if they don’t meet expectations on state tests, Brown said students testing in the bottom level, called “below” proficiency, are moving in the right direction.

In addition, almost half of the 12,260 fourth graders who received required tutoring in 2023-24 showed improvement as the year progressed. Over 14% of them scored as proficient on their TCAPs last spring, and nearly 33% met the threshold for showing adequate growth based on a state formula.

The data is the first available for fourth-graders who started receiving additional support after scoring below proficiency in the third grade.

“To finally have the numbers — to see that the needle appears to have been moved in a positive way like that — I was glad to see,” said Ryan Holt, a member of the state board.

Several other board members also said they were “encouraged” by the data.

Brown, the state’s academic chief, cautioned that gains can’t be traced at this point to any single part of the state’s reading interventions.

“It’s a combination of the things that we’ve done,” she said, “with professional learning for teachers, and summer programming, and tutoring, and those things customized for those students to see the gains that I think we’ve seen in Tennessee.”

Many educators and parents have been less enthusiastic.

The high-stakes testing was well-intended, they say, but it’s taken an emotional toll on many of Tennessee’s youngest students, affecting their self-confidence and their feelings toward school.

The legislature’s most recent revisions to the law were intended to give parents and educators more input into retention decisions.

Many students facing retention used alternative pathways to promotion

After the 2023-24 school year, most of the nearly 44,000 third graders who were at risk of retention used other pathways to promotion.

Nearly 27% were exempted for various reasons, including having a disability or suspected disability that impacts their reading; being an English language learner with less than two years of ELA instruction; and having been previously retained.

Over 4% retook the test at the end of the academic year and scored as proficient.

Others were promoted through a combination of tutoring and summer program participation.

For the 12,260 fourth graders who participated in tutoring last school year, over 14% scored as proficient on the state’s assessment in the spring.

Over 32% met the state’s “adequate growth” measure that’s tailored to each student. It’s based on testing measurements that the state uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

And nearly 44% of at-risk fourth graders were promoted by a new “conference” pathway that lawmakers approved on the last day of the 2024 legislative session. It allows the student to be promoted if their parents, teacher, and principal decide collectively that it’s in the child’s best interest.

Any fourth grader promoted to the fifth grade via the conference pathway must receive tutoring in the fifth grade.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee fourth graders show big gains on state literacy tests as third graders hold steady

2024-06-13T17:50:48+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Tennessee fourth graders showed significant improvement on state tests for English language arts, while third grade scores were mostly steady after achieving historic gains last year, state officials said Thursday.

Fourth-grade proficiency increased by 2.9 percentage points to an overall rate of 46.4%, while third-grade proficiency improved by a half percentage point to 40.9% on tests used by the state to gauge reading levels under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

The rates are the highest since the state raised its academic standards in 2010 after receiving an “F” in 2007 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for low academic expectations and for truth in advertising on its K-12 public education performance.

The state education department also reported fewer fourth graders scored “below expectations,” the bottom category for gauging proficiency.

However, the third grade scores put about three-fifths of those students at risk of being held back under Tennessee’s 2021 reading and retention law. Most of them still may advance, however, based on do-over test results and participation in various intervention options.

Last year, of the 60% of third graders who fell short of the state’s proficiency benchmark, only 1.2% were held back due to interventions, exemptions, and an appeals process.

In Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, officials reported students made gains in both pivotal grades, with the most pronounced improvement by third graders.

ELA proficiency went up 3 percentage points to 26.6% for third graders and by 1.8 percentage points to 28.5% for fourth graders. But new Superintendent Marie Feagins said the improvements weren’t enough.

“Literacy is the anchor to the success that our 110,000 students deserve to experience,” Feagins said in a statement. “Thus, these data further support the need to direct more district resources directly to classrooms, with a target emphasis on a comprehensive literacy approach at every grade level.”

In a news release, Gov. Bill Lee credited the state’s comprehensive literacy strategy, including early investments in tutoring to help struggling readers improve after the pandemic disrupted schooling in 2020. Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds praised the hard work of students, educators, and families.

“As we continue our work to ensure that all Tennessee students can read at grade level, we remain committed to supporting teachers and empowering families with multiple pathways to achievement so every student can thrive in their academic journey,” Lee said.

The education department did not publicly release the data behind its report as it usually does. Spokesperson Brian Blackley said it will be published soon but could not give a specific date.

Impacts on retention decisions are uncertain

Data on how many third and fourth graders will be held back as a result of the scoring won’t be released until late summer before school starts, under tougher retention policies approved by the legislature after the pandemic.

“There are a lot of different pathways for student promotion, and some of those haven’t even occurred yet,” Blackley said, citing summer learning programs and third grade TCAP retakes that are still being scored.

A parent, guardian, or educator of a third grader who scored just below proficiency also can submit an appeal to the education department until June 28 based on certain conditions.

For students completing fourth grade who are at risk of retention, the state is to release its calculations by July 1 on whether they showed enough improvement to advance. If not, the parent or guardian must meet with their child’s teacher and principal to make that call. But many educators and parents have already been meeting to discuss those options and make plans.

A summer learning camp is in session at Rocks Spring Elementary School in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Low literacy rates have long bedeviled Tennessee

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading, because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have historically been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.

For several decades, the state tried various strategies to move the needle, and with limited success.

After the pandemic, the state invested $100 million in COVID relief and federal grant funding to provide school systems with optional reading resources and support.

And during a special session called by Lee in 2021 to address pandemic-related learning losses, the legislature passed several laws to jumpstart the state’s literacy work. Among them: prioritizing reading improvements and investments in grades K-3, creating new tutoring and summer school programs, training teachers on the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on phonics, and — most controversial of all — strengthening retention requirements for grades 3 and 4 based on the results of TCAP testing in English language arts.

After getting significant pushback from parents and educators, lawmakers have revised the state’s retention laws several times to allow more students in those grades to advance.

Last month, the governor signed legislation to let each fourth grader’s parents, teacher, and principal decide collectively whether a student should be held back due to a second straight year of low reading scores, even after a year of tutoring.

The department expects to release statewide and district-level TCAP data in all testing subjects by the end of the summer.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s reading law gets pushback again as thousands of students could repeat fourth grade

2024-02-16T01:58:33+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Tennessee’s comprehensive pandemic-era literacy law, which last year provided several interventions to help struggling third grade readers advance to the fourth grade, offers no such escape hatches for those same students to avoid retention this year if they don’t show “adequate growth” under the 2021 law.

Now, as the State Board of Education prepares to vote Friday on what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders who are at risk, state lawmakers are getting pushback from families whose students could be held back if they score poorly on state tests this spring, even after taking advantage of state-funded tutoring and summer learning programs.

At least 5,000 students are projected to fall in that category, according to the state education department. But some estimates put that number higher.

“I think we’re going to put so much pressure on these kids that it’s going to be a real mess,” said Sen. Rusty Crowe during a legislative hearing Wednesday.

The Johnson City Republican wants to revise the 2021 law so that students and parents who are engaged with their teachers in the learning process don’t get punished. He and Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican, have introduced legislation to let a struggling fourth grade reader’s teacher, principal, and parents decide collaboratively whether to retain the student based on multiple measures, not just state test results for English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

It’s uncertain whether the General Assembly is willing to revise the law again, especially after making several tweaks last year to widen the criteria for holding back third graders.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg repeatedly has said Gov. Bill Lee’s literacy law sets reasonable and appropriate expectations in the state’s long drive to improve reading proficiency.

“We’ve moved the needle from 30% to 40% proficiency [for third graders], but 40% still isn’t acceptable,” the Bristol Republican said at a January legislative hearing.

State board is required to define ‘adequate growth’

The State Board of Education appears poised to approve proposed policy changes that include a definition of “adequate growth” for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score as proficient readers this spring.

Chairman Robert Eby told lawmakers this week that he expects a full discussion Friday — but that members ultimately will follow the law, which directs the board to define adequate growth.

The proposed definition is tailored to each student, based on testing measurements that the state already uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

“It is complicated; it is not something that is easy to explain,” said Sara Morrison, executive director of the state board, during testimony before the Senate Education Committee.

“We do feel like it is statistically robust and makes sense,” she added. “But that doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t make it an easy decision for our board.”

Board members have received a lot of public feedback about the matter, including a letter this week from Erin O’Hara Block, a Nashville school board member who worked as Tennessee’s assistant commissioner for data and research in former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration.

Block called the proposed calculations for measuring adequate growth “confusing,” and suggested that the real problem lies with the law itself.

“Instead of passing this revision of policy, I suggest that your board defer until a later date with a request that the legislature remove this portion of the law based on a lack of clear, transparent, viable, and implementable options,” she wrote.

In an interview Thursday with Chalkbeat, Block said state test scores are being misused because of the law. TCAP results were intended for diagnostic purposes, she said, not for high-stakes decisions such as holding a child back a year at school.

“This law was written quickly in the midst of a global pandemic and passed in a special legislative session. So why aren’t we revisiting it?” she asked.

Legislature drew a line in the sand

The law passed in 2021 during a weeklong session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up, but the law’s retention provision — which began with last year’s class of third-graders — has been controversial.

Still, due to the intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% from that class who took the test, were retained because of their reading scores.

The number of fourth graders expected to be retained this year will be significantly higher, officials say, based on the current law.

Research is mixed about whether holding students back helps or hurts them. Supporters say it spurs additional supports that struggling readers desperately need. Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who are of color or are economically disadvantaged.

During a workshop on Thursday, several State Board members questioned whether the law is even targeting the right age group — and Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds agreed. Intervention and retention policies aimed at kindergarten and first and second grades would be more effective, she said, adding that “third grade is too late.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s TCAP test scores climb for second straight year after pandemic

2023-06-29T19:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s third set of test scores from the pandemic era improved again across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

State-level results released Thursday showed an overall increase in proficiency since last year for public school students, and a surge since 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across the nation.

But the performance of historically underserved students — including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — still lags. Those groups of students, who already trailed their peers before disruptions to schooling began in 2020, also spent the longest time learning remotely during the public health emergency caused by COVID-19.

The latest scores continue the state’s upward trend of pandemic recovery, based on standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

The academic snapshot suggests that Tennessee’s early investments in summer learning camps and intensive tutoring are paying off to counter three straight years of COVID-related disruptions.

Gov. Bill Lee called the results “encouraging,” while interim Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy praised educators, students, and their families for their hard work.

“These gains signal that we’re focused on the right work to advance student learning,” Pearcy told reporters during a morning call. “And as a result of that, we know that we will all continue to keep our foot on the gas to keep this momentum rolling.”

Beginning in the third grade, Tennessee students take TCAPs in four core subjects. This year’s students exceeded pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and social studies, while improving in math and science.

As previously reported, Tennessee’s third-grade proficiency rate jumped by over 4 percentage points to more than 40% on tests given this spring. Many of the other 60% have to participate in learning intervention programs to avoid being held back a year under a new state law.

Results for historically underserved student groups reflected both good and bad news.

The good news: Improvement for students of color, children from low-income families, those with disabilities, and those learning to speak English mostly paralleled the gains of their more affluent, white, or nondisabled peers.

The bad news: Tennessee isn’t closing those persistent gaps. Our analysis below focused on overall performance in English language arts.

The statewide data is available online by clicking “2023 State Assessment” on a new dashboard of the Tennessee Report Card.

District-level results, which are being reviewed by district leaders, are scheduled to be released in July.

And for the first time under a long-delayed change to the state’s accountability policies, this year’s TCAP results will be used to help calculate A-to-F grades this fall for Tennessee’s 1,700-plus public schools. The state has deferred the new accountability measure for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with graphics and analysis.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee private schools could get $60 million in leftover pandemic relief funds

2022-11-30T00:26:06+00:00

Tennessee is taking steps to ensure that private schools get the opportunity to receive nearly $60 million in unused federal COVID relief funds set aside for them in 2021.

But the state is considering loosening some of the strings that the federal government initially attached to those funds. In particular, under several options outlined Monday by Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, private schools wouldn’t necessarily have to serve a “significant” share of students from low-income families to be eligible for aid, as the Biden administration had required.

Following federal rules, Tennessee recently moved leftover money from the federal emergency assistance program for nonpublic schools to a discretionary COVID education fund managed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee. His office will have more flexibility to figure out a distribution plan that may or may not factor in student poverty levels.

And based on Lee’s discussions with several legislative leaders, their goal is to make sure private schools get a second crack at the funds, instead of using them for public education needs across the state.

“I just think (private school leaders) feel like they weren’t given the opportunity to take advantage of the resources that were put in place for them,” said Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican and legislative finance leader, who reviewed the issue Monday with other members of Lee’s pandemic relief spending accountability group.

Private school advocates cite hurdles in federal rules

At issue is the federal relief fund for nonpublic schools, through which Congress set aside $2.75 billion in 2021 for states to distribute to private schools as part of a massive pandemic relief package that included $128 billion for K-12 education.

Tennessee received nearly $74 million in 2021 to help private schools rebound from the pandemic — but had awarded only $10.2 million after the deadline for applications passed this spring.

One reason cited by private school leaders: The Biden administration’s distribution rules restricted funding to nonpublic schools that enroll at least 40% of their students from low-income backgrounds — a threshold that has been used as a “measure of significant poverty” when identifying Title I schools under federal law.

The 40% language differed from an earlier relief package approved in 2020 under the Trump administration, which sought to require districts to share education aid with private schools. According to federal data, private schools serve significantly fewer poor households than public schools do.

This year, Tennessee successfully petitioned the U.S. Department of Education to reduce the poverty threshold for eligibility from 40% to 33%, based on the average poverty rate among private schools that participated in the earlier, less restrictive COVID relief package.

But out of 481 eligible private schools, only 44 submitted an application by April 1, and only 22 of those were deemed eligible based on federal poverty data.

Ultimately, the state’s private school participation rate was 5%, compared with 19% for the smaller federal relief program in 2020.

Sarah Wilson, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools, said untapped funding shouldn’t be perceived as a lack of interest or need by private schools. Her organization represents 61 out of hundreds of private schools that vary from large, well-funded schools in urban areas to small church-affiliated schools across the state.

“Some of our schools applied, but there were a host of reasons why many did not,” Wilson told Chalkbeat.

Beyond the poverty threshold, some were ineligible because federal law disallowed any private school that received a loan under the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program after December 27, 2020. Still others found the state’s application process “more onerous and difficult” than under the 2020 relief package, she said.

“I really appreciate that policymakers are looking now at what happened with this funding, recognizing that it was originally earmarked for nonpublic schools, and wanting to fulfill that intention if there is interest and need,” Wilson said.

Seeking a new formula for distributing funds

Exactly how Lee’s office would distribute funds to private schools under his emergency fund is still being discussed.

While the governor’s fund has more flexibility than the previous fund that her department oversaw, Schwinn said federal law prohibits using any of the money for private school vouchers, scholarships, or education savings accounts. And all funds must be spent by June 30, 2024.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn

The commissioner presented four options. One would use the Trump administration’s previous rules for distribution, in which public school districts could count the number of students from low-income families in local private schools and share federal funding proportionally. Other options wouldn’t factor in poverty at all and instead would set allocations per pupil using various percentages.

“We can calculate this in whatever way you all want,” Schwinn told the group, as long as it’s for initiatives that address pre-K through higher education.

Democrats hope the governor, who fought to bring private school vouchers to Tennessee, will still factor in student poverty in any new calculations for private schools. They note that distribution of $2.2 billion to Tennessee public schools under Biden’s American Rescue Plan was based on the number of low-income families served by their districts.

“Our state talks a lot about being fiscally stable, but let’s not confuse fiscal stability with fiscal responsibility,” said Sen. Heidi Campbell, a Nashville Democrat. “In our state, we tend to consistently punish people for being poor.”

Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, who serves on the governor’s accountability group, told Chalkbeat that she wants to see data about how the various scenarios could play out. But ultimately, she wants dollars intended for private schools to go to private schools. After all, she said, while all public schools received some federal support during the pandemic, not every private school did.

“A straight per-pupil allocation would be simpler, but we don’t want to be hasty,” said the Signal Mountain Republican, who chaired the House Budget Committee during the recent legislative session.

“We also have to be mindful that we’re dealing with a finite timeline,” she added. “Schools are going to need to submit their applications soon so money can get disbursed.”

You can watch the governor’s financial accountability group’s discussions here. Schwinn’s presentation began at the 1-hour, 18-minute mark.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Here is what Tennessee governor, Democratic challenger say on education

2022-10-07T14:00:19+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee and his Democratic challenger, Dr. Jason Martin, agree that Tennessee students need timely and relevant vocational training opportunities, but the two candidates for governor don’t concur on much else when it comes to K-12 education.

In fact, the two men hold widely divergent positions on charter schools, book bans, the state’s new third-grade retention law, and most of the biggest education issues facing Tennessee for the next few years, according to their responses to Chalkbeat’s 2022 candidates survey.

Lee, a Williamson County businessman and farmer who was elected governor in his first run for public office, staunchly defends initiatives he’s championed since 2019 to give the state more control — at the expense of local officials — over classroom instruction, books, school choice, and education spending.

“Nothing is off the table when it comes to expanding opportunities for Tennessee families,” the Republican governor responded when asked if he wants to widen the state’s recently launched private school voucher program beyond Memphis and Nashville, where local officials opposed the policy.

Martin, a Nashville physician who has been critical of Lee’s hands-off approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Tennessee’s biggest educational challenges are rooted in inadequate school funding and wraparound services to support students both in and out of the classroom. Making his own first bid for public office, he consistently sides with policies that uphold local education control.

“Decisions that affect our schools, teachers, and students should be made by those closest to the community,” Martin said when asked about a new law allowing a state panel to overrule school board decisions and ban certain library books statewide.

Election Day is Nov. 8, with early voting from Oct. 19 to Nov. 3.

Below, you can read our questions and the candidates’ responses, which have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Chalkbeat: COVID-19 has caused the biggest disruption to education in modern history. What is the single most important way the governor can help stabilize and support Tennessee school communities moving forward?

Lee: In January 2021, we called a special legislative session to address learning loss. That action made Tennessee a national leader in early interventions for kids. With the help of partners in the General Assembly, we created summer learning camps and targeted interventions for literacy. Recent data — including state test scores showing that reading proficiency has returned to pre-pandemic levels in almost all grades — suggests Tennessee students are recovering well. We will build on those efforts.

Martin: Tennessee schools would not have been hit nearly as hard during the pandemic had our schools been properly funded before. Ranking 45th in the nation in per-pupil spending, we need a better way to fund our schools that takes into account the different economies across communities and resources needed for each district. We must reevaluate our state’s education funding formula to make sure teachers are paid a fair salary and schools have the resources to keep kids healthy, educated, and safe. Those include more social workers, guidance counselors, and after-school programs. We also must ensure that every household, rural or urban, has access to high-speed broadband so our students can learn in a 21st-century setting.

How can the state address learning lag, especially for student groups who already were behind, such as people of color, with disabilities, or from low-income families? Should Tennessee make its tutoring and summer learning programs permanent intervention tools? What else can the state do to help students catch up?

Lee: Closing the achievement gap has been a priority woven throughout our administration’s approach. It is a key reason why we have put so many resources into literacy and early intervention, and I anticipate those programs, like summer camps, are here to stay. It is also a major factor in why we pursued an overhaul of the state’s outdated approach to school funding and built a student-centered approach via the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement. This new education funding formula will give us more capacity to address the unique needs of low-income students, students with disabilities, and students with learning challenges like dyslexia.

Surrounded by GOP legislative leaders and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, Gov. Bill Lee signs Tennessee’s new education funding bill into law on May 2, 2022, at Franklin High School, where Lee graduated in 1977.

Martin: Education inequities are the result of years of ignoring marginalized and low-income communities, and I would prioritize funding their schools to match what well-funded communities have. Tennessee should utilize public and private partnerships to create year-round wraparound programs in schools, including support for student populations experiencing learning lag. Additional interventions such as permanent tutoring, after school-programs, and summer learning camps are important, but so is widening access to softer experiences such as internship and study programs. As a state, we need to try harder to relate classroom learning to the experiences of students where they live. As governor, I’ll sit down with educators to figure out how we can grow those resources and opportunities throughout our state.

As rates of pandemic-era depression and anxiety surge among children and young people, how can the state better support the mental health needs of its students? Would you propose investing more money in Tennessee’s new education funding formula base so that districts can hire more counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses?

Lee: Early in my administration, we pushed for an outside-the-box approach to fund student mental health resources, which resulted in the creation of the Tennessee’s Mental Health Trust Fund. We invested $250 million into that fund to expand students’ access to clinical services, suicide prevention, violence prevention, and other supports. More than 60% of kids who receive mental health care do so through their school, and we believe the trust fund will ensure those services are high-quality. We also have funded a behavioral health liaison for all 95 counties and have filled at least 79 of those positions, despite workforce challenges. As for nurses and other school supports, the TISA funding formula increases state funding for public schools by almost 20%, allowing local communities to make informed decisions about what is needed.

Martin: I would not suggest adding more money into the base of Tennessee’s new education funding formula, because I believe that the formula needs to be rewritten. I do support expanding Medicaid and insuring more children to make sure they get the health care they need, including for mental health. I also support funneling more money directly into schools so they can hire health care professionals. We need to invest in wraparound services to expand access to mental health counselors, nutrition programs, interventionists, and other programs that help to keep students on track.

Should the legislature revisit the new state law that puts up to 70% of third-graders at risk of being held back if they don’t test as proficient in reading by the end of this school year? Why or why not? Specifically, would you support scaling back the law so it applies only to students who score in the state’s bottom achievement category, which currently comprises about a fifth of third-graders? And should retention decisions take into account local input, in addition to the state test results?

“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.” —Gov. Bill Lee

Lee: 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. This law is about working with parents to do right by their students before it’s too late. While retention is an option, we are making sure parents fully understand their students’ reading progress and the tools that are available to them well before repeating third grade is on the table. Tennessee’s law also prioritizes strategic investments in proven practices to support reading, such as participating in an extended summer program and in high-dosage, low-ratio tutoring to help their kids catch up. There shouldn’t be any stigma around pausing to help children learn a skill that will impact them for the rest of their lives.

Martin: We should revisit the law and, this time, take into account what teachers, administrators, and groups who represent educators say. Having the state legislature pass a law that affects so many students without consulting those who know most about the issues is not just irresponsible, but detrimental to our children. If the consensus among our education experts, which includes teachers, is that we should scale back the law to apply only to students who score in the state’s bottom achievement category, then I would support that position. No one is better qualified to speak to a student’s proficiency than a teacher. That local input is necessary for a successful education policy.

As governor, how will you measure the success or failure of Tennessee’s new Education Savings Account Pilot Program? Would you consider expanding the program beyond Memphis and Nashville to provide private school vouchers statewide? And should the Tennessee Constitution be amended to clarify that taxpayer-funded subsidies to private schools are constitutional?

Lee: After a definitive Tennessee Supreme Court ruling, three years of waiting, and just weeks before this new school year, parents in Memphis and Nashville finally got the opportunity to apply for education savings accounts. The response was tremendous and our Department of Education has worked overtime to create a high-quality, transparent process for families who want to participate. We’ve received heartfelt letters from students wanting this opportunity. One young man signed his application letter “please consider me” and noted how much it would mean to be in a more supportive learning environment after his father passed away. Critics who have fought this program tooth and nail should sit down face to face with these families to see what it looks like to deny opportunity. Hundreds of families are already enrolled, but nothing is off the table when it comes to expanding opportunities for Tennessee families. It’s all about parents deciding what’s best for their children.

“I would work with both sides of the aisle to repeal the unconstitutional voucher program.” —Dr. Jason Martin

Martin: The Tennessee Constitution should not be amended, because the voucher program is unconstitutional and has been found so by several courts. As governor, I would not consider expanding the program. In fact, I would work with both sides of the aisle to repeal the unconstitutional voucher program. Public taxpayer dollars should be spent on public schools.

Recent polling by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education found that Tennessee voters believe — by a 2-to-1 margin — that decisions on whether to approve taxpayer-funded, independently run charter schools should reside with local school boards, and not with state government. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Lee: Charter schools are public schools. The process lives first at the local level, and the charter commission handles appeals. Tennesseans have both a transparent look into the approval process and an opportunity to provide input. It is a healthy mix of citizen, local, and state collaboration when it comes to determining what new options are available to parents.

Martin: Yes, I absolutely agree. Locally elected school boards should decide whether or not to approve a charter to run a school independent of the local district. When money collected locally is what is being spent on some of these charter schools, it is best left to those in the community to decide where that money goes.

Dr. Jason Martin speaks to protesters in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on Sept. 14 before the state’s public hearing on an American Classical Education charter school application rejected by Rutherford County Schools.

What should Tennessee do in the next two years to reverse trends that show more teachers leaving the profession and too few entering it? How can policymakers address the workload and lack of respect that many teachers cite as their reasons for exiting?

“We must also address why the bureaucratic side of school systems is growing so heavily, yet the teacher workforce has been shrinking.” —Gov. Bill Lee

Lee: Teaching isn’t just a job; it’s a calling, and we’ve increased teacher pay each year we’ve been in office. We have also closed loopholes that prevented those hard-earned raises from making it to teachers’ paychecks. Tennessee is a nationally recognized pioneer in growing the teacher workforce. Our education department worked with local districts and our Department of Labor and Workforce Development to build the Grow Your Own program so Tennesseans can train to become a teacher for free while earning a wage. It is the first-ever federally recognized teaching apprenticeship program and is already attracting new teachers to the classroom. We’re making progress. But I believe we must also address why the bureaucratic side of school systems is growing so heavily, yet the teacher workforce has been shrinking.

Martin: To begin with, I wouldn’t ever disparage teachers by sitting by and accepting criticism of their profession or where they went to school. First and foremost, we must increase teacher pay. Second, if the state invests in wraparound services and fully funds our schools, it will lessen the workload of teachers. Third, we need to incentivize aspiring teachers by reducing the costs of going to school to become a teacher and to obtain their certifications. New teachers should not be saddled with insurmountable debt to serve in this noble profession. Finally, improving the profession is an ongoing effort. As governor, I would hold regular meetings with teachers to develop strategies and measure progress.

With book bans making headlines, should decisions about removing books from classrooms and school libraries be made by locally elected school board members, based on local community standards — or by a state-appointed panel such as the Tennessee Textbook Commission, as authorized under a 2022 law? And why?

Lee: Our priority is to ensure parents know exactly what their children are learning at school — and that the learning materials are age-appropriate. We’ve added transparency so parents can see what materials are in classrooms and libraries. We’ve also given parents recourse to address divisive politicking in the classroom that has nothing to do with educating our kids well in reading, math, and the basics.

Martin: Decisions that affect our schools, teachers, and students should be made by those closest to the community. That includes decisions about curriculum and what books that students should be allowed to read. The Tennessee Textbook Commission has shown itself to be overbearing and unwilling to listen to what parents, teachers, and administrators have asked for in their children’s education.

Will you commit to working to move Tennessee out of the bottom fifth of national rankings in per-pupil funding? And as Tennessee switches to a new education funding formula next year, how will you ensure the state is keeping up with the true costs of educating students?

Lee: My administration has increased funding for education every single year I’ve been in office. We’ve invested a historic $1 billion of new funding directly into our students. That’s an almost 20% increase in state funding, the largest in Tennessee history. A key function of TISA is to fund our students well and pay our teachers competitively.

“I believe that TISA will actually burden many of our school districts with new costs.” —Dr. Jason Martin

Martin: Yes, I am committed to moving Tennessee out of the bottom national rankings in per-pupil funding. I do not believe Bill Lee’s TISA will do that, nor do I believe that it will keep up with the true costs of educating students. In fact, I believe that TISA will actually burden many of our school districts with new costs. We cannot identify a solution and expect it to fix the problem forever. So we should routinely revisit and reevaluate our state’s education funding formula. If we don’t, we won’t be able to keep up with education advancements and their costs, including new technology, teaching methods, and curricula.

Anything else you’d like to say about your priorities for K-12 education?

Lee: I’ve been a passionate advocate for putting career and technical education back in Tennessee classrooms. This has been a priority — not only because of my longtime work with plumbers, pipefitters, and welders, but also because of teachers like Dan Smith. A former Agriculture Teacher of the Year, Dan taught at Dyer County High School and is an inspiration behind one of my most important initiatives: the Governor’s Investment in Vocational Education, to enhance career and technical education. Other things we’ve accomplished include Reading 360, a nationally recognized literacy initiative. We’ve expanded family engagement through Ready4K, giving parents easy-to-use activities that promote early learning with their children. And the state has invested $500 million to eliminate structural barriers between high school, workforce, and postsecondary systems. Every high school and middle school in the state will benefit.

Martin: Many Tennesseans depend on trade and vocational schools, training programs, apprenticeships, and two- and four-year colleges and universities to achieve their goals. This requires increased incentives while undergoing K-12 education for trade programs, certifications, future nurses and healthcare workers, and training for a more technologically competitive workforce. In supporting more local control of curricula, it is my hope that local administrators and teachers will provide the right instruction for all students, whether they choose to attend college or a trade school, or to pursue another path after graduating from high school.

Tell us about the kinds of schools you went to, what school was like for you, and how that influences your education policy today.

Lee: I am a proud alum of Fairview Elementary, Franklin Junior High School, and Franklin High School. It was especially meaningful to return to my alma mater this spring to sign our state’s new funding formula into law. I studied mechanical engineering at Auburn University, and that training really shaped my perspective on how we can methodically solve big problems. As an engineer, I’ve worked on massive, complex jobs where you used both blueprints and shop drawings. While a blueprint gives direction, it’s the shop drawings that dictate the day by day. The shop drawings capture every little detail that brings the vision to life. Our blueprint for education in Tennessee says kids should be prepared for life beyond the classroom. Our shop drawings look like putting parents back in the classroom and reinforcing that parents are the authority on their children. This looks like teaching our kids informed patriotism and becoming a top five state for civics education.

Martin: I attended public schools in lower Alabama, including a magnet high school. My schools were diverse across income levels and racial backgrounds. We had lifelong teachers who were committed to their classrooms. High school is where my activism for public education began. I founded a group called Students for Education, which advocated for public school funding and did coalition building to pass a property tax to increase funding for our district. Learning about the formula that funded my own public schools while attending them is a lesson that has stayed with me. And in my community, I have continued to fight for adequate school funding.

When it came time to choose schools for your own children, did you choose public schools? Private schools? Charters? Home school? And why?

Lee: I have four children, and we made decisions about their education based on each of their unique needs. That meant a mix of public school, private school, and home school for my children. I also became involved with charter schools while mentoring Adam, a young man who was growing up in the inner city and needed a different environment to succeed. When we keep our focus on students, we see the value in each offering, whether public, private, or home school.

Martin: Working in the medical field, my wife and I began our careers in our 30s. We were often on the move because my focus was on serving communities needing healthcare attention the most. So that our daughters didn’t have to change schools frequently, we chose an independent school that provided them with stability in their education, regardless of zoning or ZIP code, and that met their individual needs. It is a school that values economic, racial, and religious diversity and that reflects the values in our home.

For more information about voting, visit GoVoteTN.gov or call the Tennessee Division of Elections toll-free at 1-877-850-4959.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee high school grad rate rebounds to pre-pandemic level

2022-09-29T00:33:50+00:00

Tennessee’s high school graduation rate has returned to pre-pandemic levels — and even slightly exceeded the state’s previous peak three years earlier, according to new data released Wednesday.

About 89.8% of public school students in the Class of 2022 graduated on time this spring, more than 1 percentage point better than the previous year, the state education department reported.

The previous high of 89.7% occurred with the Class of 2019, the year before the pandemic hit.

The bounceback is encouraging news after a three-year slide pulled back on nearly a decade of incremental increases totaling more than 4 percentage points under a workforce and economic development initiative prioritized by former Gov. Bill Haslam.

The latest numbers also add to evidence that Tennessee public education is recovering from a pandemic that rocked school communities and continues to complicate teaching and learning.

In June, Tennessee reported that student scores on state tests improved across all subjects and grades, largely returning to pre-COVID levels.

In a statement on Wednesday, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn credited educators and families for positioning this year’s nearly 65,000 high school graduates to “achieve their dreams and goals.”

According to the U.S. Labor Department, a person with a high school diploma is likely to earn 40% more income over a lifetime than someone without one, and has a 33% greater chance of being employed.

They can earn even more with a post-secondary credential or degree. But mirroring national trends, Tennessee’s college-going rate declined during the pandemic, worsening a five-year trend that higher education officials have called a crisis.

The state’s college-going rate dropped 9 percentage points to 52.8% between the Class of 2019 and the Class of 2021, according to a recent report by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

The commission has been working on strategies to reverse that trend. But more students earning their high school diplomas is a good start.

According to the education department, more than half of Tennessee’s 147 school districts improved their graduation rates from 2021 to 2022, including two of the state’s four largest districts.

The rate for Memphis-Shelby County Schools rose by 2.4 percentage points to 80.1%, the highest since the 2013 merger of city and county schools. Hamilton County Schools increased its rate by 3.2 percentage points to 88.7%.

Graduation rates dipped slightly for Metro Nashville Public Schools (81.6%) and Knox County Schools (89.7%).

For more information on high school graduation rates for individual districts and schools, visit the education department’s website.  

This story has been updated with additional details.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s shift to partisan school board elections faces its first big test

2022-07-12T11:00:00+00:00

When early voting for Tennessee’s school board elections begins this week, voters in Williamson County, south of Nashville, will see candidates listed on the ballot with party affiliations for the first time.

Half of a dozen school board seats are up for grabs in one of the state’s most hotly contested local elections. Four of five incumbents are running for reelection as Republicans. One of the nine challengers is also running as a Republican, and two are running as Democrats.

Then there’s Nancy Garrett, a lifelong resident who has been a board member since 2016 and served as chair the last two years. Local leaders urged her to identify herself as a Republican on the ballot in her mostly Republican district.

But Garrett, who has voted in every GOP primary since 2014, couldn’t bring herself to run as either a Republican or a Democrat.

“We expect our teachers to be nonpartisan in the classroom,” said Garrett, who’s running as an independent against Republican Drason Beasley. “How can I set a different standard for myself? And how can I put students first if I’m also thinking about partisan politics?”

“I cannot twist myself like a pretzel,” she said.

Nancy Garrett campaigns as an independent candidate in a neighborhood in her district in Franklin, Tennessee, in her reelection bid to serve on the board of Williamson County Schools.

Not everyone’s on board with the idea, but partisan school board elections are now here in Tennessee, drawing local races under the influence of the national political divide and providing a new source of fuel for the combustive debates over education.

A state law passed last fall gives local political parties more power to choose candidates for races that used to be nonpartisan. In over half of Tennessee counties, a partisan primary selected candidates to run in the coming school board elections on Aug. 4.

“It’s a changed environment,” said Debbie Gould, president of the League of Women Voters of Tennessee, a nonpartisan organization that opposed the change.

“We appreciated nonpartisan elections because it helped the public focus on candidates’ positions instead of their party labels,” said Gould, noting that some partisan candidates have declined to participate in her organization’s forums this summer. “We’re also concerned that voters may not work as hard now to learn about those positions.”

Tennessee’s partisan pivot, and the outcomes of races like Garrett’s, are being closely watched in states like Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri, where similar partisan school board bills stalled but could be reintroduced in a nation riven by party politics.

“The pandemic, and school reopenings in particular, punched the chest of national politics, and education has moved quickly from being local to national to partisan,” said Jonathan E. Collins, assistant professor of education and international and public affairs at Brown University, who is writing a book about the politics of school boards.

“All eyes are on Tennessee to see if this is a viable political strategy,” he said of the upcoming elections. “If there’s a surge in campaign donations, voter turnout, and partisan representation on school boards, it will signal to other Republican-leaning states to pass similar legislation. But if it backfires and we see a countermobilization, it could serve as a flare for other states to stay away.”

COVID, CRT, and book bans set stage for partisan elections

Since the early 1900s, the vast majority of the nation’s 13,000 local school boards have been elected without using political party labels.

The reasoning was that the critical but often mundane work of elected school officials — passing budgets, hiring and firing superintendents, setting school policies, approving vendor contracts — should be shielded as much as possible from potential sources of conflict that could distract them from local education issues and their obligation to students.

But the shock of the pandemic and recent cultural battles over curriculum and instruction thrust locally elected school leaders into the spotlight, and provided a platform for conservative Republicans to rally more support around divisive education issues such as mask requirements, book bans, and the rights of transgender students.

Last year, politicians took note when Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, on a promise to give parents more say in their kids’ education. And when sketching its education agenda, the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute urged conservative officials to “strongly consider” pivoting to partisan school board elections.

Republican leaders in Tennessee were among the first to follow that advice. Last fall, the state’s GOP supermajority approved a partisan school board election law during a special legislative session on COVID restrictions. The measure headed to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature before opponents, including organizations representing school boards and superintendents, could mobilize against it.

The law will mean different things for voters depending on where they live and whether they elect board members at large or by district. In most cases, local political parties took the lead in recruiting this year’s candidates for primaries. According to state election officials, 57 of 95 Tennessee counties held at least one school board primary election for at least one political party.

In a few cases, there were no primaries, but local political parties convened caucuses to nominate their candidates.

And in some communities — including Tennessee’s largest district, in Memphis, a Democratic stronghold — local parties rejected partisan school board elections, and nonpartisan races remain the norm.

Clashes between parents and school leaders

Not surprisingly, the partisan shift appears more pronounced in communities where school leaders took the most heat from parents in recent years, especially for pandemic-related health and safety policies like masking, and remote vs. in-person learning.

Candidates have opted to use party labels in urban districts in Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, along with large suburban school systems in Madison, Montgomery, Rutherford, and Wilson counties.

“It’s become a very toxic environment,” said Tucker McClendon, outgoing board chair for Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools, where angry parents surrounded the boardroom and banged on windows during one meeting in May 2021. Police eventually called in backup officers to control the crowd as the board rejected a proposal to let students remove their masks for the final days of the school year.

McClendon fears the tone will get even worse under the partisan shift.

“Many people running for the board are on polar opposites of the political spectrum,” he said, “and some don’t actually seem to grasp what a school board does.”

The president of the Tennessee School Boards Association agrees.

“The most effective school boards are those that can reach a compromise. If you can’t do that, you get gridlock,” said Keys Fillauer, who has served on the board for Oak Ridge City Schools since 2001.

Collins, the Brown University researcher who grew up attending public schools in Jackson, Tennessee, says he’ll be watching closely to see if partisan-elected school boards will govern differently from nonpartisan boards, especially when it comes to serving students who need the most help.

Many partisan candidates in Tennessee are talking more about history curriculum and mask mandates than about student poverty, learning loss, and equity, he noted.

“You’re having these partisan fights over education that cover up some of the more important daily issues that need to be addressed policywise,” he said.

Scott Golden, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, counters that party identification will help voters make more informed decisions.

“During the pandemic, every parent was right to get more involved in education when their kids were learning from home,” he said. “That experience really brought to the kitchen table how decisions made by nonpartisan boards were directly impacting their children and families.”

Golden says party labels will encourage voters to weigh in on school board races instead of leaving boxes blank by names they don’t recognize.

“Partisan races just provide more information about the philosophical beliefs of candidates,” he said.

Golden also believes that all school officials will be more accountable to voters if board members declare their political inclinations up front.

“Schools account for 75% to 80% of county budgets, and it’s only right that voters and taxpayers should know as much as possible about the school board members who are overseeing that,” he said.

The pushback is bipartisan

Democrats generally opposed partisan school board races, but their state party still sought to recruit candidates to stay competitive, said Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Hendrell Remus.

“Without a party label or party resources, it’s going to be difficult for independent candidates to win,” Remus said. “And if we don’t engage, there’s also a greater likelihood of misinformation when it comes to things like critical race theory and book banning and other divisive ideas about education being circulated by a fringe element of the Republican Party.”

Still, many candidates are pushing back.

In Oak Ridge, a Republican-leaning town near Knoxville that’s home to several federal nuclear research facilities, all four candidates are running as independents for three at-large seats on the five-member school board.

“The Republican Party tried to recruit people to run as Republicans but weren’t able to,” said Fillauer, the board’s chairman, who is not up for reelection.

“I hope that’s because our candidates are running for the right reason, which is to provide a quality education for all students,” added the retired teacher and coach.

In Murfreesboro, a college town south of Nashville, three of the four candidates are running as independents for three at-large seats on the city’s school board. Among them is Amanda Moore, a mom and attorney who is seeking a second term in office.

“I’ve worked hard as a board member for four years and developed a lot of relationships,” Moore said. “I trust the voters of Murfreesboro will look past party labels.”

The sole declared Republican in the race, retired teacher Barbara Long, says embracing a party label was tactical because she’s a political newcomer in a large district.

“In the campaign realm, it’s an identifier,” she said. “It helps people get to know who you are and what you stand for. It’s like saying you’re a Baptist.”

Will partisanship scare away qualified candidates and leaders?

Critics worried early on that the new law would diminish the pool of qualified candidates by attracting more partisan warriors and discouraging some civic-minded parents. There are signs that’s happening.

Knoxvillian Rachel Snyder Miller, a former teacher with a master’s degree in public administration, has long been interested in running for office. She is passionate about education policy issues like equity and diversity and is inspired by an aunt who once served on a school board and her own 3-year-old daughter who will one day attend Knox County Schools.

But the new partisan law and the school board rancor she’s seen play out during the pandemic changed her mind about running this year.

“I don’t know if I can be part of a partisan school board,” said Miller, who also worried that campaigning for both a primary and a general election would be too costly and time-consuming.

McClendon, who will leave his board in Chattanooga in September, worries the partisan shift will drive out good education leaders, whether on boards or at the central office.

“I tried to get good people to run for my seat, and they said they wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole,” McClendon said. “As for superintendents, I don’t think any smart person would want to answer to 11 partisan-elected officials. They’d have to think long and hard about the ramifications to their careers.”

Nancy Garrett (second from right) poses with her father, William Nelson, an award-winning chemistry teacher at Williamson County’s Franklin High School, in this 1968 family photograph.

Garrett, the candidate who chose to run as an independent in Williamson County, knows that she’s facing a tough political fight without a party label. And the stakes couldn’t be higher, she said.

“If we elect school board members who lead in a partisan way and not a professional way, we’ll lose the trust of our educators and they’ll leave,” said Garrett, whose late father was an award-winning teacher in the district where she now serves on the board.

“It’s a fight,” she said, “over everything this community values about education.”

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis superintendent reflects on why this school year was his hardest

2022-04-14T14:32:14+00:00

Over the quarter of a century that Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray has worked in education, he’s faced countless challenges. But none of them — not even a pandemic that forced instruction online — compares to the obstacles this school year.

“I told my team at the start of this year: This will be the hardest year we will ever have,” said Ray. “And it was.”

Within the first 30 days of school, which marked many students’ first face-to-face instruction in 18 months, MSCS faced a COVID surge fueled by the delta variant. The next month, a shooting in a stairwell at Cummings K-8 Optional School in South Memphis left a 13-year-old boy injured, another student in custody, and the entire community reeling. And then, in January, students’ return from winter break brought on yet another COVID spike due to the omicron variant.

Similar struggles at school districts across the nation have sparked concerns about a superintendent exodus: A recent RAND survey of 350 district leaders revealed that more than a quarter planned to leave their posts imminently. More alarming, according to the report: Leaders of urban districts like Memphis, which tend to serve mostly students of color who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, are leaving in higher numbers than their suburban and rural colleagues.

Ray said what makes him determined to press forward are his daily visits to classrooms that remind him of why he got into education in the first place: children.

In a rare one-on-one interview with Chalkbeat on a recent Friday at Rozelle Elementary School, Ray shed light on how his personal struggles years ago as a Memphis student shaped his career and why he’s remained positive despite the hurdles he’s faced since the pandemic began.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: A lot of us thought it would be the return to normal this year, and it was not. What challenges or successes did you experience this year?

A: This was the first time all students were returning back to school after being out for a year for virtual learning, and you still had to mitigate for all the risks of the pandemic.

Students had to wear masks, they still had to social distance — they had to do all of that. You had the rise of delta and the omicron variants. You’ve got the national disciplinary issues with children being out of school for a year, and they’re coming back trying to acclimate themselves back into the school district. You have parents, teachers, and students still fearful.

“We highly politicize basic educational things.”

The basic needs are food, water, shelter, and safety. If your basic needs aren’t met, it is very difficult to get to the top of the pyramid [in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs], and that’s self actualization, right? And our students, coming back to an environment where they were very fearful — folks had on masks, teachers had to adjust the teaching styles — it was just very, very difficult.

And then the political polarization around everything was massive. You know, we’re having these debates on whether you should wear masks or not. … We highly politicize basic educational things — from books to critical race theory.

Joris Ray visits a classroom in Brewster Elementary School on Jan. 7, 2021.

Q: There have been reports and news coverage this year about low test scores. How have those reports and other things affected morale in the district?

A: Many teachers, principals, even parents, were upset about it ... . Our principals, our teachers, our students are more than a number, and it is my job to keep the energy high. It’s my job to continue to keep everyone focused on the task at hand. And it’s my job to just continue to lead through the moment and inspire others. And that’s what I’m going to do as a leader — I’m going to inspire us to take it to the next level.

Back in the late 1970s, early ’80s, and even the ’90s, Memphis was the city to go to in Tennessee. But look at it now, you know? Why is that? It’s because Nashville has really galvanized their support, and worked together with one another. And as I traveled the streets and just from talking to the citizens there, they had nothing bad to say about the city. They had nothing negative to say about the school district. It was about the beauty of Nashville and the growth of Nashville, and how they wanted to continue to grow and do more. And I think as a city, we can learn a lesson from that.

Q: Another big challenge schools have faced is teacher shortages. How have you tried to address that issue?

We work to remove barriers out of teachers’ way and allow them to do the job that they love to do. But also, I don’t allow certain organizations to create noise for teachers or to speak as if they’re speaking for teachers. I speak directly to teachers every day. Every single day. …I get phone calls, I get text messages, I get emails from teachers every single day. … And they’re usually uplifting messages or suggestions.

Here’s a prime example of how you uplift the spirit of teachers: It’s listening. … An instructional coach called me and she was talking to me about how to better prepare our teachers and she had a recommendation. …

“I wish we could prepare teachers better before they transition to the classroom so that, when they get to us, some of the basic things that teachers should know, they will know,” she said.

That’s how we started what’s called the New Teacher Academy in 2022: by listening to teachers and fellow administrators. …. That’s how you boost morale. That’s how you keep teachers excited.

But we also have to pay. We’re recruiting nationally, working with our colleges and universities, but also, we want to retain the teachers that we have. …We do everything we can, but our teachers are tired. They’re tired.

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Rays presents to educators in the central office auditorium in November 2020.

Q: You recently kicked off the “Literacy is Life: Believe For It” tour. What prompted the event, and what’s the purpose?

A: I wanted a heavy focus on literacy. That’s my primary goal, that’s our number one focus: teaching children how to read at or above grade level by the time they make it to third grade. I’m committed to that. I know my team is committed to that. So that is what the Literacy is Life tour is all about. It’s about giving parents strategies on how to help their children at home.

“No matter how much we want to get things back to normal, things still aren’t normal.”

But also, it’s about telling the great things about this school district. It’s my job as the leader of this district to inspire others to greatness and to add fuel to the fire, so to speak. Our students are getting ready to take, yet again, another state standardized test in the midst of a pandemic. No matter how much we want to get things back to normal, things still aren’t normal. …

I’m just trying to create energy and excitement [in the city]. We have challenges, yes. We’re not shying away from our challenges, and we’re not shying away from our data. But we can chew gum and walk at the same time. Folks act as if, “Oh, they’re just focusing on changing the school district name.” No, it’s all in the big plan, a big strategy to uplift our children, uplift our district, and provide a world-class education. And then you’re gonna see the results are guaranteed.

Q: You said earlier this year that you planned to ask the Tennessee Department of Education to, for the third year in a row, not count standardized test scores for student letter grades or teacher performance evaluations. As we head into state assessment season, have you heard any more about that from the state?

A: Penny Schwinn, the commissioner of education, and I met, I want to say in February, and we did discuss it. And I know she’s working on some type of plan. And so I wanted to give her an opportunity.

And let me say this, the commissioner and I have a great working relationship. I respect her immensely. What she’s trying to do to provide equity across the state, she gets it, and I respect her for it.

Superintendent Joris Ray interacts with students in Carol Welch’s kindergarten class at Riverwood Elementary in March 2021.

Q: How did your own background shape your perspective on education?

A: I’m the youngest of seven children. My parents didn’t have a formal education. If you look at what research says about me, with both of my parents being high school dropouts, research says there’s a 50% chance I’m supposed to be a high school dropout. But through a quality education, and caring teachers, look at where I am today. …

“I want something more for our students, each and every day. They deserve it.”

My mom had a brain aneurysm when I was 12 and almost died. My pre-algebra teacher, Ms. Wright, looked at me and knew something wasn’t right with me. Every day she checked on me. Not only academically, but she checked on my well-being socially. She checked on my mental health. She hugged me. Teachers matter. That’s what shaped me in every decision I make — those moments, things that I learned. She wanted something more for me, and she understood what I was going through at home.

And oftentimes people don’t write about that, or they don’t think about the adversities our students bring to school with them. And I just think about that time period of my life, the adverse childhood experience that I brought to school, and it took that teacher — many of my teachers — wrapping their arms around me. ... So teaching goes far beyond what we can ever imagine. That’s what I bring to the table because I want something more for our students, each and every day. They deserve it.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to resurrect Tennessee school vouchers dies in legislative committee

2022-03-09T19:35:46+00:00

A House subcommittee has narrowly killed a bill that could have revived Tennessee’s controversial school voucher program regardless of how the state’s highest court rules this year on the state’s overturned school voucher law.

The bill aimed to change eligibility requirements for students receiving public money to pay for private school tuition under the 2019 education savings account law that squeaked through the legislature but was halted by a judge before the program could launch.

The new legislation failed 5-4 Tuesday, despite a rare subcommittee appearance by Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who tried to tip the scales when a key voucher supporter, Rep. Glen Casada of Franklin, was absent. Three other Republicans — Reps. Kirk Haston of Lobelville, Chris Hurt of Halls, and John Ragan of Oak Ridge — broke ranks and voted with two Democrats against the GOP bill.

The proposal, by Rep. Michael Curcio of Dickson and Sen. Mike Bell of Riceville, would have opened eligibility to students who are either zoned to the state’s school turnaround district or whose school systems don’t offer in-person learning for a full 180 days for each of the next three school years because of the COVID pandemic.

The voucher law was overturned because it applied only to students in Memphis and Nashville schools without giving their local governments or voters a say, which two lower courts said violates the state constitution’s so-called “home rule” provision.

If the bill became law, it could have addressed constitutional questions about statewide application through the COVID provision while still likely affecting students in only Memphis and Nashville, since those are Tennessee’s only cities with low-performing schools taken over by the state-run Achievement School District.

Rep. John Clemmons, a Nashville who voted against the bill, noted that the state’s appeal of the voucher law is pending before the Tennessee Supreme Court, which recently heard oral arguments centering on questions about whether home rule applies in this case.

“It seems like we’re trying to clean that up and try to avoid some kind of adverse judicial determination for an inherently unconstitutional piece of legislation,” Clemmons said. “So I guess the true intent of this legislation is problematic.”

Curcio dodged questions about the bill’s intent.

“If this were to address that, I think that would be kind of a periphery issue,” Curcio responded. “We’re just trying to change the criteria of who’s eligible.”

A similar bill by Curcio and Bell cleared the Senate Education Committee in January. However, the sponsors started over with new legislation when other constitutional questions emerged about their first proposal. Curcio did not respond Wednesday when asked if he planned to pursue a House committee vote on his earlier bill.

Tuesday’s vote came as Gov. Bill Lee, who pushed for the voucher law, is seeking to shift Tennessee to a student-based school funding formula. The model would calculate education funding on a student-by-student basis, making it easier for Tennessee to start a private school voucher program. However, Lee has said vouchers have nothing to do with the need for a new funding formula that is simpler to understand and based on the needs of students over systems.

Rep. Harold Love, another Nashville Democrat who voted against Curcio’s bill, said changing voucher eligibility when the state is considering funding reform is problematic.

“I would hope that maybe we would hold off until we get this new funding formula under our belts and understand it,” he said.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

5 things to know about Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ decision to make masks optional

2022-03-03T15:13:26+00:00

The same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its school COVID guidelines, paving the way for many school districts to wind down mask mandates, Memphis-Shelby County Schools did so.

While Tennessee’s largest school district continues to strongly recommend masks in classrooms and school buildings, starting Monday, parents could opt their children out of wearing face coverings by filling out a school-provided form, administrators announced Friday.

After the first few days of the new, relaxed masking policy, less than 2 percent of students are going maskless in schools, according to the district. Yet some teachers are afraid of the potential consequences for their health. And the public’s reactions to the decision have varied significantly.

The new CDC guidance specifies that if new COVID cases and hospitalizations are low or moderate, and hospitals aren’t overburdened in the community, the mask requirements aren’t necessary.

Based on those metrics, Shelby County residents are among the estimated 70% of Americans who live in parts of the country where those metrics are now low or moderate, according to the CDC.

Nearly through the first week of no mask mandate in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, here’s what we know.

Few students have ditched masking … so far

As of Wednesday, just 1,408 students have opted out of masking, district officials said. That represents just 1.6% of the district’s roughly 100,000 students.

“Based on CDC guidance, options are appropriate at this time,” the district said in a statement. “Still, we acknowledge the science behind masking.”

Throughout the pandemic, Memphis-Shelby County Schools was one of the few in Tennessee to keep a mask mandate in place.

If Shelby County’s metrics change, the district may reinstate the mask requirement for all students and employees, officials emphasized on Friday.

Appropriate freedom or a ‘bad decision’? Social media reaction mixed.

The new policy, which also applies to teachers and other school staff, generated mixed reactions.

Some parents applauded the district’s decision, saying they should have the freedom to choose, or that many families are vaccinated and feel safe without school masking. They expressed excitement that their children would be able to see the facial expressions of their teachers and classmates.

Others criticized the move. One person on Facebook called the district’s shift a “bad decision” and added, “We are still in a pandemic!” Some worried about the district’s youngest students under age 5 who haven’t been able to get vaccinated yet.

And others expressed concern that it might make weary educators feel less safe. Many parents might be excited right now, but next week they’ll be complaining about teacher resignations and absences, one person said on Facebook.

Many remain unvaccinated in Shelby County

While Shelby County’s COVID levels have been low since the omicron variant surge subsided, many residents remain unvaccinated.

Just 52% of county residents were fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, the state health department reported.

And only about 20% of those ages 5-11 and 53% of 12- to 17-year-olds in Shelby County were vaccinated as of Wednesday, according to county health department data.

Some teachers are frightened, union leader says

Though relatively few parents have opted their children out of masking, some teachers are fearful — especially those who are immunocompromised.

“The pandemic is not gone and you’re in a classroom with 20 or more students,” said Anntriniece Napper, the president of the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, one of two teachers unions in the district. “You can’t really spread the kids out when you’re in a closed environment like that.”

Asked how the district is helping keep teachers safe in the midst of the new mask policies, a spokesperson emphasized that the human resources team “has continued to address concerns of employees with extenuating circumstances,” but did not elaborate.

“It’s been very stressful,” Napper said of the environment for teachers. “You have to take care of yourself because if you don’t, you can’t take care of others. And that’s what we teachers do.”

Pediatrician: Keep wearing a mask if you’re worried

As the nation moves away from COVID shutdowns, the district’s decision to drop the mandate is a step in the right direction, said Dr. Sandy Arnold, the division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis.

By now, Arnold said, most people have either been vaccinated or infected with COVID (or both), and Shelby County’s level of immunity is relatively high.

Still, teachers who have a pre-existing condition or live with someone who does should continue wearing a mask, Arnold said. The same goes for anyone still worried about the virus, she also said.

“It’s a new era and everybody’s going to have to figure out what they’re comfortable with,” Arnold said. “Only you can decide what’s OK for you.”

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s remote learning waiver process brings desperation, disruption

2022-01-26T16:17:16+00:00

The decision to apply for a waiver to Tennessee’s remote learning ban was not taken lightly.

Fayette County Schools Superintendent Versie Hamlett had been monitoring student and staff absenteeism at LaGrange-Moscow Elementary, one of the rural West Tennessee district’s seven schools. Day after day, the numbers kept rising until, on Jan. 13, they reached a breaking point: 18% of students, 16% of teachers, and 25% of other school staff members were absent.

“There comes a time when you really don’t have enough staff to run the facility appropriately and safely,” Hamlett said. “We thought through [the waiver] process and we thought it was the best thing to do, for our students especially, to stay home until this kind of passes over.”

As school districts and charter school networks across Tennessee and around the country face unprecedented staffing obstacles during the latest COVID wave, families, child care providers, and school officials are struggling to keep up with school closures and remote learning reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic.

The obstacles are especially acute in Tennessee, where state law prevents school leaders from closing buildings and switching to remote learning without approval from the state’s top education official, Commissioner Penny Schwinn — and even then, only for five days at a time.

After the delta variant surge late last summer, waiver requests subsided in the fall. But they again exploded with the new year after the omicron variant arrived.

As of Jan. 20, the Department of Education had received 107 waiver requests since the process began Aug. 27, said spokesman Brian Blackley. Of those, 100 were approved, including one partial approval, and two were denied. Five additional requests were deemed ineligible.

The process in Tennessee can translate to desperation and disruption – and a limited ability to plan ahead – for students and families who have endured a challenging past two years.

For Jamie Jones, a child care provider in Oakland, a rural town of nearly 7,000 in Fayette County, last week felt like 2020 all over again. She juggled looking after four children in her care, while also tutoring first grader Olivia and walking her through worksheets sent home from LaGrange-Moscow Elementary.

Olivia — who attended Jones’ birth-to-prekindergarten day care for the first several years of her life — had returned to Jones’ care for the week. When her school abruptly announced on Thursday it would be closed a week starting the following day due to COVID spread and staffing concerns, her mom had nowhere else to send her — until she reached out to Jones.

Jones’ in-home day care has what she proudly calls a “revolving door” — she’ll take an extra child into her care here and there to help out, but she estimates that she’s one of two providers in all of Fayette County. She can’t help but wonder where other parents, at LaGrange-Moscow Elementary or elsewhere, send their children when in need of child care with short notice.

“We really don’t have places for our kids to go. It’s friends, families, or people like me,” Jones said. “There was no panic on my end — I love my job and I’m flexible. But I know there was a lot of panic among the parents.”

Going remote is not simple for Tennessee schools

Across the nation, shortages, frustration, and resilience have marked the return from winter break for school systems in places such as Detroit, Chicago, and Newark, N.J., where districts temporarily closed school buildings for a week or more.

But that hasn’t been the case in Tennessee, which is one of at least 10 other states that explicitly require in-person learning to be offered, according to a recent Education Commission of the States report.

If local school administrators conclude in-person instruction is no longer feasible, they must get Schwinn’s approval for a waiver for an individual class or school.

Here’s how the process works: School officials submit an application, answering questions about the number of schools or classrooms in need of remote learning, the counts and percentage of students, teachers, and school staff who are absent because they’re quarantining or in isolation, and why they’re no longer able to provide in-person instruction.

The state’s waivers to go remote are for five calendar days, rolled back from the seven-day waivers approved last semester. The shortened window is due to federal and state guidance that cut in half the recommended isolation time for people testing positive for the coronavirus from 10 days to five.

Schwinn did not respond when asked through a spokesman how well the waiver process is working for students and parents.

State Sen. Page Walley, whose West Tennessee district includes Fayette County, said that the system has been helpful in giving school leaders an option to pursue.

“I believe these waivers are being thoughtfully sought,” said the Bolivar Republican. “They’re time-limited and serving their purpose, which is to get people through when a rapid wave [of COVID] is affecting the population in one school.”

Walley also said he likes that Schwinn is making the call about switching to remote learning, instead of leaving it up to superintendents or charter school leaders.

“It gives us another set of eyes to look at the data, which then reinforces the decision-making process. That’s also helpful for local leaders if they’re ever questioned about a decision,” Walley said, adding that he hasn’t received any complaints about the remote waiver process.

‘There are not enough bodies’

The voices from administrators strike a different tone — one that often conveys a sense of desperation.

Memphis’ Soulsville Charter School, which serves over 600 students in grades 6-12, had “exhausted all of our resources to keep school in person,’’ executive director NeShante Brown wrote in the school’s waiver application on Jan. 7. With almost a quarter of teachers and just over 15% of other school staff in isolation or quarantine, plus others out due to other illnesses, “there are not enough bodies” to keep Soulsville open, Brown said.

The situation was similar at Beacon College Preparatory, another Memphis charter school, where officials reported 10% of teachers and 36% of students were absent Jan. 17.

“It is not feasible to conduct in-person learning without ⅓ of our student population and a lead teacher,” Joe Buldoc, founder and head of the Memphis charter school, wrote in his application.

“It’s a crisis when you can’t staff schools,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of Tennessee’s superintendents organization. “School leaders are having a very difficult time keeping their schools operational under omicron, whether it’s having enough teachers or bus drivers, cafeteria workers, or teacher aides.”

They’d rather keep school buildings open, Lynch added, but are glad that waivers give them an option to temporarily move students to remote learning.

Many of the most recent requests have come from rural and suburban districts in Middle Tennessee, though several smaller urban districts, such as Knoxville, and charter schools in Memphis, such as Soulsville and Beacon College Preparatory, have also asked to move to remote instruction. Meanwhile, Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school district, has not applied for a waiver. District officials say they’ve been able to make staffing work so far.

In some cases, getting a waiver at one school has helped district officials patch staffing holes in other schools.

While LaGrange-Moscow was closed, Hamlett said healthy staff members were sent to other schools in the district that were struggling to keep their doors open, and students were sent home with learning packets.

Although the situation is far from ideal, Hamlett said she’s grateful for Schwinn’s support during the waiver process and for the school community’s continued patience.

“We’re in a pandemic and we have to do what’s best for our students and everyone has been really understanding of that,” she said.

Short notice on closures can stir panic

Cynthia Kennon, whose daughter is in fourth grade at LaGrange-Moscow Elementary, said she understands the school’s situation. The school’s sudden closure was not stressful for Kennon — she is unable to work because she has rheumatoid arthritis, and her daughter was able to stay home with her — but she knows that less than 24-hour notice of a school closure sends many working parents into panic mode.

Sending a letter home with students at the end of one school day informing them the school would be closed the next isn’t enough notice, she said.

“I mean, there was really no actual warning,” Kennon said, though she knew COVID cases were climbing at the school.

While Kennon had time to work with her daughter on the printed learning packets sent home with her, she also knows not every parent has that luxury. On top of it all, Kennon’s daughter has dyslexia and reading through the packet likely took her longer than other children.

Her daughter’s special education teacher also recommended they complete the work following her school schedule in order to keep the same routine of a school day — something a working parent would not be able to do.

Those kinds of challenges that parents face during school closures are part of the reason why Gary Lilly, superintendent of Collierville Schools, applied for a virtual learning waiver at the high school level rather than the elementary or middle schools.

All of the district’s schools had reached a breaking point, Lilly said. After exhausting the district’s substitute teacher pool, school leaders resorted to covering classrooms with teacher assistants, school principals, and even administrators from the central office.

On Monday, Jan. 11, Lilly realized the district wouldn’t be able to make the rest of the week work. But, Lilly wondered, which school does it make sense to move to remote learning?

Cases were soaring at the high school: As of Jan. 10, 14% of students and teachers and 29% of school support staff were either infected with COVID or had potentially been exposed to the virus. Plus, Lilly figured Collierville High is by far the district’s largest school, and going remote would have the greatest impact on limiting spread of the virus.

In addition, students at that age are more independent and are better equipped to learn online compared to elementary and middle school students, Lilly said.

“Parents, understandably, don’t want to leave their small children home alone and nor should they,” Lilly said. “It really made sense to do it at the high school level.”

Lilly applied for the waiver around lunch time that day; Schwinn approved the request around 3 p.m. By 4 p.m., the district had notified parents of the shift to remote instruction. He knew most high school students would be able to stay home alone and could manage attending class virtually.

While Lilly was initially nervous about the waiver process, in the end, it wasn’t difficult. Still, having to get state approval is yet another hurdle in an already turbulent school year, Lilly said.

“This year has been more challenging even than previous years,” Lilly said. “We thought we were coming out of the pandemic, and just when you’re about to get some relief, you hear about a new variant and it all kind of starts over again.”

“We’re doing what we can; we’re making it work,” he added. “But it’s challenging.”

Tennessee lawmakers advance school voucher bill targeting remote education

2022-01-20T00:55:38+00:00

A key Senate panel approved legislation Wednesday that would provide public money for private school tuition for Tennessee students whose school systems do not offer in-person learning all year.

However, lawmakers amended the bill first to remove a provision that also would have extended vouchers to students whose parents disagree with school mask mandates in their district.

The 6-2 vote in the Senate Education Committee came after only 30 minutes of discussion about a controversial voucher policy that has been debated for years in Tennessee’s legislature and is currently being challenged in court.

Meanwhile, dozens of schools across Tennessee are closed this week — or have moved remote temporarily — because of staffing challenges caused by COVID’s omicron variant.

Unlike Tennessee’s 2019 voucher law that was promoted as helping low-income students who attend low-performing schools in a few districts, the new legislation seeks to incentivize all 147 of the state’s school systems to keep students learning in person amid COVID-19.

“We’re doing this because we know that in-person learning is the most effective way to educate a child,” said Sen. Mike Bell of Riceville, noting that last year’s test scores showed a dramatic drop following a year of learning disruptions that leaned on remote instruction.

Sen. Mike Bell

The Republican lawmaker, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Rep. Michael Curcio of Dickson, said he wants public school systems to “take that job seriously” and keep brick-and-mortar classrooms open. He made references to large districts in Memphis and Nashville that provided mostly online learning last school year and saw their students’ scores decline beyond average statewide declines.

The bill would extend voucher eligibility to students in any district that does not offer 180 days of in-person learning because of the coronavirus pandemic for the three upcoming school years beginning Sept. 1, 2022.

Other eligibility requirements under the 2019 law would remain in place for students in districts that have a high concentration of low-performing “priority schools,” or have schools in the state’s school turnaround district program known as the Achievement School District. That criteria applies to Memphis and Nashville, where leaders didn’t want vouchers introduced and challenged the law in court.

Tennessee’s voucher program was halted by a judge in 2020 because it applied only to students in Memphis and Nashville. The case is under appeal, with arguments scheduled before the Tennessee Supreme Court on Feb. 24.

In the Senate panel, lawmakers questioned whether the new proposal could trigger voucher eligibility in districts receiving state-approved waivers to switch temporarily to remote learning. Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn launched the waiver process last fall after the COVID delta variant spread made it hard to keep schools staffed.

Charlie Bufalino, assistant commissioner of policy and legislative affairs for the Tennessee Department of Education, said the short answer is yes. However, it’s uncertain whether remote waivers will be offered beginning next school year when the proposed voucher legislation would kick in, he added.

If remote waivers are still available, Bufalino said districts could consider offering an in-person option while also providing temporary remote learning — or they could just use their 13 days stockpiled for closing schools due to inclement weather, illness, or other widespread challenges.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who voted against the bill, said districts could quickly exhaust their stockpiled days and be forced to extend their school year into summertime.

Akbari also pointed out that many private schools continue to toggle back and forth between in-person and remote learning to adjust to the changing pandemic.

“What happens if a parent tries to use this [voucher] just because they want to get their kid in a private school, and that private school is doing virtual learning?” she asked. “Then we’re taking state dollars to go to this private school, and they’re doing the same thing that’s being done by [public schools.]”

“That’s the beauty about this piece of legislation,” Bell responded. “That’s up to the parent. It’s a parent’s responsibility to choose a school that is going to meet their child’s needs.”

“My concern with that is it’s still state dollars,” Akbari reiterated, “and they’re taking state dollars to a private school that’s potentially doing the same thing that the public school is doing. So it’s not helping something that’s been identified as a problem. It is just giving the parents a state fund to take their child to a private school.”

Voucher critics have long argued that voucher advocates have an agenda beyond giving more education choices to families, many of whom already have multiple options such as public charter schools, magnet schools, online schools, and specialized optional schools, as well as homeschooling and private schools. They say the goal is to privatize education, especially for more affluent families who can most afford to cover the full cost of private school tuition beyond the $7,000 or so that a Tennessee voucher would provide.

The leader of Tennessee school superintendents said his organization opposes the bill, as it has all voucher legislation.

“We’re opposed to public funds leaving our public schools,” said executive director Dale Lynch. “Decisions are difficult enough at the local level, especially during this pandemic. Putting in this extra layer just adds to the challenges we face while trying to do what’s best for all students.”

On a related note, Gov. Bill Lee, who championed the 2019 law, is seeking to rewrite Tennessee’s 30-year-old system for funding schools to a student-based approach instead of the current resource-based approach.

The change could force the state to do student-by-student calculations that would make it easier for Tennessee to expand a private school voucher program, although Lee has denied that’s the reason he’s pushing for an overhaul.

You can track the voucher legislation here.

Mask mandates remain at most Tennessee schools, poll shows

2022-01-19T22:54:22+00:00

Most Tennessee parents are sending their children to school wearing masks, and despite state law essentially banning mask mandates in public schools, most parents report that their child’s school requires masks. The findings are part of the Vanderbilt Child Health Poll, an annual survey that seeks parents’ feedback on the well-being of Tennessee children.

The poll, conducted in late fall 2021, sampled 1,026 parents and found that region, race, and ethnicity influenced many parents’ opinions about COVID safety protocols, with Black parents and West Tennessee parents having a stronger preference for safety measures.

“While leaders need to take these differences of opinion into account, the guiding principle in setting school policies should be the well-being of all children,” said Dr. Joe Zickafoose, a pediatrician at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and one of the poll’s leading researchers.

“Regardless of where we live in Tennessee, it’s important for everyone to remember and recognize that every school has at least a few children with underlying conditions that put them at high risk of severe COVID-19, and we know that it takes multiple prevention efforts to keep them safe in school,” he added.

The Vanderbilt findings on Tennessee parents’ divided view about masking complement the Momentive and Axios poll from the beginning of the school year that sampled 38,251 people nationwide and found that 56% of Tennessee respondents supported mask mandates for all students and staff.

The divided views that both polls capture may reflect the conflicting COVID policies that abound in Tennessee as the state’s Republican lawmakers enacted a law to restrict masks mandates while federal judges issued orders blocking it.

Researchers conducted the Vanderbilt poll as some of the legal challenges unfolded, but before the rise of the omicron variant that has caused a spike in pediatric COVID cases statewide. Some key findings in the Vanderbilt poll include:

53% of Tennessee parents reported that their children’s schools have a mask mandate in place.
67% of Tennessee parents send their children to school in masks.
54% of Tennessee parents said that students are safer in school when teachers and staff wear masks.
40% of Tennessee parents both agreed and disagreed that schools should require COVID vaccines for all school staff, while 20% were indifferent.

To see more results, visit childpolicy.org/poll.

Tennessee bill would extend school vouchers to parents upset over mask mandates, virtual learning

2022-01-19T15:49:39+00:00

Tennessee parents upset about local public school policies requiring masks or virtual learning could get state funding to send their child to a private school under a voucher proposal filed this week by two Republican lawmakers.

Rep. Michael Curcio and Sen. Mike Bell want to expand a voucher program approved by the legislature in 2019 but halted in 2020 by a Tennessee judge for applying only to students in Memphis and Nashville. The case is under appeal, with arguments scheduled before the Tennessee Supreme Court in February.

The bill would expand the law to make vouchers available to students in any Tennessee district that mandates masks or does not offer at least 180 days of in-person learning due to the coronavirus pandemic for the three upcoming school years beginning on Sept. 1, 2022.

However, it does not afford the same opportunity for students whose parents are upset about the absence of a mask mandate, or would like their student to switch to virtual learning when COVID cases surge.

The bill is an effort to promote parent choice while disincentivizing districts from adopting COVID mitigation strategies opposed by Gov. Bill Lee and other GOP leaders in Tennessee.

Last summer after seeing a dramatic drop in state test scores blamed partly on virtual learning, House Speaker Cameron Sexton threatened voucher legislation for districts whose leaders require masks or shutter their buildings. Sexton, who voted against the voucher law in 2019 before becoming speaker, declined to comment Tuesday about Curcio’s bill.

“Speaker Sexton has not seen the bill language as of yet,” said spokesman Doug Kufner.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Curcio said his proposal aims to give parents choices for their child’s education — not to punish school systems — through the voucher program known as education savings accounts.

“I firmly believe in local control and local school boards setting policy for their districts,” said Curcio, of Dickson. “At the same time, if a parent questions whether those decisions are right for their child, they should be able to take advantage of an education savings account.”

The 2019 law provided voucher eligibility to students in districts that have a high concentration of low-performing “priority schools,” or have schools in the state’s school turnaround district program known as the Achievement School District. That criteria applied to Memphis and Nashville, where leaders didn’t want the program.

Curcio’s bill would add a pandemic provision to also extend eligibility statewide for any district that meets those criteria.

Curcio believes statewide application would address a constitutional provision that suggests the legislature doesn’t have authority to create a major education program that applies to only two districts without local approval.

But Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro said he would expect another legal challenge if the new bill passes and becomes law.

“What this really shows is that the legislature is using vouchers to punish school districts that get on the wrong side of Republican leaders,” said Yarbro, a lawyer from Nashville.

“First, they singled out Memphis and Nashville; now they’re singling out districts on the wrong side of last year’s culture wars. I don’t think we should pass any education policy that seeks to punish a district. And given that the voucher program has been halted by our courts as unconstitutional, it doesn’t make any sense to talk about expanding it,” Yarbro said.

Curcio disagrees. He said many parents believe their family is being held hostage by local school policies with which they disagree.

“If your kid’s been stuck at home while you’re trying to earn a living and provide for your family, you can say ‘enough is enough,’” he said. “School choice is a benefit, and I don’t think wealthy parents are the only ones who should be able to remove their child from a public school and send them to a private school if they think that’s what’s best.”

You can read a summary of the bill here.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details about current and proposed eligibility.

Shelby County Schools’ enrollment dips for second consecutive year

2022-01-12T18:49:57+00:00

Enrollment in Tennessee’s largest school district has shrunk for the second year in a row.

Nearly 4,000 fewer students are enrolled in Shelby County Schools, including charter schools, this school year, according to 60-day counts for the 2021-22 academic year released by the district on Tuesday. That represents a decrease of just over 3% from 2020-21.

Declining enrollment is not unique to Memphis. As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on education nationwide for the third calendar year, large public school systems in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have also reported sizable headcount reductions.

While it’s difficult to explain why enrollment is declining, Memphis administrators pointed to national trends that suggest a growing number of parents are pulling students out of public schools during the pandemic. Instead of having to worry about their children’s schools going virtual, they’re choosing to homeschool or enroll them in smaller charter and private schools that have more autonomy and have been able to remain open.

Last year at the 60-day mark, Memphis counted about 114,400 students enrolled, with nearly 85,500 students attending district-run schools, about 20,200 in charter or contract schools, and 7,200 in the Achievement School District. At the time, Shelby County Schools was the only district in the county that had not yet brought students back into classrooms, and administrators speculated students left in favor of in-person learning.

A return to face-to-face learning this school year didn’t stop the decline, though: Officials reported about 110,400 students in total, with about 83,300 in district-run schools, nearly 20,000 in charters, and 7,200 in the ASD.

The drop could have a major impact on school funding, as student enrollment has determined the amount of money districts get from the state and local governments, as well as how many staff the district can employ.

It’s not clear how a potential new state school funding formula will incorporate districts’ total enrollment figures, but a draft released Tuesday night proposed providing additional funds for low-income students, rural students, English language learners, and students with disabilities, according to The Tennessean.

At a Tuesday school board committee meeting, administrators emphasized their commitment to boosting future enrollment through outreach. They highlighted several initiatives, including reaching out to late-shift parents at times that are more convenient for them, meeting with families at homeless shelters, pushing the early school registration window to an earlier date, and hosting school showcase events to increase awareness of SCS’ school options.

The district is also increasing marketing efforts showing the positive impact public schools have made on graduates, officials said, as well as monitoring data to hone in on which students are coming to and withdrawing from the district.

Those efforts have already proven successful this year, administrators said. The district gained about 2,000 students between its first 20-day headcount, which showed a decline of over 6,000 students from the previous years, and the 60-day count.

Collierville High School moves to remote learning due to COVID

2022-01-11T00:07:39+00:00

Collierville High School students will learn remotely for the rest of the week as COVID cases swell in the region, increasing student and staff absences.

Collierville Schools officials announced the move in a statement on Monday afternoon, saying the district had been granted a waiver from state Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, allowing the district to go virtual.

The shift comes just over a week after the Collierville school board opted not to require students to wear masks inside school buildings when they returned from winter break, as the omicron variant fueled the most recent COVID surge. At that time, Collierville schools Superintendent Gary Lilly said his greatest fear was that the district wouldn’t have enough people to staff schools, the Commercial Appeal reported.

This week, Lilly’s fears came to fruition. As of Monday, 14% of students and teachers and 29% of school support staff were currently infected with COVID or had potentially been exposed to the virus, the district said.

Despite administrators’ efforts to send staff from the district offices, as well as the curriculum, human resources, and student services departments to Collierville High School, the district was still unable to cover all classes, Lilly said in his waiver request sent to Schwinn around 11 a.m. Monday.

Schwinn granted the waiver just before 3 p.m.

As of Friday, the last time the district updated its COVID dashboard, officials reported 35 COVID cases among staff members and 125 among students. Of those cases, 46 were among Collierville High School students and seven were among staff.

Across Shelby County, the health department reported 2,327 new cases on Monday, including 562 among children under the age of 18. In total, there are over 30,000 active COVID cases in the county, with 6,000 among children.

Collierville High School will operate online only through Friday. Extracurriculars and sports also will be canceled. Classes will proceed as normal at the district’s other schools.

Frustration and fear over COVID surge mark Memphis schools’ return from winter break

2022-01-08T00:18:21+00:00

Julius Blackburn, assistant principal of Fairley High School, feels powerless and exhausted.

He has tried to make sure the students and staff at his Memphis public charter school, which is part of the national Green Dot network, feel supported and safe in their classrooms, but the latest COVID surge due to the omicron variant is pushing his limit.

Memphis COVID cases hit the highest rate of the pandemic on Sunday. The school doesn’t have enough substitutes to fill the gaps, forcing administrators like Blackburn and already overburdened teachers to cover classrooms however they can, even if it means sacrificing prep and lunch periods, or doing what he calls “getting creative” by combining classes in auditoriums and gymnasiums.

Additionally, his teachers, many of whom are older or have health conditions that put them at higher risk of serious complications from COVID, are frightened.

“It’s almost like we are firefighters now,” Blackburn said. “We’re going straight into the fire and all we have is masks to protect us. And that’s on top of the already uphill battle we face in urban education any day.”

The Shelby County Health Department recorded 3,061 new COVID cases on Friday, 637 among children under the age of 18. It’s a slight decrease from Sunday’s record high. As of Friday, over 25,000 county residents — including nearly 5,000 children — are actively infected with the virus. The test positivity rate, at nearly 42% as of Friday, is the highest since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Across Memphis, many student and teacher desks sit empty. Two or three classes are combined in makeshift classrooms in libraries or cafeterias. And feelings of fear and frustration plague school staff, students, and parents.

The Memphis area’s situation is only going to get worse, local officials cautioned at a grim Shelby County COVID task force news conference Thursday. The county is unable to put a mask mandate or other similar COVID mitigation strategies in place unless Gov. Bill Lee declares a COVID emergency, said Michelle Taylor, health department director.

“We are going to have some very difficult days ahead here in Memphis and Shelby County, as we are experiencing across the country,” said Doug McGowan, Memphis’ chief operating officer. “It is incumbent on all of us individually to do what we can so we do not add to the burden that our local hospital systems already have.”

Omicron has caused chaos and upheaval at schools across the country in the first week of the new year. Some school systems, like Detroit and Newark, have shifted to online learning through at least Jan. 14. In Chicago, the teachers union voted late Wednesday to cancel in-person classes until Jan. 18 or COVID safety conditions improve.

Tennessee school districts don’t have that option. Only individual schools or classrooms can receive a waiver from the state Department of Education to go virtual for five calendar days — recently shortened from seven days based on new federal and state guidance cutting the recommended isolation period to five days for people testing positive for COVID.

Calling on the governor and state lawmakers to reconsider the law, Danette Stokes, president of Memphis’ United Education Association, said teachers are rising to the latest challenges of pandemic education, but they’re overwhelmed. Educators worry about potential ramifications that combining classrooms may have.

“It’s not conducive to learning, and it just makes no sense for local leadership not to be able to make that decision (to shift to remote learning) when it’s not safe to be in schools,” Stokes said. “For now, we’re just doing the best that we can with what we have and we’re praying this pandemic will go away — or at least that we can get it under control.”

Annitriniece Napper, president of the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, echoed Stokes and said several members have told her that as many as 20 staff members in a single school are out due to COVID. In turn, classes are combined, and they’re teaching more than 30 students at a time.

When teachers have more students than usual, “learning is not going to be where it should be,” Napper said. “At that point, you’re just trying to maintain discipline in your classroom.”

Post-winter break school attendance is usually low, said four-year teacher Sophia Johnson, but this year appears to be worse than normal. Johnson, who teaches eighth and ninth grade English at the Memphis School of Excellence charter in Cordova, estimated at least five students were absent in each of her classes on Tuesday, their first day back. That is high absenteeism compared to after this year’s early fall and Thanksgiving breaks, when most of her students returned to school on the first day.

Not all are out because of COVID — some traveled for the holidays and returned late — but Johnson worries about her students’ learning. Many are still behind after all the disruptions of last year, and she worries the omicron spike will make the situation worse.

Since school resumed after winter break, the message of Tennessee’s largest school district has been to “stay the course.”

Most COVID precautions remain in place at schools, though the district has cut quarantine requirements. Students and staff members who are fully vaccinated and boosted are encouraged but no longer required to quarantine if they’re deemed a close contact of someone with COVID. Those who are unvaccinated only have to quarantine for five days rather than seven. The district also has increased COVID testing in light of the post-holiday spike in cases.

However, no schools have had to close due to a staffing shortage or COVID spread, district spokesperson Jerica Phillips said Friday. Between Dec. 16 and Jan. 6, the district reported 657 new cases among students and 491 among staff, according to its COVID dashboard updated Friday.

Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support, emphasized that combining classes in larger spaces is temporary.

“Yes, there have been disruptions. But we have a plan in place,” Whitelaw said. “Our students are resilient and our teachers are resilient and flexibility has been at the core of our safe plan.”

Phillips said Superintendent Joris Ray plans to petition the state asking that all districts be held harmless in state assessments, as he did last school year, Phillips said.

Memphis parents such as Mandy Reynolds are concerned.

“It’s nerve-wracking, knowing how high the cases are and they’re packing the schools the way they are,” said Reynolds, whose daughter is a ninth grader at White Station High School.

While she’s grateful the district still has a mask requirement, and she’s been able to equip her daughter with KN95 masks for school, she is preparing for when they get COVID, rather than if they get it.

Reynolds wishes her daughter could opt into virtual learning. While she understands teaching in two formats is an added burden on teachers and virtual learning isn’t ideal for all children, she feels her daughter does well and would be safer.

Joy Westmoland also wishes online learning was an option for her five children in Memphis charter schools.

“It’s like we’re headed into the middle of a storm and we’re not going to use any umbrellas or rain boots,” she said.

Tennessee shortens how long schools can shift to remote learning from COVID

2022-01-06T23:56:52+00:00

Teacher and staff shortages caused by another COVID surge have some Tennessee administrators seeking state permission to move schools or classes temporarily to remote learning.

But any switch will only be for five calendar days instead of the seven-day window approved for dozens of districts and charter schools during fall semester.

This week, the Tennessee Department of Education shortened the length of time schools can temporarily go remote. The rollback, officials said, was based on new federal and state guidance halving the recommended isolation time to five days for people testing positive for the coronavirus.

The decision reinforces the focus of Gov. Bill Lee’s administration on keeping Tennessee students in brick-and-mortar schools, even with cases climbing again from COVID’s highly contagious omicron variant.

The state is also in litigation over a new state law that aims to prevent school districts from mandating masks, except when infections reach catastrophic levels.

Nationally, nearly 5% of roughly 100,000 U.S. public schools closed this week during the bumpy start to the new year, according to Burbio, a site tracking closures.

Tennessee got a respite from the virus — of sorts — when heavy snowfall Thursday forced many schools to close and use their days stockpiled for such disruptions. But before the winter weather arrived, the state already was fielding new requests for remote waivers.

By midday Thursday, Commissioner Penny Schwinn had approved all three requests that reached her desk this week. All came from charter schools: Valor Flagship in Nashville and Gestalt Community and Purpose Prep Academy in Memphis.

“Districts also have the option to use stockpile days instead of waivers if they so choose,” said state spokesman Brian Blackley.

Schwinn began granting remote waivers in late August after COVID’s then-emerging delta variant sparked a raft of school closures due to outbreaks among students and staff.

When school leaders worried they’d run out of stockpiled days before winter, the commissioner announced the waiver process. However, she said the option would be narrowly applied for individual classrooms and schools — not entire school systems — “to preserve in-person learning wherever practicable.”

Last fall, she approved 47 of 55 requests for seven-day waivers, including from large districts in Knox and Hamilton counties. Most requests were submitted in September when cases from the delta variant peaked.

Tennessee’s rate of positive COVID cases has accelerated since the first omicron case was confirmed in December. One in every three coronavirus tests reported to the Tennessee Department of Health over the past week has been positive, according to an analysis by The Tennessean.

Memphis students return to class as officials prepare for COVID surge

2022-01-04T01:29:14+00:00

Students in Shelby County Schools returned to classrooms Monday after winter break as district officials prepared to expand in-school COVID testing amid an omicron surge.

Beginning Jan. 17, SCS will test participating students and staff weekly — ramping up from the testing offered every two weeks in collaboration with Poplar health system since the school year started in August.

While the district has been planning to ramp up student and staff testing for months to limit a possible post-holiday season COVID spike, the expansion later this month is coming at a more opportune time than the district could’ve imagined, said John Barker, deputy superintendent for strategic operations and finance.

The Shelby County Health Department on Sunday reported 3,394 COVID cases — the highest number of new cases since the start of the pandemic. And as of Monday, the county recorded 19,166 active cases, 3,647 of which are among children under the age of 18.

“We’re just really, really fortunate to have the money and the personnel and the commitment of everybody who’s participating [in the testing program] to make sure we’re using one more piece in our portfolio to try to stop the spread, especially at this particular time of year,” Barker said Monday.

The ramped-up testing in Shelby County Schools is just one piece of the district’s strategy as families, school staff, and administrators brace for yet another challenging month of pandemic-era school, Barker said.

In a New Year’s Day letter to district families and staff, Superintendent Joris Ray emphasized that the district’s safety protocols — like masking and social distancing when possible — remain in place. He noted state Department of Health data shows that Memphis schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools — districts that have kept mask mandates in place and encouraged vaccines — have had the lowest cumulative case rate among children.

“Masks and vaccinations work and have been proven to help slow the spread of this virus. SCS has led the way for safety through this unprecedented time,” he wrote. “Let’s stay the course.”

In other areas of the U.S., the sharp rise in cases led some school districts, including those in Detroit and Newark, to take learning online and delay a physical return to classrooms until later this week or month.

Staffing shortages, also fueled by rising COVID cases, have also caused schools to shutter. School districts in Wisconsin and Iowa canceled classes on Monday because of a dearth of bus drivers.

And at a Sunday school board meeting in the nearby Collierville, Superintendent Gary Lilly cited staffing shortages as the reason the district should enact a mask mandate. As of Sunday, 89 teachers and staff in the Memphis suburb had either tested positive or were exposed to the virus, the Commercial Appeal reported, and the district only has 60 substitute teachers.

Beth Brown, president of the state’s largest teacher organization, called it “a very stressful beginning to a new semester.”

“We’re being hit with a much more transmissible omicron variant at a time when educators are exhausted and personnel resources are low. And our General Assembly has passed legislation that restricts mask mandates for most school districts,” said Brown, with the Tennessee Education Association.

Brown said she expects another wave of staffing shortages will force district leaders across Tennessee to request state waivers for some schools to shift temporarily to remote learning, similar to the beginning of the school year when the delta variant was surging.

The state waivers, which must be approved by Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, allow remote instruction for seven days for individual classrooms or schools — not necessarily entire districts unless administrators can justify that move.

Although Shelby County Schools has been able to keep its mask requirement after a federal judge ruled it a “reasonable accommodation” to ensure students with disabilities have equal access to education, Barker hopes more parents, guardians and staff members will participate in the district’s testing program.

With more than 25,000 parents and guardians authorizing the district to perform testing on students as of Monday, and about 10% of the district’s student and staff population is tested every week, Shelby County Schools has luckily been able to maintain adequate staffing so far this school year, Barker said.

But Barker encouraged more to join the district’s “preventative” measure. Because the tests are only administered to asymptomatic students and staff, the program has allowed the district to detect cases they wouldn’t have otherwise, limiting spread in school buildings and resulting absences.

“It’s proactive rather than reactive,” Barker said. “This is another step in our mitigation strategies — we have masking, we’ve got vaccinations, we’ve got social distancing. And we also need regular testing.”

The nasal swab test will be available at all Memphis schools, as well as at the Board of Education office at 160 South Hollywood St. in Memphis.

Parents and guardians can sign their children up to be tested on the district website, or by downloading a consent form and returning it to their school.

Marta W. Aldrich contributed to this report.

As omicron concerns mount, Shelby County opens COVID boosters to ages 16 and 17

2021-12-16T23:25:26+00:00

As families and school officials prepare for holiday break amid concerns about a new COVID variant, the Shelby County Health Department announced Thursday that 16- and 17-year-olds are now eligible for booster shots.

Anyone aged 16 and over who received their second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at least six months ago can now receive a third shot, the department said in a news release. Health officials ask teens to bring their vaccination card or record along to the vaccination site, as well as proof of age. Officials emphasized that all children under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Vaccinations are “widely available” in pharmacies across the county, the department said, but teens can also visit a public vaccination clinic. The health department immunization clinic, at 814 Jefferson Ave., is open to ages 5 and over, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., every Monday through Friday, except on Shelby County government holidays.

This weekend, there are also two other public vaccination events:

9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday at Germantown Baptist Church, 9450 Poplar Ave.
10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday at Collage Dance Collective, 505 Tillman St.

To find a vaccination near you, visit vaccines.gov.

The health department’s announcement comes as some schools around the country have opted to extend winter break in anticipation of the more-contagious omicron variant. Schools in Missouri, Washington D.C., and New York City have shut down and started holiday break early due to COVID outbreaks, the Daily Beast reported Thursday. And, in the United Kingdom, where omicron is already surging, scores of schools and colleges are closing early for the holidays.

In Shelby County Schools, COVID cases are on the rise — but not at the peak levels seen in summer and early fall. Last week, 90 students and 28 staff members were infected with COVID, according to the district dashboard. In total, the district has reported nearly 4,000 cases among students and almost 700 cases among staff since the school year began.

Another judge rules Tennessee public schools can continue mask mandates

2021-12-10T22:06:18+00:00

Tennessee public schools may continue requiring masks for now, according to a Friday ruling by a federal judge in Nashville.

The ruling effectively blocks the state’s recently-passed law that is meant to prohibit schools from enacting mask mandates except in catastrophic situations. The law, one product of an October special session convened by Republican lawmakers to blunt COVID safety protocols, has now been blocked or blunted in federal courts in East, Middle, and West Tennessee.

The temporary order will remain in effect while the trial proceeds.

U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr.’s ruling is in response to a lawsuit filed last month by the parents of eight Tennessee students with disabilities. They contend the law doesn’t appropriately protect their children, who are at a higher risk of contracting and getting serious complications from the virus. Universal masking inside school buildings, the parents argued, is a reasonable accommodation.

Crenshaw agreed. In his 54-page ruling, Crenshaw wrote that the Tennessee law not only fails to protect all students — let alone those with disabilities — but it also does not serve the public’s best interest.

Crenshaw called the law an obstacle that prevents school districts from complying with federal Americans with Disability Law and providing “reasonable modifications in the COVID-19 era that would allow disabled children to safely enter the schoolhouse and receive an education.”

“It is in the public’s best interest to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Tennessee’s schools,” he wrote. “Defendants have proffered absolutely nothing to suggest that any harm would come from allowing school districts to determine what is best for their schools, just as they did prior to the enactment of Title 14.”

The lawsuit against Gov. Bill Lee and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn also moves that the state’s rollback of mask mandates has put public schools in an “impossible” financial situation. On one hand, districts could lose state funds if they don’t follow state law. On the other hand, they risk losing federal aid if they don’t comply with federal disability law.

Crenshaw said the law “honors the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act more in its breach than its observance.”

Friday’s ruling comes about a month after Lee signed the COVID legislation package into law, leading to mask confusion across the state as school officials, teachers, and families juggled often conflicting mandate orders.

This is the latest ruling to uphold that universal masking at schools is a reasonable modification to protect students with disabilities, and ensure they have equal access to education. At a November hearing in Memphis, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District said Shelby County can enforce its health ordinances regardless of any rule or regulation “that purportedly restrains its ability to provide reasonable accommodations to schools.”

And in Knox County, a federal judge’s decision to keep school mask mandates will remain in place until the conclusion of the lawsuit, which could take months or possibly longer as the court case plays out.

During the legal wrangling, mask mandates have remained in place in the state’s two largest school districts — Memphis and Nashville — but many other districts that started the school year with mask mandates have dropped them.

Memphis school officials are reviewing COVID protocols after health department softens quarantines

2021-12-02T10:00:00+00:00

Memphis school officials are reviewing COVID policies after the Shelby County Health Department softened quarantine guidelines.

In the newest health order, which took effect Wednesday, the health department said quarantine is only required for those diagnosed with COVID. Shelby County Schools’ current policy is that those diagnosed and exposed should quarantine.

The health department’s order puts Shelby County in closer alignment with new state laws that attempt to dial back local health officials’ ability to enact COVID restrictions. Two federal judges, meanwhile, have issued orders that blunt the state laws. Unmasked students during a pandemic pose a health risk to children with compromised immune systems, who are protected by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, lawsuits argue.

Since the school year began in August, the district has required students and staff identified as close contacts to quarantine for 10 days from the last date of contact with the COVID positive person. If the student or staff member exhibits no symptoms for seven days and tests negative, the quarantine period is shortened to seven days.

School quarantines have been one of the largest obstacles families and educators have faced since the pandemic began. Parents have bemoaned the challenges of juggling their children’s at-home learning with their own full-time work, and teachers have struggled to ensure children continue learning from home.

In a survey of state educators, 65% of responding teachers who taught in person last school year said adapting to mandated student and staff quarantines was a challenge. Forty percent of respondents said quarantine was the biggest challenge they faced. Teachers also opposed using sick days for mandatory quarantines, a policy that the district changed earlier this year in response.

In a Tuesday statement, a Shelby County Schools spokesperson said administrators are conducting an internal review of COVID policies. In the meantime, though, families and district staff continue to follow the same pandemic protocols they have all school year.

Like Shelby County Schools, Metro Nashville Public Schools continues to require masks, but as of earlier this month no longer requires students and staff to quarantine if they are asymptomatic after coming into close contact with a COVID-positive person.

Dr. Sandy Arnold, division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, isn’t especially worried about districts like Nashville softening quarantine rules — considering the disruption it causes children and their families.

However, Arnold is worried about districts that have opted to drop both mask and quarantine requirements at the same time.

Most suburban Memphis school districts are not requiring masks. In Germantown, the only suburban district in the area that continues to mandate masks, the school board is debating how it should proceed. Numerous residents have complained about the masking policy, the Daily Memphian reported Tuesday.

Arnold suggested it would be safer for school officials to drop school quarantines first, and wait to lift mask mandates until at least after the holidays, when cases are likely to spike from increased indoor social gatherings.

In the Memphis area, Arnold said, both might be bad ideas because of the community’s low vaccination rates, especially among school-age children who only recently were cleared to receive the Pfizer vaccine. In total, around 48% of Shelby County residents have been fully vaccinated, according to Wednesday data from the health department. And as of last Thursday, the last time the department released its weekly numbers, fewer than 10% of children ages 5-11 and just under 50% of children ages 12-17 have gotten at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.

Arnold urged parents to vaccinate their children — and themselves.

“If we had higher vaccination rates, I’d be a lot less worried about this,” Arnold said. “It’s concerning. Only time will tell us what happens.”

She added: “I just hope I don’t see any kids on ventilators because of this.”

High school graduation rate dips for second straight year in Tennessee

2021-11-24T00:50:11+00:00

Tennessee’s high school graduation rate has declined again, according to new data released Tuesday.

About 88.7% of public school students in the Class of 2021 graduated on time this spring, down almost a full percentage point from 2020, according the state education department.

The rate also fell by the slightest of margins the prior year. That decline, however, came after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the state to relax graduation requirements soon after the virus emerged — and likely would have been more pronounced without the emergency rule.

While the 1 percentage point slide over two years may not sound like much, it pulls back on nearly a decade of hard-fought, incremental increases totaling more than 4 percentage points under an initiative prioritized by former Gov. Bill Haslam. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, Tennessee’s graduation rate peaked at 89.7%.

(Scroll to the bottom of this page to look up how your local high school did in 2021.)

The pandemic’s impact on graduation rates will become clearer in the years to come and will hinge on how well students and schools recover from the disruption. Other data points to reason for concern. For example, state test scores from this spring showed a dramatic reversal of Tennessee’s previous academic gains.

In a statement, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn vowed to improve graduation rates with new learning initiatives that already have begun. Tennessee launched summer camps and tutoring programs this year and also provides workshops to prepare high school students to take the ACT college preparatory test.

“The department was prepared for the negative impacts of the pandemic on our statewide graduation rate, but we are confident that ... we can resume the upward trajectory in graduation rate and ensure we are preparing Tennessee students for success,” Schwinn said.

Last year, overall graduation numbers stayed steady nationally. However, the number of graduates immediately enrolling in college declined sharply, especially interrupting the college plans of students who graduated from high-poverty schools, according to a recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Just as with Tennessee’s first pandemic test results, this year’s graduation data showed higher-than-average declines among students who are considered the most vulnerable.

The graduation rate dropped by almost 2 percentage points to 80.8% for students who are considered economically disadvantaged — and to 71.3% for students with disabilities.

Three of Tennessee’s four urban school districts saw declines, while Memphis-based Shelby County Schools stayed steady at 77.7%. Rates dropped by 1.5 percentage points to 85.5% for Hamilton County Schools; 1.2 percentage points to 81.1% for Metro Nashville Public Schools; and 1 percentage point to 90% for Knox County Schools.

But there were a few bright spots involving the 63,283 graduates in Tennessee’s Class of 2021.

The state reported 37 districts improved their graduation rates from 2020 to 2021. And 37 districts saw 95% or more of their high school seniors earn their diplomas within four years.

Below, find your high school’s graduation rate in our searchable list.

School	System	Graduation rate	Change from 2020
Anderson County High School	Anderson County	95.7%	-1.5
Clinton High School	Anderson County	94.0%	0.5
Oak Ridge High School	Oak Ridge	90.9%	-1.6
Cascade High School	Bedford County	98.6%	0.3
Shelbyville Central High School	Bedford County	87.5%	-1.1
Community High School	Bedford County	93.5%	-2.2
Big Sandy School	Benton County	93.8%	-0.6
Camden Central High School	Benton County	-	-
Bledsoe County High School	Bledsoe County	92.3%	-0.7
Heritage High School	Blount County	94.0%	-0.2
Samuel Everett School of Innovation	Blount County	-	-
William Blount High School	Blount County	93.4%	-0.4
Alcoa High School	Alcoa	-	-
Maryville High School	Maryville	96.1%	-0.1
Bradley Central High School	Bradley County	94.7%	3.1
North Cleveland GOAL Academy	Bradley County	83.3%	-9.8
Walker Valley High School	Bradley County	97.4%	-1.4
Bradley County Virtual School	Bradley County	-	-
Cleveland High	Cleveland	90.9%	2.5
Campbell County Comprehensive High School	Campbell County	91.1%	-3.8
Jellico High School	Campbell County	85.7%	7.8
Cannon County High School	Cannon County	86.9%	-7.1
East Side Elementary	Cannon County	-	-
Carroll Co Tech Center	Carroll County	-	-
Central High School	Hollow Rock - Bruceton	89.5%	-5.6
Huntingdon High School	Huntingdon Special School District	-	-
McKenzie High School	McKenzie	94.0%	-4.9
Clarksburg School	South Carroll	-	-
West Carroll Junior/Senior High School	West Carroll Sp Dist	98.6%	-
Carter County Online Academy	Carter County	-	-
Cloudland High School	Carter County	93.1%	2.5
Hampton High School	Carter County	94.3%	1.6
Happy Valley High School	Carter County	85.5%	4.6
Unaka High School	Carter County	87.8%	-5.8
Elizabethton High School	Elizabethton	93.0%	1.5
Cheatham Co Central	Cheatham County	89.2%	-4.2
Harpeth High School	Cheatham County	89.7%	-1.7
Sycamore High School	Cheatham County	84.8%	-8.6
Riverside Academy	Cheatham County	-	-
Chester County High School	Chester County	93.3%	-2.8
Cumberland Gap High School	Claiborne County	98.4%	-
Claiborne High School	Claiborne County	91.3%	-2.8
Clay County High School	Clay County	97.4%	-1.1
Cocke Co High School	Cocke County	92.4%	0.6
Cosby High School	Cocke County	94.9%	-2.9
Coffee County Central High School	Coffee County	92.5%	-0.8
Coffee County Raider Academy	Coffee County	-	-
Tullahoma High School	Tullahoma	90.4%	-2.7
Crockett County High School	Crockett County	94.1%	-1.7
Cumberland County High School	Cumberland County	91.7%	-1.9
North Cumberland Elementary	Cumberland County	-	-
Stone Memorial High School	Cumberland County	89.2%	-4.5
The Phoenix School	Cumberland County	81.3%	-1.5
MNPS Virtual School	Davidson County	96.2%	11.2
Antioch High School	Davidson County	74.8%	-6.3
Nashville Big Picture High School	Davidson County	-	-
Cane Ridge High School	Davidson County	81.3%	-2.2
East Nashville Magnet High School	Davidson County	97.5%	-0.8
Glencliff High School	Davidson County	61.2%	-1.6
Harris-Hillman Special Education	Davidson County	-	-
Hillsboro High	Davidson County	89.8%	0.2
Hillwood High	Davidson County	85.2%	-0.5
Hume - Fogg High	Davidson County	-	-
Hunters Lane High	Davidson County	81.0%	0.9
John Overton High	Davidson County	83.8%	3.7
Middle College High	Davidson County	-	-
Cora Howe School	Davidson County	-	-
Maplewood High	Davidson County	69.5%	0.3
Martin Luther King Jr School	Davidson County	-	-
McGavock High	Davidson County	76.7%	-2.9
Nashville School Of The Arts	Davidson County	93.3%	-0.9
Pearl-Cohn High	Davidson County	79.7%	3.7
The Academy at Opry Mills	Davidson County	75.9%	-11.8
The Academy at Old Cockrill	Davidson County	68.4%	-7.2
Stratford STEM Magnet School	Davidson County	76.3%	-4.2
Whites Creek High	Davidson County	82.7%	5
The Academy at Hickory Hollow	Davidson County	79.0%	-8.8
Transitions at Bass	Davidson County	-	-
The Cohn Learning Center	Davidson County	-	-
Lead Academy	Davidson County	90.0%	-3.3
KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School	Davidson County	89.4%	4.3
LEAD Southeast	Davidson County	92.6%	-
Intrepid College Preparatory Charter School	Davidson County	78.6%	-
Knowledge Academies High School	Davidson County	86.2%	-5.7
STEM Prep High School	Davidson County	96.2%	0.2
RePublic High School	Davidson County	86.5%	-3.6
Riverside High School	Decatur County	95.9%	-0.7
De Kalb County High School	DeKalb County	83.6%	-8.3
Creek Wood High School	Dickson County	94.3%	-1.4
Dickson County High School	Dickson County	93.9%	-1.6
Burns Middle School	Dickson County	-	-
Dyer County High School	Dyer County	94.7%	-2.7
Dyersburg High School	Dyersburg	92.3%	-4
Fayette Ware Comprehensive High School	Fayette County Public Schools	90.5%	0.2
Clarkrange High School	Fentress County	97.4%	-1
Franklin Co High School	Franklin County	91.9%	-1.2
Huntland School	Franklin County	98.5%	-0.4
Humboldt Junior/Senior High School	Humboldt City Schools	87.1%	4.4
Milan High School	Milan	98.1%	0.3
Peabody High School	Trenton	-	-
Bradford High School	Bradford	92.3%	-1.5
Gibson County High School	Gibson Co Sp Dist	92.9%	-0.4
South Gibson County High School	Gibson Co Sp Dist	97.7%	0.9
Giles Co High School	Giles County	86.5%	-7.7
Richland School	Giles County	95.5%	-3.3
Grainger High School	Grainger County	94.7%	1.6
Washburn School	Grainger County	-	-
Grainger Academy	Grainger County	88.9%	7.9
Chuckey Doak High School	Greene County	93.3%	-1.1
North Greene High School	Greene County	95.7%	-0.2
South Greene High School	Greene County	91.7%	-5.2
West Greene High School	Greene County	85.2%	-9.6
Greeneville High School	Greeneville	98.4%	2.2
Grundy County High School	Grundy County	89.0%	-4.1
Morristown East High	Hamblen County	92.2%	-3.7
Morristown West High	Hamblen County	89.0%	-5.1
Brainerd High School	Hamilton County	74.8%	2.9
Central High School	Hamilton County	79.9%	-4.4
Chatt High Center For Creative Arts	Hamilton County	-	-
Chattanooga School For Arts And Sciences Upper	Hamilton County	99.0%	-
East Hamilton High School	Hamilton County	89.9%	0.4
East Ridge High School	Hamilton County	87.2%	-0.4
Hamilton County Collegiate High at Chattanooga State	Hamilton County	98.5%	-
Hixson High School	Hamilton County	81.6%	-1.9
The Howard School	Hamilton County	66.8%	-6.1
Ooltewah High School	Hamilton County	87.1%	-0.7
Lookout Valley Middle / High School	Hamilton County	94.6%	0
Red Bank High School	Hamilton County	86.4%	5.6
Sale Creek Middle / High School	Hamilton County	95.5%	3.1
Sequoyah High School	Hamilton County	89.7%	4
Signal Mountain Middle/High School	Hamilton County	98.3%	0.3
Soddy Daisy High School	Hamilton County	85.8%	-4.2
Tyner Academy	Hamilton County	84.4%	-8.3
Hamilton County Virtual School	Hamilton County	53.8%	-
STEM School Chattanooga	Hamilton County	98.5%	-
Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy	Hamilton County	-	-
Ivy Academy Inc.	Hamilton County	90.9%	-
Hancock High School	Hancock County	90.7%	-2.6
Central High School	Hardeman County Schools	93.2%	7
Middleton High School	Hardeman County Schools	89.2%	-1.5
Hardin County High School	Hardin County	92.7%	0.9
Cherokee High School	Hawkins County	92.5%	-2.8
Clinch School	Hawkins County	-	-
Volunteer High School	Hawkins County	94.8%	-2.1
Haywood High School	Haywood County	92.0%	1.5
Lexington High School	Henderson County	91.6%	-5.9
Scotts Hill High School	Henderson County	98.1%	0.8
Henry Co High School	Henry County	98.6%	0.7
Henry County Virtual Academy	Henry County	-	-
East Hickman High School	Hickman County	91.3%	0.6
Hickman County Learning Academy	Hickman County	-	-
Hickman Co Sr High School	Hickman County	96.4%	-0.1
Houston Co Middle School	Houston County	-	-
Houston Co High School	Houston County	90.8%	-3
Mc Ewen High School	Humphreys County	97.2%	-0.2
Waverly Central High School	Humphreys County	91.5%	-3.3
Jackson County High School	Jackson County	88.5%	7.1
Jefferson Co High School	Jefferson County	96.0%	0.1
Johnson Co High School	Johnson County	90.7%	-5.5
Austin East High/Magnet	Knox County	75.2%	-3
Bearden High School	Knox County	93.5%	3.1
Carter High School	Knox County	94.0%	-2.5
Central High School	Knox County	77.0%	-5.6
South Doyle High School	Knox County	78.2%	-7.9
Farragut High School	Knox County	97.5%	-0.1
Fulton High School	Knox County	76.4%	-3.9
Gibbs High School	Knox County	90.0%	-4.1
Halls High School	Knox County	95.8%	1.2
Hardin Valley Academy	Knox County	93.2%	-2.8
Karns Middle School	Knox County	-	-
Karns High School	Knox County	89.4%	-4.1
Knox Adaptive Education Center	Knox County	41.7%	29.2
Powell High School	Knox County	93.6%	-0.4
Ft Sanders Education Development Center	Knox County	-	-
West High School	Knox County	91.1%	-0.1
Dr. Paul L. Kelley Volunteer Academy	Knox County	88.7%	9.7
L N STEM Academy	Knox County	98.5%	-
Career Magnet Academy	Knox County	98.2%	-0.3
Lake Co High School	Lake County	82.0%	-4
Halls High School	Lauderdale County	-	-
Ripley High School	Lauderdale County	94.6%	-3.3
Lawrence Co High School	Lawrence County	93.3%	-2.1
Loretto High School	Lawrence County	-	-
Pioneer Virtual Academy	Lawrence County	-	-
Summertown High School	Lawrence County	96.6%	0.9
Lewis Co High School	Lewis County	98.1%	6.8
Lincoln County High School	Lincoln County	93.9%	-1.7
Lincoln Central Academy	Lincoln County	83.3%	-
Fayetteville High School	Fayetteville	97.6%	-
Greenback School	Loudon County	92.7%	-5.6
Loudon High School	Loudon County	93.6%	-2.6
Lenoir City High School	Lenoir City	89.9%	-2.1
Central High School	McMinn County	98.3%	1.4
McMinn High School	McMinn County	89.3%	3.4
Adamsville High School	McNairy County	98.6%	2.1
McNairy Central High School	McNairy County	93.3%	-2.1
Macon County High School	Macon County	88.0%	0.7
Red Boiling Springs School	Macon County	95.1%	2.8
Jackson Central-Merry Early College High	Madison County	-	-
Liberty Technology Magnet High School	Madison County	73.1%	-5.7
Madison Academic Magnet High School	Madison County	-	-
North Side High School	Madison County	85.6%	-2
South Side High School	Madison County	91.0%	0.6
Marion Co High School	Marion County	88.4%	-0.9
South Pittsburg High School	Marion County	88.6%	-3.9
Whitwell High School	Marion County	88.2%	0.6
Marion Virtual High School	Marion County	-	-
Richard Hardy Memorial School	Richard City	85.7%	4.9
Cornersville School	Marshall County	89.6%	-6.3
Forrest School	Marshall County	93.9%	-3.6
Marshall Co High School	Marshall County	90.5%	-1.4
Columbia Central High School	Maury County	79.7%	-7
Culleoka Unit School	Maury County	88.6%	-4.6
Hampshire Unit School	Maury County	87.9%	-4.7
Mt Pleasant High School	Maury County	91.1%	7.9
Santa Fe Unit School	Maury County	94.6%	3.3
Spring Hill High School	Maury County	92.4%	-0.5
Virtual Academy of Maury County	Maury County	76.5%	-
Meigs County High School	Meigs County	97.4%	-
Sequoyah High School	Monroe County	81.3%	-11.1
Sweetwater High School	Monroe County	90.9%	-3.8
Tellico Plains High School	Monroe County	88.1%	-8.2
Kenwood High	Montgomery County	89.4%	-1.7
Montgomery Central High	Montgomery County	93.0%	-1
Clarksville High	Montgomery County	93.3%	-2.5
Northeast High	Montgomery County	90.8%	-2.5
Northwest High	Montgomery County	94.0%	2
Rossview High	Montgomery County	96.3%	-2.3
Middle College @ Austin Peay State University	Montgomery County	-	-
West Creek High	Montgomery County	92.0%	-1.8
Moore County High School	Moore County	90.2%	-8
Central High School	Morgan County	95.7%	-
Coalfield School	Morgan County	-	-
Morgan County Career and Technical Center	Morgan County	96.3%	-
Oakdale School	Morgan County	-	-
Sunbright School	Morgan County	-	-
Obion County Central High School	Obion County	88.6%	-3.8
South Fulton Middle / High School	Obion County	94.2%	3.5
Union City High School	Union City	83.2%	-9.1
Livingston Academy	Overton County	90.5%	-0.1
Perry County High School	Perry County	83.9%	-14.7
Perry County Virtual School	Perry County	-	-
Pickett Co High School	Pickett County	97.7%	-
Copper Basin High School	Polk County	93.2%	-4.8
Polk County High School	Polk County	86.9%	-6.6
VITAL: Upper Cumberland e-Learning Network	Putnam County	-	-
Cookeville High School	Putnam County	92.2%	2.3
Monterey High School	Putnam County	90.6%	-4.3
Upperman High School	Putnam County	91.1%	-0.7
Rhea County High School	Rhea County Department of Education	82.9%	-6.3
Harriman High School	Roane County	88.2%	-10.6
Midway High School	Roane County	98.1%	4.5
Oliver Springs High School	Roane County	91.7%	-5
Roane County High School	Roane County	98.8%	0.1
Midtown Educational Center	Roane County	56.6%	-17.9
Rockwood High School	Roane County	91.3%	-5.9
East Robertson High School	Robertson County	97.7%	0.7
Greenbrier High School	Robertson County	94.6%	4.3
Jo Byrns High School	Robertson County	96.0%	-0.6
Springfield High School	Robertson County	90.5%	-4.2
White House Heritage High School	Robertson County	94.5%	-1.9
Robertson Co. Virtual School	Robertson County	-	-
Robertson County Phoenix Academy	Robertson County	76.9%	-4.1
Tennessee Connections Academy 9-12	Robertson County	67.4%	-16.9
Blackman High School	Rutherford County	93.3%	-1.8
Central Magnet School	Rutherford County	-	-
Eagleville School	Rutherford County	-	-
Holloway High School	Rutherford County	95.8%	-1
Lavergne High School	Rutherford County	91.7%	0.1
Oakland High School	Rutherford County	95.7%	2
Riverdale High School	Rutherford County	92.7%	-4.1
Rockvale High School	Rutherford County	95.3%	8.9
Rutherford County Virtual School	Rutherford County	-	-
Smyrna High School	Rutherford County	96.1%	0.3
Siegel High School	Rutherford County	95.7%	-2.5
Stewarts Creek High School	Rutherford County	96.8%	0.1
Scott High School	Scott County	93.5%	-1.2
Oneida High School	Oneida	96.9%	-1.1
Sequatchie Co High School	Sequatchie County	84.4%	-9.4
Gatlinburg Pittman High	Sevier County	-	-
Northview Senior Academy	Sevier County	96.3%	-0.5
Northview Junior Academy	Sevier County	-	-
Pigeon Forge High School	Sevier County	95.9%	1.2
Gary Hardin Academy	Sevier County	69.7%	7.2
Sevier County High School	Sevier County	93.8%	0.3
Seymour High School	Sevier County	97.6%	3.3
Bolton High	Shelby County	74.7%	-11.3
Germantown High	Shelby County	93.7%	-3.6
Southwind High	Shelby County	79.9%	-7
Avon School	Shelby County	-	-
B. T. Washington High	Shelby County	83.3%	-3.1
Central High	Shelby County	86.5%	5.1
Cordova High School	Shelby County	78.8%	-6.5
Craigmont High	Shelby County	58.6%	-16.7
Douglass High	Shelby County	77.3%	-1.6
East High	Shelby County	96.1%	12
Hamilton High	Shelby County	59.4%	-1.8
Hollis F. Price Middle College	Shelby County	96.4%	0.9
Kingsbury High	Shelby County	71.3%	5.8
Kirby High	Shelby County	71.8%	-5.2
Manassas High	Shelby County	73.0%	7.8
Melrose High	Shelby County	65.2%	-2.2
Middle College High	Shelby County	95.8%	-
Mitchell High	Shelby County	82.8%	3.2
Oakhaven High	Shelby County	85.9%	13.2
Overton High	Shelby County	76.3%	0.4
Raleigh-Egypt High	Shelby County	81.0%	8.7
Ridgeway High	Shelby County	80.1%	-3
Sheffield High	Shelby County	53.7%	5.2
Shrine School	Shelby County	-	-
Trezevant High	Shelby County	63.0%	0.2
Westwood High	Shelby County	76.5%	0.5
White Station High	Shelby County	84.9%	-1.9
Whitehaven High	Shelby County	90.4%	3
Wooddale High	Shelby County	71.3%	5.5
Northwest Prep Academy	Shelby County	59.0%	-2.5
Carver College and Career Academy	Shelby County	-	-
Memphis Virtual School	Shelby County	54.5%	7.5
DuBois High School of Arts Technology	Shelby County	-	-
DuBois High of Leadership Public Policy	Shelby County	-	-
KIPP Memphis Collegiate High School	Shelby County	78.7%	-15.3
City University School Of Liberal Arts	Shelby County	91.1%	-2.3
Memphis Academy Of Science Engineering Middle/High	Shelby County	94.7%	-3.1
Power Center Academy High School	Shelby County	93.3%	-4.5
Memphis Academy of Health Sciences High School	Shelby County	86.1%	0.4
Memphis Business Academy High School	Shelby County	90.8%	5.5
Soulsville Charter School	Shelby County	96.7%	0
Freedom Preparatory Academy Flagship	Shelby County	85.1%	-10.4
Memphis School of Excellence	Shelby County	-	-
Memphis Rise Academy	Shelby County	88.2%	-
Gateway University	Shelby County	-	-
Southwest Early College High School	Shelby County	-	-
Compass Community School Midtown Campus	Shelby County	97.1%	-0.1
Arlington High	Arlington	96.2%	1.3
Bartlett High School	Bartlett	96.0%	-0.1
Collierville High School	Collierville	95.8%	-0.5
Houston High School	Germantown	91.4%	-3.2
Millington Central High School	Millington Municipal Schools	85.6%	-1.7
Gordonsville High School	Smith County	-	-
Smith County High School	Smith County	90.6%	-1.2
Stewart Co High School	Stewart County	95.8%	-2
Sullivan Central High School	Sullivan County	89.8%	-5.5
Sullivan East High School	Sullivan County	97.3%	5.1
Sullivan North High School	Sullivan County	93.6%	-0.6
Sullivan South High School	Sullivan County	96.4%	-1.7
Tennessee High School	Bristol	90.2%	-2.9
Tennessee Online Public School	Bristol	96.4%	-1
Dobyns - Bennett High School	Kingsport	94.7%	0.4
Beech Sr High School	Sumner County	94.9%	0
Gallatin Senior High School	Sumner County	93.9%	-1
Hendersonville High School	Sumner County	92.2%	-2.7
Merrol Hyde Magnet School	Sumner County	-	-
Portland High School	Sumner County	95.7%	2
E B Wilson	Sumner County	95.7%	-
Station Camp High School	Sumner County	97.1%	-0.5
Westmoreland High School	Sumner County	97.8%	-
White House High School	Sumner County	89.1%	-3.8
Sumner County Middle College High School	Sumner County	-	-
Sumner County Middle Technical College High School at Portla	Sumner County	-	-
Brighton High School	Tipton County	90.2%	-5.4
Covington High School	Tipton County	87.4%	-7.2
Munford High School	Tipton County	93.9%	-2
Tipton County Alternative Learning Center	Tipton County	-	-
Trousdale Co High School	Trousdale County	98.8%	1.2
Unicoi Co High School	Unicoi County	91.3%	-2.4
Union County Alternative Center	Union County	-	-
Union County High School	Union County	93.6%	-2.3
Tennessee Virtual High School	Union County	10.0%	-
Van Buren Co High School	Van Buren County	96.6%	1.8
Warren County High School	Warren County	90.7%	-4.6
Daniel Boone High School	Washington County	93.7%	-3.8
David Crockett High School	Washington County	89.8%	-5.1
University School	Washington County	-	-
Tennessee Virtual Learning Academy	Washington County	-	-
Science Hill High School	Johnson City	90.1%	-1.7
Collinwood High School	Wayne County	95.7%	0.2
Frank Hughes School	Wayne County	-	-
Wayne County High School	Wayne County	98.4%	7.6
Wayne County Virtual School	Wayne County	-	-
Waynesboro Middle School	Wayne County	-	-
Dresden High School	Weakley County	94.8%	-0.3
Gleason School	Weakley County	-	-
Greenfield School	Weakley County	93.5%	-
Westview High School	Weakley County	90.9%	-0.1
White County High School	White County	92.5%	-1.7
Brentwood High School	Williamson County	96.4%	-1.8
Centennial High School	Williamson County	95.2%	1.7
Fairview High School	Williamson County	95.0%	6.6
Franklin High School	Williamson County	96.2%	-0.1
Fred J Page High School	Williamson County	97.0%	0.1
Heritage Middle School	Williamson County	-	-
Independence High School	Williamson County	94.5%	-0.2
Longview Elementary School	Williamson County	-	-
Renaissance High School	Williamson County	-	-
Nolensville High School	Williamson County	98.4%	1.7
Ravenwood High School	Williamson County	98.2%	0.4
Summit High School	Williamson County	95.3%	-1.8
Green Hill High School	Wilson County	98.1%	-
Lebanon High School	Wilson County	93.9%	-0.6
Mt. Juliet High School	Wilson County	98.0%	0
Watertown High School	Wilson County	95.2%	-1.1
Wilson Central High School	Wilson County	96.6%	-1
Barry Tatum Academy	Wilson County	-	-
Alvin C. York Institute	Alvin C York Institute	96.3%	3.4
Tenn School For Blind	Tennessee School for Blind	10.0%	-5.8
Tennessee School for the Deaf Upper School	Tennessee Schools for the Deaf	70.6%	30.6
Gateway to Independence	Department Of Children's Services Education Division	-	-
Wilder Youth Development Center	Department Of Children's Services Education Division	19.7%	1.5
DCS Affiliated Schools	Department Of Children's Services Education Division	12.9%	2.1
GRAD Academy Memphis	Achievement School District	-	-
Pathways in Education - TN	Achievement School District	7.3%	0.8
Pathways in Education - Whitehaven	Achievement School District	-	-
Humes Preparatory Academy Middle School	Achievement School District	-	-
Fairley High School	Achievement School District	61.7%	-15.9
Martin Luther King Preparatory High School	Achievement School District	56.3%	-7.7
Hillcrest High School	Achievement School District	48.3%	-13
Bluff City High School	Tennessee State Board of Education	78.5%	-

2021 Tennessee graduation rates

Thomas Wilburn / Chalkbeat

‘One step closer to normal’: Memphis school vaccine clinic for children ages 5-11 brings excitement, relief

2021-11-20T01:02:21+00:00

Since her parents were vaccinated in May, Rosie McCade has been looking forward to when she, too, would be protected from COVID and able to get back into a classroom for the first time since the pandemic began in March 2020.

On Friday, that day finally came — but Rosie’s excitement wasn’t evident in the moment. As the nurse brought a needle to Rosie’s left arm, she closed her eyes and cringed in preparation, while her mom, Kim Ryan, cheered her on and recorded the moment on video.

Thirty seconds later, though, Rosie declared, “it wasn’t that bad.”

“It’s one step closer to back to normal,” Ryan said with a sigh of relief, smiling at her daughter. “It’s an awesome feeling to know we’re one step closer to getting her back in real school, in a classroom.”

Rosie was one of hundreds of children, accompanied by their parents, lining up for their first dose of the COVID vaccine Friday afternoon at the Shelby County Schools Board of Education building. The vaccination site, a collaboration between the Shelby County Health Department and Shelby County Schools, comes nearly three weeks after U.S. health officials approved Pfizer’s COVID shot for children between the age of 5 and 11.

For district administrators, local health officials, parents, and students alike, Friday’s vaccination clinic marked a momentous day during the third school year impacted by the pandemic.

Memphis follows several of the nation’s largest school districts that jumped to offer vaccinations to thousands of students in school clinic settings. Two days after federal officials gave emergency clearance for child vaccinations, New York City public schools announced vaccine clinics for the following week. And, both Chicago and Denver public schools canceled classes for a day to encourage students to get the shot.

About 5% of Shelby County’s 5-11 population are vaccinated so far, said Dr. Michelle Taylor, director of the Shelby County Health Department. While it’s a solid start, events like the one on Friday are key to giving children another layer of protection against the virus, she said.

With the challenges COVID has thrown at schools and families, it was fitting for the district to host a vaccination clinic, said Patricia Bafford, district senior director of health services.

“This is a safe place for families, who already have relationships with their schools,” Bafford said, noting the district and health department are already talking about hosting another clinic. “There’s a lot of excitement, knowing we can do this for our families.”

The start of this school year in August marked the first time the majority of the Memphis district’s 110,000-some students returned to in-person school, after nearly a year and a half of mostly virtual learning. But the first several months of the school year have been a rollercoaster of elevated pediatric COVID cases during the statewide surge, whiplash from ongoing political battles over school mask mandates, and educational chaos in quarantine, as educators struggled to teach remotely, under state online learning restrictions, and parents juggled full-time jobs with tutoring.

Minutes after two of Miria Hendrickson’s daughters got vaccinated, “thankful” was the first word that came to her mind.

The last two school years brought a total upheaval for Hendrickson’s family. With her two daughters, 6-year-old Marisabela and 8-year-old Evangelina, at home with her five days a week all last school year, Hendrickson had to send her 3-year-old to full-time daycare. Hendrickson, a former educator, wasn’t able to care for her youngest child while teaching her two oldest children, she said.

While it’s been great to see Evangelina and Marisabela return to University Campus School this year, Hendrickson said, it hasn’t been without worry — making the vaccination all the more exciting. With her third child at home, and another baby on the way, Hendrickson and her husband are grateful two of their children are better protected, and are less likely to bring the virus home.

For Kim Ryan and her daughter, Friday was significant — because it means Rosie soon may be able to return to a classroom. Ryan and her husband made the difficult decision to enroll her in Memphis Virtual School this year, as they felt the threat of COVID remained too great.

Although virtual school is going well, Rosie is excited to get back in school. She misses her classroom, friends, and teachers.

“It’d be a lot easier to learn in a classroom rather than on a laptop,” Rosie said.

While none of it has been easy, Ryan is just glad to see her daughter happy, and on her way back to school.

“She’s been waiting for this day for a long time,” she said.

‘Mask whiplash’ hits Tennessee students adjusting to conflicting mandate orders

2021-11-18T23:51:57+00:00

After more than a year of mask-wearing in her school, Sam Whittier’s 9-year-old daughter was excited to see her teacher’s smile this week without a face covering.

But two days after Gov. Bill Lee signed a law to essentially ban mask mandates in Tennessee public schools as of Nov. 12, a federal judge blocked the ban based on a legal complaint that the statute violates federal disability law.

A day later, the Whittiers’ school board in Williamson County voted to lift its mask mandate anyway, based on declining COVID-19 cases.

“My daughter went from feeling very excited, to very let down, to very happy, all in a matter of days,” said Whittier of the emotional roller-coaster from flip-flopping directives that he calls “mask whiplash.”

Battles over school mask mandates are playing out weekly in school board meetings and courtrooms, but it’s the students and their families who must adjust on the fly to the changing orders.

“It feels like this isn’t about common sense or mitigating the virus anymore,” said Whittier, a father of three children in public schools south of Nashville. “It’s become a political power struggle among adults, and unfortunately, our kids are caught in the middle.”

The rules could change still again for his kids’ schools.

In Nashville, U.S. District Court Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. is set to hear arguments Friday in the lawsuit filed by the parents of eight Tennessee children with disabilities who want the state law’s masking provisions struck down. They say universal masking in schools is a reasonable accommodation for their children, who are more susceptible to catching the virus, and that the new law doesn’t adequately protect them.

The lawsuit also claims the state’s rollback of mask mandates has put public schools in an “impossible” financial situation, since districts risk losing state funds if they don’t comply with the state law, but could lose federal aid if they don’t follow federal disability law.

A ruling is expected after Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, families are generally sticking with what they’re told by school administrators. But there’s confusion there, too, as district staff try to untangle legal questions created by the new state law, orders from local health officials, and rulings from federal judges in four separate Tennessee cases.

This week near Memphis, five suburban school districts switched from universal masking to optional face coverings, defying orders from the local health department and another federal judge’s ruling that health officials still have authority to issue mask mandates.

“It’s chaos,” said Charles Lampkin, a Memphis dad and pastor who worries about long-term social and emotional impact to his six children attending a mix of public and private schools in Shelby County.

“The kids are watching all the arguing and bickering. They’re the ones who are being hurt the most,” he said.

Lampkin recounted two recent conversations with his sons.

His 12-year-old asked how young people are supposed to know the right thing to do when adults can’t agree on something as simple as whether to wear a mask to keep the virus from spreading.

His 10-year-old, meanwhile, vowed that, when he grows up, he “won’t put kids in these kinds of situations where they don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

“It blew me away,” Lampkin said of the talks. “This whole pandemic has been traumatic for our kids, and we adults need to be asking ourselves whether we are easing the blow for them or making it more profound. With all the fussing and quarreling, I’m afraid it’s the latter.”

Wearing a mask in school remains one of the most polarizing issues of the pandemic, contributing to the social and emotional toll on kids who may also be behind academically due to disruptions to their education.

Therapists are seeing more cases of depression and anxiety among school-age children, many of whom are trying to process mixed messages about masking, said Stacie Hopkins, director of a child and adolescent treatment unit on the outskirts of Memphis through Lakeside Behavioral Health System.

“Children are faced with taking sides over how their parents may view the COVID policies,” she said. “Some children have suffered panic attacks because they fear being exposed [to the virus] by a classmate who is not wearing a mask.”

Hopkins urges adults to keep the lines of communication open with their kids. Mask policies may be rapidly changing, but adults can provide consistent support and model good behavior.

“Continue to encourage children with basic health practices like washing your hands, covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough. It’s OK to keep them updated on mask policies,” she said.

But some parents have taken more drastic measures over mask confusion and COVID policies.

Nicole Wilkins, of Memphis, is now homeschooling her three teenagers, while Franklin mom Monique Koupal has moved her 8-year-old son from Williamson County Schools to a private school in Nashville. Private schools aren’t covered by the new state law and are free to set their own mitigation policies.

“We left public schools to avoid all the inconsistencies,” said Koupal. “My son is anxious and has ADHD and I knew he wouldn’t be able to handle mixed messages on things like masks.”

Sam Whittier and his wife are sticking with public schools in Williamson County and trying to provide extra support during all the transitions. They also avoid talking negatively in front of their children about the conflicting orders and confusion. But it’s a challenge.

“I’m frustrated with all the back and forth and all the political fighting,” Whittier said. “People seem to want to lump you into being on one side or another of this debate, but there’s so many people in the middle who just want to see common sense. We need to move in that direction — because COVID is not going away.”

See if your district still has a school mask mandate amid mask confusion in Tennessee

2021-11-16T17:06:55+00:00

This was post was originally published Nov. 15. It was last updated Nov. 16. Additions include: A change of policy in Germantown Municipal Schools.

Days after Gov. Bill Lee signed into law sweeping changes that restrict COVID safety protocols in Tennessee, families, teachers, and school officials remain confused about what it means for mask mandates in public schools.

Under the recent rollback, school boards are allowed to enact mask mandates only in the event of severe COVID conditions, for two-week time periods and on a school-by-school basis.

But U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District said at a Friday hearing that her temporary injunction allowing masks mandates still stands in spite of the new law.

And on Sunday, U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw ordered a temporary halt of the enforcement and implementation of the new anti-mask law, causing some school officials who had already announced masks would no longer be required to reverse course. Other districts, unsure of what to do, went with their previous decisions.

Here’s where select districts around the state stand as of Monday afternoon. The story will be updated to reflect districts’ current policies.

Arlington Community Schools: Masks are not required in Arlington Community Schools, officials announced in an email to families on Saturday.

Bartlett City Schools: Masks are optional in Bartlett City Schools, according to the district’s website.

Collierville Schools: As of Monday, masks remain optional in Collierville Schools. The policy may change, though, as officials get “a better idea of what’s happening” legally, said public information officer Jen Hannah.

Germantown Municipal Schools: After making masks optional on Monday, Germantown Municipal Schools officials reversed course Tuesday and required students and staff to again don face coverings “until further notice,” citing the ongoing legal battle. In a message to families Monday evening, communications coordinator Kate Crowder asked for students’ and parents’ patience as the case plays out.

Hamilton County Schools: Masks have not been required in Hamilton County Schools since Nov. 8, “in light of local COVID-19 trends, as well as the availability of vaccines to all students,” Janelle Drake, the district’s communications manager, said in an email on Tuesday.

Knox County Schools: Knox County Schools students and staff will continue to be required to wear masks at school while a federal court order remains in effect, said district spokeswoman Carly Harrington.

Lakeland School System: Masks became optional for students, staff, and visitors on Nov. 15. Superintendent Ted Horrell said the district’s legal counsel was reviewing ongoing litigation and “will issue updated guidance to our parents and students as necessary.”

Metro Nashville Public Schools: Despite the new laws, Metro Nashville Public Schools will continue mandating masks in classrooms. In a statement, Adrienne Battle, director of schools, said the district’s “strong desire is to get to a point where masks are no longer necessary, and our classroom environment looks like it did before the start of the pandemic.” But that’s not possible, she said, as the district reports dozens of cases among students every week and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to recommend universal masking rules in school buildings.

Millington Municipal Schools: Masks are not required until further notice, according to a Saturday post on the Millington Municipal Schools website.

Rutherford County Schools: Face coverings have not been required in Rutherford County Schools buildings since Nov. 9.

Shelby County Schools: Masks are still required. Chief of Staff Patrice Thomas said Monday that the district’s attorneys are currently “reviewing the application of the law.”

Williamson County Schools: The mandate will be lifted as of Tuesday following a school board vote on Monday evening. Superintendent William Golden said the change is justified based on a downward trend in new COVID cases among students and staff.

Shelby County school mask mandate can continue despite new anti-mask law, judge says

2021-11-12T23:19:02+00:00

Shelby County will continue to have the authority to issue mask mandates, a federal judge said on Friday, despite a new law that restricts public schools and other government agencies from requiring masks. The opinion allows the county to continue pursuing “reasonable accommodations” to ensure students with disabilities have equal access to education.

At a Nov. 12 hearing, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District said her temporary injunction stands, continuing to block Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order permitting parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates. In her written decision, Lipman said the county can enforce its health ordinances regardless of any rule or regulation “that purportedly restrains its ability to provide reasonable accommodations to schools.”

She added, “The Court clarifies that the county’s obligations under the preliminary injunction have not changed in light of the new legislation.”

Lipman originally granted the injunction in September, after Shelby County government and a group of parents filed separate lawsuits challenging the executive order. The order, they argued, breached the Americans with Disabilities Act by endangering medically vulnerable children who are at a higher risk of contracting COVID from unmasked classmates. They also are at higher risk for severe complications, the suit states.

Friday’s decision is the latest in the ongoing political and court battle and came a day after Shelby County filed an emergency motion arguing that the new laws gut the county health officer’s delegated authority and give the state commissioner of health “the sole authority to determine quarantine guidelines, including any closing or restricting of private businesses and schools.”

The intention behind issuing mask mandates is to keep the community safe, and the local health department is “the best mechanism to do that,” said Tannera Gibson of Burch, Porter & Johnson, who is representing the county.

The governor’s legal counsel, led by Jim Newsom, argued Friday that the “facts on the ground” of the pandemic have changed, making it appropriate for the case to be revisited. Newsom, who works in the state attorney general’s office, said the risk of COVID has decreased since Lipman’s injunction, calling into question whether it’s still appropriate.

Though new cases have been on the downswing since Tennessee’s summer surge, the risk level for unvaccinated people, based on cases and test positivity, remains very high across the state, according to The New York Times.

Lipman sided with the county, though.

“The point of the order was to ensure that the ADA is followed in the county and to ensure that these students — the plaintiffs — have access to education,” she said.

“In my mind, I never thought that as long as there’s a pandemic, there has to be a mask mandate in all of Shelby County schools,” Lipman added. “The idea is that there has to be reasonable accommodation.”

Universal masking, Lipman said, should be among the accommodations local health departments can consider. “I have a problem with the legislature making that decision,” she said.

Tennessee governor signs law rolling back school mask mandates

2021-11-12T22:39:17+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee has signed into law a sweeping bill to curb COVID-19 restrictions in Tennessee, including prohibiting public schools from mandating masks except when infections reach catastrophic levels.

The Nov. 12 mask rollback takes effect immediately, even as a handful of large districts with mask mandates are still figuring out how to navigate conflicting state and federal laws on the issue. Legal challenges are expected.

Three federal judges in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville have ruled in favor of the mandates to protect students with disabilities who are more susceptible to COVID without universal masking.

School leaders have huddled with lawyers to review their legal options and obligations since GOP lawmakers approved the state’s rollback in the early hours of Oct. 30 during a special legislative session they called on COVID protocols.

In an emergency motion filed Nov. 11 in Memphis, Shelby County government asked U.S. District Court Judge Sheryl Lipman if students there must still wear face coverings. Lipman — who in September blocked the governor’s executive order allowing parents to opt out of local mask requirements — responded on Nov. 12 that Shelby County continues to have the authority to require masks, even under the new state law. The case is based on a class-action lawsuit filed by some parents who contend the governor’s order violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Officials with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools said they expect their concerns about conflicting laws “will be resolved in the courts as well.”

“Our preference would be that MNPS could continue to keep students safe and make decisions based on facts and not politics,” spokesman Sean Braisted said on Nov. 11, adding that the district “always seeks to follow the law.”

Most other Tennessee districts with mandates dropped them in the weeks after the bill’s passage. But mask mandates also remain in place in districts in Knox and Williamson counties under rulings by two other federal judges.

In Williamson County, south of Nashville, Superintendent Jason Golden announced Nov. 11 that he will recommend that school board members vote Nov. 15 to rescind the mandate they approved in late August when the district’s COVID cases peaked. He noted changes under the anticipated new law but also cited a downward trend in new COVID cases. The district had 52 students reporting a positive test this week, compared to 544 on Aug. 27.

The latest round of mask confusion comes as the spread of the virus continues to slow across Tennessee. As of midweek, Tennessee was averaging about 1,100 new infections per day, about half of the count a month ago.

But with new virus surges in Europe, concerns about another U.S. wave heading into wintertime, and higher death rates among unvaccinated people, health officials worry that Tennessee is dialing back mitigation strategies prematurely.

Tennessee’s vaccination rate — with less than half of Tennesseans fully vaccinated — remains among the lowest in the nation. And universal masking in K-12 schools is still recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regardless of vaccination status.

Last week’s approval of a COVID vaccine for children ages 5-11 is viewed as a game-changer, allowing families with younger school-age kids to seek a layer of protection beyond masking and social distancing. About 12,500 Tennessee children — or 2% of children in that age group — had gotten their first dose as of Nov. 11, according to the state health department’s dashboard.

Also this week, the head of the Shelby County Health Department urged parents to get their kids vaccinated. “That’s going to give that extra layer of protection that frankly many families have been waiting for almost an entire year,” Dr. Michelle Taylor told reporters in Memphis.

The new law allows Tennessee school boards to enact mask mandates for two weeks at a time, on a school-by-school basis, if specific conditions are met: The governor must declare a COVID-specific state of emergency, a principal must request universal masking, and there must be “severe conditions.” If the mandate is approved, families also could seek exemptions from face coverings for medical or religious reasons.

The measure defines “severe conditions” as a county average of at least 1,000 new infections for every 100,000 residents. The CDC defines “substantial” community spread as 50-99 new cases per 100,000 residents and “high” as more than 99. By the CDC’s measurements, community transmission in most of Tennessee remains substantial or high.

In an effort to address the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, the state law requires schools to offer education settings with masking and social distancing for students approved for a “reasonable accommodation.”

“We’re going to make sure we honor that,” Williamson County’s Golden told school board members at a Nov. 11 workshop.

But more lawsuits are likely for the same reasons that Lee’s executive order has been taken to court, said Nicole Tuchinda, a University of Memphis law professor who specializes in health law.

“I think this governor knows that masks are helpful in preventing the spread of COVID,” Tuchinda said. “He also knows that this new law is going to face a lot of legal problems because of the American with Disabilities Act and the general notion that public schools are not supposed to exclude children with disabilities, whose health conditions make them more susceptible to COVID.”

Tuchinda said the government has a responsibility to serve the public good, especially its most vulnerable citizens. She cited Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme court case that in 1905 upheld that state’s mandatory smallpox vaccination law over the challenge of a pastor who alleged that it violated his religious liberty rights.

“The court’s decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state to protect the health and safety of the public,” she said. “I think Gov. Lee is doing what he thinks is right for some kids, but he’s not doing what’s right for all kids, in my opinion.”

She added that having a new vaccine for school-age children is not enough to change the government’s obligation to give greater protection to students with disabilities.

“It’s not clear how many parents will vaccinate their children, so wearing a mask at school is still important at this point,” Tuchinda said.

Shelby County requests emergency clarity on its authority to require masks

2021-11-12T03:17:25+00:00

Shelby County has filed an emergency motion a day before Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign sweeping legislation essentially banning mask mandates in Tennessee public schools. The motion asks if a temporary injunction allowing mask requirements in schools will still stand after Lee signs the recently passed anti-mask legislation into law.

In Thursday’s court filings, the county argued that the legislation attempts “to strip the county health officer” from her “delegated authority” and gives the state commissioner of health “the sole authority to determine quarantine guidelines, including any closing or restricting of private businesses and schools.”

The motion states, “Shelby County seeks clarification as to what continuing obligations it has?”

The county would like to continue to oversee Covid-19 mitigation efforts, and Thursday’s emergency motion argues that if Lee signs the bill as promised on Friday, the county’s authority will be greatly reduced unless there is legal intervention.

The soon-to-be law has produced divided reactions from Tennessee teachers and families. While some relish the thought of being in classrooms without face coverings, others worry about safety. And many are frustrated that private schools will be able to issue mask mandates more easily than public schools since the bill does not address private schools.

Thursday’s motion is the latest legal maneuver in a winding court battle ignited after Lee signed an Aug. 16 executive order allowing parents to opt out of school mask requirements for their children.

Following the executive order, Shelby County parents filed a lawsuit against Lee alleging that the opt-out provision violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because unmasked students posed a health risk to their immunocompromised children. Parents across the state filed similar suits. Shelby County also filed a separate lawsuit saying Lee’s actions interfered with its ability to keep children safe because the order threatened the county’s health ordinance. The county and parents sought a temporary injunction and U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District granted it in September.

The injunction blocks Lee’s opt-out order while the trials proceed. The county has used that injunction to continue its school mask requirement, but Thursday’s emergency motions claims that the pending law brings a lack of clarity over which action takes precedence.

The law that Lee has promised to sign essentially bans masks in Tennessee public schools and passed along partisan lines — with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposing — during a late October special session. The bill also places restrictions on when other government institutions such as courts and libraries can implement mask requirements.

Under the likely new law, Tennessee school boards would only be allowed to enact mask mandates for two weeks at a time, on a school-by-school basis if specific conditions are met, including when the governor has declared a COVID-specific state of emergency, a principal makes a request for universal masking, and severe conditions are present.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzes positivity rate and number of new cases to calculate community transmission. By the CDC’s measurements, community transmission in most Tennessee counties remains substantial or high.

The legislation defines “severe conditions” as a county average of at least 1,000 new infections for every 100,000 residents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, defines “substantial” community spread as 50-99 new cases per 100,000 residents and “high” as more than 99. By the CDC’s measurements, community transmission in most of Tennessee remains substantial or high.

Shelby County Schools did not immediately reply to Chalkbeat’s questions on Thursday about how it will respond to the law. School spokesperson Jerica Phillips previously stated that the district would update parents and employees after the governor signs the law. Sean Braisted, spokesperson for Metro Nashville Public Schools, said that the district’s legal department is reviewing the bill and any federal laws that may supersede state law.

Tennessee governor extends his school mask opt-out order

2021-11-05T20:58:25+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Friday extended his executive order allowing parents to opt out of school mask requirements. The extension of Executive Order 84, which was set to expire, will stay in effect until Nov. 19. The order remains at the center of multiple lawsuits across the state.

The extension comes just days after state lawmakers passed legislation threatening to withhold funding from public schools that issue mask mandates without severe conditions present. The bill defines “severe conditions” as a 14-day county average of at least 1,000 new Covid infections for every 100,000 residents. Shelby County, which has nearly a million residents, currently has a 14-day average of 86 new infections, according to the health department.

The bill, passed by the Republican supermajority in the late-October special session, is headed to the governor’s desk, and many expect him to sign it into law. Lee has never vetoed a bill.

Shelby County Schools spokesperson Jerica Phillips said the state’s largest school district is still reviewing the legislation.

“We recognize it has not yet taken effect, as it awaits signature by the governor,” Phillips said. “We intend to share updates with employees and families as we learn more.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics endorse universal mask-wearing in schools, and polls show most Americans approve of it, too. But the issue remains hotly contested in Tennessee and has become part of the current education culture war, which includes debate over critical race theory.

The state is currently litigating a lawsuit filed by the Shelby County government and lawsuits from parents across the state who oppose Lee’s opt-out order. The litigants say unmasked students are more likely to spread the coronavirus and pose a health risk to their immunocompromised children. Federal judges have agreed and issued temporary orders restoring county and school mask mandates while the lawsuits proceed.

In addition to the mask mandate lawsuits, the state is also fighting lawsuits filed by parents, administrators, and education advocates regarding school funding and a new lawsuit filed on Thursday over the state’s policy restricting the participation of transgender athletes in school sports.

Should Tennessee limit school mask mandates? Tell us what you think.

2021-11-03T20:33:39+00:00

While most Tennesseans were asleep early Saturday morning, state lawmakers passed legislation barring public schools from mandating masks except temporarily in extreme circumstances. Private schools and businesses would have more leniency on issuing such mandates. The legislation, largely approved among partisan lines, was among several rollbacks to COVID restrictions.

Gov. Bill Lee has yet to sign the bills into law and declined Monday to share his stance on the package of legislation. If enacted, the policies stand to dial back mitigation efforts in public schools as the pandemic grinds on.

Chalkbeat wants to know what Tennessee students, parents, teachers, and educators think about the plan to curb mask mandates. Share your insight in the form below, or go here if you are on a mobile device.

Tennessee lawmakers all but ban mask mandates in public schools

2021-10-30T06:28:29+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers passed a sweeping bill early Saturday to curb COVID restrictions, including prohibiting public schools from mandating masks except temporarily in extreme circumstances.

The legislation allows school boards to approve 14-day mandates on a school-by-school basis if three conditions are met: the governor has declared a COVID-specific state of emergency; the county has had a rolling infection rate of at least 1,000 cases for every 100,000 citizens over 14 days; and the principal has requested universal masking.

Private schools are exempt from the restrictions under the measure, which passed 22-4 in the Senate and 58-22 in the House. The legislation would become law with Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s signature and likely will be challenged in court.

The action is the GOP-controlled legislature’s response to about a dozen public school districts that required face coverings this fall as COVID counts peaked, even as Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton warned them to make masks optional or face legislative action.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton

When some districts stuck with universal masking, Sexton rallied fellow Republicans to convene in special session this week. The goal was to address local and federal policies that the GOP deemed an assault on the personal liberties of Tennesseans who prefer not to wear masks or get vaccinated. Masking students should be left up to their parents, Sexton said.

Lawmakers sought to prohibit businesses, schools, and governmental entities from requiring proof of vaccination for their employees or customers and workers — and to ensure that anyone who loses their job over vaccinations can receive unemployment.

But they retreated from blocking mask mandates for private businesses after business leaders pushed back about being squeezed by conflicting state and federal directives. One complaint came from Ford Motor Co., which recently announced plans to bring a $5.6 billion plant and 5,800 new jobs to West Tennessee to manufacture electric pickup trucks.

Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro pointed out the inconsistencies on which entities get to keep mask mandates.

“I’m trying to figure out why we’re letting Ford do it, why we’re letting a private school do it, but we’re not letting my kid’s elementary school do it,” the Nashville Democrat said during a conference committee to work out Senate and House differences on the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson sidestepped Yarbro’s point. “It’s not an outright prohibition. We did set standards,” said the Franklin Republican about the legislation’s high threshold for letting public schools require face coverings.

The bill also allows public universities to require masks and vaccines if they convince the state comptroller that federal funding would be lost by not doing so.

Voting along mostly partisan lines, lawmakers passed several other bills related to schools.

They removed the ability of six independent local health departments to issue their own orders during a pandemic. The six include health officials in Shelby County, whose directive in August led to mask mandates for suburban school districts near Memphis that had not planned to issue them.

“We’re looking at consolidation and consistency for extraordinary circumstances across our state,” said Republican Rep. Kevin Vaughan, whose Collierville district was affected.

The bill gives the state health commissioner sole authority to set guidelines for quarantines, which Republicans contend have been too expansive and need uniformity statewide across urban and rural areas during a pandemic. It also specifies a minor cannot get vaccinated for COVID without written consent from a parent or guardian.

Another measure allows school board races, which are nonpartisan contests in Tennessee, to attach Democratic or Republican labels to candidates on the ballot. Sponsors said voters need more information to select candidates that reflect their ideals, especially as hostility erupted this year at some school board meetings across Tennessee and the nation over hot-button issues such as mask mandates and how to teach students about racism.

Gov. Lee declined to call this week’s special session, citing his executive order allowing families to opt their students out of school mask mandates. The order is set to expire Nov. 5, but is blocked by federal judges in three counties.

The session, which opened on Wednesday, wrapped up early Saturday morning after Democrats had complained the GOP was rushing significant legislation without getting enough input from stakeholders.

Yarbro called the pace “reckless,” while others asked Wednesday for more time to review 80-plus bills, most of which were filed the day before the session began.

“We’re dealing with pretty serious stuff here,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville.

“This is not something done in haste,” Johnson insisted. “This is something that’s been in the works, really, since this pandemic began.”

The special session was Tennessee’s third this year but the first called by the legislature since 1982. Lee ordered lawmakers back to Nashville last week to approve a $900 million incentive package to secure the Ford project.

Proposal to turn school board races partisan clears Tennessee legislature

2021-10-29T23:43:59+00:00

School board races across Tennessee can become partisan contests under a measure approved Friday by the GOP-controlled legislature.

The bill, co-sponsored by the legislature’s top leaders, passed 52-39 in the House and 20-10 in the Senate. It is expected to be signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee.

The measure lets local political parties decide whether to put forth school board candidates with Republican or Democratic labels beginning next year, when half of school board races will be held across Tennessee. Candidates also could run as independents. But the legislation does not require partisan races, as one earlier proposal would have done.

It’s one of a bundle of bills approved during a special session called by Republican lawmakers to curb or preempt COVID restrictions such as mask and vaccine mandates for schools, businesses, and government entities.

Their petition for a special session was wide enough in scope to consider the school board bill, however, after many of those local meetings have turned into ideological battlegrounds over school mask mandates and how to teach students about racism.

Proponents said party labels will take the guesswork out of school board elections and give voters more information to select candidates who reflect their ideals for one of the most important policy jobs in their communities.

“Some try to argue that school boards are somehow apolitical because they don’t have an R or a D beside their names. That’s nonsense,” said Rep. Mark Cochran, a Englewood Republican, citing governmental philosophies about school budgets and curriculum.

“The politics are already there. This is just shedding light on what politics are there,” Cochran continued.

A few Republicans joined outnumbered Democrats to argue that Tennessee needs less partisanship — not more — in education. They worried a change will take the focus off what’s best for students and diminish the pool of qualified candidates because of the expense of campaigning and escalating political tensions.

“We all want good school board members because good school board members are going to make for good schools,” said Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, a Signal Mountain Republican who voted against the bill. “But we have seen across our state and across the country how difficult some school board meetings are. It’s going to be harder and harder to get good candidates to even consider running.”

Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro agreed during debate in his chamber.

“I just don’t know anybody who really thinks that the biggest problem we got is not enough partisan politics,” said the Nashville Democrat.

Professional organizations representing the state’s school boards and superintendents opposed the change, which removes one of the last protected bastions of nonpartisan local elections in Tennessee. Parties already have the ability to interject partisan cues in races for county mayors, commissioners, trustees, and sheriffs.

Gov. Lee hasn’t vetoed a piece of legislation since taking office in 2019. His spokeswoman said Lee won’t comment on the bill until after the special session is done.

It’s unclear how many and which races across Tennessee would shift to partisan contests, but any that do would be in a minority nationally. Less than a fourth of school board elections in the United States are conducted with party labels. That number could increase if Florida lawmakers approve similar legislation to require partisan school board races.

Research is thin on the effects of school board partisanship. However, national research on state Supreme Court races during regular election cycles show that more voters cast ballots in those races when party labels are attached to candidates.

“Having party labels changes how people vote and encourages them to vote for co-partisans based on their affiliations,” said Vladimir Kogan, a researcher and assistant professor at Ohio State University.

He added, “I suspect that any move toward partisan school board races isn’t about increasing turnout, but rather about electing more Republicans in districts that are already pretty red.”

Kogan, who has examined school board election data in 25 states, said partisan races can be good and bad when it comes to locally elected education leaders.

“When Republicans and Democrats disagree about core issues like masking or how to teach about race, having those labels will let voters choose the candidates that are most representative of their beliefs,” he said. “On the other hand, partisan loyalty and voting behavior often means electing people who are less competent. It can at the expense of other desirable things like expertise.”

GOP lawmakers race to roll back COVID restrictions in Tennessee schools, businesses

2021-10-29T02:01:13+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers advanced a bundle of bills Thursday that would limit the authority of local school leaders, health officials, and businesses on COVID restrictions meant to tame or end the pandemic.

Meeting in a special session, the Republican supermajority chose personal liberties over public health recommendations in proposal after proposal aimed at upending mask and vaccine mandates, as well as loosening restrictions for quarantining students and staff who may have been exposed to the virus.

Under the broad scope of the session called by the legislature, lawmakers also advanced a measure to make school board races partisan contests — where candidates would have to declare their political party — beginning next year. Whether those partisan races would be required or up to local political parties is still in the air, as Senate and House committees passed different versions.

The legislative flurry reflects the GOP’s determination to return to life to normal after COVID cases dropped from their peak in early September, even as fewer than half of Tennesseans are fully vaccinated. But forecasting the virus’ future is difficult as new mutations emerge and infectious disease experts say another wave is likely when cold weather pushes people indoors.

“I wish we could pass a law and say that COVID no longer exists; it does still exist,” acknowledged Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson.

In the meantime, the Franklin Republican introduced one sweeping bill that he said would help Tennessee “move forward and put this terrible chapter of our lives behind us,” as well as clear up confusion about the patchwork of mitigation policies across the state.

Among other things, the measure would allow 14-day school mask mandates only if the governor has declared a COVID-specific state of emergency; the county has had a rolling infection rate of at least 1,000 cases for every 100,000 citizens over 14 days; and the local school board approves the requirements on a school-by-school basis.

The legislation, which could be heard on the floor of both chambers on Friday, also would prevent any school, private business, or governmental entity from taking an adverse action against an unvaccinated employee.

“We have to get to a place in this state where we have to recognize and respect people’s decisions about whether or not they receive the vaccine,” Johnson said.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis was among outnumbered Democrats opposing the bill. She said the policies would hurt both school and private business efforts to mitigate COVID — and put “an undue burden on the vaccinated public.”

“Quite frankly, I believe that school districts understand their districts well. They know what happens in their own communities,” Akbari said.

The measure easily advanced, while Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III joined 20 counterparts in other states Thursday calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw his executive order mandating the vaccine for federal employees and contractors.

The special session is Tennessee’s third this year but the first called by the legislature since 1982. Republican Gov. Bill Lee ordered lawmakers back to Nashville last week to approve a $900 million incentive package to secure Ford Motor Co.’s new $5.6 billion electric vehicle plant in West Tennessee.

Lee said this week’s gathering was unnecessary, partly because of his executive order allowing families to opt their students out of school mask mandates. The order is set to expire Nov. 5, but is blocked by federal judges in three counties.

While more than 80 bills have been filed for consideration during the special session, lawmakers are concentrating on eight proposals co-sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally. They include the massive COVID mitigation bill introduced by Johnson, which also allows employees who are fired for refusing the vaccine to collect unemployment — benefits that the legislature previously rejected for employees who left their jobs because they feared contracting the virus.

Another Sexton-McNally bill would require school board elections to introduce party labels to nonpartisan school board races. However, the Senate Education Committee amended the measure to drop the mandate and let local parties decide, as proposed earlier in separate legislation co-sponsored by Republicans Rep. Scott Cepicky and Sen. Joey Hensley.

“Voters right now have a huge lack of transparency from school board members because they’re able to run as nonpartisan,” said Cepicky, who agreed to carry the speakers’ bill in place of his own. “What this bill does is require individuals to declare Democrat, Republican or independent.”

Many Republicans who are angry about school mask mandates believe partisan school boards in Republican-heavy Tennessee would be more responsive to GOP policies. But the proposal is opposed by the professional organizations representing Tennessee school boards and superintendents who want less politics in education, not more. If both bills pass their full chambers as is, the matter would head to a conference committee to negotiate a final bill.

Another measure that advanced Thursday would limit the power of six large independent county health departments from issuing their own health orders during the pandemic. The six include departments based in the state’s four largest cities, where some orders have led to school mask mandates in districts that had not planned to issue them.

Conservative Republicans hail the special session as a campaign to uphold personal liberties, while Democrats call it a dangerous waste of time and money.

“When it comes to education, this special session is not about what’s best for kids. It’s political grandstanding at its finest,” said Rep. Vincent Dixie of Nashville, who dressed in a black suit as a symbol of democracy dying.

“I think this whole special session is a grab for the Trump base,” said Rep. Antonio Parkinson of Memphis, referring to former President Donald Trump. “But it could come back to bite Republicans. They’re making enemies in the business community who don’t want new laws interfering with them. And these policies have teachers literally fleeing the profession.”

The GOP agenda has clashed with private industry, including the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, the state’s most powerful trade group. Business leaders worry they’ll be squeezed by opposing federal and state orders.

“We do not believe government, at any level, should unnecessarily interfere with health, safety and operational decisions of private businesses,” the group said in a statement last week.

The head of the state’s largest teacher organization was critical of the pace of the session that began Wednesday and could wrap up as soon as Friday, though more likely will spill over into next week.

“These are sweeping decisions, but doing it without stakeholder involvement is creating a lot of anxiety,” said Tennessee Education Association President Beth Brown. “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be comical.”

To livestream the proceedings, visit here.

Memphis school quarantines mean little instruction, poor communication, parents say

2021-10-13T11:08:39+00:00

Three weeks into the school year, Sara Corum’s two sons, Cooper and Aiden Tate, had finally gotten into a solid routine after all the upheaval COVID caused over the last two years in Memphis schools. Then, the family’s world was turned upside down — again — when they got “the call.”

Cooper, a fourth grader at Snowden School, was a close contact of a fellow student who tested positive for the virus. Neither Cooper nor Aiden, a second grader, was exhibiting symptoms, but they were required to stay home and quarantine for the next two weeks.

What came next was chaos, Corum said. The boys’ teachers had not been informed by administrators or local health officials that they were in quarantine and would miss the next 10 school days, she said. Although a state board of education rule says teachers are not permitted to teach students in quarantine, the district has said quarantined students will receive “virtual asynchronous learning.” But Corum said no virtual instruction was provided, and the little schoolwork they did receive came with few directions.

Her family’s experience is just one example of the mayhem quarantines have caused for thousands of Memphis families and educators two months into the school year. Some parents say they are increasingly frustrated with Shelby County School administrators, complaining of poor communication, dissatisfaction with the instruction quarantined students receive, and a lack of access to learning devices and hot spots that the district previously provided.

Districtwide, 3,381 students and 523 staff members had contracted COVID as of Thursday, according to the SCS dashboard, meaning that since August, thousands of students and staff who were close contacts have likely had to quarantine.

Shelby County Schools spokesperson Jerica Phillips said administrators and educators continue to pivot and make improvements. She asked families for patience while the district serves the majority of the district’s more than 110,000 students in person.

“This is just beyond the scope of work that we’ve ever had to do,” Phillips said, “so we understand there’ll be frustrations among parents and we just ask for grace as we continue to do this work.”

Although they know the district is limited by the state’s virtual learning restrictions and operating a school system during a pandemic is challenging, many parents still say they wish the district’s quarantine instruction was better.

Schoolwork provided to children in quarantine varies between teachers, Phillips said. In some cases, a quarantined student’s teacher may also be in quarantine, Phillips said, and a substitute teacher may not know how to use the district’s distance learning platforms.

She emphasized that quarantine learning is meant to be “supplemental,” and like a sick day, any makeup work given won’t completely replace instruction given in a classroom.

“There is no one size fits all when it comes to asynchronous learning,” Phillips said. “We don’t want families to get discouraged about what that looks like. We just want to ensure some continuing learning.”

Many parents don’t feel it’s safe to send their children to school at all, and wish the district would have started the year with an online option amid the delta surge — even if it meant defying state orders.

“It felt like things were going well, then we had the rug pulled out from under us,” Corum said.

She and husband Josh McClurkan juggled their jobs as pastors while becoming makeshift quarantine tutors. “We’re not teachers. We’re not equipped, Lord have mercy, to teach our own kids.

“And now, honestly, I’m just waiting for it to happen again.”

The quarantine obstacles aren’t new this year. In a state educator survey, 65% of responding educators who taught in person last year said adapting to mandated student and staff quarantines was a challenge. And 40% of the teachers who responded said quarantine was the biggest challenge they faced.

In the survey, in-person teachers also listed student absenteeism as their largest worry. According to Memphis schools policy, students who are unvaccinated and come in close contact with a student or a staff member who tests positive must quarantine and monitor for symptoms for 10 days after exposure. Fully vaccinated students, meanwhile, are not required to quarantine.

Districts across the country have started relaxing quarantine restrictions due to concerns about keeping students out of school for weeks on end, as well as growing evidence that other safety measures can successfully prevent the spread of COVID. In New York City unvaccinated students who are masked and follow social distancing guidelines no longer have to quarantine if they’re a close contact. Philadelphia, Colorado, and Indiana have also loosened quarantines.

In Memphis, COVID anxiety remains high, even though the spike in cases caused by the delta variant in recent months is easing.

Although ShaRae Hicks has not gotten notice to quarantine any of her three children — a fifth grader at Ford Road Elementary School and two students at Hillcrest High School — she worries about why they haven’t. She figures it’s impossible that they have never been in close contact with a positive case, given the number of text, email, and robocall notifications she’s received from the school about positive cases. Hicks wishes she had the ability to choose entirely online learning for her children.

When the district “makes these robocalls saying that someone tested positive, you don’t know if it’s someone they were near. You don’t know if it’s a child or if it’s a teacher. You don’t know if it’s an administrator,” Hicks said. “You just don’t know. And that’s stressful and brings about a lot of anxiety.”

On the other hand, Hicks worries about what would happen if her children were forced to quarantine. After moving to a different neighborhood and switching schools this year, they still don’t have district-provided tablets, laptops, or hotspots to use at home, she said.

Because of the move, Hicks said, the district asked her children to return the devices issued to them last school year for virtual learning — with the promise they would receive new devices from their new school at the start of the year.

Nearly two months into the school year, the Hicks have yet to receive them.

Phillips said she’s aware of individual cases where families have not yet received hotspots, but principals and administrators are working as hard as they can to find those families and distribute devices to them.

While they recently got Wi-Fi at their home, Hicks can’t afford to buy another device for them to use.

“It’s really been a strain on my family,” she said.

Cooper Tate attends class over Zoom last spring while learning virtually from his Memphis home.

Like Hicks, Malica Hanesh worries about what she doesn’t hear about COVID cases from the district. Hanesh said she never got a notification from White Station High School or the district that her daughter had been near a student with COVID, even though she had been. Within a week of that close contact, her daughter tested positive.

“I’m just ticked off at the lackadaisical attitude of the school and district concerning the health impacts that this virus causes,” Hanesh said, saying communication has been “poor.”

The district’s newly expanded contact tracing team follows guidelines from the Shelby County Health Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine close contacts, said Dr. Patricia Bafford, the district’s senior manager of health services.

Under that guidance, Bafford said, anyone who came within 3 feet of a positive case for 15 minutes or longer, whether they wore a mask or not, would be considered a close contact. District contact tracers use seating charts to make such decisions, Bafford said, and from there, a team of nurses makes calls to tell those affected to quarantine and for how long.

In an effort to be transparent, the district also informs all students, staff, and parents of all positive cases in their school via robocalls, Phillips said. The district doesn’t disclose who tested positive — even to students’ teachers — in an effort to maintain some privacy.

The district wouldn’t tell Chalkbeat how many students or staff have been in quarantine since the school year began, or how many classrooms have been affected, citing privacy concerns.

Phillips said district officials are continuing efforts to improve communication with families, from the way it contacts families about COVID cases and quarantines to providing COVID updates publicly on the district website. And, Phillips said, the district has held numerous public family forums to encourage feedback and resolve issues individual families are having.

“Our school leaders are doing their very best to adjust as needed and make sure all protocols are being followed,” Phillips said.

Despite these efforts, frustration remains.

In Veronica Jones’ 40 years, she’s never been as frightened as she was when her two daughters, ages 8 and 10, became infected with COVID in late August after she believes they were exposed at school. Symptoms that mirrored the common cold quickly escalated and Jones had to take the girls to the hospital.

Jones, who also helps care for her grandchildren, had to take unpaid time off of her job at a Memphis hospital while her daughters were sick.

“As a mother, seeing my girls in such pain broke me all the way down,” Jones said. “Somebody has to do something. I’m just praying. That’s all I can do.”

Although Jones appreciated that her daughters’ teachers at Frayser-Coming Achievement Elementary were understanding about academic expectations while they were sick, she was frustrated that her daughters were given a printed packet of lessons.

More than ever, Jones wishes Tennessee parents had more virtual learning options.

After four weeks, the girls recovered and had returned to their charter school. But weeks later, just before the district started fall break, Jones’ daughters were back in quarantine after another exposure, and Jones was back at home without pay.

Tennessee governor to extend order letting parents opt out of school mask mandates

2021-09-30T22:10:44+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee said Thursday he’ll extend his executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of following local school mask mandates that protect them against the coronavirus.

The 30-day extension will come despite rulings by three federal judges blocking his Aug. 16 executive order, which is due to expire on Oct. 5.

Speaking with reporters in Dickson, west of Nashville, the governor said he’s disappointed by the rulings, but pleased that Attorney General Herbert Slatery Lee is appealing two of those cases.

The judges in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville sided with some parents who said the governor’s order violates federal law by creating unsafe learning environments for students with disabilities who are more at risk of severe illness from COVID. Those orders still stand and are blocking the governor’s order from being implemented in Shelby, Williamson, and Knox counties.

But Lee sided with parents who feel just as strongly that their children should not wear masks in class.

“Parents know best what is best for their children and should have the last word on health and welfare issues for children,” he said.

Tennessee leads the nation in COVID-related school closures so far this school year, according to a study released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 500 schools across the state have closed for at least one day due to the virus. But Tennessee also was one of the first states to kick off the academic year, increasing opportunities for exposure to the highly contagious delta variant since late July.

Asked whether universal masking in classrooms could help school buildings remain open, Lee emphasized the importance of getting shots that shield people against the virus.

“The best defense we have against this pandemic … is vaccination,” he said. “We’ll continue to say that.”

School-age children under 12 aren’t eligible for the vaccines yet, but federal approval to vaccinate children ages 5-11 is expected in the next month.

The governor and his staff promised that COVID and K-12 schools won’t be on the agenda for a special legislative session called for Oct. 18 to address funding and oversight for Ford Motor Co.’s planned electric vehicle manufacturing complex in West Tennessee, announced just this week.

“We have much to decide and much to confirm about that deal, so we need to stay focused,” said Lee, calling Ford’s arrival a “transformational economic moment in our state’s history.”

While Lee was in Dickson, dozens of Memphis parents, grandparents, and students were trying to meet with Lee at the Capitol to voice concerns about COVID safety in school buildings.

“Our message to the governor is to give us options so that more students can take virtual classes during this pandemic,” said Bridget Bradley, a grandmother who organized the trip.

A group of Memphis parents, grandparents, and students gather outside of Gov. Bill Lee’s office on Thursday, Sept. 30, to ask for more virtual learning options during the pandemic.

New state rules require in-person instruction this year, except when individual students must temporarily isolate or quarantine due to the virus. The state also is granting seven-day waivers for some schools to close, usually in response to staffing problems.

But Bradley said “kids are terrified to go to school” because the virus continues to spread.

“They’re scared of getting sick; they’re scared of dying,” Bradley said. “How can you learn when you’re that afraid?”

Leaders of Bradley’s group, called Concerned Parents 901, met with one of the governor’s staff members. The group also spoke with Rep. Vincent Dixie, a Nashville lawmaker who chairs the House Democratic caucus.

“I don’t think the governor is hearing us,” Bradley said. “If he can give certain people options to not wear a mask in school, surely he can give people with sick children options to take virtual classes.”

Court rulings in Shelby and Knox counties against governor’s mask opt-out order appealed by Tennessee

2021-09-27T23:36:49+00:00

Tennessee is challenging the rulings of two out of three federal judges who blocked Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order that lets parents opt out of school mask mandates.

Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III filed appeals Monday in district courts in Memphis and Knoxville.

Those judges had sided with some parents who said the governor’s order violates federal law by creating unsafe learning environments for students with disabilities who are more at risk of severe illness from COVID.

But Slatery said the rulings “have impeded the governor’s executive authority during an emergency to direct the state’s public health response.”

With the appeals, Lee is digging in on his position that parents are the best deciders on whether to send their child to school in a mask, even as judges are siding with Tennessee school districts seeking to require them.

His press secretary, Casey Black, declined to comment.

In a statement, Slatery said he is asking the judges to immediately suspend their orders that have allowed districts in Shelby and Knox counties to better enforce universal masking requirements.

Earlier this month in Memphis, Judge Sheryl Lipman issued a temporary injunction in response to a class-action lawsuit challenging Lee’s order in seven school districts in Shelby County.

Then, on Friday in Knoxville, Judge J. Ronnie Greer issued a similar ruling affecting families in Knox County Schools.

Both of their orders remain in place.

Another federal judge, in Nashville, also ruled against the governor’s order last Friday in a separate case involving students and parents in Williamson County, south of Nashville. But Slatery did not appeal that ruling, which involved a temporary restraining order.

The court decisions have put the governor on the defensive over his Aug. 16 executive order, which Lee issued as several Republican leaders were seeking a special legislative session to outlaw school mask mandates.

Tennessee also is one of at least six states under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education over whether efforts to restrict school mask requirements constitutes a civil rights violation for students with disabilities.

On Friday, Lee said he was undecided whether he’ll renew his order, which is set to expire on Oct. 5.

“We’ll make that decision until we get closer to the (date),” Lee told reporters. “We made a decision to allow schools to mandate masks and have mask requirements — and to give parents the ability to opt out of that. We think that’s the right path forward.”

That same day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new studies showing that enforcement of school mask mandates helps reduce the spread of COVID.

Tennessee’s first summer learning camps yield improvements in reading and math, governor says

2021-09-22T23:45:05+00:00

Tennessee public school students who participated in recent summer learning camps showed improvement in reading and especially in math, based on test results released on Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration reported an overall improvement of nearly 6 percentage points in English language arts and more than 10 percentage points in math for students who attended the six-week camps.

About 120,000 students in grades 1-8 — or 20% of those who were eligible — enrolled in the voluntary camps that districts were required to host under a new law aimed at recouping pandemic-related learning loss. The state picked up the $135 million tab, including $18.5 million to provide bus transportation.

“We know it’s been a tough year, but we’re very encouraged by this data that shows that swift action did pay off,” Lee said during a conference call with reporters.

Tennessee has been one of the most aggressive states in the nation in trying to address declines in student proficiency as the pandemic creeps into a third straight academic year. In January, Lee called a special legislative session for lawmakers to focus on K-12 education and approve initiatives to launch summer camps, after-school tutoring, and phonics-based literacy instruction.

State test scores released in August further illustrated the need to bolster student achievement. Those results, from tests given last spring, showed overall student proficiency declined 5 percentage points since 2019, the last time the state administered standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. It marked a dramatic reversal of previous gains.

To measure progress during the summer camps, the state used a much simpler measurement — giving students 10-question tests anchored in the state’s academic standards at the start of the camps and then at the end. The camps required six hours of daily instruction in reading and math five days a week.

The state reported that improvement was markedly higher for elementary school students than for middle schoolers.

In math, elementary school students saw an improvement of nearly 12 percentage points — double the performance of middle school participants.

A writing exercise during a summer learning camp at Rutland Elementary School in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in June 2021

In reading, elementary grades showed an improvement of over 7 percentage points, compared to 1 percentage point for middle school students.

Overall, economically disadvantaged students improved at generally the same rate as their more affluent peers, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn told state lawmakers later Wednesday during a hearing to discuss the results.

“That’s a really big deal, because typically what we see is our economically disadvantaged students improve at a slightly slower rate,” Schwinn said.

State officials did not release detailed attendance data, but Schwinn reported that 96% of enrolled students attended for one or more days. Attendance was higher in elementary schools than middle schools.

Registration priority was given to students who generally scored below proficient in math or reading on their most recent TCAP tests or another state test used to identify students needing early intervention. The program also prioritized students eligible to benefit from federal funding intended to help poor working families.

Asked for more details about the testing data, a department spokesman said less than half of participating students took both tests. Schwinn called that a representative sampling and also said the 10-question assessment was the right tool to measure improvement over the summer.

“I do not think it’s appropriate to give students a 3-hour test at the beginning and the end of a summer program,” she told reporters, adding that the assessments gave her department “a directional sense on improvement.”

“I feel strongly that we absolutely saw academic benefits,” she said, noting ancillary benefits in student confidence, engagement and — for those returning to in-person instruction after a year of remote learning — preparation to re-enter classrooms.

But House Democratic Caucus Chairman Vincent Dixie said “it’s a little early for a victory lap.”

“I think the sample size of the students who attended summer school is pretty small and I’d wait until we find out more about this school year and the 1 million students who have struggled this year through the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Nashville lawmaker said in a statement.

At Wednesday’s hearing, several district leaders told lawmakers they believed the inaugural camps were successful — and that local flexibility on staffing and scheduling was key.

“There is no one size fits all,” said Danny Weeks, superintendent of Dickson County Schools.

Weeks and Cleveland City Schools Superintendent Russell Dyer asked for continued leeway to make adjustments as the program continues next summer, emphasized the importance of providing transportation to encourage student participation, and asked the state to consider increasing pay for teachers beyond $1,000 a week, which is basically the salary of a beginning teacher.

The state already is getting a return on its investment, they agreed, especially for struggling students that the program targets.

“Having our students come to school during the summer – having those fun learning experiences – absolutely made a difference when they came back in the fall,” Dyer said.

Despite COVID, most Tennessee parents are upbeat about school this year, poll says

2021-09-21T22:57:21+00:00

A month into the new academic year, three-fourths of Tennessee parents said school was going well for their child and 69% said their student felt safe attending classes in person, even as many districts closed temporarily under the strain of COVID’s highly contagious delta variant.

Poll results released Tuesday also show that nearly half of the state’s parents worry their students have fallen behind academically during the pandemic, with those concerns even more widespread among suburban parents and parents of high schoolers.

The poll — commissioned by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, also known as SCORE — offered some surprises on parents’ perceptions of the beginning of the third straight school year affected by the pandemic. The survey was conducted Sept. 1-5 with a representative sampling of 500 registered voters and 300 public school parents across the state, where most students started back to school in early August.

About 77% of parents surveyed were positive about how the 2021-22 school year was going for their child.

At the time, at least 18 of Tennessee’s 147 school systems had shut down for up to a week to try to tame the virus as sickness or quarantine sidelined too many teachers to adequately staff classrooms. And a third of all Tennessee COVID cases were among children up to age 18. In addition, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn had just begun granting seven-day waivers to let some schools shift temporarily to virtual learning under a new COVID response plan.

Since then, Tennessee has reported more new coronavirus cases than any other state, relative to its population — an average of 109 for every 100,000 people, according to a New York Times database.

Data released Monday by the state health department shows the number of deaths for people under age 20 has doubled to 20 since the school year began.

And at least 14 public school employees who contracted COVID have died this academic year, based on a report about confirmed deaths by Tennessee Lookout, an online news organization. The report notes that it is unknown whether any employee was exposed to COVID at school or outside of school.

SCORE officials believe parents feel good about more in-person learning happening than last school year, when districts had blanket authority to shift to virtual learning to respond to local virus surges. A new state rule requires schools to provide in-person instruction and tap into stockpiled days if they have to close. Even with Tennessee’s COVID numbers, Gov. Bill Lee’s administration hasn’t backed off of that position.

“The positive feelings parents expressed about the start of this school year are a testament to the hard but essential work the state’s teachers and school and district leaders have done to support in-person instruction in very difficult circumstances,” SCORE President and CEO David Mansouri said in a statement.

Teresa Wasson, a spokesperson for SCORE, added that polling from the last two years shows two-thirds of Tennessee parents think remote learning is worse for their students than in-person learning.

Beth Brown, president of the Tennessee Education Association, agreed that in-person learning is best and said it’s great parents are feeling positive about the school year. But she also cited a disconnect between what the survey shows and what she’s hearing from educators on the ground who continue to respond to disruptions.

“People need to understand that the pandemic is taking a toll on educators in a state where there’s already a teacher shortage,” Brown told Chalkbeat. “Teachers are exhausted, burned out, and struggling mentally and emotionally.”

This year’s poll had similar results to last year over parent concerns about pandemic-related learning lags. But this is the first pandemic year that Tennessee has had the benefit of statewide test scores, which were released a month before the latest poll was conducted. In 2020, testing was canceled nationwide due to the virus.

Tennessee’s scores showed an overall decrease in proficiency of 5 percentage points since 2019 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. The scores declined across all subjects and grades, with the sharpest drops among students who have trailed their peers historically and learned remotely the longest.

SCORE’s poll delved into non-pandemic education issues too.

Most people surveyed, including 71% of parents and 65% of voters, believe that Tennessee public schools don’t receive enough funding. And even greater percentages of those surveyed said they would support the state increasing funding for K-12 education.

The poll also showed strong statewide support for continuing annual state testing, which has been used in Tennessee since 1988, to know if students are meeting education standards in reading, writing and math.

Based in Nashville, SCORE is a research and advocacy group founded in 2009 by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

The group’s poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and had a margin of error of just over 4% for the registered voter sample and over 5% for the public school parents.

Mask mandate in Memphis area schools can continue, for now, judge rules

2021-09-17T18:10:20+00:00

Shelby County students will continue to wear masks in schools after a Tennessee federal judge once again blocked an executive order from the governor that had allowed them to opt out of a mask mandate.

The executive order challenged an earlier mask mandate from the county health department that covered public and private schools. The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit argued that the opt-out order violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by putting medically vulnerable students at higher risk of catching COVID from their unmasked peers.

U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District granted the plaintiff’s request for a temporary injunction just as a 14-day temporary restraining order on the same issue was set to expire. Temporary injunctions, which require a higher burden of proof, typically cover a longer time period. In her ruling, Lipman said that the injunction will last until the conclusion of the case, and that it is necessary to ensure that immunocompromised students have easier access to their classes and school activities.

“It is that unmasked presence that creates the danger to these plaintiffs,” she wrote. “Universal masking is a reasonable accommodation that the governor’s executive order refuses to make available to schools, school systems and, in this case, the Shelby County Health Department.”

Friday’s ruling only affects Shelby County, where the executive order was in effect from Aug. 16 to Sept. 3, when it was blocked by the court’s temporary restraining order. Gov. Bill Lee’s order still stands in other counties.

The governor’s lead lawyer on the case, Jim Newsom, from the state’s attorney general’s office, argued that the lawsuit was premature because the plaintiffs had not yet exhausted the appeals process available through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He also said schools could use creative scheduling and gymnasiums as classrooms to help immunocompromised students social distance from their unmasked peers.

In her ruling, the judge sided with the plaintiffs’ attorneys from Donati Law who argued that masking was the most efficient solution.

Lipman wrote, “The accumulation of costs, alternative schedules, and other changes stands in stark contrast to the cost-effective, minimally burdensome requirement for children to wear masks when at school.”

Plaintiff Brittany Schwaigert, mother of a 13-year-old boy who attends West Middle School in the Collierville Municipal School District, said that her son comes to school 15 minutes late to avoid unmasked kids in the hallway. Her son has autism and is also immunocompromised because of a chemotherapy regimen that he takes to manage tuberous sclerosis complex, a genetic disorder that causes polycystic kidney disease, epilepsy, and hypertension.

The other plaintiffs in the case are recently added Kimberly Morrise, mother of of an immunocompromised 14-year-old daughter who attends school in the Collierville Municipal School District, where Morrise also works, and original plaintiff Emily Tremel, mother of an 11-year-old girl who attends Houston Middle School in the Germantown Municipal School District.

Tremel’s daughter has a chromosomal abnormality that causes episodic ataxia, which impairs movement and the nervous system, and congenital nystagmus, which causes involuntary eye movement.

During the three weeks when the governor allowed families to circumvent the county mask requirement, Tremel’s daughter was diagnosed with COVID, according to the complaint.

The case is one of three lawsuits Tennesseans have filed challenging Lee’s edict. Parents from the Knoxville-area also allege that it violates the ADA. And in its lawsuit, Shelby County government argues that the executive order prevents it from providing safe county schools.

County Mayor Lee Harris celebrated Friday’s ruling on Twitter. “We’re grateful that this ruling will allow us to keep Shelby County’s universal masking requirement for all schools. Masking is a critical extra layer of protection from spreading COVID-19. We all want to keep our kids healthy and in the classroom,” he said.

Some parents have argued that mask mandates are an affront to their parental rights. In anti-masks protests across the country, they have carried signs that said, “We do not co-parent with the government.”

When Lee, who is vaccinated and often wears a mask in public, announced his executive order on Aug. 16 he tweeted “parents are THE authority & will be the ultimate decision-makers for their individual child’s health & well-being.”

Lipman acknowledged the governor’s position in her ruling.

“The public interest certainly recognizes the rights of parents,” she said, “but a universal masking requirement to protect students’ health does not significantly impact their ability to direct their education any more than would a uniform policy or requiring that students receive certain vaccinations before attending school.”

20,000 COVID diagnoses in Memphis-area students is a sobering pandemic milestone

2021-09-13T22:00:36+00:00

Eighteen months after the pandemic first disrupted schools across the U.S, Shelby County marks a grim pandemic milestone: 20,000 school-age children have tested positive for COVID since the pandemic began in March 2020.

That means about one in 9 Shelby County children, ages 5 to 18, has been infected with COVID, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Health. Since the school year began Aug. 9, the number of children diagnosed with COVID has jumped from 13,741 to 20,611 as of Monday afternoon, an increase of almost 50 percentage points. Increased testing has contributed to the rising number of COVID diagnoses in the county.

Shelby County Schools partnered with Poplar Healthcare to provide free and voluntary COVID PCR tests, sometimes called nasal swab tests, to students and educators.

“Since the start of the program on Aug. 9, we have administered over 17,700 COVID PCR tests for Shelby County Schools students and staff,” said Rachel Carpenter, spokesperson for Poplar Healthcare. “Participation increases each week as more parents and guardians opt in for their children to be tested.”

In the first four weeks of school, Shelby County Schools reported a total of 1,650 students and 246 staff members had tested positive for COVID.

Principals and school leaders are also tracking COVID cases on their campuses. As of Thursday, 14 students have tested positive for COVID at Crosstown High School this school year, said Chris Terrill, the charter school’s executive director. The school serves 490 students.

Terrill credits the school’s relative success to several efforts, including pushing vaccines as soon as they became available. As of Thursday, Terrill said 98% of school staff and 78% of students are vaccinated. Additionally, masks are mandatory at all times — except during lunch, when students are asked to scan a QR code once they sit at a table and log who they’re sitting with in order to ease contact tracing. And, there is ongoing, voluntary testing. In the last cycle of testing, Terrill said, 480 children participated and zero were positive.

With most of the school population and staff vaccinated, Terrill knows they’ll likely be OK, even if they contract the virus since vaccinated people have less severe symptoms. But if 12 or 15 teachers test positive, and all their close contacts must quarantine, how will he staff the school?

“No school is really staffed for something like that,” Terrill said. “It’s just kind of an exhausting, mind-boggling process that we’re in.”

Terrill said that although he is proud of how Crosstown has handled the school year so far, he is worried. And, he knows he’s not alone.

“It’s heavy,” he said. “While we’re doing everything we can here to limit the spread, it still weighs heavily on our staff; it weighs heavily on our kids and our parents.”

The 20,000-case mark comes as the state continues to make national headlines for its surging COVID cases, accelerated by the more contagious delta variant, which began to widely circulate just as many Memphis students’ returned to in-person learning for the first time in more than a year.

Shelby County Schools offered only virtual courses until March, and after school buildings reopened, about two-thirds of students chose to continue to learn online.

But the road back to the building has been bumpy. Over a hectic first month of school, district officials have grappled with the continuing battle over whether parents can opt their children out of school mask mandates.

For Dr. Nick Hysmith, medical director of infection prevention at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, where most beds are full, the sobering 20,000-case milestone doesn’t come as a surprise.

When the pandemic was just starting, Hysmith recalled how few children contracted the virus, and if they did, their symptoms were likely mild. In many cases, they were asymptomatic.

Most beds are full at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital where healthcare workers have seen an increasing number of children with severe respiratory illnesses due to the coronavirus.

Recent weeks have been a different story. Hysmith has seen an increasing number of children with severe respiratory illnesses due to the virus, with some needing supplemental oxygen to breathe and others intubated or on ventilators in the intensive care units.

“I’m not terribly surprised that this is where we are,” he said, blaming the surge on the more-contagious delta variant, low vaccination rates across the region, and the start of school.

Hysmith is hopeful, though. He believes many Memphians have taken the recent surge seriously, and thinks the Mid-South may be approaching a plateau — as long as people don’t drop their guards.

“If we can just hold out and continue doing what we’ve been doing in the coming weeks, that’ll be the best thing,” Hysmith said. “If we can just keep our kids masked and at home if they’re sick for the next several weeks, we will get through this delta wave.”

Mask mandate hearing raises issue of ‘separate but equal’ for Tennessee students with disabilities

2021-09-09T20:20:57+00:00

Schools can use creative scheduling to comply with the Tennessee governor’s order that allows families to opt out of masks in schools and still protect the rights and health of immunocompromised students, argued attorney Jim Newsome during a court hearing on Thursday.

Newsome, attorney for defendant Gov. Bill Lee, was among the parties presenting their cases in a Memphis courtroom before U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District. Lipman will now decide if a temporary injunction is appropriate to continue to block the governor’s order, or if the court should reinstate it.

The judge issued no ruling on Thursday, but a temporary restraining order issued on Friday remains in effect until Sept. 17. The temporary injunction, if granted, would remain in effect while the trial is pending or until overturned in an appeals court.

Three Shelby County parents of students with disabilities filed the class action lawsuit on Aug. 27. The suit says allowing students to circumvent a county masks-in-schools mandate violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because it jeopardizes the health and education of their medically vulnerable children who are at higher risks for severe complications from COVID. Parents in Florida have filed a similar lawsuit, and the Biden administration also is investigating related issues in Tennessee and other states.

Newsome argued that the lawsuit was premature because the parents had not exhausted the appeals available through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Schools also should consider using gyms as classrooms to allow more social distancing or make special class schedules for students with disabilities to help limit their contact with their maskless peers, he said.

Brice Timmons of Donati Law, who is representing the plaintiffs, scoffed at such ideas after court.

“I thought that separate but equal was over but apparently we’re going to argue that again for students with disabilities,” he said.

“That is completely antithetical to the central purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is to integrate persons with disabilities into the mainstream of American society,” he said.

Lawyers for Shelby County, who also filed a lawsuit against the governor over the executive order, supported the plaintiffs in court on Thursday.

The only witness called on Thursday was Theresa Nicholls, assistant commissioner for special populations at the Tennessee Department of Education.

Nicholls, a defense witness and the head of special education services for the state, walked through the extensive accommodations that the state has made to help students with disabilities access a “free appropriate public education” since the beginning of the pandemic.

On cross-examination, the plaintiff’s lawyer asked if Lee consulted with her before issuing the order, given her expertise on disability services.

“No,” she replied.

In Thursday’s hearing, attorneys and the judge also spoke to the effectiveness of masks, with the plaintiff’s attorneys echoing the sentiments of a brief filed in the case by the state and national chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The statement said, “The AAP’s strong recommendation of universal masking for students, teachers, and support staff in school has remained consistent from the beginning — because masks are a safe, effective, and critical infection control measure.”

The statement also quoted one of Lee’s statements on masking.

“In short, the science squarely backs up Gov. Lee’s advice that “If you want to protect your kid from the [COVID] virus or from quarantine, the best way to do that is to have your kid in school with a mask,” it said.

Lee, who is vaccinated and often wears a mask, has given mixed messages on masks for Tennessee schoolchildren. In interviews, press conferences, and social media posts, he has said both that masks are unnecessary in school and necessary for safety. However, Lee has remained steadfast that parents should make that choice for their children, not a county or school district.

The issue of masks in schools has been hotly debated nationwide, but especially in the Republican stronghold of the South where some conservatives argue that masks are an intrusion on personal liberties.

At the end of Thursday’s hearing, an anti-mask protester approached plaintiff attorney Bryce Ashby and called him a bad lawyer for his position in the case.

After the hearing, Ashby’s colleague addressed the outburst, political climate, and a threat made against one of his clients. He said he’s worried about his clients’ safety but added that he has already witnessed their toughness.

“Parents of kids with disabilities are some of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” he said. “They have to be tough. They have to constantly advocate for their children’s needs.”

Timeline: Teacher deaths, mask debates rock Memphis during the first 30 days of school

2021-09-09T15:29:43+00:00

Back-to-school season is always filled with both nervousness and excitement, but the first 30 days of the 2021-22 academic year in Shelby County Schools have been even more intense as Memphis educators, students, and parents navigate a dynamic learning landscape shaped by a pandemic.

As cases of the delta variant have skyrocketed, especially among children, district officials have grappled with shifting state-issued restrictions on remote learning, as well as the battle over Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing parents to opt out of school mask requirements.

On top of it all, the Memphis community has been shaken by the deaths of educators and students. And new state standardized test data confirmed an academic slide among students across the state, but especially among those in the most vulnerable groups — students of color and those who are economically disadvantaged.

To mark the start of a topsy-turvy school year, Chalkbeat Tennessee has created a timeline of key events that chronicle the first 30 days.

Tennessee: We want to hear about your quarantine experiences this school year

2021-09-07T17:38:56+00:00

Since students across the state returned to classrooms nearly a month ago, Tennessee has drawn nationwide attention for skyrocketing COVID cases among children.

In turn, quarantines, too, have skyrocketed, impacting students, parents, and caretakers for weeks at a time.

Chalkbeat Tennessee wants to know about the quarantine experiences of families, teachers, and school staff from Memphis and across the state. Tell us your story in the form below, or go here if you are on a mobile device.

Tennessee judge allows school mask mandate, temporarily blocks governor’s opt-out order

2021-09-03T23:10:57+00:00

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order that allows parents to opt out of mask requirements in Tennessee schools.

The governor’s “opt-out provision interferes with plaintiffs’ ability to access services at their public schools through a reasonable accommodation – required mask coverings,” U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District said Friday in her statement.

Plaintiffs and Shelby County parents Brittany and Ryan Schwaigert, and Emily Tremel filed a class action lawsuit against the governor alleging that he violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit says his order allowing parents to circumvent a Shelby County health ordinance requiring masks in schools in Memphis and its suburbs jeopardizes the health and education of immunocompromised children.

The temporary restraining order lasts until Sept. 17 or until trumped by another action of the court. A preliminary hearing will be held on Sept. 9, where the judge may rule to extend the ban or reinstate the governor’s order until a trial is conducted.

Attorney Brice Timmons, representing the plaintiffs, said that his firm, Donati Law, has received calls from several concerned parents.

“There are lots of parents of disabled children in Shelby County getting organized,” he said.

Jim Newsom, from the state’s attorney general office, argued that the lawsuit was premature because the parents had not exhausted the appeals available through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The judge addressed that claim in her response, stating that the plaintiffs sought “to protect their bodily health within a public educational setting – protection provided by the Shelby County Health Department through the enforcement of a mask mandate.”

In the state’s initial response to the temporary restraining order request, attorneys said, “The Court should not overlook the incredible reach of plaintiffs’ argument. If these claims do apply to anyone in the employment context, and plaintiffs are right that a mask mandate is required by the [Americans with Disabilities Act], then nearly every employer and business open to the public must also adopt a mandatory mask requirement for its employees and patrons.”

Although face coverings have proved to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Lee, who is vaccinated and often seen wearing a mask, has sent mixed messages about his views on masks in schools.

During an appearance on Fox News in May he said, “I don’t think any kid ought to wear a mask. If you want to follow the science, you wouldn’t have kids in a school wearing masks when kids do not get sick from COVID.”

But during an August press conference he switched positions, saying, “If you want to protect your kid from the virus or from quarantine, the best way to do that is to have your kid in school with a mask.”

The judge and lawyers for the plaintiffs referred to his comment in August during the hearing, stating that the governor acknowledged the positive public health implication of masking.

Universal masking has been a controversial issue in Tennessee and many Republican led states where conservatives often argue that mask mandates intrude on personal liberty. But what if one’s expression of personal liberty harms the well-being of another? That’s one of the questions that plaintiffs and their lawyers want the courts to consider.

Tremel is the mother of an 11-year-old girl who attends Houston Middle School in the Germantown Municipal School District in the suburbs of Memphis. Tremel’s daughter has a chromosomal abnormality that causes episodic ataxia, which impairs movement and the nervous system, and congenital nystagmus, which causes involuntary eye movement.

Shortly after the governor allowed families to circumvent the county mask requirement, Tremel’s daughter was diagnosed with COVID, and it has “disrupted” her school year, said Tremel.

The Schwaigerts are parents of a 13-year-old boy who attends West Middle School in the Collierville Municipal School District, also in the Memphis suburbs. Their son has autism and is immunocompromised because of chemotherapy needed to manage tuberous sclerosis complex, a genetic disorder that causes polycystic kidney disease, epilepsy, and hypertension. Since the governor’s order, the teenager now goes to school 15 minutes late to avoid being in the hall with unmasked children, missing part of his daily instruction, his mother said.

On Wednesday, the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a Maryland-based nonprofit that promotes disability rights, filed a brief in the case supporting the plaintiffs.

It said that the governor’s order “obstructs access” to schools and education and called the Tennessee lawsuit a case of national importance.

It added that the final verdict will decide if “children with disabilities have equal access to attend their public schools and obtain an education alongside their non-disabled peers.”

Schwinn approves 8 waivers allowing some Tennessee schools to shift to remote learning temporarily

2021-09-02T00:24:19+00:00

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has granted eight of 14 waiver requests from Tennessee school leaders wanting to switch temporarily to remote learning under a COVID response plan that began this week.

A spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Education said Wednesday that Schwinn also partially granted one other application and denied two, while three more requests weren’t eligible.

The department has not provided details about what applications have been submitted or approved. The process extends to charter schools but can’t be used to pivot entire school systems to virtual instruction.

The rollout of seven-day waivers, announced late last week, is Schwinn’s attempt to give district and school leaders some flexibility on new state rules that essentially require in-person instruction this academic year, except when individual students must temporarily isolate or quarantine due to the virus.

But Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is under increasing pressure to provide even greater flexibility for virtual learning as additional districts shut down under the strain of COVID’s highly contagious delta variant. According to data from the state health department, more than 38% of all Tennessee COVID cases reported last week were among children up to age 18.

Hamilton County school leaders were the latest to announce they will shutter their Chattanooga-based district for two days next week to try to tame the virus over the long Labor Day weekend. At least 17 other school systems were closed this week for the same reason, according to a list compiled by The Tennessean.

Such closures require districts to dip into stockpiled days used usually for inclement weather. District leaders are worried that at this rate, they’ll run out of those before winter arrives.

In Memphis, where the state’s largest district provided remote instruction for most of the last academic year, a school board meeting became emotional Tuesday night as parents pressed leaders of Shelby County Schools for more virtual options.

But officials there said state rules don’t provide the same flexibility as last year. And Schwinn’s waiver option is limiting too, they said.

“The process is stringent, and we understand there’s little likelihood of a large district like ours getting approved since we have a pool of substitutes and administrative office staff who can step in if we don’t have enough teachers to staff our classrooms,” spokeswoman Jerica Phillips said Wednesday.

“Right now, we’re managing,” Phillips added. “But we are also exploring ways to petition the state to expand our continuous learning plan — for instance, for families where there is chronic illness.”

Nashville school leaders don’t expect to request waivers either.

“Our focus remains on keeping mitigation strategies in place to keep students safe and learning in the classroom,” said spokesman Sean Braisted, citing universal masking, social distancing, and vaccinations for eligible students and staff in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

During her weekly call with district superintendents on Wednesday, Schwinn said she is reviewing waiver requests on a case-by-case basis and looking especially closely at staffing problems.

Earlier in the week, she said there’s no clear criteria for granting waivers because “there’s a lot of variance across the state” on the size of schools and districts and availability of staff.

“It really is going to be about specific individual waiver requests at the classroom and at the school level, and it is when there is no way that you can continue to reasonably provide in-person instruction,” Schwinn told reporters.

“In-person instruction continues to be our priority in the state of Tennessee. That will not change,” she added.

Schwinn announced Wednesday that the state has reopened the application process for districts wanting to launch their own virtual schools in light of recent COVID outbreaks. In July, her department approved 29 new virtual schools for this year, bringing the total statewide number to 57.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, who chairs the Senate Democratic caucus and serves on her chamber’s education committee, called on the governor to give school leaders more autonomy to respond locally to the public health crisis through an executive order or new state rule.

“Any flexibility being offered is helpful, but the delta variant wasn’t an issue when these decisions were made,” said Akbari, of Memphis. “We are now seeing record numbers of students being hospitalized and other students sitting at home and not learning because their schools have been closed. We are dealing with something that’s more unknown and potentially more deadly.”

A spokeswoman for Lee did not immediately respond Wednesday. The governor is scheduled to hold his weekly news conference on Thursday at the state Capitol.

Tennessee should prioritize funding more school nurses and counselors, says key panel

2021-08-31T23:36:30+00:00

With the pandemic highlighting the importance of students’ physical, social, and emotional health, an influential Tennessee committee is urging Gov. Bill Lee to prioritize more funding for school nurses and counselors next year.

An annual investment of about $110 million would get Tennessee to nationally recommended ratios of nurses and counselors in public schools, according to the panel of government and education officials who annually review the state’s education funding formula.

The improvements, which were outlined Monday in a letter to Lee, would allow Tennessee to fund 1 nurse for every 750 students instead of the current ratio of 1 to 3,000.

Tennessee also could fund 1 counselor for every 250 students. Currently, the state covers the cost of 1 counselor for every 500 students in elementary schools and 1 per 350 students in grades seven through 12.

The recommendations mark the first time Tennessee’s BEP Review Committee has elevated both needs to the top of its priority list for how to improve public education through the funding formula known as the Basic Education Program.

The top billing acknowledges what education experts have been saying for a long time: Healthier students are better learners.

The committee’s endorsement boosts the likelihood that Lee and the legislature will seriously consider investing in needs that state officials have long discussed but deemed too costly.

Last year, the governor and lawmakers followed the panel’s recommendation to maintain funding for public schools in this year’s budget, even as student enrollment declined due to the pandemic. And former Gov. Bill Haslam heeded the panel’s suggestions when building several of his spending plans, resulting in hundreds of millions of additional dollars allocated toward teacher compensation.

In its letter, the 22-member BEP committee said nurses are critical “to meet the needs of all students, and in light of the ongoing public health crisis.”

The panel also cited the “expanded role and scope of responsibilities of school counselors,” who create comprehensive programs focused on student outcomes and help students navigate paths toward college and career opportunities.

The letter was signed by Lillian Hartgrove, a member of the BEP panel and chairwoman of the Tennessee State Board of Education.

Lillian Hartgrove, who chairs the Tennessee State Board of Education, speaks with students during a school visit.

Lee was traveling Tuesday in East Tennessee, and his press secretary, Casey Black, said the governor was reviewing the committee’s recommendations.

Earlier this year, as the pandemic continued to take a toll on student wellbeing, Lee championed a budget that included a $250 million trust fund to address student mental health through annual investment income — but did not include extra money to quickly hire more school nurses, counselors, social workers, and psychologists.

A leader with the Tennessee School Counselors Association lauded the prospect of more funding for the 2022-23 fiscal year, which begins next July.

“We have definitely never been at the top of this list before,” said Lauren Baker, who serves on the association’s board of directors.

Baker said the ratio of counselors to students is especially dire in elementary and middle schools, since much of Tennessee’s counseling focus is on college and career readiness. But the early grades are just as important, she said.

“A lot of industry people have talked to our Tennessee leaders about college graduates struggling to regulate their emotions or having difficulty with communication or problem-solving skills. If we don’t start teaching those core competencies to children, it’s much harder to teach them as adults,” Baker said Tuesday.

Most districts already hire more nurses and counselors than are funded through the BEP formula. Providing more state funding for those areas would free up local funds for other needs, including teacher compensation, technology, or hiring more specialists for the state’s 7-year-old instructional intervention program. All three of those items rounded out the committee’s Top 5 list of recommended funding priorities.

Tennessee schools have received $4 billion-plus in federal relief funding — a historic amount — to pay for COVID-19-related expenses that range from learning recovery and acceleration programs to improved ventilation systems for school buildings. But that money must be spent or obligated by September 2024, when it will no longer be available to fill recurring expenses like salaries.

Still, many districts are using the federal funds to hire more nurses and counselors temporarily — an approach that kicks the can down the road, said Robert Eby, vice chairman of the state Board of Education.

“I think we need to realize that the [federal] funds are one-time-only,” Eby said at a recent BEP Review Committee meeting. “They weren’t originally in there for recurring costs.”

At the same meeting, Hartgrove addressed funding naysayers who say the federal infusion of cash should be enough for now.

“In reality, these are temporary pots of money to assist with the current crisis. But you have a long-term need, regardless of the pandemic,” she said.

Below is the committee’s letter to the governor:

Judge hears objections to Tennessee governor’s order making wearing masks in school a parental choice

2021-08-30T21:18:06+00:00

Seeking a temporary restraining order to halt Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing students to opt out of wearing masks, attorneys for two Shelby County parents told a federal judge Monday that the order creates an “unreasonably dangerous environment” and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit, who are parents of children with disabilities, say their children are high risk for developing severe complications for COVID and need their peers to wear masks in order for immunocompromised children to learn in safe environments.

Lee framed his order as a choice for parents to make. But it challenges a Shelby County masks in schools mandate issued Aug. 6.

U.S. District Judge Sheryl Halle Lipman of Tennessee’s Western District did not rule on the temporary restraining order, but is expected to make a decision quickly. She granted the parties 24 hours to file written closing arguments and rebuttals.

In addition to the attorneys for both sides, attorneys for the county were present and voiced their support for the parents’ complaint, which aligns with a similar case they filed against the governor on Thursday. Also on hand were members of the legal team for Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district. Shelby County School officials have continued to promote universal masking despite the governor’s orders. Donati Law is representing the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs, Brittany Schwaigert, mother of a 13-year-old boy who attends West Middle School in the Collierville Municipal School District, and Emily Tremel, mother of an 11-year-old girl who attends Houston Middle School in the Germantown Municipal School District, appeared before Lipman. Tremel appeared virtually because her child recently tested positive for COVID following the governor’s opt out order.

“It’s disrupted her school year completely,” said Tremel of the COVID diagnosis and resulting quarantine.

Tremel’s daughter has a chromosomal abnormality that causes episodic ataxia, a condition that impairs movement and the nervous system, and congenital nystagmus, which causes involuntary eye movement. Because nystagmus makes online learning challenging, Tremel said that she was relieved when the county issued its mask ordinance because it gave her daughter the opportunity to go to school safely with her peers.

She said about 10% to 20% of the students at her daughter’s school attended without masks after the governor’s opt-out order on Aug. 16.

“We were horrified when that decision came down,” she said. “The one thing that was there to keep our child safe was now being taken away.”

Fellow parent and plaintiff Schwaigert added that the governor’s order “changed everything” regarding her child’s safety at school. Her son has autism and is also immunocompromised because of a chemotherapy regimen that he takes to manage tuberous sclerosis complex, a genetic disorder that causes polycystic kidney disease, epilepsy, and hypertension. Since the executive order, he now comes to school 15 minutes late to avoid being in the hallway with unmasked children.

Jim Newsom, from the state’s attorney general office, argued that the lawsuit was premature because the parents had not yet exhausted the appeal process available for families of children with disabilities. Newsom said that the proper course would be to file a complaint with school and district officials and then with the State Department of Education.

Schwaigert said that during a “tense” email exchange, a Collierville school official told her that the district’s hands were tied because of the governor’s position.

The defense did not call any witnesses.

The judge also heard from two medical experts brought by the plaintiffs, both of whom expressed that the pandemic had reached a new and more serious phase with the more contagious and more dangerous delta variant.

Dr. Sara Cross, an infectious disease physician with Regional One Health said that health officials are bracing for a gloomy September because their models are predicting a peak in infections at the end of the month.

Dr. Joi Wilson-Townsend, a pediatrician with Memphis Children’s Clinic added that they are already feeling the repercussions of the governor’s opt-out orders.

“In the past month, we have been totally overwhelmed by COVID. It’s totally different than it was a year ago,” said Wilson-Townsend.

Wilson-Townsend added that Shelby County has a disproportionately high number of children who suffer from diabetes, obesity, and asthma, and they are particularly vulnerable.

“Allowing a child not to be masked puts a higher burden on other children in the classroom,” she said.

Earlier in the day, teachers organizations and allies pressed the state to allow local districts to require masks and fully switch to virtual school at a virtual press conference.

“We support the efforts of our district to keep our students and staff safe, including using mask mandates,” said Danette Stokes, president of the United Education Association of Shelby County. “The state spent millions of dollars on a public health campaign: ‘Face it, masks work.’ It is wrong for them to back away from that basic fact.”

Matt Barnum contributed reporting.

Schwinn to consider waivers to shift schools to virtual learning as COVID cases spike in Tennessee

2021-08-28T01:14:48+00:00

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn announced Friday she will consider granting waivers to let school districts shift to remote instruction in response to outbreaks of COVID and a raft of school closures.

In a letter to superintendents, Schwinn said the seven-day waivers will be for classrooms or schools only, not entire districts. But waivers won’t be required to move individual students online due to virus-related quarantines.

While the “additional flexibility” is needed, Schwinn said the waivers will be “narrowly applied to preserve in-person learning wherever practicable.”

Her announcement came in response to a surge in pediatric COVID cases, a wave of school closures and canceled bus routes, confusion about the state’s rules for providing remote instruction, and inconsistencies in how those rules are being applied.

On Wednesday, after Gov. Bill Lee said he won’t issue an executive order to let entire districts move online, Schwinn said school systems already had the ability to shift schools or classrooms to virtual instruction without dipping into days stockpiled for inclement weather and illness.

But administrators and parents complained about mixed messages from the state, and Schwinn promised to deliver clearer guidance.

Dale Lynch, who leads the state superintendents organization, called the new waiver process “good news” for educators and students.

“This is a critical need, and we’re appreciative of any flexibility that will allow schools to keep operating and students to keep learning,” he said.

House Education Committee Chairman Mark White welcomed the change as well.

“I believe this is a way to address the need for schools to have virtual learning during this time of COVID spiking, but at the same time set parameters on how long virtual learning can take place based on quarantine guidelines,” said White, a Republican from Memphis.

Schwinn’s letter said the waiver process aims for “a nimble approach” to help schools navigate the worsening pandemic, marked by 14,000 pediatric cases of COVID across Tennessee for the week ending Aug. 21. She promised her team will review waiver requests daily and respond “as quickly as possible,” but that she will make the final decision.

According to a copy of the waiver request form, districts must document and demonstrate “a significant impact of COVID-19 quarantine or isolation on school operations, impacting students, teachers and/or staff.”

If a waiver is granted, all extracurricular activities at the school must also be canceled.

Districts had blanket authority last year to shift to virtual learning when needed. But because spring testing showed students fell dramatically behind academically, a new state rule for 2021-22 requires schools to provide in-person instruction and tap into stockpiled days if they have to close.

This week, as more Tennessee schools closed, educators, parents, and policymakers clamored for expanded remote options to manage the more contagious delta variant.

Earlier Friday, the legislature’s Democratic leaders called on the governor to provide school leaders with immediate flexibility.

“We have kids being sent home to quarantine without a clear way to stay on top of their schoolwork. That’s unacceptable,” said the Democrats’ letter.

Schwinn told Chalkbeat she expects to consider waivers for the “foreseeable future” and will reassess the need “week by week.”

“I think this is the right approach, and I feel confident districts will be judicious in seeking waivers,” she said. “It continues to be really important that we maximize in-person instruction.”

Below, you can read Schwinn’s letter to superintendents:

Tennessee governor says no again as some school leaders clamor for remote learning

2021-08-26T01:37:46+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday he has no plans to allow school systems to shift to virtual learning, despite another COVID surge and calls from district leaders wanting flexibility to manage the public health crisis.

At a news conference, Lee said he’s not considering issuing an executive order that would let district leaders have the same remote options as last year — “in part because we saw just how devastating the learning loss impact was when we went remote.”

But his education chief, Penny Schwinn, clarified later that districts already have authority to temporarily move individual students, classes, or even entire schools online in response to a COVID outbreak. In those cases, she said, districts would not have to dip into their allotment of days stockpiled for inclement weather, sickness, or staffing problems.

“Right now, [remote instruction] is available to use on a school-by-school basis and an individual basis. You cannot use it district-wide,” Schwinn told Chalkbeat.

The approach means Tennessee expects school leaders to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer to respond as cases of COVID’s delta variant increase dramatically among school-age children.

The state logged about 14,000 pediatric cases last week, an increase of 57% over the prior week, and more of those children are needing medical attention. The biggest spike has been in children ages 5-13, most of whom are still too young to be vaccinated, said Dr. Lisa Piercey, state health commissioner.

Lee, Piercey, and Schwinn spoke with reporters at the Nashville headquarters of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency after the governor returned from touring flood-ravaged Humphreys County, west of Nashville.

While he does not support mandates, Lee emphasized the importance of getting vaccinated and wearing masks to lessen virus spread in both classrooms and communities.

“Let me just say and remind parents, you have tools to protect your children and to help mitigate the spread,” Lee said. “[For ages] 12 and over, vaccine is the tool. Every parent can have their children wear a mask to school as a tool to mitigate the spread.”

His comments came just days after school leaders in Memphis urged families to contact the governor’s office about needing remote flexibility for Shelby County Schools — not only because of ill and quarantined students but because of challenges staffing classrooms.

Some district or charter administrators already have dipped into their stockpiled days to close schools because of quarantined teachers or staff. In Memphis this week, Frayser Community Schools closed MLK College Prep for two days, while Williamson County Schools closed one of its middle schools for one day last week.

In a letter Tuesday, two school superintendents in the governor’s home county worried the situation isn’t sustainable.

Jason Golden, with Williamson County Schools, and David Snowden, with Franklin Special School District, asked state lawmakers to lobby the governor to reinstate remote learning as a tool to help manage COVID spread. They said many of their schools were approaching a staffing “crisis point” and asked for flexibility to shift schools or grades to remote instruction to avoid depleting stockpiled days before winter arrives.

But Schwinn said districts have options beyond using stockpiled days to respond to COVID-related staffing problems. Those include holding remote classes on a temporary basis, or allowing a quarantined teacher to virtually teach students who remain in their school buildings under the supervision of another adult.

“I trust my district leaders to make the best decisions for their communities on that,” said Schwinn, adding that the state isn’t defining what constitutes an outbreak or a staffing shortage.

Schwinn emphasized the state doesn’t plan to move to a “blanket approach” on remote learning.

“Because there are so many individual quarantines at individual schools, there are some superintendents who would like to have a more uniform approach across the district. But we’re not going to do that,” she said.

In a separate interview, House Speaker Cameron Sexton said more discussion is needed to clear up confusion about policies that are supposed to address ongoing disruptions to learning.

“We’re going to be facing this for the next 5 or 10 years easily as we go through COVID. I think there needs to be a bigger conversation about the direction for school boards to set the policy so parents know what it is and understand it,” Sexton said.

Elizabeth Tullos, a spokeswoman for the State Board of Education, said any decision to close schools should be made at the local level. If any closures exceed a district’s number of stockpiled days, districts may ask Schwinn for a waiver from the required 180 days of instruction.

“Along with other state leaders, the State Board of Education is monitoring what rules and policies, if any, are needed in further response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Tullos said.

As pediatric COVID cases climb, Memphis parents fume over Tennessee’s new restrictions on remote learning

2021-08-25T00:14:05+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is getting pushback in Memphis on new Tennessee restrictions that make it harder for district leaders to close school buildings and shift students to remote instruction as pediatric COVID cases climb.

Meanwhile, school board members with Shelby County Schools held a moment of silence Tuesday to remember two students, two teachers, and one young alum who recently died. School officials did not release the cause of death for any of the five.

“We must stand together during this difficult time,” Superintendent Joris Ray said.

A day earlier, district officials encouraged families to direct their complaints to the governor’s office as a petition circulated demanding a virtual option that allows students to stay with their teachers. More than 13,000 people had signed the petition by Tuesday afternoon, and a small group of parents also protested outside the district’s headquarters on Monday.

“We hear your concerns and understand your frustrations regarding options for remote learning,” said a statement from the district. “Stand for safety with us by contacting Governor Lee and state legislators.”

The call to action reflects the ever-growing divide between the Republican governor and Tennessee’s largest school district over the best way to teach while protecting the health of children too young to be vaccinated. COVID’s delta variant has returned Tennessee’s case numbers to levels not seen since the pandemic’s wintertime peak.

Shelby County leaders said their hands are tied on remote learning options beyond enrolling in Memphis Virtual School. They cited new rules and criteria passed recently by the Tennessee State Board of Education for closing schools and remote learning.

Those rules allow individual students to switch temporarily to remote instruction if they’re sidelined by the virus, either because of illness or exposure. But districts can’t toggle back and forth with remote learning without an executive order from the governor, according to state officials. School systems that have to close entire schools because of COVID outbreaks must use days usually stockpiled for inclement weather, flu outbreaks, or staffing problems.

“We must comply with the law as we continue to push legislators to allow local control,” said the statement from Shelby County Schools.

After signing an executive order last week allowing parents to opt their students out of local mask mandates, the governor said he does not want students to return to remote instruction. He cited the results from testing last spring that show a dramatic decline in statewide achievement, especially in Memphis and Nashville, which stayed remote the longest.

“Currently, there’s no plan allowed for [students] to go back to virtual learning,” Lee said on Aug. 16. “So we’ll take that one step at a time, but our hope is that they won’t move in that direction.”

On Tuesday, his press secretary, Casey Black, said the governor’s office has received about 80 calls since then about remote learning. About half want the same kind of virtual flexibility they had last year, and the other half want school buildings to stay open, Black said.

Memphian Nikita Taylor, who has two children and a grandchild in Shelby County Schools, was among those weighing in. She contacted the governor’s office after learning about COVID cases at her children’s schools.

“My message to him would be that our children are not safe in the current conditions and under the compliances that you have in place,” said Taylor. “We need those to be adjusted so that our children can not only learn but so that they can also be safe while they are learning.”

Taylor wants her district to be granted flexibility to use a rotating schedule of in-person and remote classes allowing half of a school’s students to come to brick-and-mortar classrooms on Monday and Wednesday and the other half on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This would allow more space for social distancing in classrooms and help crews better disinfect the buildings, she said.

Taylor’s own children began the academic year in quarantine after testing positive for COVID before classes started on August 9.

“My children, they were just blessed to be healthy enough to fight it off, but there are some who may not be as lucky, and I’m really concerned about those children,” she said.

The governor has called the pandemic “an adult problem” that doesn’t require universal masking in schools.

His opt-out masking order drew a stern letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona urging Lee not to block districts from following “science-based strategies for preventing the spread of COVID-19 that are aligned with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” And another petition signed by nearly 6,000 Tennessee health care workers urges Lee to drop his executive order.

On Tuesday, the governor’s spokeswoman did not respond when asked via email about the surge in pediatric cases and whether schooling under the current restrictions is sustainable.

In a new COVID dashboard unveiled on Tuesday, Shelby County Schools reported 547 cases among students and staff in its first two weeks of school. And according to data from the Tennessee Department of Health, Shelby County has seen a 40% increase in COVID cases among children ages 5 to 18 — to about 2,400 cases — in the last week, as of 3 p.m. Tuesday.

On Monday, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis confirmed the death of its third patient this month — 16-year-old Azorean “Zo” Tatum, a student at Westwood High School — due to complications from the virus. By Tuesday, the hospital was treating 33 children with COVID, including nine in intensive care and two on ventilators.

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, district officials mentioned the death of a second student without providing details.

They also confirmed the deaths of two educators: Ashley Leatherwood, a second-grade teacher at Riverwood Elementary School in Cordova, and Catrina Brooks, a pre-kindergarten specialist at Grahamwood Elementary School in East Memphis.

The sudden losses have served as tragic markers in a young school year and added anxiety to school communities trying to navigate the stubborn pandemic.

“It’s just all so stressful,” said Taylor.

How Tennesseans reacted to the governor’s order to make masks optional in schools

2021-08-17T23:44:20+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued an executive order on Monday allowing parents of schoolchildren to opt out of school mask policies. His announcement at an afternoon press conference prompted swift and strong reactions from Tennesseans who remain polarized on the issue. Some commended him for preserving parental choice while others accused him of putting partisan politics above public health. Below are a collection of reactions from state lawmakers and local residents.

This story has been lightly edited for style and length.

I feel like the governor is just condemning my grandchildren — two under age 9, one of them with Down syndrome — to needless Covid-19 illness and possible death. He must just not care about small children, if he ever did.

— Anne Carey, grandparent, Nashville

Every child’s situation is different, and parents know what’s best for their children.

— State Sen. Brian Kelsey, Republican, Germantown (Source: Twitter)

It’s just such a crock to say this executive order is about protecting parental choice. There are lots of parents who would choose for their kids to go to a school observing a mask mandate, and Gov. Bill Lee has largely eliminated that option.

— State Sen. Jeff Yarbro, Democrat, Nashville (Source: Twitter)

I write this standing in a school short-staffed because three teachers who are parents had to leave to get their children from schools due to quarantined classes. This is not fair to the classes of kids they had to leave nor their own children. This is one many examples that have happened within just the first two weeks of school. Not requiring masks will only make this worse. My child is 11. I fear for her life and the lives of all our children.

— Michelle Armstrong, parent and public education advocate, Shelby County

We simply could not have worse leadership on this.

— State Sen. Heidi Campbell, Democrat, Nashville (Source: Twitter)

I am hopeful this order can be extended further by curtailing the power of the six independent health departments that can still impose unlimited mandates upon our business community.

— State Rep. Cameron Sexton, Republican, Crossville (Source: Twitter)

I could not disagree with this more. Hospitals across Tennessee are at or near capacity. Some hospitals’ pediatric cases doubled in the course of a week. Masks are such a little thing that can protect our kids and teachers. Kids can’t get vaccinated and should be protected at all costs.

— State Sen. Raumesh Akbari, Democrat, Memphis (Source: Twitter)

Gov. Bill Lee is depriving disabled and immunocompromised children of equal educational opportunities in free public schools, as guaranteed by law. Without safety precautions and a virtual option, the school doors are effectively closed to many children.

— State Rep. John Ray Clemmons, Democrat, Nashville (Source: Twitter)

Our Constitution requires government leaders to protect liberties. It does not direct us to protect health. You are responsible for you and your children.

— State Rep. Chris Todd, Republican, Madison County (Source: Twitter)

I totally disagree. Schools should have students wear masks. It is a neighborly and loving thing to do for our community.

— Becky Lloyd, licensed family therapist, Memphis

One of the thoughts I’m really entertaining in terms of my own children is whether or not it would be best to take them out of school for the year, and that’s a difficult decision for me as a parent and a teacher, but I also want them to be alive and healthy. I don’t even know what an alternative would be. But I know them physically being in school is not more important than them being well and alive. It puts parents like me in a really difficult position.

— April Thompson, parent and teacher, Memphis

Tennessee students can opt out of wearing masks at school, governor says. The Shelby County superintendent disagrees.

2021-08-16T21:50:18+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued an executive order Monday allowing parents of schoolchildren to opt out of school mask mandates.

Lee said he will not call for a special legislative session, which General Assembly leaders had called for in an effort to prevent mask mandates and other safety measures in schools.

“Local decision-making is very important,” Lee said at a news conference in Nashville. But parents’ ability to make decisions for their kids “is the most important. No one cares more about the health and well-being of a child than that child’s parent.”

The state’s largest school district, Shelby County Schools in Memphis, will for now continue to require masks for all school employees, students, and visitors, Superintendent Joris Ray tweeted Monday evening. Ray said he and board members are consulting with the district’s general counsel to review Lee’s order.

Lee’s move comes as the delta variant drives a resurgence of COVID cases and political fights are raging nationwide over what schools should do to keep safe as they try to find their footing after a year and a half of pandemic disruptions.

Shelby County Schools, which resumed classes last week, announced in early August it would require masks in schools, and at least 13 other school districts followed suit.

Six small school systems in the Memphis suburbs also issued mandates in compliance with an order from Shelby County health officials to require face coverings inside of all school buildings.

Lee’s executive order covers both school districts and local health agencies.

In a statement Monday, the Shelby County Health Department said it would comply with Lee’s order and “make adjustments as necessary.” The department said it continues to support recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics that children age 2 and older, teachers, and staff members at schools, preschools and day cares wear masks in indoor settings, particularly in regions with high transmission of the virus like Tennessee.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the county shifting its stance will mean for Shelby County Schools. Ray referred to the county health order in saying the district’s mask mandate would continue.

Rep. Vincent Dixie, a Nashville Democrat, said going maskless to a school where COVID-19 is spreading freely “is like going into a lion’s den with no armor.”

“The governor gave no solutions on how to protect our kids,” Dixie said, noting kids under 12 are ineligible for any of the vaccines. “You can’t just say what you don’t want and don’t give some sort of solution.”

Lee’s order is similar to one signed last week by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Lee’s order doesn’t go as far as DeSantis’s, which threatens to defund administrators’ and school board members’ salaries if they require masks.

In a statement, Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat, said the order was “irresponsible” and won’t help to curb the spread of the virus.

“How do you say decisions on community health should be made locally, and in the very same breath and sentence remove local control in regards to children wearing masks at school?” Parkinson said.

Amanda Bragida, a parent of elementary school students in Shelby County Schools and a school nurse, said she cried when she heard about Lee’s order. Her daughter, who as a kindergartener is too young to be vaccinated, has asthma. Bragida said she and her husband discussed whether she should quit her job to homeschool, but they can’t afford it.

As a school nurse, Bragida said, she has watched masks, social distancing, and other safety measures work wonderfully in schools.

“I tell my children that this is a way we can try to help ourselves and help others, and they understand that,” she said. “I’m trying to educate our students that these tools are effective and it doesn’t go against our freedom. We have to care about others.”

Even with a mask order, Bragida said, she has spent much of the young school year contact-tracing and fielding calls from parents with children who were exposed or tested positive, in large part because community transmission remains high.

“I don’t get a lunch break. I’m like a floor nurse,” she said. “We’re so swamped already, and less masking isn’t going to make this year go better for us or for students.”

Lee’s order comes as the virus is spreading through Tennessee faster than at any time during the pandemic, except for this winter’s surge, while a staffing shortage makes it harder for hospitals to provide care.

The Tennessee Department of Health reported a seven-day rolling average of 3,913 daily cases on Aug. 12, and deaths are at roughly 20 per day. On Monday, according to the health department, the test positivity rate was 17.5%; the World Health Organization recommends restrictions to slow the spread of the virus when the positivity rate is above 5%.

Earlier in the day, Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey said the Tennessee National Guard was being deployed to understaffed hospitals. She said more people were hospitalized in the first 15 days of August than there were during any full month of the pandemic.

Many hospitals are full, but not entirely because of COVID. Piercey said they were closer to capacity than usual before this summer’s delta variant spike. Two out of five ICU patients have COVID, Piercey said.

Both Lee and Piercey promoted the use of monoclonal antibodies for people to improve their immune response.

But in addition to the increased number of cases and hospitalizations, more Tennesseans are getting vaccinated. About 41% of Tennesseans are vaccinated, but more people have been getting the shots each week for more than a month.

Nearly all COVID deaths in the past few months — 94% — were among unvaccinated people, Piercey said. Most of the vaccinated people who died were immunocompromised.

Ian Round reported from Nashville and Caroline Bauman reported from Memphis.

Tennessee’s pandemic test scores dropped, but especially in Memphis and Nashville

2021-08-13T21:46:51+00:00

The two Tennessee school districts that taught all their students primarily remotely last year saw their test scores fall further than the state’s average decline.

But those districts in Memphis and Nashville also serve the highest proportions of students who are economically disadvantaged, of color, and learning a new language — some of the student groups that have been most affected by the pandemic.

Both issues have been factors in falling student achievement rates across the United States after a year of educational and social disruptions, according to national data.

Tennessee released district-level test scores this week showing that Memphis-based Shelby County Schools had an overall drop in proficiency of 11 percentage points from 2019 to 2021, compared with the statewide slide of 5 percentage points.

Overall proficiency for Nashville public school students declined by just over 8 percentage points.

Both school systems stayed remote the longest in the contentious debate with elected state officials over how best to reopen schools last year. Gov. Bill Lee charged the districts weren’t putting the needs of students first, while their superintendents said they were prioritizing safety in communities disproportionately affected by the deadly coronavirus.

Now the question is how Lee’s administration and the GOP-controlled legislature will respond to the grim results from Tennessee’s two largest school systems, which are located in Democratic strongholds.

At an Aug. 2 news conference to discuss state-level test results, the Republican governor highlighted that achievement gaps had “greatly widened,” with a disproportionate negative impact on minority students.

“The lack of in-person learning this year has exasperated (cq) an already bad situation,” Lee said, calling the results “unacceptable.”

Along with this week’s spreadsheet of district results, the state education department released a 312-page online report to give a snapshot of each school system’s performance in third-grade reading, which is considered an indicator of future academic success, and eighth-grade math, which is necessary to understand subsequent courses on algebra and mathematical reasoning.

At the request of leaders of the legislature’s House Education Committee, the report also labeled each district’s primary way of teaching last year.

Shelby County and Metro Nashville stood out as the only districts that taught all students primarily online, although several school systems were identified as providing mostly remote instruction to their older students. About 60% of districts were identified as teaching their students mostly in person, with the remainder providing a mix of both in-person and remote instruction.

During a presentation this week about test scores in Memphis, Shelby County school leaders stood by their decision to teach mostly online last year.

“Recognizing that shuttering schools could impact academic achievement, the risks to public health and safety were too great to be ignored,” officials said in a statement.

Nashville schools Director Adrienne Battle said test results for Tennessee’s second largest district weren’t surprising.

“We knew economically disadvantaged students were hit hardest by the pandemic and saw the greatest declines,” she said. “And urban school districts like Metro Nashville [and] Shelby tend to have the highest proportion of economically disadvantaged students in the state.”

Almost a third of Tennessee’s 1 million students are from low-income families, which comprise about 56% of the student population in Shelby County Schools and 38% in Metro Nashville.

State officials say test scores have confirmed the pandemic has been hardest academically on historically underserved students.

Those demographics apply to the state’s Achievement School District, which is trying to turn around 25 low-performing schools in Memphis and two in Nashville. Three out of every five ASD students are considered economically disadvantaged, while 98% are people of color.

The ASD provided both in-person and remote instruction last year and also saw its scores drop precipitously.

The 2021 results provide the most detailed look so far at how the pandemic has slowed student learning since the first COVID cases reached Tennessee in March of 2020. Standardized testing was canceled nationwide last year, including the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

Tennessee’s school-level results will be released later, while families can use the state’s TCAP Family Portal to access student test scores.

School, district, and state results are scheduled to be published in a more user-friendly format this fall through Tennessee’s online report card.

Tennessee governor weighs whether to call special legislative session to hobble school mask mandates

2021-08-13T00:13:35+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is considering convening a special legislative session to address charges of “overreach” by local officials as a growing number of Tennessee school districts require students and staff to wear masks.

The governor received a letter Wednesday from House Speaker Cameron Sexton and signed by his entire Republican caucus asking for an opportunity to “address misdirected and mandated responses to COVID-19 by local entities and officials.”

“We are reviewing the letter and will have more to say soon,” said Casey Black, Lee’s press secretary, on Thursday.

The decision could set the stage for lawmakers to limit avenues available to local officials responding to the surging infection rate for children with COVID’s more contagious delta variant. Children under 12 aren’t eligible for vaccinations.

School boards, as well as six independent health departments, currently have authority in Tennessee to require masks in schools, as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

But both Sexton and the governor have said parents should decide whether face coverings work for their students.

Last week, Sexton threatened to push for voucher legislation that would let parents move their children and taxpayer funding to private schools if their local public schools require masks. And on Monday, Lee told reporters that “nothing’s off the table” to address the latest pandemic battle putting schools in the crossfire.

Rep. Mark White, who chairs the House Education Committee, said the odds for a special session are 50-50.

“I think the House is on board, but I haven’t heard of movement from the Senate. We’ll see where it goes,” White said Thursday.

The Memphis Republican signed Sexton’s letter in response to hundreds of emails and calls to his office, mostly from constituents who want masks to be optional.

“We’re a divided population right now, with people very angry on both sides,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea for the legislature, as a representative body, to come together to try to find some kind of solutions.”

The GOP-controlled legislature could pass laws to punish districts that issue mask mandates by taking away state funding, as Florida’s governor is threatening to do, or to strip away the authority of independent health departments.

But Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, said the legislature should not do anything that could extend a pandemic that to this point has claimed the lives of nearly 13,000 Tennesseans.

“We cannot support a special session where the controlling party is only concerned with punishing private business owners and school districts for exercising medically appropriate precautions to keep people safe,” Akbari tweeted on Wednesday.

At the beginning of August, only Shelby County Schools in Memphis was requiring masks for the new academic year. But at least 13 other districts have since joined the state’s largest district in that policy, including its counterparts in Nashville and Chattanooga.

The list of districts with mandates includes the governor’s home school system in Williamson County, where an explosive school board meeting on Tuesday night erupted into shouts and threats from anti-maskers against doctors and nurses who spoke in favor of a mandate.

Six small school systems in the Memphis suburbs also have issued mandates in compliance with last week’s order from Shelby County health officials to require face coverings inside of all school buildings.

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who leads the Senate, has said the decision about mask mandates should lie with local school boards, but he declined Thursday to say whether he supports a special session.

“Amid all the controversy regarding masks, vaccine passports and the like, we appear to have lost sight of the one thing that truly matters: keeping children in the classroom so they can learn,” McNally said in a statement.

If a special session is convened, the Oak Ridge Republican pledged to keep the focus on what’s best for education.

White said any special session on school masks needs to happen before Labor Day.

“Things are kind of getting out of hand,” he said, referring to the Williamson County school board meeting that made national news and drew a public rebuke from President Joe Biden.

“It’s like we’re in a fast-moving canoe going down rapids and just trying to hang on,” White said.

Mask confusion reigns as Tennessee goes back to school amid COVID surge

2021-08-09T23:37:41+00:00

Tennessee mom Amanda Sharitt sent her three children back to school this week wearing masks, but she figures only one will actually use a face covering all day under their district’s optional masking policy.

“My 13-year-old daughter is very informed and plans to wear a mask, but my 11-year-old son has autism and finds them itchy and confining. As for my kindergartner, I’ll send her with a mask, but if it comes off, it comes off. I can’t do anything about that,” said Sharitt, who lives in Murfreesboro, south of Nashville.

After a year of universal masking requirements by most of Tennessee’s 147 school districts, less than a dozen have extended those mandates for the new academic year, even as the more contagious delta variant has reawakened the coronavirus pandemic.

The result is a state of mask confusion. For weeks, Tennessee students, parents, and teachers have been wading through a morass of conflicting statements from state and local officials, changing government directives, and shifting medical guidance.

“The information is bouncing all around,” fumed Sharitt, who wishes that Rutherford County Schools had required masks. “The CDC says one thing, our governor says something else, and then our local leaders say they’re just following what they’re being told. Nothing is consistent.”

Tennessee isn’t alone in its patchwork of policies. Illinois mandated face coverings last week, while Florida’s governor threatened to withhold funding from districts that require them. The governor of Arkansas is trying to reverse a mask ban he signed earlier this year. Cities like New York City and Denver plan to require masks, but many districts are still mulling what to do.

Last week, in a reversal from his previous message, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said parents should decide about masking, not local school systems. House Speaker Cameron Sexton agreed, threatening districts that require masks with voucher legislation to let public school parents move their children and taxpayer money to private schools.

Tennessee law says such decisions lie with local school boards and, in some cases, county health officers.

Parents like Michael Miller are fed up with the mixed messages, especially since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics agree that all students and school staff should wear masks, regardless of whether they are vaccinated.

“It’s incomprehensible. Honestly, it feels like gross negligence,” said Miller, whose two sons attend schools in Williamson County, also near Nashville.

His school system, which started classes last Friday, has “highly encouraged” masks but isn’t requiring them so far this year, contrary to a pledge in March to follow CDC guidance when families had to choose between in-person or virtual classes for 2021-22. After a year of remote learning, the Millers chose to send their sons back into school buildings.

But at a recent open house at one of his children’s schools, Miller saw only about a fourth of the people, including teachers, wearing face coverings.

“I’m angry, upset, scared, concerned, because we just spent a year doing everything we could to keep our kids safe,” he said.

Another COVID wave arrives

The delta variant is spreading quickly, mostly among unvaccinated populations, with the number of Tennessee cases doubling in the last two weeks. Less than 40% of Tennesseans are fully vaccinated, compared with about 50% nationwide.

Most concerning is the surge happening among children, said Dr. Lisa Piercey, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health. During a call with reporters on Friday, she said pediatric COVID cases almost doubled to nearly 3,200 during the week ending on July 25.

“A lot of our pediatric cases are in the West Tennessee region right now, because of its proximity to Missouri and Arkansas. This is probably going to be across the state in the next few weeks,” Piercey said.

Even so, her department won’t recommend more restrictions at schools if the spread worsens among school-age kids.

“We’ve passed along the CDC guidance. We’ve passed along the AAPA guidance. We don’t have anything to add to that. Those two large national bodies have spoken, and we’re telling districts and parents, this is your choice,” Piercey said.

Tennessee wants to keep students learning in person as much as possible this year, especially after state test scores released last week showed an across-the-board drop in proficiency, particularly for students who learned mostly remotely.

Students line up in the hallway at Bruce Elementary School in Memphis on Aug. 9, 2021, Shelby County Schools’ first day of classes. The district operated remotely most of the 2020-21 school year and is requiring masks for in-person learning in 2021-22.

Under new rules approved by the state Board of Education, Tennessee is allowing students to switch temporarily to remote instruction if they’re sidelined by the virus, either because of illness or exposure. But districts that have to close schools or entire systems because of COVID outbreaks will have to use days they’ve usually stockpiled for inclement weather, flu outbreaks, or staffing problems.

If districts and parents want to keep their students in brick-and-mortar classrooms, national guidance is “actually pretty clear,” said Dr. Stephen Patrick, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy.

“We need to have a layered approach to protection,” said Patrick, who is also a pediatrician. “The first layer is vaccines, the next is masks, and the last is proper distancing.”

Tennessee dialed back COVID protocols

Tennessee isn’t set up to quickly follow all of those protocols. A new state law bans COVID vaccine mandates for most government-run entities, so public school teachers and school staff can’t be required to get inoculated. And children 11 and under aren’t eligible to get vaccinated yet.

As for mitigation, the delta variant spike has caught districts flat-footed after they rolled back COVID strategies like masking for summer school programs, with few problems.

On Monday, Arlington Community Schools, near Memphis, canceled the first day of classes at one elementary school due to staffing issues after several teachers tested positive for COVID following several days of staff training.

Last week, another district in Trousdale County, northeast of Nashville, quarantined nearly 200 students when a teacher and student tested positive at two of the district’s three schools. The rural school system reopened July 29 with an optional masking policy.

“We thought we were safe this fall after summer school went so well with optional masking, but we’ve been shocked by the potency of this variant and how fast it moves,” Trousdale Superintendent Clint Satterfield said Monday.

The masking policy will be reviewed again by the school board next week.

“We’re going to put the health and safety of our people first,” Satterfield promised, “and that’s probably going to mean more quarantines.”

Delta variant is a game changer

Dale Lynch, who leads the state superintendent organization, described the situation as “very fluid.” Some school boards are calling special meetings to review their protocols for face coverings, social distancing, and cohorting students into smaller groups.

When August began, Memphis-based Shelby County Schools was the only district that had announced a mandatory mask policy for the upcoming academic year. But with the recent COVID surge, at least 10 other districts have since reinstated their mandates. They include Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, as well as six suburban districts in Shelby County that say they will comply with Friday’s local health order for all K-12 students to wear masks indoors.

The trend comes despite recent statements from the Republican governor and House speaker about possibly convening a special legislative session aimed at punishing districts with mask mandates, or banning such mandates altogether.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters about COVID mask mandates after giving remarks to Tennessee emergency management officials meeting in Franklin, Tennessee, on August 9, 2021.

On Monday, Lee said he was disappointed in the Shelby County order, which he says overrides the decisions of parents and local school boards. While he would not say if he will call lawmakers back to Nashville, he said he is in talks with legislative leaders.

“Nothing’s off the table,” the governor said.

Shelby County health officials issued a statement Monday saying mask mandates are well within their authority under a state law that allows them to take action to “protect the general health and safety of the county.”

“That many children cannot be vaccinated and will be indoors during school sessions is one of the highest risks of transmission that Shelby County faces today,” the statement said.

Even among top state officials, there’s disagreement about whether the legislature should step into the heated discussion.

“While I am firmly against a statewide mask mandate, I trust locally elected school boards to do what is necessary to keep their students healthy and their doors open,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a recent statement.

Nashville mom Sonya Thomas has been listening closely and watching how officials have managed the virus across Tennessee. She says her faith in government is shaken as her district prepares to kick off a new school year Tuesday.

“I don’t trust when our leaders can’t sit down together and set politics aside and make good public health policy,” said Thomas, who leads a parents advocacy group called Nashville Propel.

“COVID has its own agenda,” Thomas continued, “and we need serious strategies for managing it. This whole conversation has turned into a pissing contest.”

Patrick, with Vanderbilt University, says he understands the frustration of parents like Thomas. He hopes they don’t give up and is encouraging them to act on guidance from the CDC.

“We are in an evolving pandemic that none of us have gone through before,” he said. “We need to understand that the guidance will change because the virus has changed. And we need to give each other some grace because the bottom line is that we’re all in this together.”

Masks required in all public and private schools in Shelby County

2021-08-06T16:56:26+00:00

Masks will be required in all public and private daycares, preschools, and K-12 schools in Shelby County following an order released by the Shelby County Health Department on Friday morning.

Shelby County Schools, which largely covers the city of Memphis, was the only district in the county to have its own mask mandate. Under the new order, face coverings will be required in private schools and the county’s other districts: Collierville Schools, Germantown Municipal School District, Bartlett City Schools, Arlington Community Schools, Lakeland School System, and Millington Municipal Schools. Some of the districts have already started their school year. Classes in Memphis start Monday.

In a statement, the department said, “This amendment is deemed necessary because Health Department data indicates an alarming increase in pediatric COVID-19 cases in recent weeks. More than one quarter of the current active cases are among those 17 and younger. Regional hospitals also report an increase in COVID-19 pediatric cases, many of whom require intensive care and ventilatory support.”

At a press conference earlier this week, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton threatened to withhold funding from any school district mandating masks.

Face coverings have been proven to reduce the spread of COVID. In July, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that all students and school staff wear masks this year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control later followed suit, issuing updated guidance that recommended “universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.”

Despite this guidance from scientific and healthcare leaders, masks in schools have been a controversial issue nationwide, but especially in the South where a strong anti-mask movement has developed.

One group, Parents Rise TN, scheduled a meeting in East Memphis earlier this week to plan a proactive response against mask and vaccine mandates.

In an email announcing the meeting, organizers said, “It is our duty as parents to ensure our children are never subjected to health mandates again as a condition of full enjoyment of their education, put a stop to the social conditioning of fear, and take back our rights over our children’s health choices.”

Other parents expressed relief over Friday’s announcement.

“I am thrilled,” said Katie Anderson, mother of a Bartlett second grader.

She added, “The under-12 population is still vulnerable, as are others, and the delta variant is proving more dangerous to them, as well as more contagious. I applaud the Shelby County Health Department for taking this step to keep our kids safe and add an extra layer of protection to reduce transmission rates as we head into the fall.”

Having trouble viewing this form on mobile? Go here.

Tennessee House speaker threatens districts that close school buildings or require masks with vouchers

2021-08-03T00:45:59+00:00

A top Tennessee legislative leader warned local school officials Monday not to issue mask mandates, shutter school buildings in favor of remote learning, or segregate classrooms based on who has and hasn’t been vaccinated.

Any such action for the 2021-22 school year may result, he said, in a special legislative session where lawmakers could vote to let parents move taxpayer money from public to private schools.

The stern warnings from House Speaker Cameron Sexton came as Tennessee released disappointing but expected state-level results of the first pandemic test scores from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Testing Program, or TCAP.

The data showed a 5% decline in proficiency since 2019, the last time students took the standardized tests. A related presentation by the state education department said students who learned in person were more likely to score as proficient than those learning remotely.

“I sure hope that a school system in this state, after this data is released, does not shut their schools,” said Sexton, a Republican from Crossville.

“If they do, I’m going to ask the governor for legislation to allow those parents in those school districts to take their money through school choice and to go wherever they deem they need to go,” he continued. “There needs to be a message to these school systems that it’s unacceptable to close schools or systems in our state any more.”

State education leaders had promised to release TCAP data with “forward-looking” strategies for catching students up. But a news conference at the state Capitol instead turned into a GOP critique of school districts in Memphis and Nashville that spent most of last school year teaching their students remotely, with Sexton and Gov. Bill Lee delivering frequent jabs. They also criticized COVID mitigation strategies that don’t have anything to do with test scores.

“Student achievement gaps have always existed, but the lack of in-person learning this year has exasperated (cq) an already bad situation,” Lee said, noting that the gap in test scores between white students and students of color has widened. “It’s clear that minority students have been negatively impacted disproportionately.”

Last year, in the pitched debate over school reopening, the governor and GOP legislative leaders repeatedly chided leaders of the state’s two largest school districts for sticking with remote learning, even as rates of COVID infection were higher in those communities. At one point, lawmakers threatened to strip funding from their students if the districts didn’t reopen their classrooms, which they did by March.

The governor and Sexton also used the news conference to deliver pointed messages about mask mandates to Shelby County Schools, the only Tennessee district requiring face coverings for the upcoming school year, and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, whose board is scheduled to convene Thursday to review its earlier decision to make masks optional.

Lee said “personal decisions like masks” should be left up to parents, a departure from his statement last month that mask mandates in schools were local district decisions. State leaders in the departments of health and education also have told district leaders to make their own masking decisions based on federal guidance and discussions with local health officials.

“It would be helpful for districts to know if that guidance has changed,” said Sean Braisted, a spokesman for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, on Monday.

Now, as COVID’s fast-spreading delta variant is causing cases to surge again, some school systems elsewhere in the nation have reinstated mask mandates based on recent guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Both organizations say all students and school staff should wear masks, regardless of whether they are vaccinated.

But Lee said Monday that parents know best whether to send their students to school with face coverings.

“I’m listening to parents because parents have the best decision-making process for their children of anyone. The parents should consult with their medical professionals to make those decisions,” he said.

Sexton was even more passionate about keeping masks optional. For districts that issue mandates, he threatened to pursue a school voucher law to let parents pull their kids and funding out of public schools. Sexton previously has voted against all voucher proposals.

“We can listen to health care people … but at the end of the day, we’re elected and we make the decisions that we feel is best based on the information we have,” Sexton said.

He said the mortality rate for unvaccinated children under 11 is low, even as hospitals in the South are reporting admitting record numbers of children with the delta strain.

The speaker also warned that districts should not consider segregating students and staff based on whether they’ve been vaccinated, although Chalkbeat has found no reports that idea is under discussion in Tennessee.

Districts plan to use numerous mitigation strategies to prioritize student safety as the pandemic grinds on. In addition to its masking order, Shelby County Schools will provide voluntary nasal swab testing for COVID to all students and staff when the new school year begins next week.

John Barker, deputy superintendent for strategic operations and finance, called nasal swabs the “gold standard for testing” and said testing will be done at schools through a partnership with Poplar Healthcare. Any testing of minors will require parental consent.

The Memphis district also is using federal funding and grants to staff schools with healthcare workers in hopes of having a nurse in every school.

“We’re looking to employ healthcare professionals — nurses, LPNs, RNs — to be in schools to not only help facilitate with this effort but also to help with the social-emotional needs of students as they return,” Barker said.

Cathryn Stout contributed to this report.

Tennessee’s decline in pandemic TCAP scores shows a dramatic reversal of previous gains

2021-08-02T23:04:19+00:00

Tennessee’s first pandemic test scores declined across all subjects and grades, with the sharpest drops among students who have trailed their peers historically and learned remotely the longest.

State-level results released Monday showed a decrease in proficiency of 5 percentage points since 2019, the last time that public school students in grades 3-11 took standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

The dramatic slide for 2020-21 was expected due to COVID and follows national trends after one of the most disrupted periods of schooling in American history. The results will set Tennessee’s new baselines for improvement going forward.

In 2019 — the last time standardized testing occurred — Tennessee students improved in nearly every math subject, older students showed gains in English, and more than half the schools improved in most subjects. Testing was canceled nationwide in 2020.

Consistent with national data, 2021 math scores took a major hit. Only 1 in 4 students met grade-level expectations, compared with more than 1 in 3 before the pandemic began.

Science scores also suffered a double-digit drop, but that’s likely because Tennessee overhauled its science test based on updated academic standards for that subject.

And while every student group saw scores go down, the steepest declines tended to come from students who are of color, from low-income families, or learning to speak English.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration presented the sobering data at a news conference at the state Capitol.

“It will require all of us working together to address this on behalf of our students,” the governor said.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said the process could take years and will require strategic investments at both the state and local levels.

With more than $4 billion in federal relief funds to work with, the governor has urged district leaders to spend more than the required 20% of their portions directly toward learning programs.

School systems already have completed their first year of required summer learning camps targeting students who are furthest behind. After-school tutoring is planned for this fall. The state also is revamping early literacy instruction to focus more on phonics and is providing high school students with more access to advanced courses and non-academic support.

Even amid the pandemic, Tennessee got 95% of its students — many more than expected — to take the spring tests. But on Monday, the state education department reported that students who are Black, have disabilities, and live in cities were most likely to be underrepresented in the data.

While Tennessee achieved a 95% participation rate in spring tests, this graphic gives a snapshot of participation in smaller groups.

Under a law passed during a special legislative session in January, the 2021 scores won’t be used this year to evaluate teachers, rate schools, or determine state interventions in low-performing schools. That means the data will only be used to develop improvement plans.

Math scores declined 12 percentage points since 2019. Only 1 in 10 students from low-income families met grade-level expectations.

The performance for middle school math was especially troubling. The state reported that fewer students demonstrated a readiness for Algebra I, a beginning course for higher-level math in high school.

Proficiency in English language arts dropped by 6 percentage points. Only three out of every 10 students — and one out of every seven who are economically disadvantaged — met grade-level expectations.

State officials said they are especially concerned about the reading performance of Tennessee second-graders. They’re not required to test, but more than half took an optional assessment that showed the share of students who hit the state’s proficiency bar fell by 11 points. The data suggests that more students in the non-tested grades of kindergarten and first grade also likely fell behind.

Tennessee students took updated assessments in science and social studies this year based on revised standards to identify what students are expected to know at each grade level. Even in a normal year, scores tend to drop after introducing new tests.

Students struggled with science, where overall proficiency dropped 19 percentage points from the previous test, but fared better in social studies, where the share of students considered proficient fell by only 3 points — the smallest decline of any subject. And high school performance in social studies actually increased slightly.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn discusses Tennessee’s first standardized test scores since the pandemic began during a news conference on Aug. 2, 2021.

“I’m not sure I can explain [the stronger performance] in social studies,” Schwinn told Chalkbeat. “But with science, students really have to have command over math and reading standards to be able to access that content because it’s an application-based series of courses. So when you see declines in math and [English language arts], that’s going to create an exponentially larger decrease in science.”

On Aug. 11, the department plans to release district-level data, which is expected to vary more widely than usual among Tennessee’s 147 school systems since their modes of instruction varied.

Tennessee’s two largest districts, which stayed remote the longest and serve the state’s most diverse populations, are preparing their messaging for parents in Memphis and Nashville.

“Certainly we have some significant challenges, and we knew that,” Shelby County Schools spokeswoman Jerica Phillips said when asked last week about the district’s performance.

Memphis school officials are using federal stimulus money and local allocations to hire more tutors. They’ve also committed to hiring more teachers and assistants to achieve a 1:13 teacher-student ratio in kindergarten, first-, and second-grade classrooms.

In Nashville, leaders are channeling more federal funding to schools that serve more students from low-income families or who are learning to speak English. That will translate into higher-dose tutoring, more personalized learning time focused on literacy and math, and additional training and support for educators.

“The district also held its largest ever summer learning program, Promising Scholars, this June to accelerate academic growth as we head into the new school year and will continue providing this extended learning program in the coming years,” said Adrienne Battle, director of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Learn more about the state’s scores here.

Tennessee’s first pandemic test scores will be released soon. Here’s what you should know.

2021-07-28T22:59:09+00:00

Tennessee officials got to deliver a bit of good news this week: More students than expected took state tests for 2020-21, despite the pandemic. The harder news comes next week when the state releases its first standardized test scores since the COVID crisis began.

The Department of Education plans to drop statewide data on Monday.

The scores will offer a gut check on how much Tennessee students know — and don’t know — after one of the most disruptive school years in modern American history. Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has hinted that Tennessee’s test results are sobering.

While the data won’t be used to evaluate teachers or spur state interventions in low-performing schools, education leaders say it could be the most important information ever generated under the 40-year-old Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, better known as TCAP. Since last year’s standardized tests were canceled nationwide due to the emerging virus, the scores will offer the first deep look in two years into student learning across Tennessee.

“This will finally give us a baseline understanding of where we stand going into a new school year, and that’s going to be important to our recovery and acceleration efforts,” said Sara Morrison, executive director of the Tennessee State Board of Education.

Expect scores to tumble.

Test results released earlier in Texas and Indiana offered a discouraging glimpse of the pandemic’s toll on learning. Both states saw substantial declines, especially in math, where there’s growing concern that online instruction may not translate as well as with other subjects. Drops were steeper in districts that provided most of their instruction online instead of in person. And students of color and those living in poverty were hit especially hard.

Tennessee is likely to see similar patterns.

“We expect, just like we’ve seen in the national data that has been released so far, that the COVID-19 pandemic is going to have a negative [impact] on what we might normally see in terms of outcomes,” Schwinn said Monday while touring a summer learning program in Memphis.

A bright spot: A lot of students showed up for testing this year.

As more contagious coronavirus variants emerged, concern grew that students, especially those learning remotely, wouldn’t show up at schools or alternative testing sites to take Tennessee’s spring assessment on paper.

But on Tuesday, the state reported that 95% of Tennessee’s testing population in grades 3-11 took their tests, reaching the nation’s standard participation threshold. And all 147 districts met or exceeded the 80% minimum participation rate set by the legislature to be held harmless for any disappointing results.

In total, nearly 750,000 Tennessee public school students were tested.

Participation matters. The more students who test, the more complete and actionable the data is. That makes it easier to compare results across years and less risky to make strategic investments and policy decisions accordingly.

But test results won’t tell ‘the whole story,’ say some education leaders.

They don’t want Tennesseans to put an inordinate focus on state test scores, especially during a public health crisis.

“Assessment is just a snapshot from one day in a student’s journey. It’s not going to tell the whole story,” said Beth Brown, president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teacher organization.

Brown says teacher grade books provide a fuller picture of student achievement based on grades for everything from traditional tests to classroom discussions to project-based learning.

Dale Lynch, who leads the state superintendents organization, said Tennessee should look beyond test scores and celebrate the perseverance and resilience of students and teachers during a year when they were figuring out how to learn and teach virtually. Keeping school communities healthy and safe was an even bigger priority, he said.

“We’re going to have a whole lot of Monday morning quarterbacks when it comes to how we handled COVID. To forget how far we’ve come would be a travesty,” Lynch said.

It’s also important to remember that schools do more than teach students about reading, writing, and arithmetic, said Lauren Baker, a board member for the Tennessee School Counselors Association.

“Whatever the scores look like on paper, my hope is that we will pause to reflect on what our schools overcame last year,” Baker said. “What the scores won’t show us, unfortunately, is how our students are coping with our rapidly changing society.”

This year’s test data will help chart learning recovery efforts going forward.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration already is investing heavily in early literacy, summer learning programs, and after-school tutoring as Tennessee tries to maximize over $4 billion in federal COVID relief funds flowing into its public schools. Schwinn is incentivizing local districts to follow suit and spend more than the federally required 20% of their shares of stimulus dollars toward learning recovery and acceleration.

A Tennessee teacher works with students at a summer learning camp at Rutland Elementary School in Mt. Juliet, east of Nashville, on June 30, 2021.

But the pandemic is expected to undo years of hard-fought achievement gains on national tests, which will require long-term, research-based strategies to recoup any losses and accelerate learning.

“The results are going to give us a clearer idea of which students have had their learning disrupted the most as a result of the pandemic — and then to make sure there’s a plan to help get them on track,” said Teresa Wasson, a spokeswoman for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, a Tennessee research and advocacy group.

Early concerns that the pandemic would worsen pre-pandemic test score gaps along racial and economic lines appear to be bearing out.

According to two national studies released this week, students of color and those from low-income families have been hit the hardest. One analysis by the consulting firm McKinsey found that first through sixth-graders who are white fell behind an average of four months in math, compared to six months for Black and Latino students.

Tennessee will be looking closely at the performance of those same student groups and students who have disabilities or those learning to speak English as a new language.

“When we look at scores in the average, you can make quick assumptions about how all students are doing, and that’s why it’s really important to see how we did across our student groups so we can focus our resources there,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, director of The Education Trust in Tennessee.

Recovery must be a focus of parents, too.

Eventually, after the release of district- and school-level scores, individual student reports will be sent electronically and on paper to parents to help them understand how their children are progressing compared to peers across their district and state.

“When parents get their family reports, we recommend they take a copy to their next teacher conference and talk about what the report says, what it means, and how they can work together to help their student in the year ahead,” Wasson said.

You can learn more about Tennessee’s testing program here.

Tennessee governor: Get vaccinated but masks not necessary in schools

2021-07-22T18:11:38+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is urging Tennesseans to get vaccinated as cases of COVID-19 surge, but doesn’t think schools should follow new recommendations from U.S. pediatricians for all students and staff to wear masks.

In a news conference Thursday, the Republican governor acknowledged the virus isn’t going away without interventions as he deviated from his previous messaging that “vaccines are a personal choice.”

“The No. 1 tool we have to manage COVID-19, including the delta variant, is the vaccine, and we encourage Tennesseans to pursue that,” said Lee, who got his shots in March with no public announcement.

It was the governor’s most direct message yet about the need for mass vaccination in a state with less than 39% of residents fully vaccinated, one of the nation’s lowest rates.

But Lee stuck with his longstanding position that mask mandates aren’t necessary as most Tennessee kids, including those under 12 who aren’t eligible for vaccinations, prepare to return to school next month.

“That is a district decision in this state, but I suspect most districts will not require masks, and I support that,” Lee said.

He added that vaccines are available for “any adult that wants it” and that “the likelihood that children will get seriously ill is incredibly low.”

The governor also praised the state health department’s recent decision to halt any marketing of vaccines to adolescents that doesn’t go directly through parents. And he supported his health commissioner, Dr. Lisa Piercey, for firing the state’s immunization chief, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, in the political tug-of-war over vaccines and the pandemic.

This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics released school reopening guidance recommending essentially that everyone in schools wear face coverings, even if they’re vaccinated. Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommended that unvaccinated students and staff and all students under 12 should wear masks.

Only one Tennessee district, Shelby County Schools in Memphis, has mandated masks for all students and staff this year. Other school systems that have announced their policies are making face coverings optional, although Nashville officials are “strongly encouraging” their use. A petition launched by a group of Nashville parents is asking that more stringent masking protocols be reinstated.

The relaxed mitigation policies are leaving students, parents, teachers, and staff to decide for themselves what layers of protection are needed as the highly contagious delta variant spreads.

DeAnna Osborne, a middle school teacher in Rutherford County, plans to keep wearing a mask, even though she’s been vaccinated and her district south of Nashville has made face coverings optional.

“A mask is a very small gesture I can make to communicate that I take the risk seriously and I respect scientific guidance,” Osborne said.

Eric Hagan hasn’t been vaccinated but the high school teacher says he doesn’t plan to wear a mask in his classes in Robertson County, north of Nashville, unless his district tells him to.

“The policy could quickly change,” Hagan said. “But I think most people have common sense. They’re washing their hands, covering their mouth when they cough. It’s really just up to each person’s comfort level.”

Children, including very young children, can develop COVID-19, but many have no symptoms. Those who get sick tend to experience milder symptoms such as low-grade fever, fatigue, and cough. But some children have severe complications, and those with underlying health conditions may be more likely to become severely ill.

In Tennessee, less than 14% of children ages 12-15 are fully vaccinated. For those ages 16-20, the rate rises to 24%.

Memphis district will require masks next school year

2021-07-20T23:59:58+00:00

Masks will be mandatory in Memphis classrooms during the upcoming school year.

District officials will require all students, teachers, and school-based employees to wear face coverings, making Shelby County Schools one of the only school districts in Tennessee to maintain the strict COVID-19 protocol. Other districts, including Metro Nashville Public Schools, have made masks optional for the new school year.

Memphis Superintendent Joris Ray made the announcement Tuesday evening during his report at the Shelby County Schools board meeting.

“These are some 2021 guidance that I know that many of our parents have been asking for,” he said. “We’re going to continue to wear masks until further notice.”

Ray added that the decision was driven by the latest guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which recommended masks for all unvaccinated students, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which on Monday recommended masks for all students next school year.

Adults and children 12 and over are now eligible to be vaccinated.

Despite pandemic fatigue and resistance from some groups that refuse to mask up, face coverings have proved to slow the spread of COVID-19. Local health officials and medical experts are particularly concerned about the spread of the virus locally, given the rise of the more contagious Delta variant and the low vaccination rates in the South. Only 38.6% of people are fully vaccinated in Tennessee, and according to reporting from the New York Times, the state has one of the highest rates of new cases in the country, making it a hotspot for what has been called a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Memphis students will also be required to wear masks on school buses and continue social distancing practices, and they will be discouraged from sharing supplies. The district will use plexiglass barriers and maintain the disinfectant protocols established last school year.

“We’ll continue to monitor the CDC and the Health Department guidance for updates and recommendations,” said Ray. “We want to ensure that all of our employees and students and constituents remain safe.”

The first day of school for students in Shelby County Schools is Aug. 9.

Tennessee’s fired immunization chief blasts halt to outreach for kids: ‘There will be children who die.’

2021-07-15T20:06:24+00:00

Tennessee’s decision to halt all vaccine outreach for children and adolescents preparing to head back to school will cost lives and could balloon the state’s current resurgence of COVID cases, says the pediatrician fired this week as the state’s top immunization official.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus is especially afraid that students from communities of color and low-income families could become the latest casualties in what she calls a politicized tug-of-war over vaccines and the pandemic.

“The timing is really bad,” Fiscus said of schools reopening during the next month amid a convergence of troubling factors.

Tennessee has placed a moratorium on state-coordinated immunization promotions for kids while also having one of the nation’s lowest COVID vaccination rates — only 38% of Tennesseans are fully vaccinated against the virus. Meanwhile, cases of the more contagious Delta variant are surging amid mixed pandemic messaging from officials and general COVID fatigue.

“I’m fearful of what this is going to look like as school begins,” said Fiscus, former medical director of vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health.

In an interview Wednesday with Chalkbeat, Fiscus spoke candidly about the possible impacts of the state’s pause in promoting immunizations for children and adolescents. She discussed the dangers of anti-vaccine rhetoric and offered advice to pandemic-weary school leaders for the coming academic year, including districts that have opted to loosen or eliminate mask mandates. (Scroll down to read our Q&A.)

Her firing Monday by Dr. Lisa Piercey, Tennessee’s health commissioner, came just days after Piercey halted state-sponsored immunization events on school properties. The commissioner also ordered a moratorium on COVID vaccine messaging aimed at adolescents.

The state has not commented on Fiscus’ dismissal. A health department spokeswoman said Tennessee supports vaccine outreach “while being mindful of hesitancy and the intense national conversation that is affecting how many families evaluate vaccinations in general.”

But Fiscus believes the orders stem from a legislative hearing last month when Piercey was grilled by angry Republican lawmakers who charged that Fiscus was targeting minors for mass vaccinations without parental consent.

Our Q&A below has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Chalkbeat: What will be the impact of the state’s decision to eliminate COVID vaccine outreach to teens?

Fiscus: We’ve had this vaccine available since May 10 for adolescents — plenty of time to get to herd immunity. But we’re at less than 13% fully vaccinated right now for kids 12-15 and nearly 24% for ages 16-20. That’s a largely unvaccinated youth population who will return to hallways and pep rallies and basketball games and not wearing masks.

Is Tennessee positioned to launch a new school year safely?

The timing is really bad. School starts in three or four weeks in most places in Tennessee, and we’re going to bring in kids 11 and under with no ability to protect themselves with a vaccine, no remote learning to speak of, less physical distancing and masking. It’s important to know that this Delta variant is more transmissible and is impacting children more severely than what we saw with the original COVID cases. In the last two weeks, our cases [for all ages] have gone up 400% [to 4,700 active cases], and the vast majority of those have been among the unvaccinated.

Last school year, you had almost weekly conference calls with Tennessee school leaders to offer information on how best to navigate the pandemic. What recommendations would you give those same leaders now?

They should spread the message that children 12 and older and their school staff need to be vaccinated. For those who aren’t fully vaccinated, they should wear a mask when they’re in school. And for kids 11 and under who aren’t eligible for vaccination, mask mandates should absolutely stay in place. That’s CDC guidance.

As for in-person vs. remote learning, I totally agree with the need to prioritize in-person learning. But schools have got to take mitigation steps seriously if they’re going to stay in person. If they don’t, this Delta variant is going to come through like a tidal wave, and we’re going to have sick and dead kids. We’ve already had 10 Tennessee kids die of COVID [since the pandemic began].

The state’s recent moratorium on vaccine outreach went beyond COVID to include all vaccine-preventable diseases for children and youth. What are the possible ramifications?

We were told to do no communications whatsoever this August around National Immunization Awareness Month. We’ve always done a media blitz, sent out a press release, asked the governor for a proclamation, but all of that was halted this year. We had reminder cards ready to mail out to parents whose children were missing a vaccine, but they didn’t go out.

All of this hurts public health. There will be children who die from HPV-related cancers because they missed their vaccine during the pandemic and nobody reminded them to get it done. We have communities who are vulnerable to measles. And if you think COVID is contagious, wait until we have another measles outbreak because measles is nine times more infectious than COVID. California’s got a measles outbreak right now.

Tennessee law requires that, before entering kindergarten, children are up to date with their immunizations against diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella. The state had a pre-pandemic vaccination rate of 95% for those children. How will the outreach moratorium affect that process?

It’s always been hard, but it will be harder now. Three things could happen. First, more kids showing up to kindergarten will be told they can’t go to school because they’re not vaccinated, so Mom and Dad will have to leave work to take them to their doctor or the health department to get vaccinated before they can come back. Second, a parent who learns their child can’t come to school may decide to file a religious exemption out of convenience, which would be committing perjury under Tennessee law. Third, a school may not do their due diligence in reviewing immunization records, so that we have unvaccinated kids attending who shouldn’t be there.

What does this moratorium mean for children of color and lower-income communities with historically lower vaccination rates?

Disparities in Tennessee vaccinations used to be most pronounced with flu shots, but now we’re seeing a widening gap in routine childhood vaccinations and kids not being up to date by age 2 in our African-American communities.

When you’re talking about low-wage earners working multiple jobs and friends or family watching their kids, parents don’t have the time to take their child to the health department or to a clinic to get vaccinated. Their priority is getting food on the table and a roof over their heads. We’re hurting these communities when we remove the ability of parents to get their children vaccinated at school in partnership with their local health departments. And these are communities that already have higher rates of chronic disease — diabetes, heart disease, hypertension — that we know die disproportionately from COVID-19.

Getting vaccination services at schools is preferred by so many parents. It’s just easier. It’s free. Kids can get their shots with their peers, so it’s more comfortable. There’s no reason to disrupt that routine.

Will urban areas be hardest hit?

They have the bulk of low-income populations, but fortunately our metro health partners [in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Jackson, and Sullivan County] are independent of this mess. They’re still doing in-school vaccinations and ramping up those back-to-school communication efforts. But for our rural poor populations, partnerships have been canceled between the department of health and school systems to provide vaccinations for back to school and for flu in the fall. Now those families are left to figure out where they’re going to get their kids vaccinated.

Ultimately, public trust is key to good public health. How will Tennessee regain trust in its public health systems after so much infighting over vaccines, especially for school-age children?

I hope Tennesseans will still trust their local health departments. Local health officials are not being deceitful. They are doing everything they can to care for families but they’ve been handcuffed under a toxic environment in which individuals with political agendas and aspirations have sold out the people of Tennessee. Local health workers are true heroes and champions of public health.

Rising Delta variant, Tennessee’s low vaccination rate could turn schools into COVID breeding grounds

2021-07-09T21:03:40+00:00

Claire Manos plans to shop for supplies and a few clothes to get ready for a new school year next month in Tennessee, but one major item isn’t on her back-to-school list: getting vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The 14-year-old became eligible for the vaccine in May when it opened to children ages 12-15, but Claire said she’s not ready for that step, even if scientists recommend it.

“I guess I’m just waiting to see how everybody does with it,” explained the incoming freshman at Wilson Central High School in Lebanon, just east of Nashville, while shopping with a friend Thursday.

With less than 38% of its eligible residents fully vaccinated — and only 2% in Claire’s age group — Tennessee will be one of the first states to reopen schools while navigating COVID’s more contagious Delta variant, now the nation’s dominant strain of the respiratory virus.

The new academic year begins in late July or August, depending on the district, but all schools will deal with the same challenges when it comes to keeping their students and staff safe and healthy: skepticism about the new vaccines, politicization of the pandemic, and general COVID fatigue.

The convergence of factors has public health leaders worried, with at least one prominent infectious disease expert recommending that unvaccinated Tennesseans get their shots as soon as possible.

“Tennessee may be known as the Volunteer State, but most Tennesseans have not stepped up to get vaccinated,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. “Sadly, we are a very undervaccinated state, and that makes us vulnerable, including in our schools.”

The Delta variant is just beginning to get the attention of school leaders who have focused this summer on providing extra state-required learning programs to counter more than a year of pandemic disruptions, said Dale Lynch, who heads the state superintendents organization.

But medical experts have been tracking the mutation since its discovery in India in December. Evidence shows the strain spreads more quickly than previous variants and is most dangerous for people who aren’t fully vaccinated. States with the lowest vaccination rates — like Tennessee — will be hit the hardest, the experts warn.

“The bottom line is that the more people who are vaccinated, the safer we’ll be and the safer our schools will be,” said Schaffner, also medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

It’s especially important for unvaccinated parents or school employees — from teachers to bus drivers to custodians — to get vaccinated, as should children 12 or older with a parent’s permission, so that schools don’t become breeding grounds for the Delta variant, Schaffner said.

But that message hasn’t been delivered consistently across Tennessee, where a recent poll found party politics dominate residents’ attitudes on key public health and social issues in the deep red state. The poll, conducted in May by Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, found Republicans were less likely than Democrats to get vaccinated and far more likely to view the pandemic as largely over.

A masked Gov. Bill Lee leads Tennessee budget hearings in November of 2020.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who got vaccinated quietly in March with no public announcement, declared in April that COVID-19 is “no longer a statewide public health emergency.” Calling vaccines a personal choice, he has been mostly mum recently on the need for them. He’s also rejected strategies embraced by some Republican governors to give cash and other vaccination incentives to hesitant residents.

This spring, the GOP-controlled legislature passed several bills that also sent mixed messages on vaccinations. One prohibits government entities, including public schools and universities except those with healthcare studies, from requiring COVID shots. No such mandates exist, but legislators argued for a preemptive law to ensure that personal liberty would trump public health, even during a pandemic.

Another new law requires that any information shared with students or parents about state vaccination requirements for communicable diseases must now also include information about religious exemptions.

Last month, several Republican lawmakers threatened to dissolve the state health department over allegations it was targeting minors for vaccinations without parental consent.

“Market to parents, don’t market to children — period!” Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Republican from Springfield, told Dr. Lisa Piercey, the state’s health commissioner, during a legislative hearing.

As a result, the department — which recently returned some 3 million vaccine doses to the federal government because of low demand — instructed its county-level employees to halt vaccination events focused on adolescents and stop online outreach to teens, according to department emails obtained recently by The Tennessean.

Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat from Nashville, called the state-level developments “mind-numbing” and predicted they will set the tone for local conversations that school officials must now have in their communities.

“Politicizing public health decisions never makes sense,” Yarbro told Chalkbeat. “It’s sad that our legislature, just like our governor, hasn’t sent a consistent, easy-to-understand message to Tennesseans so they know how to keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe.”

Those conversations are sure to include whether to reinstate mask mandates that, despite some local pushback, were fairly standard last school year based on recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In new guidance for next school year issued on Friday, the CDC said young students should continue to wear masks at school, but vaccinated older students and teachers don’t need to.

A masked student looks at a hallway billboard in Nashville’s Westmeade Elementary School as Tennessee’s second largest district worked to navigate the coronavirus pandemic in the fall of 2020.

With the exception of Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, most masking school systems switched to optional or limited face coverings for summer programming after the vaccine became easily accessible. District leaders in Knoxville and Chattanooga already have announced they won’t require masks this fall, which Schaffner says they should reconsider.

“Especially for younger ones who aren’t eligible to be vaccinated yet, it’s important for schools to stick with well-established ways that will keep them as low-risk as possible,” he said. “That means mask wearing, good hand hygiene, social distancing — in addition to older people around them getting vaccinated.”

Last week, the Tennessee State Board of Education offered some public health options for the coming school year with an emergency rule that lets districts provide temporary remote instruction to students who are quarantined after testing positive or being exposed to COVID.

Chase Werkheiser, a 16-year-old Nashville student, plans to follow all the scientific recommendations when he returns in August to Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School. He and his older brother, Chris, wore face coverings while visiting a local mall Thursday to interview for part-time jobs. They’re also fully vaccinated — a decision they viewed as a no-brainer.

“I just didn’t want to take the risk of getting COVID,” said Chase, “and I trust the vaccine enough.”

Schwinn plans 10-day bus tour to spotlight summer learning happening across Tennessee

2021-06-08T21:00:07+00:00

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn is hitting the road to talk up summer learning opportunities during a 10-day bus tour of 50 school districts across Tennessee.

The state education department announced Tuesday that Schwinn will kick off her “Accelerating TN” bus tour next week. Her itinerary lists four days of stops in East Tennessee beginning June 14, visits to West Tennessee June 21-22, and a four-day tour of Middle Tennessee wrapping up on July 1.

The road trip seeks to spotlight summer programs required under a new state law to bolster learning that was disrupted by the pandemic. The work mirrors acceleration academies happening this summer in schools across the nation to help students learn key concepts they may have missed, while also preparing them for a new school year.

“This summer, students are in their schools and learning,” Schwinn said in a statement. “Districts and schools are planning how to spend historic amounts of federal funding to accelerate student achievement. The Accelerating TN 2021 bus tour will support this important work.”

Funded with state money freed up by billions of federal dollars flowing into Tennessee for coronavirus relief, most of Tennessee’s camps are already underway for kindergarteners through grade eight. For four to six weeks, teachers and staff are providing six hours of daily programming that include reading and math, as well as physical activity and play.

“Our aim is to accelerate the learning for our summer camp participants so that all students are ready for grade-level work when we return for the 2021-22 school year,” said Russell Dyer, director of Cleveland City Schools, where Schwinn is scheduled to visit during a swing through southeast Tennessee on June 17.

Tennessee won’t have a baseline on whether and how much students have fallen behind academically until results of state tests are released late this summer. But some districts have begun to receive early scores from assessments that began in mid-April and end this week.

The department did not immediately provide summer enrollment data requested by Chalkbeat, but a survey of several large districts indicates that tens of thousands of students are participating.

During her whirlwind tour, Schwinn wants to interact with students and educators at camps, as well as teachers being trained in phonics-based reading instruction as part of Tennessee’s Reading 360 initiative. Under a state contract with New York-based TNTP Inc., about 11,000 teachers in prekindergarten through fourth grade are learning about foundational principles of literacy in person this summer after completing a week of online training this spring.

Some stops on the bus tour will feature roundtable discussions with district leaders and elected officials, possibly including Gov. Bill Lee.

Artist’s rendering of the bus for Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s “Accelerating TN” tour of summer learning programs

The tour won’t include Shelby County Schools since the state’s largest district is finishing up the school year and will launch its summer learning academy on July 6, after Schwinn’s final stop. The Memphis district has hosted its summer academy since 2017 and is expanding offerings this year with federal funding.

“We are in talks with the commissioner’s office and looking for an opportunity for her to visit and see our academy in action,” said spokeswoman Jerica Phillips.

Schwinn last came to Memphis in April, visited Parkway Village Elementary School, and spoke with Superintendent Joris Ray about his Reimagining 901 plan for using federal coronavirus relief funds to revamp academics and school facilities.

The West Tennessee bus tour will focus mostly on rural areas like Tipton County, north of Memphis.

“It has been a unique and challenging year to say the least,” said Director John Combs, “so we appreciate Commissioner Schwinn taking the time to stop by Tipton County to share the department’s vision for Tennessee schools and see firsthand the great work happening in our district.”

Below is the bus tour’s schedule:

June 14-17: East Tennessee

June 14: Johnson City Schools, Bristol City Schools, Sullivan County Schools, Kingsport City Schools, Washington County Schools
June 15: Jefferson County Schools, Grainger County Schools, Claiborne County Schools, Scott County Schools, Oneida Special School District
June 16: Knox County Schools, Sevier County Schools, Blount County Schools, Maryville City Schools, Alcoa City Schools, Clinton City Schools, Tennessee School for the Deaf
June 17: Etowah City Schools, Polk County Schools, Bradley County Schools, Cleveland City Schools, Hamilton County Schools

June 21-22: West Tennessee

June 21: Benton County Schools, Hollow-Rock County Schools, Trenton Special School District, Bradford Special School District, Milan Special School District
June 22: Tipton County Schools, Lauderdale County Schools, Haywood County Schools

June 28- July 1: Middle Tennessee

June 28: Trousdale County Schools, Jackson County Schools, Overton County Schools, Pickett County Schools, White County Schools, Warren County Schools
June 29: Decatur County Schools, Perry County Schools, Maury County Schools, Williamson County Schools, Franklin Special School District, Metro Nashville Public Schools, Tennessee School for the Blind
June 30: Cheatham County Schools, Dickson County Schools, Sumner County Schools, Wilson County Schools
July 1: Murfreesboro City Schools, Rutherford County Schools, Clarksville Montgomery County Schools

Here’s how Tennessee plans to spend $491 million of federal stimulus funds on education

2021-05-21T20:55:36+00:00

Tennessee’s education department will spend the bulk of its $491 million share of one-time federal funding on new literacy, summer camp, and tutoring initiatives as the state seeks to accelerate student learning after a year of pandemic-related disruptions.

The department also will prioritize classroom resources, teacher training, and programs to prepare more candidates for the teaching profession.

The state released its spending plan this week for its portion of the nearly $4.2 billion that Tennessee is getting for K-12 education through four COVID-19 relief and economic stimulus packages passed by Congress.

School districts will receive the vast majority of the $4.2 billion. They have until June 1 to decide how to spend the largest and most recent round of funding provided under the Biden administration.

The massive infusion of cash — which amounts to two-thirds of what the state spends in a single year on its students — presents a historic opportunity to transform public education in a state that ranks near the nation’s bottom for per-pupil spending.

But all of the money must be spent or allocated by the fall of 2024, which means administrators likely won’t want to put it toward recurring expenses such as raising teacher salaries or hiring full-time specialists to support schools.

Gov. Bill Lee has called the amount of funding “historic” and urges local education officials to “keep student achievement at the center of all decision-making.”

The state education department’s plan for using its $491 million share is due to the U.S. Department of Education on June 7.

The department plans to spend $170.5 million — a third of its allocation — on programs that aim to help students catch up and accelerate learning. Those include learning camps starting this summer and after-school tutoring programs set to launch in the fall.

Another $120.7 million will bolster literacy work in a state where only a third of students test as proficient readers. The money will pay for new resources for classrooms and families and new training for teachers to ground their instruction in phonics.

This month, about 12,000 teachers in prekindergarten through the fourth grade began a two-week training program through an $8 million, two-year contract with New York-based TNTP Inc., a nonprofit group that provides teacher training programs.

Other planned investments include:

$56.5 million for professional development and additional resources to help teachers prepare for their courses.
$35 million to support Tennessee school districts’ adoption of new math textbooks in 2022-23.
$32.6 million for grants going to 21 districts to reimagine high school in ways that better equip students for college and careers, plus a new program to expand access to advanced coursework so high schoolers can earn college credit. The Tennessee-based Niswonger Foundation will recruit teachers and students into Tennessee’s new Advanced Placement Access for All Program, train teachers, and help develop new curriculum.
$32 million for online resources for teaching and learning and improvements for school districts.
$21 million to grow Tennessee’s educator ranks, including grow-your-own initiatives in which districts and teacher training programs partner to provide innovative, no-cost ways to enter the teaching profession.
$17.8 million to support student mental health through grants to school systems or new investments to help schools support students who have experienced trauma in their lives.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said her department’s spending priorities are based in part on feedback from district leaders and education advocates from across Tennessee.

She plans to spend about $20 million to hire staff and establish systems to monitor how the federal money is being spent, both at the state and local levels. This spring, the legislature authorized the department to hire 22 staff members for that work.

Schwinn has encouraged district leaders to use at least 1% of their federal relief and stimulus funds to establish similar monitoring protocols at the local level.

The state also has an ongoing list of grant opportunities and free resources for students, families, teachers, schools, and districts.

Some grants are competitive, such as one to provide new equipment for schools with state designations specializing in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math. Other resources — like free reading materials for children in kindergarten through the second grade — are available for any Tennessee family who orders them.

You can learn more about the state department’s plan here.

Memphis school leaders try novel ways to lure students on campus for upcoming TNReady test

2021-04-30T14:25:00+00:00

Raffles. Parties. Extra credit. And an opportunity to shave a principal’s head.

These are some of the incentives that leaders in Shelby County Schools are promising students – especially virtual learners – who come to class in person next week for the state’s standardized tests.

The annual state assessment, previously known as TNReady but now called TCAP, starts Monday in Memphis schools, and per state orders, 80% of students in a district must take the test in person. The state said that there will be repercussions for districts that don’t meet the threshold.

The testing turnout — and results — for Tennessee’s largest district are being closely watched across the state because, in March, Shelby County Schools became the last district to reopen school buildings. Results for students may serve as a referendum of sorts for Superintendent Joris Ray’s decision to delay in-person learning.

Shelby County Schools has 111,000 students, and the majority have opted for virtual learning this year. So how do you get more than 60,000 students back on campus for multiple days of testing?

Grandview Heights Middle School Principal Deartis Barber hopes to get students into the classroom by putting his hair on the line.

“If I can get all of my students to come in and test on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,” said Barber, “then there will be a sixth grader, seventh grader, and eighth grader…that will shave my head.”

Barber said that a student in each grade who has completed the test and the most online math tutoring will get the honor of holding the “grand clippers.” The Memphis native got the idea from watching wrestling when an opponent cut the loser’s hair. He wants at least 90% of his students to participate, and he wants to give his students a fun experience in a challenging year.

“I wanted to do something that would be novel, that would be new, that would get their attention,” he said. “They really got excited when I went around to the homerooms to make the announcement.”

During testing season, students in grades two through eight take comprehensive exams and high school students take subject-area exams. Unlike families in other states, Tennessee students and parents don’t have the choice to opt out of the state test. District officials said that it is “still unclear” what will happen if they don’t hit the 80% benchmark for the test, but state and district officials have said that test scores and participation rates will not factor into teacher and principal evaluations this year.

“Everyone’s trying right now,” said Rodney Rowan, an assistant superintendent, “We see their efforts.”

To help ease parents’ angst about returning their children to campus, school leaders have held open houses to allow parents of virtual learners to see the COVID-19 protocols in place at their children’s schools. They also sent out a survey asking parents if their children needed transportation on testing days. Only about 10,000 families completed the survey.

CDC social distancing guidelines mean only about 14 students are allowed in a typical Memphis classroom. As a result, district officials will convert cafeterias, auditoriums, gyms, and offices into testing centers. They also are staggering the testing days for different grades and condensing the testing window into three days per grade.

Typically, the test would stretch out at least a week with students taking different sections each morning. This year, students will take some sections in the morning and other sections in the afternoon. Students who complete all three days of testing will earn class participation credit.

“It will kind of serve somewhat as extra credit for those students, but there’s no penalty for the other students,” said Bill White, executive director of planning and accountability. “There’s no zeros for the ones who don’t come. It’s a positive incentive only.”

Tennessee governor’s order ending mask mandates doesn’t apply to schools

2021-04-27T22:09:57+00:00

Although Gov. Bill Lee wants to back off of local mask mandates and COVID-related business restrictions, most Tennessee school leaders expect to continue mask and social distancing requirements for students and staff for the rest of the academic year.

Amid the global pandemic, the governor declared Tuesday that Tennessee is no longer in a public health crisis, and he signed an executive order removing the authority of most county mayors to require face coverings.

“After more than a year of public-led health interventions, we’re in a different season,” said Lee, who has never issued a statewide mask mandate but allowed local officials to order them. “It’s time to shift our focus now more toward recovery and not restrictions.”

Following the Republican governor’s announcement, his press secretary, Casey Black, clarified that school systems continue to have the authority to set and enforce policies on their campuses.

But Lee’s declaration could make it harder for school leaders to get families to encourage their students to follow federal guidelines on masking and social distancing for important events ahead. This spring, students are taking their state tests in person, and schools are planning how to host proms, graduations, and end-of-year programs.

Some parents quickly took to social media platforms Tuesday to call on district leaders to peel back mask requirements in schools, too.

“Parents, get together and go to your school board, insist they remove the mask mandate!” wrote Ashley Wallace, whose comments on the governor’s Facebook announcement echoed the sentiments of dozens of other parents.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control still urges schools to prioritize universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing.

Masking policies vary among Tennessee’s 147 school districts. Many, including Shelby County Schools in Memphis, have required face coverings during the pandemic. Some have not, and still others allow students and staff to remove masks if they are socially distanced.

Those policies are not likely to change immediately, especially as districts work to follow CDC guidelines, said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents organization.

“Our school leaders want to continue their current health and safety protocols for the remainder of the academic year because it has gone well,” Lynch said “Students, faculty, and staff understand what those restrictions are now, and there’s not a desire to change course with just weeks left to go.”

Public health policies for summertime academic programs may be another conversation, he added.

“The key is that superintendents and school boards need to be empowered to make the best decisions to keep their students and staff safe. That’s how we’ve been able to reopen schools and that’s how we’re going to be able to plan for summer learning camps,” Lynch said.

Asked if the state education department expects to release new guidelines in the wake of the governor’s latest order, a spokeswoman responded that masking in schools remains a “local decision.”

“The department encourages school districts to make policies that are aligned to their local communities,” said Victoria Robinson, the department’s director of communications.

Gov. Bill Lee has been at the helm of Tennessee during the coronavirus pandemic.

Large districts in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga are among those planning to continue masking requirements for the remainder of the school year, but so are many smaller school systems in suburban or rural Tennessee.

The head of Weakley County Schools, with 3,900 students and 10 schools in northwest Tennessee, said his students have been wearing masks since the first school bell rang last August.

“We all look forward to the day when we’re not wearing masks, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” said Superintendent Randy Frazier.

“We’re still seeing some COVID cases and people having to quarantine,” he continued. “We just don’t want our students to miss out on final exams, proms, and graduations because we stopped short of the finish line with what seems to be working.”

Lee, who is up for reelection next year, said Tennesseans who want to continue wearing masks can do so as the state takes steps to get back to normal.

“It’s time for celebrations and weddings and conventions and concerts and parades and proms and everything in between, to happen without limits on gathering sizes or other arbitrary restrictions on those events,” Lee said at a news conference.

The change of course — which also drops reopening guidelines for businesses and urges large counties to lift mask mandates by Memorial Day — comes while Tennessee COVID outbreaks are among the nation’s highest. Meanwhile, its vaccination rates are among the lowest to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. Almost 43% of adults in Tennessee have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared with nearly 54% nationally.

Tennessee is the latest state to back away from COVID-19 restrictions. At least six, including Alabama and Mississippi, have lifted mask mandates, while businesses in Texas opened at 100% capacity last month.

Tennessee’s governor has a novel idea to fund more student mental health services. Will it pay off?

2021-04-23T21:05:39+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee’s proposed $250 million trust fund for student mental health is generating accolades for its magnitude, but new questions are emerging about the plan’s unconventional funding approach.

The one-time amount, pulled from better-than-expected tax revenues, would establish an endowment that dedicates annual investment income toward mental health needs. Those could include clinical services in K-12 schools, trauma-informed training for educators, mental health awareness campaigns, and initiatives to quell bullying, violence, and suicide.

But projections released this week suggest the endowment initially would generate only about 2%, or $4.5 million annually — a third of what was expected when the governor first proposed the idea last year.

The lower projections have added fuel to arguments that a trust fund might not be the best approach to tend to needs that have become more acute and widespread during the pandemic, as students have become more socially isolated.

And the proposed fund does nothing toward moving quickly to hire more counselors, social workers, psychologists, and nurses for Tennessee schools, where provider-to-student ratios fall far short of national recommendations.

Sen. Joey Hensley, who serves on legislative panels overseeing education and finances, summed up the concerns of naysayers during discussions this week in the Senate Finance Committee.

“Why would we choose to [address] mental health problems by tying up $250 million? Why don’t we just fund what we need every year?” he asked. The Lewis County lawmaker was the only Republican to join a few Democrats voting against the GOP governor’s proposal in committees.

Even so, a bill to create the trust fund has advanced steadily and is on track for final votes by the full legislature before lawmakers recess in May. Members of the House Finance Committee are scheduled to take up the matter next week.

Years of stagnant funding

Historically, Tennessee has given more lip service than funding to mental health services for both children and adults, while its budget for prisons and correctional programs have increased by more than 40% in the last decade.

Lee has vowed to step up the state’s commitment to children and adolescents struggling with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Gov. Bill Lee reintroduces his mental health trust fund proposal on March 29, 2021, at the state Capitol. Marie Williams (right) will help oversee the fund’s use as Tennessee’s commissioner of mental health services.

Last month, when the governor reintroduced the trust fund idea that he had put on hold a year earlier, he called mental health a “complicated issue” that is “often under-discussed” and shared that one of his daughters tried to take her life at age 15 as a result of depression. Before the pandemic hit, his education chief, Penny Schwinn, called student mental health the No. 1 concern she heard from educators when touring schools.

But in his proposed budget and recent revisions, the governor didn’t set aside new recurring money to hire more mental health specialists in schools through the state’s education funding formula. That decision came despite proposals from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers to address the need.

On Friday in Memphis, Lee said the trust fund would especially help children from uninsured families. And his press secretary, Casey Black, called it a “fiscally conservative approach to ensure Tennessee students have access to critical resources in the long term.”

The governor’s plan would place $225 million in an untouchable endowment, with a $25 million reserve available for short-term needs. As the endowment generates interest, the money could be deployed by the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, in consultation with the Department of Education.

But the low rate of projected return is troubling lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who have seen the state’s 35-year-old endowment for higher education serve as a boon to Tennessee colleges and universities. One key difference, according to state officials, is that the mental health trust fund would be completely state-funded, while the higher ed endowment receives private and corporate donations.

“The impression was we would get 5-6% yield on these kinds of trust funds. We have learned within the last couple of few weeks that that’s really not what the return will be,” said Sen. Bo Watson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which reviewed the mental health bill this week. “Is that amount of revenue enough to satisfy?”

Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro said he was conflicted because the low yield may not keep pace with inflation.

“I believe in investing in mental health and want to see that investment made desperately,” said Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat. “But I think this is a very odd fit — to have a need that we know is recurring and not funding it at the level that all of our schools would like and need. I don’t think that we’re setting up a scenario that is actually capable of filling the needs here.”

Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican, supported the governor’s proposal, though, and urged his colleagues to take the long view. “If you throw $250 million at a problem all at once, it will be spent all at once and you’ll set up a bureaucracy that we just can’t keep funding each year,” he said.

Ultimately, the panel voted 9-2 to recommend the bill to the full Senate.

Strengthening the student safety net

Schools provide the main safety net for Tennessee students in crisis. The state reports that more than 60% of children who receive mental health services do so through their school. But while rates of depression have increased among adolescents in recent years, state funding for mental health services has been stagnant. According to the most recent national data, Tennessee ranks 34th in mental health services and access for youth.

“Until our state addresses the lack of counselors, psychologists and social workers in schools, we’re not going to scratch the surface of what’s happening inside of our classrooms,” said Lauren Baker, director of legislation and public policy for the Tennessee School Counselor Association.

School Specialist	Tennessee-funded ratio	Nationally recommended ratio
Counselor	1:426 students	1:250 students
Psychologist	1:2,500 students	1:700 students
Social worker	1:2,000 students	1:250 students
Nurse	1:3,000 students	1 per school

School Staffing for Mental Health: By the Numbers

Source: Education Law Center

“It’s great that we’re having conversations about mental health and that the governor is reducing the stigma by talking about his daughter’s story,” Baker told Chalkbeat. “But the truth is, there’s just not enough trained mental health professionals in our schools, and we’re totally overwhelmed. Kids are falling through the cracks because it’s not humanly possible to meet the needs when you’re one person to 800 children, which is the ratio in some of our Tennessee schools.”

Beyond the trust fund, the state has other plans and options available to bolster student mental health.

Legislative leaders and the governor still could negotiate an increase in Tennessee’s final budget so that school districts can hire more specialists.

Tennessee also is receiving a historic infusion of cash for K-12 education — about $4.5 billion in all — from three federal stimulus and pandemic-recovery packages, and some of that money can be spent on student mental health. But because the one-time cash must be allocated by September 2024, districts likely won’t want to use it for salaries of long-term employees.

Schwinn said her department plans to invest nearly $18 million on mental health using federal recovery funds. That would pay for a comprehensive needs assessment for every school district in Tennessee, plus offer mental health grants that districts could seek to fund new or existing programs.

Baker, who represents the school counselors association and works as a counselor at Collierville Elementary School near Memphis, said a needs assessment could be helpful if the state surveys specialists who are already doing the work in schools. She’s less enthusiastic about grants for new initiatives.

“I’ve not met a counselor yet who wants another program. There are already a lot of strong programs out there. We just can’t deliver the programs we have with fidelity because of our large caseloads,” she said.

In the meantime, the governor’s trust fund proposal is garnering enthusiasm among mental health advocacy groups, even as many stakeholders acknowledge it may be an imperfect mechanism.

“To the governor’s credit, it’s a novel idea that creates a dedicated funding stream for mental health,” said one long-time advocate who asked not to be identified. “For decades, Tennessee has thrown pennies at mental health while dollars go to tourism and other places. Frankly, we’re thrilled to see this money — and we’ll take it.”

‘It was quite overwhelming’: Tennessee bill would spare recent out-of-state teachers from taking costly license exams

2021-04-01T19:49:41+00:00

Despite Tennessee’s attempts to ease pressure on teachers during the pandemic, legislators created an unintended obstacle for out-of-state teachers when they invalidated their evaluation scores in 2020.

In most cases, out-of-state teachers are required to get a temporary license when they first come to Tennessee. They can bypass taking licensure exams they took when they first became educators if they earn high classroom evaluation scores during their first two years. But teacher evaluation scores did not count last year because of the pandemic.

The bill, which the House and Senate passed and Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign, allows the state to accept the most recent teacher evaluation score if for some reason one of the two years doesn’t count. If there aren’t evaluation scores for either of those years, the superintendent can recommend that the teacher receive a license.

The new bill saves teachers who recently moved to the state hours of studying and hundreds of dollars for licensure exams. It also simplifies the state’s licensure requirements, which lawmakers hope will encourage more teachers to move to Tennessee.

The flurry of state laws passed last spring gave the State Board of Education lots of flexibility to adjust rules on issues such as student grades and teacher evaluations as COVID-19 kept schools closed.

But the law “did not allow any leeway’’ on how to license teachers who came from out of state, a state board spokeswoman said.

Fielding concerns from district leaders about teachers affected, the Tennessee School Boards Association crafted a bill, sponsored by Sen. Ferrell Haile, a Gallatin Republican, and Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, a Lancaster Republican.

Legislators and superintendents from across the state told the association that the hurdles for out-of-state teachers have been deterring them from coming to Tennessee for years. And those obstacles will have more dire consequences in coming years, as the number of teacher vacancies grow. In 2017, the Tennessee Department of Education expected half of its 65,000 teachers to leave or retire within the decade. Plus, fewer people want to be teachers.

Without the new bill, some teachers may leave the profession or the state rather than deal with the bureaucracy, said Ben Torres, the assistant executive director and lawyer for the school boards association.

“They were performing well, but through no fault of their own, an evaluation score wasn’t provided last year,” he said. “And because of how the law was written, they were not able to take advantage of the exception.”

Some teachers like Tahna White, who moved from Illinois to Tennessee, have already spent hundreds of dollars and several hours trying to work out their license issues.

In 2018, she got a temporary teacher license per state law. If she had earned a high classroom evaluation score in her second year teaching in Tennessee, she wouldn’t have to take long, expensive exams to obtain a professional license. She already had earned one high evaluation score in 2019.

Because state lawmakers promised that teachers would not be harmed by evaluations last year as the pandemic began, White assumed her license wouldn’t be affected.

But Shelby County Schools officials notified her in mid-February that because last year’s evaluation score did not count, she would need to take at least one licensure exam, which would cost more than $200 for registration and study materials. She then would need to spend hours studying — all while transitioning from all-virtual instruction to having some students back in the classroom.

“I am not being held harmless,” said White, now a kindergarten teacher at Lowrance K-8 School in Memphis. “This is being used against me. Not on purpose but lack of foresight.”

White has already spent hours emailing local and state administrators, her school board representative, a local teacher association, and others looking for advice to resolve the issue. She’s also already spent nearly $700 to keep her Illinois teacher license updated just in case that would be required to get her Tennessee license.

“This is not really the time I need to be worried about this,” White said. “It was quite overwhelming.”

Governor renews proposal for $250 million mental health trust fund for Tennessee students

2021-03-29T21:29:25+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee on Monday reintroduced plans to establish a $250 million trust fund to develop and support mental health services for K-12 students across Tennessee.

The fund, which Lee first proposed last year but slashed after the pandemic slowed the economy, would serve as an endowment to tend to an array of student challenges that have increased during the pandemic like anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Calling mental health a “complicated issue,” the governor announced his proposal at a press conference where he was flanked by legislative leaders including Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

“We’re here to shine a light on something that’s incredibly important and often under-discussed,” said Lee, disclosing that one of his own daughters tried to take her life at age 15 as a result of depression.

The announcement comes as Tennessee is receiving billions of dollars in federal relief funds to address pandemic-related needs that include student mental health. That money must be spent by September 2024, which means districts likely won’t want to use it for salaries of long-term employees.

Tennessee does not fund the recommended number of school-based counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses. Lawmakers from both parties have filed several bills seeking to improve the state’s provider-to-student ratios, but Lee has not said whether he will support those.

The trust fund would take a longer-term approach to providing clinical services in schools. It also would help pay for suicide and bullying awareness and prevention programs and to train educators on trauma-informed practices.

“Although COVID has been hardest on our state’s young people … today there is hope,” said Marie Williams, who will oversee the work as commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the mental health of Americans of all ages, but especially of teenagers and young adults as their access to support in schools, religious communities, and community programs was interrupted or sometimes cut off completely.

Leaders of the Tennessee General Assembly praised the $250 million addition to the governor’s proposed spending plan, which also includes $120 million more toward teacher pay and $110 million to support new phonics-based reading initiatives.

“We’re delighted to put it back in the budget,” Lt. Gov. McNally said of the Senate.

Sexton, who leads the House, said the state is better positioned to launch the fund now that the economy has rebounded.

“We should never let mental illness be a stigma that characterizes someone for something’s that bad. It’s just a health condition that we need to help,” he said.

How Tennessee school leaders spend billions in federal relief funds will carry huge stakes, both practically and politically

2021-03-24T01:25:47+00:00

For years, one faction of Tennessee’s education community has argued that more money is the answer to improving schools, while another has championed giving families more choices through programs like charter schools and vouchers.

Now the first faction is about to get its wish, and the second is watching closely to see how it goes. The stakes are high, both practically and politically.

Tennessee is receiving $4 billion-plus in federal funds for K-12 education through three pandemic recovery packages. That’s more than two-thirds of what the state spends in a single year on its students.

How the one-time money is spent over the next four years — and whether student achievement goes up as a result — will not only affect a generation of students disrupted by the pandemic. Some are setting this up to be a referendum on the perennial debate over whether more funding is key to improving schools.

“If students are still performing at the same level after we spend all this money, then money’s not the issue. It’s leadership,” said House Education Chairman Mark White, referring to Tennessee superintendents and school board members who have broad discretion over where to invest the massive amount of cash.

The Memphis Republican is among the GOP supermajority that, rallied by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, has embraced school choice policies as the route to jump-start academic gains that mostly have stalled in Tennessee since 2013.

Democrats, meanwhile, say Tennessee chronically under-resources its public schools via a broken funding system. Joined by several educator groups and backed up by reports and research, they’ve called for major investments to reduce class sizes, boost teacher salaries, and hire more specialists like school-based nurses, counselors, social workers, and academic interventionists.

Currently, Tennessee spends about $6 billion a year on education and ranks 46th in the nation in per-pupil spending, according to research compiled by the National Education Association.

Under a decade of GOP leadership, the state has, in fact, upped K-12 funding by more than $1.5 billion. But critics say the increases haven’t kept pace with inflation, forcing local governments to take up the slack and prompting a legal challenge from school systems in Memphis and Nashville over the adequacy of state funding.

National research consistently shows that spending more money on education yields better outcomes for students, including higher test scores, higher graduation rates, and often higher wages as adults.

White, the GOP leader from Memphis, believes the stimulus funding will serve as a test in Tennessee. Lawmakers plan to watch closely to see if students improve.

Rep. Mark White of Memphis chairs a key education committee in Tennessee’s legislature.

“If the needle has not been moved in two years, don’t come here griping because you’re not using your money wisely,” he said, citing student test scores as the primary measure of success.

Claire Smrekar, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, said it will take at least three to five years to fairly judge the impact of the federal money. Learning gaps, she noted, aren’t the only challenges the pandemic has imposed on students.

“This isn’t the stock market, and children are not machines,” Smrekar said. “Our students are going to need care, including cultivating their health and mental health. This is a process that will require intentionality, thoughtfulness, and a lot of collaboration.”

Either way, Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn wants every school leader to understand it’s a make-or-break time for educators.

“I’m looking at 900 different ways to explain this moment to school districts so they understand both the opportunity and gravity of this funding,” Schwinn said.

It’s unclear whether and how much students have fallen behind over the last year. State assessments will be given between April 12 and June 10 to determine where students stand.

But it’s increasingly clear that Lee’s administration expects the additional funding to generate test scores that both recover and raise the bar by spring 2025, especially for the state’s youngest students.

“We’re not going to tell district leaders how to spend the money. But how they choose to spend it and what happens will absolutely have an impact on every conversation we have about school funding moving forward,” Schwinn said. “This is a moment in time to show us.”

Districts will get about $2.2 billion of nearly $2.5 billion coming to Tennessee schools from President Joe Biden’s recent American Rescue Plan. Federal law requires that a fifth of the money pay for programs and resources designed to catch up students from pandemic-related learning lags. The rest is to address other pandemic-related needs that could include technology, student mental health services, and school building improvements to reduce risk of virus transmission, among other things.

Many district leaders are still figuring out how to spend the second pot of money, which totals $1.1 billion in Tennessee, much less the much larger third pot. But the clock is already ticking. By law, they must spend or obligate the funds by September 2024.

Beyond launching required learning recovery programs, Montgomery County Superintendent Millard House has his eye on long-neglected buildings in his school system along the Tennessee-Kentucky border. “This is an opportunity to address deferred maintenance and air-quality issues that have been skipped over for years,” he said.

The one-time money can’t be used on recurring expenses like raising teacher salaries or lowering classroom sizes, so school leaders must be especially strategic, said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state’s superintendents organization.

“I think it’s important to remember that this is money sent to us for relief and recovery. It’s to help our children, our school systems, recover from COVID-19,” Lynch said.

School systems must report expenses to the state education department to get reimbursed with the federal funds.

To elevate accountability on the third round of money, Schwinn wants local leaders to submit monthly reports to her department beginning July 1 — and to publicly post spending plan summaries to help parents, students, and educators understand where the money is going.

“We’re also strongly, strongly recommending that districts spend 1% of their funding on staffing to monitor the spending. This is not the kind of work that can be placed on existing staff,” Schwinn said.

Smrekar, with Vanderbilt University, believes the historic infusion of cash should transcend politics to improve and innovate public education. It doesn’t have to be a referendum, she said.

“This is not a contest. It’s a clarion call to come together,” Smrekar said. “The decisions that are made today and implemented tomorrow will become part of the historical legacy of this pandemic.”

These Memphis schools were the first to get a COVID scare last year. Their experiences warned of the challenges to come.

2021-03-19T21:44:41+00:00

A year ago, the shared Treadwell elementary and middle school campus was the first in Memphis to feel the effects of what would become a world-shaking pandemic.

An employee at one of the schools went into quarantine after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 — one of only four cases reported in Tennessee at the time. A robocall to parents set off a mild panic, with a line of cars assembling to pick up students early.

Now, as most students in Shelby County Schools continue to learn remotely, the two schools can claim some of the highest in-person learning rates in the 88,000-student district. Hand sanitizer stations are set up in the hallways and students have assigned seats spaced out at lunch.

This is about as close to “normal” as school can get these days in Shelby County Schools — and it’s far from that. Only a third of the district’s students signed up to return to classrooms.

What happened at Treadwell was a preview of the challenges and successes to come in pandemic education, from spotty communication and shaken trust in school leaders’ ability to keep communities safe to moments of joy and connection.

On the day the quarantine was announced, Treadwell Middle School teacher Tasha Casey let students use her phone to call their parents. Looking back to the pandemic’s early days, Casey said she most treasured the moments when she and her colleagues posted video messages to students on social media. She always ended her segments with the words “We will be OK.”

“I was more concerned about the kids and how it was affecting them and adjusting,” said Casey, who has been teaching in Memphis schools for 20 years. “Honestly, as a teacher, the most difficult thing was not being able to disseminate information the way I want to, not to see them, not to hug them.”

The Treadwell campus sits just north of Summer Avenue in Memphis, an international district with restaurants and shops representing countries from Colombia to Somalia to China.

Before the pandemic, the neighborhood was known for block parties where cultures mingled. Soccer and basketball games at the Treadwell campus were natural meeting spots where people who normally would stick to their own groups could get to know each other.

In the wake of Memphis classrooms closing last March, there was a “loss of neighborhood identity,” even as neighbors needed each other more than ever, said Jared Myers, who leads the Heights Community Development Corporation.

“Families were not being shared on information from the district on what to expect,” he said. “Everything happened so quickly.”

Treadwell parent Tameka Patterson learned of the quarantine not from a robocall but from TV. She was at home on the couch resting in the last days of her pregnancy when the initial reports aired.

The footage, which drew national attention, showed just how little the public knew about the virus at the time. One father sprayed his son with disinfectant before picking him up. A grandmother showed up with plastic bags wrapped around her clothing as protection.

Patterson headed to school to pick up her two daughters and son at the elementary and middle schools. By the end of the day, almost half of students at the middle school had left early.

“I was puzzled,” Patterson said. “But I was also, ‘I really don’t understand what’s going on but it sounds serious — let me go get my child.’”

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray visits Treadwell Middle School the day after the district announced the employee’s quarantine in March 2020.

Three days later, Shelby County Schools announced every district school would close its doors.

While many large U.S. districts quickly pivoted to online learning, the Memphis district took a different approach, handing out paper lesson packets and televising instruction while the district worked on a plan to purchase laptops and tablets for virtual learning using federal relief money. Last spring, district officials only had enough laptops for half of their students.

By the start of the new school year in August, the district secured laptops, tablets, and Wi-Fi hotspots for students who needed them and provided some teacher training for online instruction.

When virtual learning started, Patterson reduced her work hours instead of returning fulltime to her job as a McDonald’s cashier after maternity leave so she could help her three older children adjust to online classes. With her youngest school-age child in pre-kindergarten, Patterson said she needed a lot of patience to help her daughter and learned about what teachers go through.

But communication with her children’s teachers was scarce. She felt the switch to virtual learning was too sudden and unorganized. It’s hard for her to see any upsides of continuing online learning. And since Shelby County Schools is keeping all instruction online the rest of this school year even if a student returns in person, Patterson said sending her children back to classrooms has felt like a waste of time.

“With her being inside the building, she still not getting that hands-on learning,” she said. “She’s doing the same learning she would be doing at home.”

Treadwell Middle School teacher Tasha Casey

Lack of updated contact information for parents and guardians in the district’s databases has been a challenge since the pandemic first disrupted education. By the fall, Shelby County Schools was searching for 3,000 students who hadn’t picked up a laptop or attended classes.

Casey, the longtime Memphis teacher, saw her relationship with parents and students change dramatically during remote learning. Before, she prided herself on working out issues with students one-on-one in class and helping them take responsibility for their actions. She only called parents as a last resort when a student was missing work or misbehaving.

During the pandemic, parents began emailing her more frequently — sometimes to her delight and sometimes excessively. Parents have more access to what their children are doing in virtual classes and often rush to intervene, Casey said. She’s still getting used to it.

“Some of them wear the email out,” she said of parents.

As districts across Tennessee reopened school buildings this school year, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray held firm that remaining remote was the best path, citing the health risks and community sentiment as the virus continued to exact an awful toll.

But Gov. Bill Lee pressured school leaders in Memphis and Nashville to reopen classrooms, saying, “you can’t say you’re putting the needs of students first and keep schools closed.” State legislators threatened to cut funding.

Finally, last month, Ray announced that the Memphis district would begin returning to buildings March 1.

Students leave Treadwell Elementary for the day following afternoon dismissal.

At afternoon pickup at Treadwell last week, eighth grader Romeo Vasquez said he felt there are “a lot of people protecting us from the virus” at the school.

That wasn’t always the case. When the Treadwell employee was quarantined last March, all six janitors at the schools quit, eliminating the first line of defense for hygiene supplies and cleaning. That left one manager from the district’s contractor to fill the enormous gap at a critical time, said school board member Althea Greene.

The situation and ensuing complaints caused district leaders to re-evaluate their cleaning routines. During the announcement about reopening buildings a month ago, a top official announced that custodial staff at all schools would be required to restock soap and paper towels daily instead of waiting until the dispensers were empty.

Though minor, staff across the district noted the change as a sign their complaints might finally be addressed.

Since reopening classrooms, school leaders have noticed more students submitting assignments and returning students being more engaged than they were online. Even students who sporadically attended online classes came back to the classroom focused and ready to learn, Casey said.

Ray said recently that some version of online learning will continue even after the pandemic. He hasn’t released details, but said he’s thinking about how to apply lessons learned during virtual learning to prepare students for life after high school.

“People tend to think in our community that once we get back to ‘normal times’ — whatever that is — the devices, they’re going to go away,” Ray told board members during a planning meeting last month. “Absolutely not. We made a major investment.”

Treadwell sixth grader Leonardo Vasquez, Romeo’s brother, said he is learning more in person even though teachers are still instructing over videoconferencing. The lessons are more interactive and he can get instant help from a teacher if he needs it, he said. Before classrooms reopened, he said he felt “basically trapped up in your own room.”

Now, he feels like he’s experiencing all the “firsts” of middle school in a way he couldn’t online.

“When there’s school, you can meet more people,” Leonardo said. “You can talk to them to see if you can become friends.”

Here’s what your Tennessee district will get from Biden’s unprecedented federal investment in schools

2021-03-19T20:13:13+00:00

Tennessee school districts are poised to receive a historic infusion of cash from the latest and largest federal pandemic relief package, with high-poverty districts benefiting the most.

School systems will receive more than $2.2 billion of Tennessee’s nearly $2.5 billion share for K-12 schools from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, according to a list of allocations released Friday by the state education department.

The state will get the remainder of the money to create and support learning-related resources and programs.

As with last year’s two federal stimulus plans, which totaled $1.5 billion for Tennessee schools, the new plan will give more money to districts with more students from low-income families.

Shelby County Schools in Memphis will receive more than $503 million, the largest allocation in the state. Metropolitan Nashville Public Public Schools is due more than $277 million. Districts in Knoxville and Chattanooga are to receive $114 million and $91 million, respectfully.

Federal law requires spending a fifth of the money for programs and resources designed to catch up students from possible pandemic-related learning lags. The rest is to address other pandemic-related needs, but district leaders will have broad discretion on what to prioritize. The spending list could include technology, student mental health services, and school building improvements to reduce risk of virus transmission, among other things.

“I think people understand both the excitement and the gravity of this opportunity,” Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn told Chalkbeat last month as Congress prepared to approve the latest plan. “We’ve never had anything like this amount of relief funding in such a short period of time. It is our moment in time to really invest wisely.”

Federal law says all of the money is available through the end of September 2023. However, districts may get an extra year to spend or allocate the funds, which would make the actual deadline September 2024.

Below, look up how much your district is expected to receive.

District	ESSER 3.0 Allocation
ACHIEVEMENT SCHOOL DISTRICT	$55,198,034.84
ALAMO CITY SCHOOLS	$906,335.98
ALCOA CITY SCHOOLs	$2,146,024.57
ANDERSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$11,704,957.98
ARLINGTON CITY SCHOOLS	$6,592,510.24
ATHENS CITY SCHOOLS	$5,323,860.58
BARTLETT CITY SCHOOLS	$17,630,335.11
BEDFORD COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,927,411.96
BELLS CITY SCHOOLS	$781,010.64
BENTON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,955,621.85
BLEDSOE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,028,191.89
BLOUNT COUNTY SCHOOLS	$16,921,351.81
BRADFORD SPECIAL SCHOOLS	$686,523.08
BRADLEY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,709,700.96
BRISTOL CITY SCHOOLS	$8,331,450.81
CAMPBELL COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,824,276.61
CANNON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,595,827.33
CARTER COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,034,317.91
CHEATHAM COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,216,226.47
CHESTER COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,871,721.01
CLAIBORNE COUNTY SCHOOLs	$11,595,629.56
CLAY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,266,978.76
CLEVELAND CITY SCHOOLS	$12,177,478.39
CLINTON CITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS	$1,514,886.35
COCKE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,192,004.87
COFFEE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$8,370,808.75
COLLIERVILLE CITY SCHOOLS	$16,014,595.45
CROCKETT COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,233,190.84
CUMBERLAND COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,137,618.41
METROPOLITAN NASHVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS	$276,736,466.07
DAYTON CITY SCHOOLS	$2,490,367.08
DECATUR COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,578,824.52
DEKALB COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT	$6,694,579.64
DICKSON COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT	$13,378,146.86
DYER COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,205,461.78
DYERSBURG CITY SCHOOLS	$8,982,226.71
ELIZABETHTON CITY SCHOOLS	$5,659,315.09
ETOWAH CITY SCHOOLS	$949,116.99
FAYETTE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$8,989,215.50
Local Educational Agency	ESSER 3.0 Allocation
FAYETTEVILLE CITY SCHOOLS	$2,723,226.72
FENTRESS COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,738,404.09
FRANKLIN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$9,769,107.64
FRANKLIN SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$2,974,297.76
GERMANTOWN CITY SCHOOLS	$11,307,497.65
GIBSON SPECIAL DISTRICT	$3,539,429.05
GILES COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,695,740.98
GRAINGER COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,397,159.67
GREENE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$14,723,890.93
GREENEVILLE CITY SCHOOLS	$4,578,492.02
GRUNDY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,307,676.01
HAMBLEN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$20,173,061.82
HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$91,025,240.10
HANCOCK COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,238,450.88
HARDEMAN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$9,460,324.64
HARDIN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$9,169,587.89
HAWKINS COUNTY SCHOOLS	$16,401,088.41
HAYWOOD COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,397,302.30
HENDERSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,736,662.52
HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,863,862.34
HICKMAN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,854,126.08
HOLLOW ROCK-BRUCETON SCHOOL DISTRICT	$1,788,500.19
HOUSTON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$2,702,785.82
HUMBOLDT CITY SCHOOLS	$4,435,285.59
HUMPHREYS COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,044,203.80
HUNTINGDON SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$3,048,351.93
JACKSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,920,689.80
JEFFERSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$14,091,303.91
JOHNSON CITY SCHOOLS	$13,881,917.90
JOHNSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,994,514.37
KINGSPORT CITY SCHOOLS	$17,075,503.09
KNOX COUNTY SCHOOLS	$114,112,117.74
LAKE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,322,311.08
LAKELAND CITY SCHOOLS	$2,854,317.24
LAUDERDALE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$13,389,602.17
LAWRENCE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$15,665,884.01
LEBANON SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$4,876,525.34
LENOIR CITY SCHOOLS	$2,919,288.24
LEWIS COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,215,960.63
Local Educational Agency	ESSER 3.0 Allocation
LEXINGTON CITY SCHOOL	$1,920,851.84
LINCOLN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,849,761.55
LOUDON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,785,148.68
MACON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$8,858,980.75
MADISON CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL	$37,688,295.80
MANCHESTER CITY SCHOOLS	$3,025,891.71
MARION COUNTY SCHOOLS	$8,085,679.54
MARSHALL COUNTY SCHOOLS	$8,164,943.41
MARYVILLE CITY SCHOOLS	$4,097,098.62
MAURY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$18,181,045.91
MCKENZIE SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$2,500,583.78
MCMINN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$11,226,447.18
MCNAIRY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$9,360,830.06
MEIGS COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,022,323.80
MILAN CITY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$3,516,983.84
MILLINGTON CITY SCHOOLS	$7,131,788.25
MONROE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$11,015,950.17
MONTGOMERY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$58,471,762.18
MOORE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$964,716.03
MORGAN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,526,608.41
MURFREESBORO CITY SCHOOLS	$12,671,280.46
NEWPORT CITY SCHOOLS	$4,537,925.50
OAK RIDGE CITY SCHOOLS	$7,008,669.91
OBION COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,838,276.21
ONEIDA SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$2,373,088.99
OVERTON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$6,214,574.99
PARIS CITY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$4,395,905.14
PERRY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,320,066.56
PICKETT COUNTY SCHOOLS	$1,358,272.85
POLK COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,737,913.05
PUTNAM COUNTY SCHOOLS	$20,676,389.97
RHEA COUNTY SCHOOLS	$9,729,742.20
RICHARD CITY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$578,680.99
ROANE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$13,259,577.61
ROBERTSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$14,762,182.91
ROGERSVILLE CITY SCHOOLS	$1,871,172.12
RUTHERFORD COUNTY SCHOOLS	$43,774,580.29
SCOTT COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,987,378.54
SEQUATCHIE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,979,360.42
Local Educational Agency	ESSER 3.0 Allocation
SEVIER COUNTY SCHOOLS	$27,523,341.79
SHELBY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$503,145,852.64
SMITH COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,919,156.22
SOUTH CARROLL SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$865,882.05
TENNESSEE PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL COMMISSION	$3,844,150.89
STEWART COUNTY SCHOOLS	$3,648,494.74
SULLIVAN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$20,610,150.34
SUMNER COUNTY SCHOOLS	$31,463,481.60
SWEETWATER CITY SCHOOLS	$3,034,329.31
TENNESSEE SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND	$1,196,524.73
TENNESSEE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF	$1,781,091.02
TIPTON COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT	$17,841,500.22
TRENTON SPECIAL SCHOOLS	$2,882,182.33
TROUSDALE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$2,156,721.70
TULLAHOMA CITY SCHOOLS	$7,077,371.76
UNICOI SCHOOLS	$4,691,566.32
UNION CITY SCHOOLS	$5,047,859.59
UNION COUNTY SCHOOLS	$7,923,593.62
VAN BUREN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$2,059,494.16
WARREN COUNTY SCHOOLS	$18,725,991.53
WASHINGTON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$11,963,190.47
WAYNE COUNTY SCHOOLS	$4,803,019.16
WEAKLEY COUNTY SCHOOLS	$8,694,049.76
WEST CARROLL SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT	$2,331,749.28
WEST TENNESSEE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF	$344,665.30
WHITE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT	$8,746,589.56
WILLIAMSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$5,222,354.19
WILSON COUNTY SCHOOLS	$12,554,039.91
YORK INSTITUTE	$1,338,852.87
Total Flowthrough to Districts	$2,238,874,272.90

How much Tennessee school districts will get in latest pandemic relief

Source: Tennessee Department of Education

Sam Park contributed to this story.

This Tennessee superintendent leads with ‘resilient’ students and schools in mind

2021-03-17T19:26:39+00:00

Bryan Johnson says few experiences prepared him to lead a school district during a pandemic, so he leaned on several principles that have served him well as a leader so far in his career.

Keep students at the center of all decisions. Listen to the experts on the ground. Never forget that you’re a public servant.

That ethos has helped Johnson become a leader among leaders in public education. This year, he represented Tennessee as one of four finalists for National Superintendent of the Year.

In four years at the helm of Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools, Johnson has shepherded student performance from the bottom to the top of Tennessee’s ranking system for academic growth. His district’s high school graduation rate has climbed for four straight years. And its number of schools designated below state expectations has dropped from nine to three.

In 2018, Johnson launched an initiative called Future Ready Institutes, placing 23 career academies in high schools to help students prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. To pay for the program, he secured over $3 million from local business and industry.

He also spearheaded a partnership with the local electric utility to provide broadband access for more than half of the school system’s 44,000-plus students, a third of whom opted to learn remotely during the pandemic and many considered economically disadvantaged.

Johnson’s pathway to leadership began with his own public education in Nashville and included stints as a teacher, principal, and chief academic officer in Clarksville, home to a U.S. military base on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky.

He spoke recently with Chalkbeat about his job, including ways to catch up students, helping children through a season of grief and trauma, and why no school day looks the same during a pandemic.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Had anything in your career prepared you for the challenges of leading a school district during a pandemic?

Each of my experiences in school leadership has helped to equip me, but this year has been unlike anything I’ve experienced in public education. I’ve relied on my commitment to public service to guide me during these difficult circumstances. When you focus on serving others, you can see beyond the personal stress that we’ve all felt.

How are you guiding your staff through this unprecedented time?

I’m trying to listen and respond to their needs. The “higher” your role, the more important it is to listen deeply to experts on the ground. We have established several feedback groups so we can hear directly from students, teachers, leaders, and the community. As always, we keep children at the forefront of all decisions.

What does a typical day look like for you now?

COVID-19 has taught me there is no such thing as typical. My day includes school visits, video calls, school board communication, COVID response, and meetings with local leaders. Because of the pandemic, I’ve had to become even more nimble and available to address the urgency of any given day.

How are you addressing learning gaps following months of remote learning?

Last summer, we offered programs for about 2,000 of our most at-risk learners, which gave us an opportunity to close some gaps and make adjustments for COVID prior to reopening in the fall. That experience helped us. Our district had 84 days of in-person learning during the first semester, and we’ve been on campus for the second semester since Feb. 1. We also ramped up our afterschool programming for intervention and enrichment and will expand our summer offerings.

After nearly a year of upheaval — and in some cases grief and trauma — are you doing anything different to account for what so many families have been through?

We know there are varying degrees of fear, anxiety, trauma, and uncertainty with regard to the virus, and that the COVID experience has not been uniform for every student and family in Hamilton County.

Last March, we set up a hotline in English and Spanish for families to call for any reason — from food and utilities to over-the-phone guidance from a school counselor for students. By the end of the summer, the hotline had fielded 1,500 calls.

This school year, we set up virtual learning centers in community spaces like the YMCA and local churches for families who opted their students out of in-person school but still needed support with virtual learning. Several of our community partners called remote students regularly to make sure they were engaging with online instruction and that their non-academic needs were being addressed.

We also began using a social-emotional learning screener from Panorama Education to identify areas of concern district-wide. And we launched “Wellness Wednesday” sessions to support the wellbeing of both teachers and students.

Bryan Johnson became superintendent of Hamilton County Schools in 2017. The Chattanooga-based school system has 44,500 students in 79 schools.

What inspired you to become an educator?

My parents were public servants. My mother was a social worker and caregiver, and my father was in the Navy and still serves as a pastor. Their emphasis on serving others and making an impact made a great impression on my siblings and me. Both of my parents were first-generation college attendees and elevated the importance of education in our home.

Describe your own experience as a student.

I grew up in Nashville and attended public schools from kindergarten until graduation. It was an amazing experience, and I remember many great teachers. Not only did I learn content and curriculum, they taught me about character, high expectations, and citizenship.

What’s the best leadership advice you received?

First, to always put students at the center of every decision you make as an educational leader. Second, to seek input whenever possible before making decisions. I’ve learned the decision is rarely, if ever, wrong when children are first in the decision-making process.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

Our senior leadership team is currently reading “The Infinite Game,” and one of the key themes is so appropriate in this season. The author, Simon Sinek, compares stability to resilience. Stable organizations weather the storm, he writes, while resilient organizations transform as a result of the storm.

Superintendent Bryan Johnson talks with a Hamilton County student who opted to learn in person during the pandemic.

What interactions with students, teachers, or principals inspire or affect you the most?

I try to be as visible as possible in schools. Seeing teachers, leaders and students in their everyday environment keeps me grounded on what matters most. I get to see great learning, teaching and leading on a regular basis, and it inspires me to continue to push. I also get to see collective efficacy in action as people like school nutrition workers and educational assistants work alongside teachers and leaders in support of children.

What gives you hope at this moment?

Our students have shown such resilience. And I’m inspired by the way our teachers have risen, challenged themselves, and sacrificed for children during this difficult season.

Tennessee will get another $2.5 billion in federal stimulus funding for schools. Tell us how your district should spend its share.

2021-03-15T21:19:17+00:00

Tennessee schools are about to be on the receiving end of a historic windfall of federal cash — nearly $2.5 billion, to be exact.

We’d like to know how you think school leaders should spend it.

Last week’s passage of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan adds billions more to the $1.5 billion the state already has received for education from the first two stimulus plans approved during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn calls the total a “stunning amount of money,” with high-poverty districts getting the largest shares.

District leaders will have a lot of flexibility on how to spend the latest federal investment, but must dedicate a fifth of it to learning recovery programs like summer school, after-school tutoring, and extending the school day. The rest can go for other pandemic-related needs.

We want to hear from students, parents, and educators about the greatest needs you see as Tennessee seeks to recover from the pandemic. Please take our brief survey and let us know if we can follow up with you.

Loading…

Holdout no longer: All Memphis students have access to classrooms as older students return

2021-03-08T22:35:09+00:00

Some middle and high school students in Memphis returned to classrooms Monday, completing Shelby County Schools’ phased plan to reopen buildings nearly a year after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted remote learning.

About a fourth of middle and high school students were expected to return Monday. A third of pre-kindergarten and elementary students returned last week. Families have a choice to send children back to campus or to keep them learning from home via live videoconferencing, as they have done since August. The majority of district parents have chosen to stick with remote learning.

Charter schools, which educate about 17% of the district’s students, can make their own reopening plans. Several more opened their buildings Monday, such as Freedom Preparatory Academy and Memphis Business Academy, which means nearly all charter schools in the city are offering in-person learning.

Latoya Jenkins was one of the first parents to show up at Manassas High School on Monday morning. In addition to a face mask and hand sanitizer, she bought gloves for her daughter to use at school. She has wanted classrooms to reopen for months.

When asked how virtual learning had been for her daughter, she put two thumbs down.

“Our kids aren’t learning,” she said. “Baby, you can get corona anywhere. So don’t stop my child’s education.” Her daughter has been earning good grades, but she doesn’t believe that means she’s been getting the learning she needs.

Superintendent Joris Ray visited Lowrance K-8 School on the first day of welcoming back middle school students Monday.

The week before classrooms reopened, the county’s test-positivity rate dropped to about 5% — meaning 5% of COVID-19 tests taken returned positive — the lowest rate since early October. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of new cases reported in the past week still put Memphis in the second-highest risk category for transmission, after months of being in the highest transmission tier.

It’s unclear how new variants of the virus will affect transmission locally.

The school district plans to begin offering COVID-19 tests to students and staff later this month.

Superintendent Joris Ray had been holding out on reopening classrooms while the city was in the highest-risk category. But as cases statewide began to decline and state legislators threatened to cut funding if districts didn’t offer an in-person option for students, Ray reluctantly announced new return dates and also backtracked on his promise to teachers and required them to return to buildings.

Without the option to work from home, science teacher Marsharee Swift said her anxiety kept her up until 2 a.m. Monday. Swift and most of her colleagues outside Manassas High were wearing face masks, face shields, gloves, and disposable medical gowns as they greeted students and parents Monday morning.

“We’re scared. Very scared,” Swift said. “We see the need for them to come back to school. But I hope we’re not having to sacrifice students, teachers, or staff because someone felt we needed to return.”

Rosemary Winters, who teaches students with severe disabilities at Westwood High School, was one of the two dozen educators who participated in a drive-by protest at the district’s headquarters last month. She worried that she would not have enough gloves, hand sanitizer, and other equipment to protect herself since her students need much more hands-on help than most, such as helping them in the bathroom and keeping their masks on.

But she was relieved to find she had plenty of supplies when she returned to her classroom last week to prepare for students’ arrival.

“Everything was there when I returned there. I was very pleased,” said Winters, who is also a board member of one of the district’s teacher unions, Memphis-Shelby County Education Association. She plans to continue advocating for ample supplies to be available throughout the school year, which ends in mid-June.

Jakayla Tuggle, a senior at Booker T. Washington Middle and High School, said she didn’t have any concerns about safety in the building from what she and her mother heard from school leaders. She was just ready to learn more and do some senior activities to mark her last year in high school. At home, she’s been having internet connection and laptop problems almost every other day, which has interfered with her classwork.

“It’s been hard,” she said.

Those technology problems won’t necessarily disappear for students returning to classrooms. They will continue to learn through videoconferencing and sign in to online classes taught by a teacher who may be in another classroom. District officials did not want dramatically different instruction for students on campus than for the majority who are still learning from home.

The learning setup varies by school. But all campuses outfit their returning students with headphones to participate in online classes. Schools limit movement between rooms to reduce risk of any virus transmission among students and staff.

Jenkins, the Manassas High parent, said she didn’t learn until recently that classes would continue to be online even for in-person students. Since then, she’s been looking at houses in neighboring suburb Bartlett so she can enroll her daughter in a school that has traditional in-person classes.

“That’s what I have to do to make sure my child gets an education,” she said.

Swift, the science teacher, said despite the challenges, she wants to make the return to classrooms worthwhile for students. “We’re here and we’re going to make the best of it.”

Tennessee vaccination exemption bill stalls over concerns about teacher choice

2021-03-04T01:03:58+00:00

A debate over whether to prioritize the public health of school communities or the personal liberty of teachers has stalled a Tennessee bill designed to ban potential COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

The legislature’s House Health Committee agreed Wednesday to wait until next week to vote on a bill that would prohibit state and local authorities from requiring a person to get vaccinated against their will.

Gov. Bill Lee has said vaccinations should be optional for people in public schools, and no districts have said they will require them. But the bill — which sponsors say is preemptive — could discourage some school employees from participating in the nation’s most ambitious immunization program ever.

Tennessee teachers became eligible for vaccinations last month after the state health department moved them up on the priority list. State officials have said they don’t have data on how many teachers have been inoculated thus far.

The vaccination bill is not exclusive to schools but could have major implications for education. Medical experts say more than three-quarters of the population need shots in their arms to achieve a level of protection that will crush the virus and return schools to normal.

Rep. Bud Hulsey, a Kingsport Republican who is cosponsoring the measure with Sen. Janice Bowling of Tullahoma, said the goal is to calm the fears of Tennesseans who worry they could be forced to get vaccinated over their strong personal objections.

“There are a lot of folks who are very afraid of it,” said Hulsey, who noted later that he has heard from a lot of worried teachers.

But Rep. John Ray Clemmons called the bill premature and says it appears to try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

“I am not aware of any law or bill or movement to force anyone to take a COVID-19 vaccination in the state of Tennessee,” said Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat.

The legislation has GOP support and, at the request of the Tennessee Hospital Association, was amended Wednesday to exempt employees at government-run hospitals from vaccination requirements. But discussion stalled after Rep. Sabi Kumar, a retired surgeon, proposed exempting teachers as well.

“The purpose of the amendment completely is to protect people, protect public, avoid the spread of the virus,” said Kumar, a Republican from Springfield.

That raised concerns that teachers and other school employees refusing vaccines could be forced out of their profession if their district opts to require them.

“This really puts me in a very bad position,” said Rep. Ron Gant, a Rossville Republican, suggesting that the bill needs more work.

Currently, there is no state law or requirements for teacher immunizations, but local school boards may set public health standards for their employees.

For students, however, Tennessee law allows parents to refuse to vaccinate their children based on their religious beliefs and practices, as long as the state is “in the absence of an epidemic or immediate threat of an epidemic.”

On Tuesday, a House health subcommittee rejected another vaccination bill that would have eliminated the so-called pandemic clause so that parents can opt out of the coronavirus vaccine for their children.

Lawmakers, including Kumar and several other medical professionals, voted against that proposal on the grounds it could endanger public health.

Memphis students and staff can receive COVID testing about every two weeks tentatively starting this month

2021-03-02T22:10:58+00:00

Shelby County Schools is teaming up with the Memphis city government to offer COVID-19 testing in schools now that classrooms are open.

The tests for students and staff will be optional and happen about every two weeks, with a goal of starting in mid-to-late March, said John Barker, a district deputy superintendent.

“Every student, every teacher in a school who wants to have a test, can have a test,” Barker said Saturday during the school board’s daylong planning meeting.

Deputy Superintendent John Barker chats with a kindergarten student at Riverwood Elementary on the first day of classrooms reopening, March 1, 2021.

The test, which includes inserting a long cotton swab partially up each nostril for a few seconds, has been a part of the district’s reopening plan for months but details had not been released until recently.

Coronavirus testing is important to help understand infection rates in schools, especially when the surrounding community spread is high. Students and staff who came in contact with an infected person are supposed to be notified within 12 hours of school leaders learning of a positive case.

The city’s testing method, called pooling, often can get school leaders and parents results within 24 hours, which can help reduce transmission by keeping infected staff and students at home.

Pooling allows technicians to test an entire classroom’s samples at once. If the virus is detected, the lab can go back and test each sample individually to find the source. If the group comes back negative, the technicians can move quickly to test the next group.

Although COVID-19 testing has been a sticking point for teachers in other districts, Memphis teachers mostly had been worried about getting vaccinated. Shelby County Schools and the local health department offered first-dose vaccinations for all employees last week before classrooms started to reopen Monday.

The city is currently rotating COVID-19 testing to about a dozen charter and private schools whose classrooms have been open. A city spokesman said last month that Shelby County Schools, just like the other public schools in the program, would not have to pay anything to participate in testing. But district officials said they’ve been told they would need to help pay for the city’s current contracts for laboratory testing, staffing, and supplies.

District leaders said over the weekend they estimated spending about $3 million over the next year from their second round of federal relief money on COVID-19 testing. City officials were not available this week to answer questions about funding for the program.

‘Happy reunion’: Memphis elementary classrooms open for first time in nearly a year

2021-03-01T23:04:09+00:00

Even on the eve of Randy Butler’s return to school, the fifth grader’s parents weren’t sure if they were making the right decision, he said. But as he connected with peers and met his teacher in person Monday for the first time since online classes started in August, he was excited.

“It’s a happy reunion, basically,” said Randy, who attends Riverwood Elementary. After months of his younger siblings interrupting his classes and wearing a mask and social distancing at the grocery store with his family, he was ready to be back in a classroom.

Randy Butler, right, with teacher Brenda Taylor, center, and classmate Khloe Cooper, left, at Riverwood Elementary on the first day of Shelby County Schools reopening classrooms March 1, 2021.

“It’s definitely a lot easier to focus,” he said.

Randy was one of more than 17,000 elementary students, about a third, expected to return to Shelby County Schools classrooms Monday. About a fourth of middle and high school students are scheduled to return March 8. Most parents opted to keep their children learning remotely. School buildings in the Memphis district have been closed to students since the pandemic hit the city a year ago. Shelby County Schools was the last district in Tennessee to reopen classrooms.

When Superintendent Joris Ray unveiled his initial reopening plans last summer, teachers could choose to work remotely. He delayed the plans as COVID-19 devastated the community. But after state lawmakers threatened to cut funding if the district did not offer in-person learning and the virus’ spread started to recede, Ray two weeks ago announced he would require teachers to return to classrooms.

Still, Ray did not get as much pushback from the district’s 6,500 teachers as other cities across the nation did about returning to classrooms. But unions in Tennessee also have little power to challenge district actions after state lawmakers stripped them of bargaining rights a decade ago.

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray

“The teachers, them returning in person, just did my heart glad,” Ray told reporters Monday afternoon. “So far, so good. We’ve had a great day.”

Ray said the public should expect some COVID-19 cases and possible individual school closures like other school systems across the nation have when students or staff have to quarantine. Ray said Shelby County Schools will report all cases to the state so the information will be publicly available by school.

“We’ve done everything we can possibly do, but the virus is still here,” he said.

But under the district’s plan, returning to classrooms does not mean a return to traditional in-person learning. All students, whether learning remotely or in a classroom, will continue to log on to live videoconferencing with their teachers.

At Riverwood Elementary, the third stop of the day for Ray and his leadership team, about a third of the school’s 919 students were expected to return. Principal Latisha Brown said she was missing about 40 whose parents had signed them up to return.

As masked students stopped in the hallways, they looked down to see if they lined up with floor markers set 6 feet apart and backed up when needed. At the entrance of each classroom, there was a table with a large bottle of hand sanitizer. Some had boxes of disinfectant wipes. Inside classrooms, students worked on their tablets with headphones behind mostly clear desk shields. As students rotated through the cafeteria for lunch, each class was assigned a row and spaced out to have two students at each table.

Still, parents and teachers have expressed concern about buildings staying clean, having hot water in bathrooms, and having ample ventilation if windows aren’t operable. A district spokeswoman said Monday that though janitorial staff clean surfaces more frequently and restock paper towels and soap dispensers daily, the district’s vendors have not hired more staff to carry out the increased workload. Some fixes for building ventilation are expected under the district’s next round of federal COVID-19 relief money.

Carol Welch’s kindergarten class at Riverwood Elementary in Memphis on the first day of classrooms reopening March 1, 2021.

While Monday’s reopening got the most attention, most of the district’s students are still learning remotely. Porsha Holloway has four children at Vollentine Elementary and decided to keep them home. She doesn’t want them to wear masks all day and worries that they could get sick.

“I doubt if [other students] will follow the directions with keeping their hygiene up,” she said. “You got to tell them how to bathe… just to expect them to do it on their own is a lot.”

Holloway stopped taking hair styling clients so she could stay at home with her children during virtual learning because their father works. But she worries her children will be bored as teachers assign more work for students to do on their own. When teachers did this last week, her children finished all their work by Wednesday.

In anticipation of returning to classrooms before Ray’s announcement, Carol Welch, a kindergarten teacher at Riverwood Elementary, drove to neighboring Haywood County about a month ago to get her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine before it was available locally. On Monday, about half of her class was in the classroom, while the rest were learning remotely. At top of mind for her is making sure that students at home don’t feel left out.

“I’m determined to make it equitable,” she said. She will offer the same materials and activities to students at home that she offers for students in her classroom.

When Jamie Veals, a fifth grade teacher at Whitehaven Elementary, first learned that teachers would be required to return to classrooms, she felt “against a wall” and wasn’t sure how it was going to work out. But once the district arranged for teachers to get their first vaccine doses last week and her principal reviewed safety protocols, she felt better.

“It is not as bad as we think it is. It was actually a lot better,” she said. “If we can follow the guidelines… I believe we will be fine.”

District officials did not reveal how many teachers have quit, received accommodations under federal disability laws, or taken extended leaves since Ray announced the new reopening plan Feb. 12. Ray did say that only 40 of the 300 teachers who are eligible to retire said they would.

Riverwood Elementary’s cafeteria on the first day of classrooms reopening March 1, 2021.

Mental health centers, teacher assistants, building ventilation: Memphis leaders suggest ideas for spending COVID relief money

2021-02-28T01:21:49+00:00

Shelby County School officials unveiled a two-year $170 million plan to board members, offering a first look at how Tennessee’s largest district wants to spend its second round of federal relief money after a year of pandemic disruption to students.

At the board’s planning meeting Saturday, district officials suggested expanding its mental health services, hiring additional teacher assistants for young readers, and improving building ventilation.

Toni Williams, the district’s finance chief, said she wanted to bring some ideas to school board members before finishing the district’s application for the federal relief money. So, the proposal will change.

Tutonial “Toni” Williams, the district’s chief of finance

“God has been great. We have a whole pot of money we can look at,” she said. The district spent most of the first round of federal relief money approved last spring on laptops, internet hotspots, and protective equipment for students and teachers. Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said the state could also receive $2.6 billion if Congress approves a third round of relief money.

For the second round of federal funds, most of the board’s ideas were similar to district officials’ suggestions. But members wanted more money spent on building maintenance, athletic fields, and a $1,000 bonus for all school staff this year.

Board members were eager to go beyond what the district proposed for expanding mental health services. It would create two new mental health centers that would be open for student and family therapy through 7 p.m., with five employees each. The district’s existing mental health center employs licensed psychologists and social workers for student therapy and can be deployed to schools when there is a crisis.

“We’re going to have students coming back… most of them who have experienced trauma dealing with death, after death, after death,” said board member Stephanie Love. “And nevermind what they’re going through at home and the community.”

The proposal to add 250 teacher assistants in kindergarten and first grade classrooms is a carryover from the district’s ask to county commissioners, the local funding source for schools, in an effort to boost reading skills and reduce the number of students each employee supports.

Superintendent Joris Ray said he hopes county commissioners will help pay for those teacher assistants once the federal money runs out. Until then, district officials will have to inform the newly hired teacher assistants that they may only be employed two years.

“The work can’t wait,” he said.

The building improvements include replacing four schools’ heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and installing ventilation technology known as needlepoint bipolar ionization in all schools. Manufacturers claim the technology can stop novel coronavirus particles from re-entering air that circulates in a room. National engineering experts have called for more independent research on the technology before recommending it for use in schools.

The district’s presentation did not list a cost because officials are still seeking estimates, but Ray told Gov. Bill Lee last fall he expected it to cost about $26 million.

The district will receive $224 million in federal relief money, but some funding went to charter schools and summer camps. Below are the rest of the district’s proposals:

Expand teacher training for using laptops and other technology in the classroom to prepare for when all students return to buildings.
Hire more virtual teachers with special certification when the district has trouble filling vacancies.
Launch ACT test preparation for high school students in the summer and recruit college students to tutor during the school year.
Hire 36 specialists to help students in the lowest performing schools catch up in literacy and math.
Create a summer camp for English language learners.
Hire and train more staff for “reset rooms” where students can go to receive some behavior intervention instead of in-school suspension.
Buy a screening tool to help staff understand students’ emotional needs; train staff to spot signs of trauma.
Sanitize sports equipment, including helmets, to meet national standards during the pandemic.

9 things you should know before Memphis classrooms start reopening Monday

2021-02-27T00:05:24+00:00

The first wave of Shelby County Schools students are returning to classrooms Monday, just days after educators got the opportunity to get their COVID-19 vaccines.

After a delay related to the city’s largest snowfall in 50 years, teachers began returning to buildings to prepare classrooms for social distancing. Earlier this week, one of the district’s teacher unions protested some parts of the district’s reopening plan. Some teachers are quitting instead of returning.

Although the district already had plans for how to return to school buildings, some things have changed and our readers had a lot of questions. Here’s what we know. Do you have more questions that aren’t answered here? Email us at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Schools will revert to their normal start and end times for the school day.

That way, the district can time bus routes for students who are going to buildings. At the beginning of the school year when everyone was remote, the district put every school on an 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. school day, but that will change Monday. Check with your principal for the start and end times at your school. The schedule changes also will apply to students learning remotely.

Students and staff will be required to wear masks and undergo temperature checks every day.

That has been true since the district first unveiled its reopening plan. If a student or staff member does not have a mask, the school has extras for them.

If a student’s temperature is above 100.4 degrees, they will be sent to a designated room in the school until a parent can pick them up.

Even students who return to buildings will learn through live videoconferencing.

In-person learning won’t be like it was before the pandemic. Students will still log on to online classes through Microsoft Teams, the videoconferencing platform they have been using all year.

Officials believe parents will feel their children are being instructed equally even if they aren’t ready to send their children back to classrooms. Some parents have said they had wanted to choose in-person learning, but they felt the district’s instruction plan wasn’t worth the risk. Still, district officials said returning students can get some social interaction with peers and get guidance from teachers, things that are difficult to get remotely.

Staff and parents should expect to know if a person who tests positive for COVID-19 was in close contact with them or their child within 12 hours of when the school was notified.

That’s according to a recent directive from the Shelby County Health Department. After a COVID-19 case is reported, district officials will review the teacher or student’s schedule, check if they rode the bus, and identify any extracurricular activities or sports they might be involved in. Then school leaders will contact people who might have come in close contact with them so they can quarantine at home.

Quarantines will last 10 days after contact with the infected person, district officials said. In December, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortened quarantines from 14 to 10 days in some cases, but Rutherford County Schools, Tennessee’s fourth largest district, recently switched back to 14 days because some students developed symptoms after they returned to campus from quarantine.

The health order says school leaders should update at-risk parents, students, and staff weekly about what they are doing to prevent more infections and any changes to the school day as a result. Shelby County Schools plans to use text messaging, email, and robocalls to notify affected parents and staff.

A typical classroom will hold no more than 12 students to allow for social distancing.

A floor sign encouraging social distancing at Brewster Elementary School in January.

John Barker, a district deputy superintendent, said other classrooms may be able to hold more students sitting 6 feet apart, but that maximum is a general rule based on the typical classroom size.

You can find how many students are expected to return to your school in Chalkbeat’s searchable table.

Over the past few months, district leaders have bought plastic desk dividers for classrooms too. Extra masks for students and staff will be available at each school, along with gloves for staff.

Soap and paper towel dispensers will be restocked every day, instead of waiting to refill when they run out.

“There will be soap always restocked, there will be paper towels always restocked, hand sanitizer always restocked,” said Barker, the deputy superintendent. “That’s something that we’re excited to talk about especially for our teachers, especially for everyone who is going to be back in buildings.”

The district has made some ventilation improvements, and more are on the way.

Maintenance staff have installed upgraded air filters in most buildings, but the new filters still fall short of federal guidance. Air systems are set to take in more fresh air during the day and Ray plans to use some new federal relief money to better capture small viral particles in the air.

Teachers are required to come back to classrooms beginning Monday.

This is a reversal from Superintendent Joris Ray’s plan announced months ago to allow teachers to have the option to continue working remotely. He said that he looked at “every aspect to try to give teachers choice. But we need teachers to do this work effectively.” He had planned to reassign teacher assistants, behavior specialists, and central office staff to supervise students and assured the public they had enough staff. The school board even approved a $956,250 contract with a staffing agency to hire classroom monitors to help fill the gap.

District officials did not elaborate on why teachers were required to return to classrooms.

The district has not specified a threshold number of COVID-19 cases for temporarily closing a school.

Instead, Shelby County Schools officials said they will decide on a case-by-case basis and consider the number of COVID-19 cases, how many students and staff were identified through contact tracing, the district’s capacity to sanitize the school before students and staff return, and how the cases were connected to the school.

Look up how many students are returning to your Memphis school building

2021-02-25T22:47:42+00:00

Following national trends, Memphis elementary students are more likely to return to classrooms than middle and high schoolers, according to data the district recently released.

The school-by-school breakdown provides parents and others insight into how many students will be returning to school buildings.

About 38% of elementary school students in Shelby County Schools are expected to head back when the district’s buildings start reopening Monday. About 29% of middle schoolers and 24% of high schoolers are expected to return March 8.

Ten of the district’s 140 schools have more than half of students returning to buildings, according to the new details from a parent survey first released in December. All but one serve elementary students.

Shelby County Schools officials did not provide racial demographic data of students based on the type of instruction their parents chose.

Superintendent Joris Ray said that all students will continue learning through live videoconferencing so parents feel their children are being instructed equally. Overall, 32% of students are expected to attend online classes from a classroom, while the remaining students will take online classes from remote locations, based on the district’s parent survey.

Although younger students have had a harder time keeping up with online classes from home, some parents don’t believe it’s worth their time to send their children to classrooms if they’ll still be learning through a laptop or tablet. Other parents say they don’t trust the district will keep buildings clean or that students will have enough soap, hot water, and paper towels to keep their hands clean based on past experiences. District officials said soap and paper towels will be restocked every day, rather than when they run empty.

Charter schools in the district can make their own reopening plans and most networks are offering in-person instruction or plan to soon.

The school-by-school breakdown below is current as of mid-December when district officials released the parent survey results. Though parents can change their choice ahead of reopenings March 1 and 8, the totals have not changed drastically, a district spokeswoman said.

Don’t see a searchable table below? Click here.

Name	Percent in-person	Enrollment
Manassas High	67.23%	415
Melrose High	44.88%	742
Riverview School	53.67%	395
Holmes Road Elementary	42.99%	735
Hamilton High	41.23%	713
A. Maceo Walker Middle	40.97%	847
Mitchell High	41.44%	432
Lucie E. Campbell Elementary	44.71%	577
Cromwell Elementary	42.38%	453
Levi Elementary	52.71%	461
Hamilton School	33.08%	656
Geeter School	39.17%	697
Whitehaven High	22.85%	1571
Ridgeway High	29.74%	908
American Way Middle	38.54%	724
Raleigh-Egypt Middle	38.01%	492
Highland Oaks Elementary	35.19%	824
Sheffield High	22.02%	563
Sherwood Middle	38.51%	857
Woodstock Middle School	35.37%	328
Oakhaven High	29.59%	392
Whitehaven Elementary	30.28%	436
Oakhaven Middle	36.31%	325
Kingsbury Elementary	47.40%	500
Double Tree Elementary	42.33%	404
Ford Road Elementary	48.63%	584
Hollis F. Price	31.19%	109
Hickory Ridge Middle	34.47%	818
Cordova Middle	32.14%	753
East High	22.65%	543
Westwood High	22.07%	358
Douglass High	25.00%	676
Winridge Elementary	39.83%	472
Grandview Heights Middle School	49.02%	457
Idlewild Elementary	30.88%	489
Southwind High	8.72%	1491
White Station High	18.92%	1977
Lucy Elementary	46.29%	350
Cummings School	24.75%	408
Alcy Elementary	42.74%	585
Sea Isle Elementary	46.82%	487
Cherokee Elementary	41.42%	408
Georgian Hills Middle	20.72%	333
Bolton High	24.35%	735
Bolton High	24.35%	735
Scenic Hills Elementary	51.30%	308
Germantown Middle	20.32%	812
Gardenview Elementary	40.26%	313
William Herbert Brewster Elementary School	35.24%	454
Cordova Elementary	40.13%	760
Bruce Elementary	29.65%	543
Oakhaven Elementary	34.26%	505
Chimneyrock Elementary School	36.09%	931
Ridgeway Middle	24.87%	744
Kingsbury High	26.07%	1327
Jackson Elementary	35.77%	274
Sheffield Elementary	38.09%	512
Raleigh-Bartlett Meadows Elementary	45.29%	488
E.E. Jeter School	63.20%	337
Bellevue Middle	26.28%	586
Sherwood Elementary	34.52%	562
Lowrance School	31.70%	918
Sharpe Elementary	54.09%	318
Winchester Elementary	32.97%	549
J. P. Freeman School	23.59%	640
Snowden School	28.23%	1307
Kate Bond Elementary School	36.79%	742
Keystone Elementary	40.68%	440
Newberry Elementary	36.25%	400
Peabody Elementary	33.52%	358
Oakshire Elementary	23.56%	365
Egypt Elementary	36.56%	547
Shelby Oaks Elementary	40.77%	780
Oak Forest Elementary	38.88%	445
Parkway Village Elementary	36.62%	871
Berclair Elementary	45.41%	643
Balmoral/Ridgeway Elementary	33.68%	285
Kate Bond Middle School	29.05%	1143
Belle Forest Community School	40.13%	1099
Central High	23.45%	1390
Northaven Elementary	38.91%	329
Hawkins Mill Elementary	44.27%	314
White Station Elementary	43.63%	683
Craigmont Middle	27.32%	527
Craigmont High	22.83%	762
Grahamwood Elementary	46.09%	946
Cordova High School	21.47%	2222
South Park Elementary	48.91%	460
Dexter Elementary	40.87%	893
Southwind Elementary	29.40%	711
Douglass School	50.12%	427
Raleigh-Egypt High	9.69%	712
White Station Middle	20.11%	1223
Downtown Elementary	36.58%	730
Westside Elementary	35.61%	337
Germantown Elementary	24.38%	603
Chickasaw Middle	18.33%	371
Crump Elementary	42.73%	564
Overton High	25.56%	1334
Mt. Pisgah Middle	18.35%	534
Maxine Smith STEAM Academy	29.00%	369
Willow Oaks Elementary	16.24%	665
Delano Elementary	38.93%	280
Rozelle Elementary	37.66%	231
A. B. Hill Elementary	61.96%	397
Robert R. Church Elementary	38.58%	648
Macon-Hall Elementary	25.88%	1082
Wooddale High	18.44%	667
Treadwell Middle School	45.74%	634
Riverwood Elementary School	36.89%	919
LaRose Elementary	38.77%	227
Richland Elementary	44.71%	803
Evans Elementary	34.61%	419
Germantown High	12.60%	1969
Dunbar Elementary	29.58%	240
Getwell Elementary	45.73%	468
Wells Station Elementary	33.38%	704
Alton Elementary	38.46%	312
Havenview Middle	17.27%	724
Vollentine Elementary	38.41%	328
Trezevant High	31.57%	548
Springdale Elementary	65.96%	282
Ross Elementary	31.07%	605
Colonial Middle	18.15%	1080
Hickory Ridge Elementary	29.01%	717
Germanshire Elementary	26.47%	797
Kingsbury Middle	31.90%	696
Treadwell Elementary	61.60%	750
Bethel Grove Elementary	25.34%	221
B. T. Washington High	25.15%	493
B. T. Washington High	25.15%	493
Barrets Chapel School	38.54%	384
Kirby High	22.25%	800
Shady Grove Elementary	37.91%	364
Westhaven Elementary	21.41%	822
Fox Meadows Elementary	37.59%	572
Middle College High	23.71%	329
Brownsville Road Elementary	38.46%	533
Dexter Middle	19.85%	393
Highland Oaks Middle	20.36%	668

32% of Memphis students will be returning to classrooms

Source: Shelby County Schools

Credit: Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee

‘The trust has been broken’: As some Memphis teachers prepare to return to classrooms, others are calling it quits

2021-02-24T02:27:34+00:00

Some Memphis teachers, expected back in the classroom on Thursday, are airing their concerns about Shelby County Schools’ back-to-school plan. Others have decided to resign rather than go back to campus, after Superintendent Joris Ray reversed his promise that teachers could choose whether to return to school buildings while COVID-19 remains widespread.

In the two weeks since Ray’s reversal, Shelby County Schools and the local health department have arranged for staff to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine dose this week — a development that Ray and teacher leaders said is crucial to building employees’ confidence about returning.

The district’s plan has already been pushed several days, following the city’s largest snowfall in half a century, which burst pipes, drained the reservoir, and put the area under a boil water advisory. Teachers were originally scheduled to return to school buildings Monday. Students are to begin returning on March 1.

The district’s new plan meant that teachers had less than two weeks to arrange for child care and upended online learning plans that Ray had only recently extended.

And despite the district’s assurances that they would work with employees to find alternate working conditions if needed, Shelby County Schools has not specified who would qualify for work-from-home exemptions. Teachers have also reported being turned down even if they or someone they care for is at risk for serious COVID-19 complications. District officials did not respond to Chalkbeat’s question about if teachers who don’t return this week would face consequences.

“The trust has been broken,” said Jolie Madihalli, the president of the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, which represents most Shelby County Schools teachers. “They are upset, and they feel like their voices have not been heard.”

About 25 educators from Madihalli’s group drove by the district’s central offices Tuesday evening, ahead of a school board meeting, to share their concerns about building cleanliness and teacher accommodations. Teachers held signs that read “Teachers Matter” and “Our Voices Count” and honked their horns as they drove around the parking lot.

Teachers from Memphis-Shelby County Education Association organized a drive-by protest at the district’s headquarters.

Shelby County Schools has avoided most of the tension with unions, compared with other districts nationwide, because Tennessee lawmakers stripped educators of their bargaining rights a decade ago. But teacher buy-in is still crucial to school reopening plans.

Recent research suggests that the degree to which schools further the spread of the coronavirus depends on the existing rate of community spread. Researchers also caution that contact tracing may miss some COVID-19 cases, and note that districts lack systematic “surveillance” testing that would provide a more complete picture of school infection rates.

Before the announcement, state lawmakers and Gov. Bill Lee pressured Ray to offer an in-person option to parents — and threatened to cut funding if he didn’t. Parents can still choose to keep their children remote. From their classrooms, some teachers will be instructing students learning in person and virtually.

Although some teachers say Ray did all he could to protect them, others contend that communication about reopening has been lacking — and some have decided to resign rather than return.

Simone Anderson quit her teaching job at Raleigh-Egypt Middle School after Superintendent Joris Ray reversed his decision to give teachers the option of working from home.

Simone Anderson, a teacher at Raleigh-Egypt Middle, decided to quit the day after Ray’s announcement. She said the reopening plan was “rushed” and that basic necessities, such as hot water and windows that open, are missing. She also had just returned from maternity leave last month and said she doesn’t plan to get vaccinated while nursing her son. Few vaccine trials included pregnant or breastfeeding women.

“Going back to the classroom wasn’t worth putting myself and my son at risk,” she said. “I always say family comes first. I can’t be there for other people’s children if I can’t be there for my own.”

After she turned in her resignation, Anderson set aside 10 minutes at the end of her virtual class to break the news to her students. She didn’t want them to hear it from anyone else. A few cried. One sent her a private message: “You are a good mother to be making that sacrifice.”

“It really pains me that I had to make that choice to leave,” Anderson said.

But not all teachers are going to be able to make that decision, especially amid a pandemic-induced economic downturn. Shelby County Schools officials did not provide an estimate of how many teachers have quit, requested accommodations, or taken a leave of absence in the wake of the reopening plan change.

Maintenance staff installed upgraded air filters that are better than those in most schools, but still fall short of federal guidance. Ray plans to use some new federal relief money on purifiers to better capture airborne viral particles.

So far this week, students have been working on assignments independently instead of joining live classes online as teachers prepare to return to school. On Thursday, teachers will learn which students will be assigned to their classroom, how lunches will be served, how often teachers and students will change rooms, and how to prepare their classrooms for social distancing. All students who return to buildings, about a third of the district’s 88,000-person enrollment, will continue learning through video conferencing and each receive a headset.

The district had previously planned to reassign teacher assistants, behavior specialists, central office staff, and additional classroom monitors hired by a staffing agency to supervise students where a teacher chose to remain remote. About 83% of teachers had planned to work remotely, according to survey results released in mid-December.

“I never understood how they were going to do it in the first place. I don’t think [Shelby County Schools] realized how many teachers were not going to come back,” said Amy Dixon, a Snowden School kindergarten teacher who originally chose to work remotely only because she didn’t want to sit in a room of students still learning on a tablet.

Dixon’s kindergarten students, most of whom don’t know what it’s like to spend the whole day in a classroom, need a lot of support from parents or grandparents while learning virtually at home — even with simple tasks such as finding page numbers. She’s looking forward to providing some of that support in person to students who return, but worries about the area’s poor track record on contact tracing.

“Teachers have been working hard all along. Virtual teaching is not a vacation. It is not something that any teacher I’ve known has taken lightly,” Dixon said.

Dexter Britt, a history teacher at Kingsbury High, worries students will be disillusioned when they return to the building.

Dexter Britt, a history teacher at Kingsbury High, said he is concerned that students who return will be disillusioned: “We’re going to be doing the same thing we could have done at home.” He said that he doesn’t blame the district for the situation, but worries about high-risk colleagues who haven’t received exemptions.

“I know teachers are not the only people in America who have to go to work in these circumstances,” Britt said. “I’m not as concerned about my health but my wife’s health and other people who could get it because of me.”

Those concerns and others erupted during a recent virtual teachers meeting, where district leaders laid out plans. Many teachers said the presentation was a repetition of previous meetings with their principals and lacked detailed answers to their remaining questions. The livestream’s chat box, which allowed participants to remain anonymous, was flooded with complaints about schools lacking hot water even before the pandemic and worries that classrooms could not handle social distancing.

One commenter said: “I am sitting here in tears because I’m terrified!”

Anderson said that proponents of reopening campuses often dismiss teachers’ concerns.

“They don’t realize that teachers are not robots. We are humans too who are going through this pandemic, too,” she said. “It’s a heavy load.”

Tennessee could get up to $2.6 billion more for K-12 education with third federal stimulus package for COVID

2021-02-23T23:26:17+00:00

Tennessee could receive up to $2.6 billion more to spend on K-12 education if Congress approves a third coronavirus stimulus package, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said Tuesday.

That funding, which is part of President Joe Biden’s massive American Rescue proposal to deal with the pandemic, would add to the $1.5 billion the state already has received for education from the first two stimulus plans.

The total of about $4 billion in a single year would mark an unprecedented federal investment in Tennessee education. It would dwarf the $500 million in federal money received beginning in 2010 to overhaul the state’s education system over five years.

“It’s a stunning amount of money,” Schwinn told Chalkbeat of the combined stimulus packages. “In some ways, it’s overwhelming, but it’s also a great opportunity if we invest it wisely.”

Although the latest stimulus package is still working its way through Congress, Schwinn expects the amount for education funding to remain intact. She estimates Tennessee’s share at between $2.3 billion and $2.6 billion, which should arrive by April.

“I’m encouraging districts to make their plans now for 3.0 now,” she said. “We really want districts to have cohesive plans so they make sense for communities and kids.”

School systems have yet to spend most of the money from the first two stimulus packages, which were distributed based on their number of students from low-income families.

Last summer, Tennessee received about $260 million from the first package and $59 million through another federal education fund that the governor has discretion over.

The second package, which was approved by Congress in December, brought $1.1 billion to Tennessee. About $990 million of that goes to local school systems, and districts must submit their spending plans to the state by March 15. The governor’s discretionary education fund, meanwhile, got another $100 million boost from the second round of money.

In presentations Tuesday before the Senate and House finance panels, Schwinn outlined plans for spending the 10% of stimulus funds allocated to the state education department. Most of that $110 million portion from the second package will go toward students’ long-term needs, while the first round primarily helped with the immediate costs of reopening schools safely during the pandemic.

About $47 million will help pay for a new tutoring program approved by lawmakers last month to catch students up because of learning disruptions since last March. Another $20 million will go toward programs and grants to add more teachers, since about a third of them are eligible for retirement. And $20 million is needed, Schwinn said, to make Tennessee’s digital systems, including for the state’s comprehensive new literacy initiative, easier for districts, educators, and families to use.

Another $10.5 million will bolster work that began from the first stimulus package to provide more literacy resources, expand rural access to advanced courses, and continue the state’s partnership with PBS television stations to serve families without internet service.

As for the latest stimulus money going to school systems, Schwinn said Congress was clear that it should be spent on stemming learning loss and making school facilities safer for students. Ultimately, though, districts have discretion on spending the money, as long as it’s aligned with the intent of the legislation to provide relief from the pandemic.

All funding from the first two packages must be spent by Sept. 30, 2023.

“That is a tight timeline to spend this amount of funding,” Schwinn told the Senate panel, noting districts have to seek reimbursement from the state for their spending. “There is not a mechanism right now where we would be able to ask for a further extension, so it is a hard and fast deadline under which we are operating.”

Schwinn said up to $72 million out of the latest $100 million allocation to the governor’s discretionary fund must be offered to Tennessee’s 525 eligible private schools. The state is working through that process now, and any money that’s not sought by private schools will be reallocated to public schools.

“What we have seen is that the majority of our private schools are choosing not to participate,” Schwinn said, “either because the reporting requirements are too high, they’re participating in the paycheck recovery program, or they don’t want to submit the information to federal entities.”

The next round of federal money proposed for the governor’s discretionary fund is to go to higher education.

‘Let’s test.’ Tennessee pushes ahead with in-person testing, remote learners included, during pandemic

2021-02-17T23:08:36+00:00

While at least six states are seeking to cancel student testing this spring as the pandemic grinds on, Tennessee isn’t wavering in its plan to give tests in person to most of its nearly 1 million students.

“Let’s test and see where we are,” said House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, calling the results crucial to understanding how much students know after a year of learning disruptions. “I think it will help us in the long run.”

His enthusiasm is shared by Gov. Bill Lee and most Tennessee policymakers who are trying to figure out how to target support for students who have fallen behind.

But it runs counter to thinking in states like Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, where leaders have said they intend to ask the federal government to waive testing requirements for a second straight year.

Whether and how to test this spring are the latest pandemic questions being debated and brainstormed in every state. While testing could start as soon as March in some places, the spread of more contagious coronavirus variants, some possibly resistant to vaccines, might cause more school buildings to shutter and disrupt testing again.

The Biden administration is accepting state requests for testing waivers, but has not indicated whether it will approve them or issue a blanket waiver as former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did last spring. Miguel Cardona, the president’s nominee to succeed DeVos, has said testing could be useful this year — but that schools should not test students on campuses that are closed for safety reasons.

Those wanting to cancel tests say they can’t create an ideal testing environment when some students are learning in person, some remotely, and some both. Officials also worry about the stress that weeks of annual assessments would add to an already difficult school year.

But in Tennessee, state officials believe testing can be done safely and well with careful planning. Last summer, they brushed aside early calls for cancellation from the state’s largest teacher organization, which questions the validity of assessment results even in normal years. And as for more recent concerns raised by several school boards about whether remote students should have to participate, they say adequate safety protocols are in place.

Since early fall, state and local school leaders have mapped out the logistics for giving assessments to more than 726,000 public school students between April 12 and June 10.

The Tennessee Department of Education widened its testing window by several weeks to provide more flexibility because of varying school calendars and the potential for illness and quarantines to disrupt testing for some students.

“The health of our students, families, and educators is paramount,” said department spokeswoman Victoria Robinson, detailing meetings, training, guidance, and adjustments aimed at following health protocols and policies.

Why test in person?

With approximately a fifth of its students learning remotely, Tennessee has practical reasons for requiring all students to test in person.

First, it’s a more secure environment, with test administrators and proctors on site to make sure students are doing the work themselves. Second, it alleviates concerns about internet bandwidth at home that could put some students at a disadvantage if tests were given online.

Perhaps most important, though, is Tennessee’s plan to administer paper-and-pencil tests for one year before transitioning to online exams under its 2019 contract with testing company Pearson. The state planned to use the paper tests last spring before assessments were canceled nationwide because of the emerging virus. Since then, Pearson has stored about 75 tons of testing materials, for which the state already has paid $11 million, in its warehouse in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Tennessee’s paper assessment materials, printed by testing company Pearson, were supposed to be used in the spring of 2020 before student tests were canceled nationwide due to the pandemic. The materials have since been in storage.

To keep students socially distanced during testing, the state has encouraged staggering schedules or securing additional testing locations like libraries, churches, or community centers. Most districts that offer remote learning plan to test those students separately from classmates learning in person.

In rural Dickson County, just west of Nashville, testing coordinator Ray LeComte is looking to use large meeting rooms in churches to test students who are learning virtually. Meanwhile, in-person students will test in school classrooms already set up for social distancing.

“It’s going to be an adventure, but we’ll get it done,” LeComte said of his 8,000-student district.

Rutherford County Schools, the state’s fourth-largest school system with more than 47,500 students, expects to bring in distance learners to school buildings on days when other students aren’t there. The district already tested some of its high school students on nontraditional schedules in November and “it went very well,” said testing coordinator Kevin Whittington.

“The No. 1 thing is you have to communicate with students, parents, and stakeholders that we’re offering a very safe testing environment,” Whittington said.

Getting families on board

State testing in the fall went smoothly for about 50,000 high school students, Assistant Commissioner Casey Haugner Wrenn said last month in a report to the State Board of Education. The bigger test happens this spring when hundreds of thousands students are to take their TNReady assessments in grades 3-8 and end-of-course exams for high schoolers.

Whether remote students will show up to test in person is a concern.

State lawmakers recently approved a one-year policy with incentives for districts to encourage student participation. In addition to allowing test results to be excluded from teacher evaluations, it lets districts exclude the scores from their state ratings, as long as at least 80% of their students take the tests. In a normal year, the federal government requires 95% participation, and Tennessee is seeking a federal waiver for the lower threshold.

“I think everybody across the country is expecting a lower participation rate this year,” said Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, which advises about 40 states on testing matters.

But Marion said, “there’s nothing magical about 95% participation, or even 80% participation” when it comes to data.

“There are political polls that are based on calls to a thousand representative households across the country,” he said, and the same representative analysis can be applied to test results.

Others say the more student results, the better, especially in a state like Tennessee that for 15 years has used data to inform its education improvement work.

“Data-driven decisions are the right thing to do for students, and the way we do that is by having assessment data on how students are doing,” said David Mansouri, president and CEO of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, a Tennessee research and advocacy organization.

“I think 80% is an indicator meant to say we care about knowing how students are doing,” he said, “and we want to make sure there’s a good-faith effort to administer the test this year.”

Tennessee teacher vaccinations for COVID-19 open statewide next week

2021-02-16T21:27:20+00:00

Tennessee K-12 teachers statewide can schedule appointments beginning Monday to get their vaccinations against the coronavirus.

The state health department announced Tuesday that Tennessee is moving into its next phase of vaccinations. Teachers and child care staff are part of that group, as well as Tennesseans ages 65 and older.

The announcement is a boost to school districts working to fully staff and reopen their campuses, even as new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says schools don’t need to wait for staff to be vaccinated to reopen.

Since a limited supply of vaccines began arriving in December, Tennessee has prioritized vaccinations for health care workers and elderly people first.

“We are still constrained by supply,” Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey told reporters.

But beginning next week, Piercey expects the state will receive 10% more doses than its current supply. Those shipments will get Tennessee to 110,000 weekly doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, with the new single-shot vaccine by Johnson & Johnson expected to enter the rotation by early March.

“While we remain focused on our seniors, who are the highest-risk population, we’re able to expand vaccine eligibility to these additional groups as our supply continues to grow each week,” Piercey said, noting that more than 1 million doses have been distributed so far across the state.

About 100,000 people are in the group that includes teachers and child care workers. Some Tennessee educators already have gotten their shots, though, if they live in or travel to rural counties where supply is available.

Demand has been higher in metropolitan areas like Memphis and Nashville, where schools also have been slower to get students into classrooms for in-person learning.

The state launched a new online scheduling tool Monday for Tennesseans to book their appointments directly instead of registering online and waiting to hear back from local health departments and providers. Those who already have registered for their shots should not re-enter their information in the new system, officials said.

For more information, visit here.

In an abrupt turnaround, Memphis superintendent orders teachers back to school, with plans to start reopening classrooms March 1

2021-02-13T00:08:00+00:00

Two weeks after Superintendent Joris Ray delayed reopening classrooms indefinitely, he reluctantly announced he will require teachers to return to classrooms Feb. 22 and that students can begin returning to Memphis schools a week later.

Students in kindergarten through fifth grade can return to classrooms first, on March 1, with sixth through 12th graders returning a week later on March 8. Parents can contact their school if they want to change to in-person learning. Parents who choose to continue learning from home can still do that.

Until now, Ray pledged that Memphis teachers would have the option to work from home whenever students return to buildings. Only about 17% of Shelby County Schools teachers chose to return, according to a survey released two months ago. District officials had planned to deploy teacher assistants and central office staff to supervise students expected to return, about one third of them.

But he reversed that stance Friday, saying “we can’t do this work without teachers.”

“We looked at every aspect to try to give teachers choice,” Ray said during a press conference. “But we need teachers to do this work effectively… We want our teachers in front of our students.” To soften the blow, Ray announced Friday that he would offer a $1,000 bonus for certified educators and $500 for other school-based employees who return to buildings.

“We fought the good fight. We stood alone in Memphis and Shelby County against mounting pressure to reopen while COVID-19 cases spiked in our community,” he said. He noted that in a meeting with teachers Friday afternoon, he had reflected on a prayer about accepting what is out of his control.

“We know best how to serve our students and children and as such, the time has come for us to return stronger in-person to our buildings and classrooms,” he said.

Ray cited declining numbers of COVID-19 cases in the county as one of the reasons he plans to reopen classrooms in about two weeks. He also cited a legislative proposal to cut funding for school systems that do not offer at least 70 days of in-person learning this year.

But his desire to have vaccinations available to teachers before announcing a return date went unmet. The state prioritized teachers in its vaccination plan but then bumped them back in the line last month. Shelby County is still vaccinating first-phase medical workers and residents older than 70. In a statement shared by district officials, the county’s health department director said she expects to announce plans to vaccinate teachers “in the near future.”

Federal guidelines released Friday said schools don’t need to wait for staff to be vaccinated to reopen. Instead, the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control emphasized wearing masks at school, social distancing and COVID-19 testing for students and staff where the virus’ spread is high.

The leader of one of Memphis’ teacher associations spoke at Friday’s press conference in favor of Ray’s plan after months of supporting continuing virtual learning to protect students and staff from COVID-19.

Danette Stokes, president of United Education Association of Shelby County.

“Pending legislation could cause irreparable harm thus directly impacting teachers and families,” said Danette Stokes, the president of United Education Association of Shelby County. She said she recently toured schools with Ray to hear updated safety rules and brought up concerns from members about returning to classrooms. She said she is “assured that we are ready to re-enter safely.”

“Now, it is critical that we stand behind his decision,” Stokes said. “He has done everything in his power to protect us over the last year. Yet, he is being forced by leaders in Nashville, forcing us to re-enter.”

Ray has avoided most of the tension with teacher unions over reopening classrooms seen elsewhere in the nation.

In Chicago, the district agreed to start a vaccination program and work from home accommodations for teachers as the threat of a strike loomed. In Philadelphia this week, the mayor announced details of a teacher vaccination plan as he and the teachers union waited for a mediator to determine if school buildings were safe, including properly ventilated. The mayor had ordered teachers to return to schools on Monday, but union members protested instead.

Ray gave teachers the option to keep working from home. But, unlike in other states, unions in Tennessee have little power to oppose district actions because the state legislature stripped them of bargaining rights a decade ago.

Jolie Madihalli, the president of the district’s other teacher group, Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, said she was not invited to Ray’s announcement Friday. But in the hours after the press conference, she was inundated with texts and phone calls from teachers who are more at risk of dying from COVID-19 and others who want to be vaccinated but haven’t been given the opportunity to do so.

Madihalli also worried that bringing back all elementary grades at once rather than in smaller phases would be a hard adjustment. Metro Nashville Public Schools, for example, started with students with disabilities in specialty schools and then in students in kindergarten through fourth grade. Madihalli expects numerous teachers to quit or retire following the announcement, especially since Ray had previously promised to give teachers a choice.

“I think this was a tough decision forced upon him by the powers that be in Nashville,” she said, referring to policymakers in the state’s capital. Still, “I think this is going to cause quite a stir if there’s not enough teachers.”

Gov. Bill Lee has pressed Shelby County Schools to offer an in-person learning option, and a spokeswoman praised Ray and school board members Friday for their decision.

“Today’s announcement is encouraging news for parent choice and a return to the classroom is critical for students, especially low-income students who have struggled this year,” said Laine Arnold, adding that the state “will continue to provide support.”

Under Ray’s plan, students will continue learning through videoconferencing through the rest of the school year even if some return to classrooms. Ray said he did not want parents who chose virtual learning to feel like their children were missing out on a better learning experience because they still had concerns about COVID-19.

Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district with 90,000 students, is the only one in Tennessee that hasn’t reopened school buildings this school year. The district’s charter schools can make their own reopening plans and most of the charter networks are offering in-person learning, though few students are returning.

This story has been updated with comments from Gov. Bill Lee’s spokeswoman and teacher association leaders.

‘It’s time!’ says Tennessee Senate leader as bill advances to get Memphis students back in classrooms

2021-02-11T01:11:01+00:00

A key legislative committee advanced a bill Wednesday aimed at getting Tennessee’s largest and last completely remote school district to reopen its campuses to Memphis students who want to learn in person.

Following a tense exchange between two Memphis-area lawmakers, the Senate Education Committee voted 8-1 for a measure that would ensure Gov. Bill Lee could legally force Shelby County Schools to offer an in-person learning option.

“It’s time!” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Brian Kelsey, who sponsored the bill.

“Virtually every other large urban school district in America, and certainly every other one in the world, is safely back in school now, and it’s time for Tennessee to get on board,” said Kelsey, a Republican who represents the Shelby County suburb of Germantown

That isn’t quite the reality. Classrooms are shuttered in a number of cities including Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Chicago elementary and middle school students are not set to return to buildings till next month. At the same time, schools in Europe have closed their doors in recent weeks as a more contagious COVID-19 variant has taken hold.

The committee vote came as the governor’s Feb. 15 reopening target looms for Memphis schools — and after the nation’s third largest district in Chicago reached a deal with its teachers union to begin reopening schools.

A Shelby County Schools spokeswoman said Superintendent Joris Ray will share a new reopening timeline soon.

“We are working in concert with the Shelby County Health Department to get vaccinations for our teachers and employees,” said Jerica Phillips, the district’s communications director.

Last month, Ray announced a third delay in reopening, which had been planned for Feb. 8. State and local officials must work together first, he said, to reduce the infection rate in his mostly Black community, which has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus.

Kelsey’s bill would ensure that any school reopening executive order from the governor would supersede decisions by local school officials during the pandemic or a similar emergency, as long as the order is applied statewide.

The measure also seeks to alleviate squabbles that have hampered reopening in some suburban Shelby County districts. The bill says school boards should make the final decision in consultation with local and state health officials, as long as the governor hasn’t issued an executive order.

“Mandated directives should only come from elected leaders who are accountable to the people they serve,” Kelsey said in a statement later.

Memphis and Nashville schools have been under immense pressure from the governor to reopen. Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools recently began transitioning its youngest students back to their classrooms, leaving Shelby County Schools as the lone holdout.

Numerous other Tennessee school systems are pivoting back and forth between remote and in-person instruction based on local virus spread and staffing issues.

Kelsey charged that Ray’s decision to scuttle the district’s recent reopening plan was in response to the governor criticizing Memphis and Nashville school leaders last month during his address to lawmakers to kick off a special session on education.

“It’s purely out of spite. It’s purely political,” said the Germantown lawmaker about the latest delay. “They are listening to the teachers union and not to the parents.”

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, who is the committee’s only Memphian and Democrat, called that characterization unfair.

“I’ve been in constant communication with them, and their decision not to reopen on Feb. 8 had absolutely nothing to do with the governor’s statements,” said Akbari, who cast the lone dissenting vote and is also the committee’s only Black member.

Screenshot of Sen. Raumesh Akbari

Rather, she said, their focus is on the health and safety of students, teachers, staff, and their families.

“In my district,” Akbari continued, “I have a tremendous amount of homes where you have children who will be going home to live with grandparents who potentially could get sick and die. The school system has to balance all of those things.”

Rep. Kevin Vaughan, the bill’s co-sponsor, said he plans to bring the measure up quickly in House committees. A Republican from the Shelby County suburb of Collierville, he said much of his focus is on clearing up confusion among his school board and health officials about who has local authority to reopen schools.

“With regards to leaving the ability for the governor to still order [Shelby County Schools] to return to the classroom, I would hope that it will be unnecessary,” Vaughan said in an email to Chalkbeat. “I’m hopeful that the SCS leadership does not continue to keep their students out of school.”

Laine Arnold, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Lee is neutral on the bill and will defer to the legislature. She did not respond when asked if he would consider a statewide executive order to reopen if Shelby County Schools continues to stick with virtual learning.

This story has been updated to include additional information about the state of school reopenings in the U.S. and Europe.

Most Memphis charter school networks are reopening buildings, but most students aren’t returning

2021-02-08T22:43:23+00:00

Even as Shelby County Schools’ buildings remain closed, most of the 15 charter school networks in Memphis have opened campuses or are planning to soon. But only about 3,000 students, or 15%, are returning.

The low participation for in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic reflects parents’ concerns about virus transmission in schools, and in some cases, low confidence that school officials can keep them safe. Parents are also worried about how well their students are learning while attending classes remotely.

Charter schools run by nonprofit organizations are allowed to make their own plans about reopening buildings. That means about a quarter of Memphis students attend public schools that are not obligated to follow Superintendent Joris Ray’s decision to continue all-virtual learning.

Yet, some charter school leaders are following Ray’s lead and not opening classrooms because risk of infection in the community is still high. One charter network, Memphis Academy of Health Sciences, has even planned to push reopening classrooms until the fall. But several other charter school leaders said they felt compelled to find a way to reopen campuses because students were falling behind academically.

Ray has kept most Memphis classrooms closed to students since late August. Gov. Bill Lee has urged him to offer in-person learning by Feb. 15. Statehouse leaders have threatened to cut funding to districts and charter schools that do not offer at least 70 days of in-person learning this school year. The bill is likely to be discussed after lawmakers reconvene this week.

Chalkbeat checked in with each of the city’s charter school networks, which together represent about 70% of charter schools in Memphis. The other 22 charter schools are not part of a network.

Network	Number of schools	Enrollment	% In person	Reopening Date
Achievement School District*	3	814	9%	Sept. 14, 2020
Capstone Education Group (Cornerstone)	3	1,191	36%	Nov. 12, 2020
City University Schools	3	401	10%	March 1
Compass Community Schools	6	1,322	18%	Sept. 2020 - Jan. 2021
Frayser Community Schools	3	1,155	In progress	March 1
Freedom Preparatory Academy	5	2,214	0%	None set yet
Gestalt Community Schools	5	2,375	9%	Feb. 8
Green Dot Public Schools	5	2,396	26%	Jan. 19
Journey Community Schools	4	1,809	28%	Feb. 8
KIPP Memphis	5	2,018	23%	Jan. 25
Memphis Academy of Health Sciences	2	626	0%	Fall 2021
Memphis Business Academy	6	1,780	0%	None set yet
Memphis Scholars	3	620	20%	Feb. 8
Memphis School of Excellence	3	1,090	0%	None set yet
Pathways in Education	2	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable
Promise Academy	2	669	47%	Aug. 26, 2020

Most Memphis charter networks have reopened classrooms or plan to soon

* Most of the Achievement School District schools are part of other charter networks listed. Three schools are run by the state. Note: Chalkbeat did not contact charter schools that are not part of a network.

Of the schools that have been open for a few weeks or more, one reported temporarily switching some classrooms to remote learning for two weeks because of COVID-19 cases. But COVID-19 cases in Tennessee schools have been difficult to track because not all school officials report their results.

Recent research has suggested that the degree to which opening schools furthers the spread of COVID-19 depends on pre-existing rates of spread in the community. Researchers also caution that contact tracing may have missed some cases, and note that school systems lack systematic “surveillance” testing that would provide a complete picture of virus cases in a school.

About a quarter of students in Green Dot Public Schools’ five charter schools are back in classrooms since opening their doors in mid-January. But teachers have noticed that even students learning online in classrooms do better academically.

Terra Henderson, math teacher at Wooddale Middle School School, instructs a mix of students in person and remotely on Feb. 8, 2021.

Terra Henderson, a math teacher at Wooddale Middle, said one student who would frequently play online games during virtual class came back to the building and has started making A’s on his assignments instead of D’s and F’s.

“The ones who are here are benefitting,” she said.

Returning to her classroom was scary for Henderson because she and her siblings care for her father, and she did not want to spread the virus to him. But the weekly COVID-19 tests that return results in 30 minutes put her more at ease. And students have gotten into the routine of wearing their masks and wiping down their desks.

Anthony Anderson, the CEO of Memphis Business Academy, said many schools, including his, need more teachers so they can keep classroom sizes low to allow for social distancing. At the beginning of the school year, about half of families in his charter network wanted to return to classrooms, which would have been difficult to pull off with existing resources.

But with the pressure from the state to reopen buildings growing more intense, Anderson said the “political climate” caused him to fast forward his planning. He and his team have not announced a date yet, but are preparing to as Shelby County Schools considers its next move.

“Honestly, we thought we would go this entire year virtual,” he said.

Update, Feb. 11, 2021: The numbers in the table were updated to reflect enrollment data that wasn’t available earlier.

Some Memphis school board members push for a reopening date as superintendent shares updated protocols

2021-02-05T02:57:24+00:00

Some Shelby County Schools board members want Superintendent Joris Ray to commit to a new date for reopening classrooms, adding to recent pressure from the governor to open by mid-February.

Ray presented some updates for reopening during a board committee meeting Thursday, including creating a district contact-tracing team and using district buildings to administer vaccines to teachers. But he mostly reviewed plans that have been in place since summer. On Friday, he delayed reopening classrooms indefinitely, citing high community spread of the respiratory disease COVID-19.

After hearing all the details, some board members were more vocal about their support to reopen Memphis classrooms after months of little pushback. Board member Billy Orgel said he didn’t understand why Ray couldn’t follow Gov. Bill Lee’s desire to reopen by Feb. 15.

“I think you’ve got the groundwork laid,” Orgel said. “I want to know a date that we’re going to go back to school.”

Pressure to reopen school buildings in the state’s largest district has been mounting for weeks from the state legislature, Lee, and most recently in a letter from the local chamber of commerce. Board member Kevin Woods said district employees and parents should hear about a new tentative date directly from Ray.

“Your presentation further assures me that we can do that,” Woods said. “You want to honor that commitment of giving those families choices.”

For parents who want the opportunity to send their children to classrooms, board member Shante Avant added “it’s paramount to how they work, they live.”

Other board members commended Ray’s “outstanding leadership” by keeping virtual learning since the school year began in late August.

“We know that the best place, as it relates to academics for our children is in the classroom,” said board member Stephanie Love. “But we also know that we have to prioritize safety over that, which is why I think we’re doing a good job with the virtual process.”

Ray acknowledged that COVID-19 cases in Shelby County are declining, but also said the COVID-19 tracker in the New York Times lists the county as at high risk for infection. Ray said he would like to see the risk decline further if people avoid large gatherings and wear masks. Previously, he urged the governor to issue a statewide mandate for wearing masks.

“I see there are signs of hope,” Ray told board members. “But we can’t negate the fact that we’ve got to have community support to do this job.”

Shelby County Schools plans to have its own contact tracing team that will work with the health department to identify people at risk of infection if someone tests positive for COVID-19. Officials were not immediately available to provide details about how many people would be on the team.

Recent research has suggested that the degree to which open schools further the spread of COVID-19 depends on pre-existing rates of spread in the community. Researchers also caution that contact tracing may have missed some cases, and note that school systems lack systematic “surveillance” testing that would provide a complete picture of virus cases in a school.

To help the local health department administer vaccinations to staff, Ray said they plan to use a teacher training building on Union Avenue and the district’s future headquarters in North Memphis.

District officials also plan to deploy 60 school nurses to help public health workers inoculate up to 1,170 people per day, said Patrice Thomas, the district’s chief of staff. The district employs about 14,000 people and about 6,000 responded to a recent survey to gauge interest in getting the vaccine. Ray said about 4,600 of respondents want to get the vaccine.

When Memphis school buildings reopen, the district’s plan calls for students to continue receiving instruction through a screen as many teachers have chosen to continue to teach remotely. About 32% of students are expected to return to buildings, and about 17% of teachers are expected to do so, according to survey results released in mid-December.

Tennessee governor softens tone but still wants Memphis students in classrooms by mid-February

2021-02-04T00:34:46+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee asked Memphis school leaders last week to offer an in-person learning option by Feb. 15 but sidestepped questions Wednesday about what would happen if they don’t.

“We’ve only talked about what we can do to support them,” Lee said of his conversations with Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray. He added that he wants to “keep communications open” with Ray.

The remarks appeared to defuse a possible showdown between the state and its largest school system over the best way to educate Memphis students during the deadly pandemic, which has been hardest on people of color and those from low-income communities. Meanwhile, several local Shelby County health officials said a return to classrooms could be managed safely.

The governor spoke during an exchange with reporters after signing a handful of education bills into law from the recent special legislative session on education.

Ray announced last Friday that he was delaying students’ return to Memphis classrooms for a third time, despite the governor’s call for a mid-February in-person option and a threat from legislators to reduce or cut state funding for districts that don’t comply. The superintendent said state and local officials need to work together first to further reduce the infection rate in his mostly Black community.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, the only other Tennessee district meeting completely virtually, is scheduled to begin returning to in-person learning on Thursday under a transition plan Director Adrienne Battle announced on Monday.

Lee said he was grateful to Battle and hopes the Memphis district “moves in that direction soon.” He said he has offered Ray an unlimited supply of rapid COVID-19 tests and emphasized that the state health department will prioritize teachers for vaccinations after elderly Tennesseans get their shots.

Earlier this week, Tennessee opened vaccinations to people ages 70 to 74 after prioritizing health care workers and Tennesseans over 75. Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said the approximately 300,000 people in the new age group could take the rest of February to vaccinate. Teachers are in the next statewide group on the priority list.

“Supply is still very limited,” Piercey said Tuesday of the vaccine, but she expects it to increase each week.

On Wednesday, Tennessee reached a somber milestone: More than 10,000 residents have died during the global pandemic since the first case was reported in the state last March.

The newly signed laws were passed during a four-day special session last month to respond to pandemic-related school disruptions. They will:

Hold teachers, schools, and districts harmless from the results of state tests scheduled for this spring, as long as at least 80% of each district’s students take the assessment.
Require school systems to adopt phonics-based reading instruction and revise what aspiring teachers must learn in their college training programs about how to teach reading.
Authorize new summer school and after-school tutoring programs to begin this summer and fall to help students catch up from learning they may have lost.

The learning recovery law includes a controversial provision that, beginning in 2022-23, will increase the likelihood of schools holding back more students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade. Those students could also retest or take advantage of the new summer and tutoring programs to get promoted to the fourth grade.

Lee called the legislation “historic” as he prepared to sign the bills in a large room on Capitol Hill filled with legislative leaders, school superintendents, and some teachers, as well as his education chief, Penny Schwinn.

Because the governor convened lawmakers early to focus on education, Tennessee took a national lead in addressing pandemic-related learning challenges.

“I think Gov. Lee is right to boast about Tennessee’s aggressive actions here,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “As far as I know, the Volunteer State is out front of its peers when it comes to addressing learning loss.”

Patricia Levesque, chief executive officer of ExcelinEd, a school reform group launched in 2008 by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, agreed.

“They called a special session and dealt with a variety of issues — reading, assessments, tutoring, summer camps, teacher pay — all within one week,” Levesque said. “This will give their state agency more time to focus on implementation.”

Race, politics, and power loom large in dispute between state officials and Tennessee’s two largest school districts over reopening

2021-02-03T01:17:25+00:00

In the pitched debate over school reopening, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has repeatedly chided leaders of the state’s two largest school districts for not “putting the needs of students first.” His Republican colleagues in the state legislature are threatening to strip funding from the Memphis and Nashville districts if they don’t pivot quickly and reopen their classrooms.

Although Nashville announced a gradual return starting this week, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray has stood firm. The district is sticking with all-remote learning indefinitely. Ray accused state leaders of being out of touch with the needs of Memphis students, who are mostly Black, living in poverty, and disproportionately affected by the deadly virus.

The profound disconnect is the latest example of how a decade-long rift between Tennessee’s state-level decision-makers and urban school leaders can boil over and shape policy affecting the state’s most vulnerable students. Like previous state battles involving Memphis and Nashville, this one is shaped by politics, race, and power — with both sides claiming the moral high ground.

“We’ve seen this before,” Memphis City Councilman Martavius Jones said of the seemingly intractable debate. “It feels like another case of us versus them.”

New, however, is the global health crisis that is disrupting classrooms and disproportionately affecting people of color. The stakes are high because COVID-19 is a life-threatening virus that is putting a generation of students at risk academically and emotionally.

“At the end of the day, our children are suffering,” said Dianechia Fields, a Memphis parent who wants state and local leaders to find a way to collaborate. “At some point, we have to stop fighting each other and sit down and come to reasonable and sensible solutions.”

The reddening of Tennessee

Much of the fracture can be traced to politics.

Mirroring a regional flip, Republicans gained control of Tennessee’s legislature in 2008 and, two years later, the governor’s seat, too. That historic shift, in a state where Democrats had mostly reigned for more than a century, has profoundly changed the working relationship of state government with its two remaining Democratic strongholds.

In the decade since, Tennessee’s reform-minded legislature has singled out Memphis and Nashville for multiple controversial education initiatives, even if their locally elected officials oppose them. GOP leaders point to the high concentrations of low-performing schools that have languished in both cities as justification to intervene.

Beginning in 2012, the state took over dozens of schools in Memphis and a few in Nashville through its Achievement School District. The takeovers, which handed control to charter operators that for the most part have also struggled to improve the schools, angered people in neighborhoods where schools were a source of pride.

A student at Caldwell-Guthrie Elementary School listens in 2015 as parents protest the state’s process for matching charter operators with Memphis schools taken over by Tennessee’s Achievement School District.

The legislature also approved measures aimed at luring private charter organizations to use public money to open and operate schools that are supposed to use innovative teaching methods. Memphis begrudgingly became home to most of the charter schools, while Nashville’s school board pushed back the hardest.

More recently, the legislature passed a school voucher law that would give taxpayer money to eligible families who leave public schools to pursue a private education. The 2019 law, which was championed by the governor, only applied to Memphis and Nashville, opening the door to a successful legal challenge. The state has appealed the ruling.

In separate litigation, Memphis and Nashville school boards are challenging the adequacy of state education funding, especially for urban schools. Their 5-year-old lawsuit, which is set for trial in October, aligns with Democrats’ calls to invest more money in education in a state that still ranks near the bottom in per-pupil spending.

The lawsuits have infuriated state Republican leaders, while providing recourse for local officials who believe Capitol Hill isn’t giving them a fair shake.

“Since 2010, the legislature has kind of quit listening to the people on the ground in its biggest urban areas, especially in Memphis,” said Marcus Pohlmann, professor emeritus of political science at Rhodes College. “They’ve imposed policies that are premised on the idea that school choice is pretty much the answer to everything.”

Many urban educators long have argued for an approach that is more comprehensive — and expensive. Their want list includes expanding early childhood education and wraparound programs that combat poverty and improve health care.

“It’s just like playing whack-a-mole if you’re not trying to solve the systemic problem,” said Miska Clay Bibbs, school board chairman for Shelby County Schools.

‘Race cannot be ignored’

Tennessee’s school reopening debate has centered on the state’s two most diverse school systems, which also are led by Black superintendents.

“The undercurrents of race cannot be ignored,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat.

“The official line is that this is not about race,” said Akbari, who is Black. “But it’s difficult for Memphians to think otherwise when folks from other places in our state are trying to decide what’s best for Memphis and Shelby County, and it’s in conflict with the decisions of local school leaders who know their community best.”

Trust in state government, including its predominantly white legislature, is particularly low in her hometown, she said. About 65% of the population is Black.

Memphians are still smarting over legislative decisions that prompted the school board to give up its charter for Memphis City Schools, which served students who were mostly of color and from low-income families. That move led the city district to merge in 2013 with the suburban Shelby County district, which served more affluent students who were mostly white.

A year later, six suburban towns seceded and created their own school systems after Republican legislators passed a new law to allow it. Their exodus is considered one of the nation’s most egregious examples of public education splintering into a system of haves and have-nots over race and class.

“That was a big thing,” recalls Councilman Jones, who served on the city school board before schools were desegregated, then quickly resegregated. “It led to a lot of mistrust, and that has never dissipated.”

Dianechia Fields’ mistrust only grew when she began traveling to the Capitol in 2016 to lobby for education policy changes with the parent advocacy group Memphis Lift. Fields, who is Black and has two sons in Memphis schools, was surprised by how little rural white legislators knew about the state’s largest school district and the experiences of Black parents and students. One lawmaker remarked that he didn’t know Memphis parents cared about their children’s education.

“That was eye-opening,” she said. “They didn’t know. They just knew what they saw on paper. But none of them had visited schools to see what was actually happening.”

“Don’t hurt my children,” Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray has told lawmakers about a GOP proposal to cut funding for districts that use completely virtual instruction.

Multiple surveys conducted by Shelby County Schools show parents and educators have serious concerns about whether schools can keep students and teachers safe from the virus. Most say they don’t want to return to classrooms due to their city’s large number of COVID-19 cases. Many Memphis students live in crowded and multigenerational homes with older family members who are more at risk of dying if they get sick.

“The health concerns are real,” said Pohlmann, who has authored several books on education and race in Memphis. “People are dying, and the feeling is that, if you have to err, maybe you err on setting back kids’ learning a little bit in order to protect lives. Kids can recover, but dead people don’t come back.”

Who gets to decide?

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said he believes in local education control, but not when it runs contrary to state policies aimed at “the best interest of kids.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said there’s little evidence of coronavirus transmission in schools if precautions are followed. By contrast, staying remote has put a strain on students’ mental health and compromised access to food for children from impoverished families. Other data shows that Black and Hispanic students, as well as those in schools that serve low-income students, are falling further behind in reading and math.

“The state sets the parameters in which the [school systems] operate and provides about two-thirds of the funding,” said Johnson, who represents an affluent district south of Nashville and co-sponsored the bill to tie funding to reopening. “When they are not adhering to the letter or spirit of those parameters, we have every right to intervene — and we will.”

Flanked by Tennessee GOP leaders including Sen. Jack Johnson (far right), Gov. Bill Lee speaks to reporters on Jan. 22, 2021, at the close of a special legislative session on education.

Johnson has little patience at this point for school systems that don’t offer an in-person learning option. “These are massive school systems. They have enormous facilities. They’ve had ample warning and plenty of time,” he said.

But that kind of top-down talk feels more like a “master-slave narrative” in which “I know what’s best for you,” says Natalie McKinney, a former policy director for Shelby County Schools.

“We cannot purport to say we’re changing something for the better for someone and we don’t include them in that process,” she said.

Others worry that choosing a combative tone ultimately will be counterproductive.

“Power dynamics go both ways,” said Joshua Glazer, an education policy professor at George Washington University, who has studied education and race in Memphis. “Local districts depend on the state for funding. And the governor and state education agency really need school districts to carry through and implement their plans. There’s a web of interpendence here where all these different players really need to work together.”

Unfortunately, Glazer said, the divide over how to best reopen schools follows years of other disagreements that have created a debilitating level of mistrust between the state and districts in Memphis and Nashville. Without a history of healthy institutional relationships to fall back on, he said, “things can very easily spiral downward, which it seems to be doing.”

“COVID didn’t invent these problems; it just put them in the limelight,” Glazer continued. “And there’s no vaccine that will cure when cities and the state can’t work together.”

Even as Gov. Lee insists on reopening classrooms in two weeks, Shelby County Schools delays again

2021-01-29T23:10:09+00:00

Superintendent Joris Ray is delaying students’ return to Memphis classrooms for a third time, despite the governor asking him to offer in-person instruction by mid-February and legislators threatening to cut state funding.

Leaders of Shelby County Schools, Tennessee’s largest district, had planned to reopen classrooms to kindergartners-fifth graders on Feb. 8 and sixth-12th graders two weeks later. The 90,000 students in district-run schools have been all-virtual since August. Now, Ray doesn’t know when the district will offer in-person learning.

“There are multiple factors, and I and our dedicated [school] board are weighing all of them.” Ray said in a statement Friday. “Schools are safe to open, but only if we all work together to reduce the infection rate in our community.”

Ray’s continued refusal to reopen classrooms to protect teachers and students puts him in direct conflict with Gov. Bill Lee’s urging to offer in-person learning — escalating an already tense debate between the state and leaders in Memphis and Nashville on how to educate students during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ray said the virus’ spread in Memphis is still too high to reopen classrooms, though he has not specified a threshold that would allow students to begin a safe return. COVID-19 cases in Memphis have declined in recent weeks, but are still high. Ray said that policies to mitigate the spread in the broader community, such as restricting indoor dining, would help prevent transmission in schools, citing a recent medical journal article.

A Wisconsin study said spreading COVID-19 in schools was uncommon when students and staff wore masks and practiced social distancing — even when the virus’ spread in the community was high.

Still, Ray noted the local health department acknowledged the district’s decisions have played an “essential role in helping our community save lives and reduce the spread of the virus.”

“We’ve come too far by faith to turn our backs on safety now,” he said. “Now is not the time to deviate from our successful course of action. For those who say we need to get back to school, we say school is in session.”

Unlike other large city districts across the nation, Ray has not had to wade through fights with teacher unions skeptical of school officials’ ability to carry out safety measures to keep infections low. He gave the district’s 6,500 teachers the option to continue working remotely when classrooms reopen, and more than 80% took him up on the offer. District leaders plan to reassign teacher assistants, behavior specialists, and central office staff to supervise students where teachers are working from home.

Ray also said he wants to see inoculations of Memphis teachers begin soon, which the state delayed to prioritize senior citizens because they were filling up hospitals. But he stopped short of saying the delayed vaccinations were the reason he pushed back the return to school buildings.

Since the beginning of the school year, Lee has pushed districts to offer parents the option of sending their children back to classrooms. Lee spoke with Memphis and Nashville school leaders this week and urged them to offer an in-person learning option to families by Feb. 15.

“The governor has expressed his concerns about a lack of in-person options, his deep concerns about low-income students and the overwhelming data that supports promptly getting kids back to the classroom,” said Laine Arnold, a spokeswoman for the governor.

Adding to the pressure, a bill that state lawmakers may consider after they reconvene on Feb. 8 would require districts to provide an in-person learning option to elementary students for at least 70 days this school year or risk losing state dollars. That means Shelby County Schools would have to reopen classrooms by early March and stay open the rest of the school year, which ends in mid-June.

In Nashville, the state’s second largest district, Director of Schools Adrienne Battle curated local health statistics to develop a benchmark for determining when to reopen classrooms. She said Friday that she anticipates offering an in-person option for students soon based on recent lower rates of COVID-19 cases.

“The Nashville community has made great progress in slowing the spread of COVID-19,” she said in a statement. “I’ve made a commitment to our families, students, and staff that we would offer the in-person option when it was safer to do so based on our community spread.”

In Memphis, even if students do eventually return to classrooms, the district’s plan calls for online learning to continue so parents don’t feel they are missing out on a better learning experience if they aren’t ready to send their children back to school.

But students in school buildings will have in-person access to school staff to help work through any issues with online assignments and keep them on task.

This story has been updated.

From ‘ready to go back’ to ‘easier to learn this way,’ Memphians share their virtual learning experiences 5 months in

2021-01-29T00:13:12+00:00

One high school junior said “it’s not really school” and she hasn’t learned much. The parent of a second-grader has been blown away with teachers adapting to virtual school but is itching for a return to classrooms. A sixth-grade English teacher pauses every day to tell her students on the other side of the screen that she loves them.

The 2020-21 school year is now reaching the halfway point — and it’s played out entirely online for the roughly 90,000 students in Shelby County Schools.

District officials are tentatively planning a return to classrooms Feb. 8 for students whose families have taken that option — about a third of the student population. That could change, however, if Superintendent Joris Ray, who has taken a cautious approach to reopening, believes COVID-19 cases in the community are still too high.

Either way, the majority of Memphis students will continue to be learning online from home. We asked parents, teachers, and community leaders how it was going.

This is what we heard.

This story has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

Khalifa Clark, 11th grade student at White Station High School

Khalifa Clark

I know COVID-19 is going around and everything so it’s probably best to stay online, but at the same time, it’s draining. It’s nothing fun.

Our teachers talk, we just “listen” and then we log out. I feel like going online took the emotion out of the teachers as well. It took a toll on teachers too.

As far as me learning anything, no I haven’t really learned a lot this year. It’s been a lot more work and assignments than usual and I usually do them during class. It wasn’t the best even in person, but this year, it feels like it’s not really school. It’s just being there, turning stuff in. That’s what I feel like.

Even if we did reopen now though, I think it’s too late for this year. When they first gave that option I wanted to go back, but now I’m so used to online learning. I wouldn’t be able to keep up if we switched back now. I don’t think it would go well for a lot of folks.

I don’t know what I would want to be different. I just wish we were back in school. That’s all I can really say.

Kathy Mize, parent of a second grader at Grahamwood Elementary and a seventh grader at White Station Middle

Celia Mize, left, and Molly Mize, right.

My daughter in second grade is ready to go back. She’s mostly able to concentrate during the school day, but that age group needs socializing. We chose in-person learning for her each time the district asked.

But my daughter in seventh grade is living her best life with virtual school. She’s very motivated and doesn’t mind the social isolation as much. Chatting online with friends is enough.

When the school year started, I cried for weeks because my kids’ teachers were so great. They came prepared. They came with a plan. They didn’t just say it was going to be horrible. They came with their A-game. I was blown away.

Virtual learning has worked for our family. Our internet has survived and my husband, who works for FedEx, has been working from home. I’m a nurse but currently not working so I can stay at home with my daughters. But every day I remind the kids that it’s not working for everybody.

My kids get how serious this virus is. My father-in-law died from COVID-19 in a nursing home. We watched him die through a window and I got it during the funeral despite our safety precautions. I get Dr. Ray’s conundrum because there doesn’t seem to be a right answer. I know that it’s not as safe for a lot of kids to be at school. But it’s also not safe for them to be at home. You could argue it on either side.

Eric Watkins, virtual learning center coordinator at New Horizons apartment complex, executive director of Red Door Urban Missions

I don’t think students are really retaining the information. The kids are already behind. Now they’re going to be further behind. I know we’re trying, but it’s not working for the majority.

Eric Hawkins helps a student with his online class at a virtual learning center run by Red Door Urban Missions in an apartment complex in Memphis’ Whitehaven neighborhood.

The superintendent says virtual learning isn’t broken, but it’s broke, man. The students don’t think it’s school, they think it’s play. Come out to the communities where your students are attending online class and ask questions. If you don’t understand what they’re going through, how can you serve them with excellence?

If they can’t read the instructions, how can they answer the question? So they go to what they know and play an online game or start acting out.

I’m often the bridge between the school and the parent. I’ve had a principal call me when a student doesn’t show up for class online. Turns out, his mom was in the hospital. Many parents lost their jobs and kids don’t have the necessities they need. They’re just trying to survive.

I don’t know what would make it better, but how can we come together?

Bianca Martinez, sixth grade English teacher at Colonial Middle School

My favorite moment this semester was when we did a virtual field trip to Disneyland where someone had their camera on the whole time they were riding rides. The kids loved it.

Every morning I’m playing music and I’m happy. I start the day with a minute of mindful breathing with my students and I end each day with an affirmation we say together: I am kind, I am powerful, and I am responsible. I also say I love them at the end of every day. The resilience that is required for them to continue to show up each day, that’s why I’m not super hard on them.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a kid right now in front of a screen for so long and not being able to play outside with your friends. I just try to be graceful with them.

Bianca Martinez

Virtual learning has been difficult to navigate. We know that our students have extenuating circumstances, and they’ve always had that. But the pandemic has brought that to light. I have a handful of students who have lost their parents to COVID-19 and some who have to babysit their siblings during class while their parents work.

As with all learning, virtual learning works for some students and doesn’t for others. And I don’t think there’s a way that we can make it work for everyone. Everyone is doing the best they can. Parents can’t stop working. I was really reminded this semester how important it is to really make a loving space for kids. But if it comes with the risk of getting the kids sick or their parents sick, I recognize it’s a difficult choice to make.

I’ve been working from the school building so far because I have my own room by myself. But I plan to work from home when classrooms reopen. Ideally, we would wait until teachers are vaccinated to get back in the classroom. But if they required us to go back, I would go.

There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all and there’s not a perfect way to do it. I’m really grateful for how Dr. Ray has handled this because he aims to protect everybody.

Jalynn Sanders, 10th grader at Central High

Jalynn Sanders

The pandemic started a few weeks before my birthday. I was planning on having a big sleepover with my friends, maybe go out to eat and a movie, so it was really disheartening and it hurt a lot not to do it. With people who were in your life every day, it’s hard to be withdrawn from that so suddenly.

When virtual school started, I was devastated. But now I’ve come to enjoy it. I would take this over in-school learning. It’s easier to type out documents and assignments, there’s no paper. I have longer breaks in between classes and can email my teachers to get answers when I need them. There’s the comfort of being at home and not having to worry about lunch and people bothering you.

For people who have speaking anxiety, being able to turn your camera off during class and write down what you’re going to say before you unmute really makes a difference.

I definitely have learned a lot over virtual. I have seen a positive difference. It’s a lot easier to learn this way. I’m definitely retaining a lot more information than I did last year.

I hope teachers who are struggling with technology will get more help. Those kinds of problems take up a lot of class time and sometimes they ask students to help them. But I’m staying virtual most definitely. I am enjoying the luxury of virtual and 15-minute breaks between classes. But I will miss seeing my friends’ faces.

Tennessee recruits districts and school nurses to vaccinate teachers and staff

2021-01-28T22:28:41+00:00

Teachers, bus drivers, and other school staff could get their COVID-19 shots on campus and from school nurses under a plan being promoted by Tennessee’s education chief.

Commissioner Penny Schwinn said Thursday the Tennessee Department of Health is recruiting schools as vaccination sites and school nurses to give the shots “wherever feasible.”

In her weekly email update to school superintendents, Schwinn encouraged districts to register to become vaccination providers if they have refrigeration to receive doses and nurses to give the inoculations.

The effort comes as Tennessee prepares to open up statewide vaccinations in February or March to tens of thousands of teachers and staff at its K-12 schools and child care centers.

Scaling up those vaccinations as more doses become available will be key to getting and keeping classrooms open in a state where remote education has become a contentious issue as the pandemic grinds on. Republican Gov. Bill Lee has criticized districts that remain virtual while, in a legislative proposal aimed at school systems in Memphis and Nashville, GOP lawmakers want to take away their state funding.

Tennessee joins other states where school and health officials are collaborating to expedite teacher vaccinations. Last week, leaders in Chicago announced plans to train school nurses to administer shots to about 40,000 school employees, while Detroit officials are trying to establish a handful of their schools as vaccination sites.

A health department spokeswoman did not immediately respond Thursday when asked how many districts have signed up for Tennessee’s school-based program. However, “there’s been a lot of interest,” said Victoria Robinson, communications director for the state education department.

Schwinn said districts also can work with their local health departments to arrange vaccination sites for employees.

A third of Tennessee’s 95 counties — mostly in rural areas — already have opened up the shots to educators through local health departments and providers.

In Henry County Schools, about half of that West Tennessee district’s 500 teachers and staff were vaccinated this month, said Superintendent Leah Watkins.

“Staff with Henry County Medical Center have been coming to our schools to give shots to those who elected to receive the vaccine. It’s been remarkable,” Watkins said.

Large school systems have bigger logistical challenges, though.

Shelby County Schools has about 14,000 employees and 200 schools across Memphis. District leaders are working with local and state health officials to train school nurses to give the shots at several district locations.

“Our goal is to ensure vaccination prioritization for district educators and employees,” said spokeswoman Jerica Phillips. “We are working to learn more about whether direct shipments will indeed expedite vaccinations before we assume any liability.”

The state’s second largest district is on board with the plan.

“We are eager to receive a direct allotment of vaccines as soon as they are available,” said Sean Braistead, spokesman for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Memphis school leaders call for public support as state pressure increases to reopen classrooms

2021-01-27T02:01:00+00:00

Shelby County Schools board members plan to release a “community action plan” soon to keep the state from forcing the district to open school buildings.

Miska Clay Bibbs, the board’s chairwoman, said many people have reached out to board members asking how they would respond to a bill introduced by Tennessee statehouse leaders that threatens to cut state funding for districts that do not hold in-person classes for at least 70 days this school year.

“The board is working on our community action plan and will be released sometime very soon,” she said to the public during the board’s meeting Tuesday. “Thank you so much for your support in making sure we’re fighting on behalf of the children of Shelby County.”

Stephanie Love, who leads the board’s legislative committee with Sheleah Harris, said she wants to ensure Memphians understand what’s happening on the state level and how they can take action.

“We are most definitely in the process of working with other school districts trying to garner support to make sure that we advocate for what is in the best interest of all of our students in Shelby County,” she said.

The announcement is the school system’s latest attempt to keep control of how to educate students during the coronavirus pandemic as the state increases the pressure to reopen buildings.

Over the weekend, district leaders encouraged parents and teachers to call and write state lawmakers to protest “targeted attacks on urban school districts.” The bill also threatens funding for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. Legislators did not discuss the bill during a special session last week but could when the regular session resumes in early February.

In a video posted Friday morning, Superintendent Joris Ray pleaded with lawmakers to reject the funding bill. He then told national news network CNN that expedited teacher vaccinations and a statewide mask mandate would be more helpful than a deadline for reopening. Memphis teachers have not received any vaccinations, and Gov. Bill Lee has repeatedly declined to issue a statewide mask mandate to help stem the virus’ spread.

But the district is preparing to reopen classrooms with just 17% of teachers choosing to return. The school board voted Tuesday evening to approve a contract to hire up to 100 additional classroom monitors to supervise students whose teachers chose to continue working remotely.

The Memphis district tentatively plans to open classrooms to students beginning Feb. 8. Parents of about 32% of students in district-run schools said in a survey they would send their children back to school buildings.

Students are slated to continue learning through a screen even if they return to buildings. That way, students don’t have to switch teachers if they choose not to return to the classroom. Also the district wanted to give students the opportunity to go to classrooms, even if their teachers are on screen.

Teacher pay bump passes as Tennessee lawmakers wrap up special session on education

2021-01-22T20:19:27+00:00

Tennessee educators could get a small pay increase for the rest of the school year, even as state lawmakers who voted Friday for the boost acknowledged that many teachers won’t notice a difference in their paychecks.

Concurring with a Senate vote on Thursday, the House unanimously approved $42 million more toward instructional salaries from Jan. 1 through June 30, including $12 million to cover what local governments would normally have to match.

The pay hike equates to a 2% funding increase toward the salaries of teachers and other certified educators like school administrators, counselors, librarians, and social workers.

The move wrapped up the legislature’s four-day special session on education, called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions for students during the coronavirus pandemic, plus perennial challenges with teacher pay and literacy. On Thursday, lawmakers voted to strengthen Tennessee’s third-grade retention requirements; create new summer and after-school learning programs; require schools to provide phonics-based reading instruction; and hold teachers, schools, and districts harmless from the results of state tests scheduled for this spring.

“What was accomplished here is remarkable,” the Republican governor said after the GOP-controlled legislature completed its work. The changes, he said, will make Tennessee the nation’s “most aggressive state” to get students back on track.

But Democrats criticized the “rush” to enact sweeping policy changes that will affect students and schools for years. They singled out the governor’s plan to require schools to hold back third graders beginning in 2022-23 if they aren’t considered proficient at reading and don’t take advantage of new programs to improve.

“It is absolutely reckless to change our retention policy in a four-day special session,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro of Nashville. “It’s not something the legislature should rubber stamp without hearing from our educators and the people who are going to be affected.”

Lawmakers did not take up a controversial bill designed to push school districts in Memphis and Nashville to provide in-person learning options during the pandemic. The proposal, introduced earlier this week by GOP leaders, could take away state funding from school systems that stay all virtual.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth said he hopes the bill will pass during the regular session ahead. “It is critical that we get schools back open so that there is an in-person option,” said the Portland Republican.

Earlier Friday, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray posted a video message begging lawmakers to reject the bill. “As you’re making decisions on behalf of students in Shelby County, please don’t hurt my children,” said Ray, who insists that remote learning is the right plan for Memphis, where virus spread has been high.

The 2% funding boost toward salaries will more realistically translate into a 1% pay bump by the time the increased allocation moves through the state’s education funding formula known as the Basic Education Program, or BEP.

Because Tennessee districts hire about 10,000 teachers beyond what the formula funds, the increase would get spread across those salaries too, or not at all, if school systems opt to invest in more staff or benefits.

Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, who chairs the House Finance Committee, said getting state dollars into the pockets of teachers is complex, though the intent is to boost teacher pay.

“We can never tell a teacher that they’re going to get a percentage raise,” said the Signal Mountain Republican. “All that we can tell them is that we have allocated funds for X% raise based on the BEP formula. Their local district in their budget will determine how those dollars are actually spent.”

Democrats characterized the increase as paltry and even insulting to teachers who are working longer hours and adapting to changing teaching models during the pandemic. Rep. Gloria Johnson, a retired teacher from Knoxville, compared the increase to a penny tip for a restaurant server.

Others said the challenge spotlights inadequacies in both the state’s funding formula and its level of funding. While it’s invested $1.5 billion more in education over the last decade, Tennessee still ranks near the bottom in spending per pupil. A 5-year-old lawsuit brought by the state’s two largest school districts challenges the adequacy of the state’s education investment and is scheduled to go to trial in October.

The governor has said he plans soon to propose a 4% increase toward teacher pay in next year’s state budget, which would take effect on July 1.

The raise for the rest of this year, while retroactive to Jan. 1, could take some time to process. “Those funds will go to the districts,” Hazlewood said. “I would anticipate that they will not pay the teachers until they get the state dollars.”