Chalkbeat

How free out-of-school therapy for Memphis teens strengthens MSCS mental health services

2025-10-21T16:16:35+00:00

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Peyton Golden said she knew she needed mental health support last spring when she started struggling to control her feelings.

“Sometimes I gather too many emotions at once, and I just start lashing out,” said Golden, 15, a sophomore at Power Center Academy High School in Memphis. “It was making me lose opportunities. It was making me look like a bad person, and I’m not a bad person.”

Golden said she was nervous to ask about starting therapy because it can be expensive. Then earlier this year, her mom found out about Youth Connect, a program run by the Shelby County Youth and Family Resource Center and local nonprofit The Braid Foundation that offers teens 12 free sessions with a Memphis-based therapist.

Golden started seeing hers in May. She and her therapist practice daily affirmations to boost self-confidence, Golden said, and work on developing skills to cope with overwhelming situations at school.

“I’m so proud of how far I’ve come,” Golden said. “Now, I can express my feelings, and I can say, ‘Wait, can we come back to this conversation when I calm down?’”

Youth Connect has provided free therapy outside of school to 345 young people in the Memphis area since it launched in May 2024. That is far fewer than Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ own mental health services, which serve over 6,000 students in group or individual therapy each year. But those who work in schools and with young people say Youth Connect is filling an important need, especially since a 2024 state law restricted certain kinds of mental health help schools can provide.

Youth Connect’s teenage clients, many of whom are MSCS students, say the program also offers more autonomy and privacy than in-school services.

Donna Goings, director of MSCS’ mental health centers, said the school system and Youth Connect work closely together. They often refer clients to each other, she said, and can share information about mutual clients if given permission from the student or their guardian.

“I know there’s a belief out there that a child shouldn’t have more than one therapist,” Goings said. “But we communicate with [Youth Connect] to ensure that we’re both on the same page, and helping that child to really be the best person that they can be.”

A program designed with teen choice in mind

Youth Connect started as a response to rising mental health needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s become more about addressing persistent issues in accessing youth mental health care locally and statewide.

Tennessee ranks as one of the worst states in the country for youth mental health, with high rates of mental health conditions and low access to care. In 2021, for example, more than half of 12-to-17-year-olds struggling with depression in Tennessee did not receive help. Nearly a quarter of Shelby County high schoolers reported seriously considering suicide that year.

To sign up for Youth Connect, teens and their families fill out an online form, and then choose a provider from a list of over 20 vetted therapists using their personalized video introductions.

“I am not a person that trusts off the bat,” Golden said. “But I felt very secure going into this,” she added, because she chose a therapist that best matched her experience and needs.

Right now, Youth Connect clients complete around six free therapy sessions on average, program leaders said. But some, like Golden, use all 12 free appointments and then continue working with their therapist.

Cathy Emerson, co-founder of the Braid Foundation and one of three Youth Connect leaders, said they designed the program with teen autonomy in mind. Before launching, Emerson said her team talked to over 300 young people about how they wanted free mental health support to look.

The responses were clear, she said: Young people want to choose their own therapists. And they want mental health care outside of school.

“In so many spaces, youth don’t have that autonomy of choice in their therapist,” Emerson said. “It’s either whoever’s assigned to their school, whoever their insurance covers, or whoever their parent or legal guardian is picking.”

With only a little over a year of service under their belt, Youth Connect leaders are already facing a funding deadline. The program is entirely reliant on federal pandemic aid, which is set to expire by the end of 2026. Emerson said they’re already looking for outside grants to replace that money.

The program takes about $350,000 to run per year, but Emerson says she’s seeking some $650,000 to expand their services, including to 18- to 24-year-olds.

“We absolutely hope our local leaders continue to invest in youth and community wellness,” she said. “At the same time, we know sustainability means diversifying funding.”

Youth Connect fills gaps in Memphis mental health care

In 2020, a group of nearly 80 Memphis-area nonprofits and practitioners started pushing the local government to fund targeted mental health support for young people. The Shelby County Commission responded in June 2021 by setting aside a little over $1 million in federal pandemic relief money for what would become Youth Connect.

Unlike some other free services, Youth Connect is also universal for teens ages 13-18, said Braid Foundation co-founder Shaneika Smith. That means families don’t need to prove their income level or insurance status to access it.

Smith said program leaders also insist on paying local therapists a sustainable wage, at close to $140 per session.

From left to right, Youth Connect program leaders Shaneika Smith, Cathy Emerson and Kache Brooks at the Youth Connect Launch Party May 31, 2024 at the Shelby County Youth & Family Resource Center. It has now been renamed to be A. C. Wharton Youth & Family Resource Center

Brandi Rhoden, one of the Youth Connect therapists, said families used to turn down her help because they couldn’t afford therapy while reliant on Medicaid or without health insurance. Now, she can help them sign up for Youth Connect.

As an out-of-school option, Youth Connect is smaller but more flexible in some ways than in-school MSCS services. The program is also able to provide therapy to clients 16 and older, who can sign up without parent consent.

While Youth Connect leaders say very few teens sign up without parent permission, the option differs from school requirements for explicit parent consent on student mental health services. The 2024 Tennessee Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act expanded that active permission requirement to school-wide assemblies on suicide prevention and bullying, following a nationwide push for more parent oversight in public education.

But the district currently has over 80 therapists and social workers on staff that can diagnose and treat students with mental health conditions on an individual or group therapy basis, she said, which not all school systems are equipped to do.

Most MSCS clinicians work in two schools, Goings said, and they can sometimes have waitlists for therapy services. That comes with the challenges of working in a time-constrained school environment, she added.

“We can’t take them out of a certain class, so we have to work around their academic schedule,” Goings said. “And we definitely try to include the parents in everything, because we are a school setting. We do not want to alienate parents.”

Emerson said Youth Connect leaders are still working to expand their own client numbers. This school year, she said, they started working with six local student volunteers to spread the word.

Dulce Ordonez is a 17-year-old student at Middle College High School. She said addressing stigma around mental health care, especially in Latino communities, is one of her main goals as a Youth Connect Ambassador.

“A lot of Latino people would often say that mental health is not important, or ‘you’re just crazy,’ or mental health is not real,” Ordonez said. “But some parents don’t really realize the importance of mental health within their families, their relationships, or their children.”

Clients like Golden offer valuable testimonies, too.

“People my age have our guard up with trust and everything, but it’s okay to let that wall down,” Golden said. “There’s a lot of suicide going on our generation. With the world that we live in, we need more trusted adults around us.”

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

With an ally in the White House, Moms for Liberty renews its fight against a longtime target

2025-02-27T23:07:38+00:00

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In a small recording studio near Nashville, Tennessee, conservative activist Kelly Schenkoske urged an online audience of parents to scour school district websites for contracts that mention social and emotional learning.

“Social-emotional learning is far more than just kindness,” Schenkoske said. “It is a bait and switch.”

The bait, according to Schenkoske and other panelists at the recent Moms for Liberty training event, is small shifts in the school day to introduce students to lessons about virtuous qualities like empathy and compassion.

The switch, they said, is to make children sympathetic to what they see as progressive ideas, ranging from open borders and acceptance of homosexuality to gun control, action against climate change, and redistribution of wealth.

“You send your child with your value system, your own beliefs, and now they’re getting the government’s value system installed into them,” warned Schenkoske, who hosts a podcast from her California home about education and parent rights.

The two-hour training session was the first installment in Moms for Liberty U, an online course meant to drive conservative parent activism in the group’s continuing effort to sway local and national education agendas.

That it focused on social and emotional learning illustrates the staying power of conservatives’ concerns about schools’ role in addressing student well-being. These concerns stretch back years, even as research on SEL shows wide-ranging benefits for students.

Now Moms for Liberty has an ally in the White House, with President Donald Trump painting schools as centers of radical indoctrination and signing executive orders that seek to stamp out teaching about systemic racism and policies supportive of transgender youth.

The group’s future trainings will cover critical race theory, restorative justice, sex education, library content, Marxism, and more — topics that are under scrutiny by the new administration and more prominent in public conversation.

Tiffany Justice, a Florida mom, activist, and former school board member who co-founded Moms for Liberty, sees SEL at the root of everything. She hopes the administration soon will call it out by name too.

“It’s very hard to focus on learning math if we’re all talking about, you know, Johnny’s dog that died.”
Tiffany Justice, co-founder, Moms for Liberty

Parents who agree with the Trump administration can “take those executive orders, that messaging, and really make it come alive throughout the entire country,” Justice told Chalkbeat.

SEL use grew in schools after the pandemic

Social and emotional learning is an educational approach introduced in the 1960s to teach life skills designed to help children manage stress, treat others with respect and empathy, work cooperatively, and recognize and regulate their emotions.

The use of SEL tools has increased as educators seek to help students rebound academically and emotionally from disruptions to schooling and children’s daily lives after the COVID pandemic emerged in early 2020.

About 83% of principals reported last year that their schools use an SEL curriculum or program, compared with 73% in the 2021-22 school year and 46% in 2017-18, based on a nationally representative survey by RAND Corp. and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL.

A cafeteria mural at a Tennessee school promotes kindness, a tenet of programs that emphasize social and emotional learning. The educational approach was introduced in the 1960s to teach life skills designed to help children manage stress, treat others with respect and empathy, work cooperatively, and recognize and regulate their emotions.

Educators say the pandemic deeply affected students’ mental health, contributing to higher rates of depression and anxiety. And national studies highlight an urgent need to provide kids with tailor-made interventions. An infusion of federal aid for education during the pandemic helped to fuel the growth in SEL adoption.

The programs vary in quality. But a large analysis of studies on SEL published in 2023 found a wide range of positive effects, including better academic performance, homework completion, and attendance, a major area of concern nationwide since the pandemic.

Though teachers sometimes complain that SEL is one more thing piled on their very full plates and could distract from pure academics, the analysis also found that programs led by teachers had more positive effects than those led by counselors or outsiders.

“It’s frustrating to see the science and impacts in schools and then to see the noise around the banning of SEL,” said Christina Cipriano, an associate professor at Yale University and lead author of the meta-analysis, which synthesized more than 400 studies over 13 years that collectively included half a million children.

Cipriano recalled a trip to Washington, D.C., to talk with policymakers about using science to make decisions, including about social and emotional learning. One Republican congressional staffer told her that their constituents would love everything about her work — except the name.

“You have a Control-F problem,” the staffer said, referring to the computer keyboard command that lets someone easily find a term in documents such as school district contracts to purchase SEL products and services.

Polls back that up. Large numbers of parents support the idea that schools should teach interpersonal skills and self-regulation, but far fewer react positively to the term “social and emotional learning.”

Another SEL backlash brews

Justice, now a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close ties to the Trump administration, described social and emotional learning as a “Trojan horse” that opens students to ways of thinking that run counter to what parents teach at home. For example, an emphasis on kindness might lead a student to feel pressure to use a transgender classmate’s preferred pronouns, she said, when that makes the first student uncomfortable and runs counter to their parents’ values.

That’s why Moms for Liberty U started its parent training series with a focus on social and emotional learning.

“We had to start here, because this is what opens the child up to the indoctrination,” Justice said. “It’s the programming mechanism that allows for gender ideology to come in, for critical race theory to come in.”

The training session, which was taped early this year, describes SEL as being tucked into dozens of programs and tools in common use in schools, from teacher-parent messaging platforms to programs designed to make recess a more positive experience. Panelists named surveys on youth well-being as another example of SEL.

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice (far right) moderates a panel discussion during the organization's new national training program for parents on monthly education topics. The first session, recorded near Nashville, featured (from left) author Alex Newman, parent activist Kelly Schenkoske, and psychology professor Jennifer Kom.

Alex Neuman, a conservative author who appeared on the inaugural training panel, said the ultimate goal of SEL is “de-Christianizing education,” something he traces back to Horace Mann, the 19th century social reformer considered one of the fathers of public education.

Panelist Jennifer Kom, a psychology professor at Bethany Lutheran College in Minnesota, said SEL forces teachers to be therapists and leads children to disclose personal matters that can lead to bullying.

Their arguments were enough to convince Tennessee mom Genevieve Pahos to take her activism a step further.

Pahos was part of a small live audience at the taping. A Moms for Liberty chapter leader in Williamson County, south of Nashville, she already had heard many of the arguments against SEL, but she said the session inspired her to start filing more public records requests about SEL programs in her local districts.

“I learned a lot from some of the speakers,” she said, “about how to find out what’s really happening in our schools.”

Speaking to Chalkbeat after the training session, Justice said schools should stick to academics.

“Kids are sad sometimes; it’s OK to be sad sometimes,” she said. “But we need to help children be resilient and find their way through (sadness) by finding interest in life and success in school and giving them the confidence that they get from mastery of skills in the classroom.”

Put another way: “It ends up having kids marinating in their feelings all day. It’s very hard to focus on learning math if we’re all talking about, you know, Johnny’s dog that died.”

Researcher: Schools should include families in SEL programming

Even supporters of social and emotional learning are sometimes fuzzy on what SEL is and isn’t, Cipriano said, which can make it hard to have productive conversations across different viewpoints.

SEL is not therapy or a mental health intervention, she said. But done well, it might mean fewer children need mental health support down the road, just as teaching reading properly to all students might mean fewer students need special education services.

Building resilience — so that students can focus on academics even when bad things are happening around them — is one goal of SEL.

School leaders should think about what problems they want to solve and how they’ll support teachers, Cipriano said, not just adopt a social and emotional learning curriculum because it seems like the thing to do.

She’s working on a public database that she hopes will help school communities make better decisions about which curriculum or products to invest in. Users will be able to see what outcomes were generated by certain programs and the types of communities where these programs have been tried.

She sees lots of room for improvement — better teacher training, more rigorous reviews of existing curriculum, and better communication with parents.

“It seems to me that we have a real opportunity to engage families at the outset of implementation so they’re aware of what’s happening in the schools,” she said. “When you talk to parents and families about the strategies involved in social and emotional learning, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t want their child to be a good friend or have less test anxiety.”

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

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

National teacher of the year urges teachers to ‘find their voice’ as experts in their profession

2024-08-26T23:24:49+00:00

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The Tennessee educator chosen as the nation’s teacher of the year is calling on America’s 3.5 million teachers to “find their voice” on behalf of students as many states seek to censor teachers, ban books, and push voucher policies that send taxpayer funding to private schools.

Missy Testerman, who just ended her tenure as Tennessee’s teacher of the year, said that bigger educational priorities demand attention: air conditioners are breaking down in aging school buildings as a new academic year begins; federal pandemic relief funding is running out to pay for tutoring and summer learning programs; and school communities are struggling to provide mental health support, especially for their most marginalized students.

“When we find our voices, we find our own way to stand in the gap for kids. It is not enough to just shut our classroom doors and teach,” Testerman said in her video address to the nation, released this month by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Testerman, who officially began as her profession’s top ambassador in July, is on leave this academic year from her job at Rogersville City School, where she teaches English language learners in her rural Appalachian town of 4,500 people. Her new role includes traveling to more than 150 speaking engagements or appearances before organizations spanning education, business, health, and government.

Among her messages: Teachers are experts in their field.

“Your governor is not an education expert. The legislature is not filled with education experts,” she told Chalkbeat. “If you want an expert on education policy and outcomes and what works for students, ask your teachers, your administrators, your director of schools.”

That message has resonated at her talks, where she’s routinely greeted afterward by a line of educators waiting to thank her.

“It’s hard to do a profession where you are the expert, but you’re often not treated as such,” she said. “Sometimes, we need to be reminded.”

Testerman spoke with Chalkbeat on Friday before ceding her title as Tennessee’s teacher of the year to the 2024-25 honoree, Bryan Kerns, a math and fire management instructor at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport.

In many ways, Testerman said, Tennessee epitomizes the challenges faced by educators she’s met across the nation, many of whom feel like they’re walking on eggshells just to keep demanding jobs that pay a modest salary.

While she applauded a focus on early literacy and significant investments in vocational and technical education under Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, she said other policy changes during the last six years have been more of a burden.

A 2021 state law limits what public school teachers can say about race, gender, and bias in the classroom and interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. A group of Tennessee teachers is challenging that law in federal court.

Tennessee’s 2022 school library law, billed as a way to ensure materials are age-appropriate, quickly expanded so that a state panel can ban certain books statewide, based on local complaints. This year, lawmakers added a definition of “suitable” that makes it easier to remove materials, including many stories about Black people or those identifying as LGBTQ.

Also this year, the legislature passed a law requiring public school employees to out transgender students to their parents and debated a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools. Testerman called the second proposal, which failed to pass, a distraction.

“From my standpoint, there are so many problems facing schools — I’ll give you a list,” she said. “But that’s not one that I think we need to waste a lot of time on. Let that be a local decision.”

Meanwhile, Lee’s administration is pushing for a statewide voucher program that would let any Tennessee family use taxpayer money toward private school tuition, regardless of their family income.

“Tennessee is currently in the bottom tier of states in per-pupil funding for public education, and increasing that should be our focus,” said Testerman.

“Right now, however, there’s a $144 million placeholder in our state budget for a voucher program that didn’t even pass,” she continued. “It’s disheartening for teachers to know this money is sitting there doing nothing while their students have so many needs.”

Testerman said the money could be used instead to fix broken air conditioners in Memphis schools, hire more mental health professionals in her own school system, and replace outdated Chromebook laptops in suburban Williamson County near Nashville, one of the state’s most affluent districts.

“If Williamson County is seeing these kinds of financial problems,” she said, “you can imagine what’s happening in urban and rural districts in East and West Tennessee that don’t have the tax base to raise funds the traditional way.”

While it often feels like her profession is under attack, Testerman said she’s inspired by the educators she’s met across America as she advocates for higher compensation and respect for them.

“This job can feel heavy,” she said. “Teachers are facing student behavioral and mental health issues at a scale they’ve never seen before. We have no idea what kids go home to. But we can make the seven hours that they’re with us happy. We can use those hours to deliver academic content in a way that prepares them to move on and hopefully create a good life.”

“We are hope givers,” she said.

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

Misguided Tennessee policies, not students, are root of classroom discipline problems, report says

2024-06-21T11:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee schools are increasingly punishing and excluding special education students with behavioral issues instead of providing them with evidence-based interventions to support their academic and behavioral growth, a new report says.

And it’s not the fault of teachers, school staff, or the students themselves, the author says.

In its report, released Friday, the Tennessee Disability Coalition blamed state policymakers for setting priorities and adopting policies that are ineffective at best, and likely harming thousands of the state’s most vulnerable students.

As a result, the coalition says, educators are using “ineffective, dangerous, counter-productive, and rights-violating practices” in the classroom.

The criticisms come after Tennessee enacted a string of increasingly stringent laws aimed at tightening discipline in the classroom — from the 2021 Teacher’s Discipline Act empowering teachers to remove chronically unruly students to a 2024 law requiring a one-year suspension for students who assault teachers at school.

Such policies, the report says, disproportionately affect students with disabilities, particularly those with behavioral issues, thereby restricting their educational opportunities.

“These policies not only sweep students with behavior needs into more restrictive settings, alternative school placements, and the juvenile justice system, they cast a net over other marginalized communities, including students of color and students in poverty,” the report says.

Jeff Strand, the coalition’s public policy director, said recent Tennessee laws also show a lack of understanding about special-needs students with behavioral challenges, leading to policies that are poorly suited to address the root causes of disciplinary issues.

“Good teachers know behavior issues are a child’s cry for help,” said Strand, a former special educator who authored the report. “What we’re doing in Tennessee is only making the problem worse.”

Specifically, the report calls out a shortage and high turnover of special education teachers; systemic gaps in training and support for special and general education teachers and administrators on the needs of students with behavior issues; a trend toward punitive and exclusionary practices; and a lack of student access to effective school-based supports and therapies, including enough school psychologists, counselors, speech-language pathologists, and board-certified behavior analysts.

Families say educators are under-trained and overwhelmed

Chris and Angela Powell’s family has experienced gaps in school services firsthand as parents of a child with autism and ADHD.

They describe their son Charlie as intelligent, caring, and kind. But his behaviors — whether shouting out answers, failing to complete worksheets, or fighting — often resulted in lost recess, hours in the principal’s office, or even being physically restrained or placed in a padded room during his first few years of elementary school in Williamson County, south of Nashville.

“These are invisible disabilities, and his behavior was his form of communicating. But he was being excluded and punished based on his disability,” said Angela Powell, now a special-needs advocate. “His general education teachers didn’t seem to understand how to work with children who have needs like ADHD or autism.”

The Powells say Williamson County’s two school districts lacked qualified therapists and other specialized support staff, leaving teachers with few tools to tackle classroom misbehavior. Charlie eventually was placed on homebound instruction, receiving his lessons in a home setting and missing out on the opportunity to attend school with his non-disabled peers. Now 12, he is being homeschooled.

“If the richest district in Tennessee can’t help my son learn,” said Chris Powell, “I shudder to think what families deal with in the other 94 counties.”

Meanwhile, the report identified only three of the state’s 10 largest teacher training programs — at the University of Memphis, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and University of Tennessee-Chattanooga — as offering more than two courses on teaching students with disabilities.

Also, while the state recently switched to a new K-12 education funding formula to provide more resources for students with higher needs, such as students with disabilities, the change did not require that districts designate such extra funds for special education services.

And while the state promised to inject an extra $1 billion annually in the K-12 funding pool, Tennessee remains in the bottom fifth of states in per-pupil funding.

Exclusion policies gave way to inclusion movement

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

The expanded Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 marked the advent of the inclusion movement and the belief that children with disabilities, with some individualized support, can thrive in educational settings with their non-disabled peers.

But despite clear research on the benefits of inclusion for students with disabilities, surveys show general education teachers feel ill-prepared to work with them and struggle especially with special needs students with behavioral issues.

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

But according to data from the state education department, those same students receive a disproportionate share of formal disciplinary actions that include in-school and out-of-school suspension, expulsion, and transfer to alternative settings. In 2021-22, the most recent school year for which data are available, 12.5% of students with disabilities were removed from their classrooms, even though federal law limits excessive exclusionary discipline.

In addition, informal exclusionary disciplinary practices — which are difficult to quantify — are almost exclusively directed toward students with disabilities, the coalition says. They can include directing parents or guardians to take the student home for the day, inappropriate homebound placement, excessive use of threat assessments, inappropriate use of in-school suspension, and exclusion from school transportation.

Pending review of the report, a spokesperson for the state education department declined to comment on its assertions.

The leader of Professional Educators of Tennessee, which lobbied for the Teacher’s Discipline Act, acknowledged the challenges and nuances of disciplining students, especially those with special needs.

“We have seen since the pandemic an increase in mental health issues. That is why we at Professional Educators of Tennessee have worked hard to get additional funding for mental health in Tennessee,” said Executive Director JC Bowman.

He added that he’s open to new ideas that “ensure classrooms are safe and orderly, and every child has an opportunity to learn.”

The state comptroller is looking into the “informal removal” issue, also called “off-book suspensions.” Its Office of Research and Education Accountability has commissioned a report, which is expected to be released later this year, to better understand the use of informal removal, which often violates the rights of students with an IEP.

Strand says both pathways — formal and informal — can allow schools to avoid developing effective plans to correct bad behavior so they can stay in class and learn.

He recommends that Tennessee parents learn as much as they can about the rights of children with disabilities, including those with behavioral issues.

The coalition is hosting a free webinar at 5:30 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, June 25, on Facebook.

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

Where Tennessee lawmakers landed on vouchers, guns, AI, and other education issues in 2024

2024-04-29T10:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee’s legislature is done for the year after a session marked by political infighting over private school vouchers and emotional debates about whether teachers and staff should be able to carry a gun in public schools.

The statewide voucher proposal fizzled after the Senate and House couldn’t agree on the specifics. Gov. Bill Lee quickly pledged to come back next year with another plan.

The bill to arm some school employees easily passed, defying dramatic protests at the state Capitol, a year after a Nashville school shooting in which three children, three adults, and the intruder were killed.

“This was a session of good, bad, and ugly,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari said after the legislature adjourned on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, some really really bad bills ended up passing,” the Memphis Democrat added.

Republican leaders hailed the four-month session as a success.

“We accomplished things that will benefit the people of this state,” the governor told reporters minutes after the gavel fell.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25. He's flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders.

He cited the passage of a “historically important budget” that includes a consolation prize of $144 million for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act, in case it passes in future years. The failed voucher proposal seeks to give taxpayer money to any family who wants to send their children to private schools, regardless of their income.

“That shows a clear intent that we believe in this concept and that we expect that to get done next year,” Lee said.

By the end of the week, the governor had signed the bill to let some school employees carry guns, which took effect immediately.

The new law marks the biggest expansion of gun access in Tennessee since the killings at The Covenant School. Last year, the legislature appropriated $140 million to help place an armed officer in every public school, but many districts, especially in rural areas, haven’t been able to hire an officer for every campus.

“Districts have the option to choose,” Lee said earlier, arguing that some school systems need to let some employees carry a concealed handgun.

Protesters stage a "die-in" on the rotunda floor at the Tennessee State Capitol outside of the House chambers on April 23, 2024, after state lawmakers passed a bill to let certain teachers and school staff carry handguns in schools.

Legislation at the intersection of schools and guns

Lawmakers sorted through some 230-plus education bills filed in time for this year’s session — about 300 if you count those left over from last year in the two-year General Assembly. They ultimately passed about 70 that directly affect K-12 education.

For the second straight year, they made tweaks to a 2021 reading and retention law to address what many called unintended effects for students in grades three and four. Under a compromise approved on the last day of session, parents and educators of fourth graders will now have input on whether their students get held back because of low reading scores on state tests.

The legislature rejected tighter gun laws sought by Democrats and gun control advocates, and continued instead to pass legislation aimed at fortifying campuses. Among the initiatives: new school fire alarm protocols to take into account active-shooter situations; a pilot program to give teachers wearable alarms; increased safety training for school bus drivers; and guidelines to digitize school maps so first responders can access school layouts quickly in an emergency.

A rare bipartisan bill increases the penalty for anyone who threatens to commit an act of mass violence on school property or at a school-related activity.

Another measure, which Lee has signed into law, requires public schools to teach children age-appropriate firearms safety concepts as early as pre-kindergarten. The video-based training is to begin in the 2025-26 school year and, among other things, will instruct students who find a firearm that they shouldn’t touch it and should notify an adult immediately. The bill bars parents from opting their children out of the training.

So-called culture war issues played prominently again

One new law requires public school students to watch a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group, or something comparable. Another measure will require public school employees to out transgender students to their parents. But a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools failed in the Senate amid concerns of a legal challenge based on First Amendment rights.

Tennessee’s age-appropriate materials law, championed by Lee in 2022 to cull certain titles from school libraries, now includes a definition of “suitable” materials for certain ages and maturity levels. And if a local school board doesn’t address a book complaint within 60 days, the complainant can now take the issue straight to the state textbook commission.

Another GOP bill that passed seeks to make sure that material related to “sexual activity” is excluded from the state’s mandatory family life curriculum for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade.

Meanwhile, legislation sponsored by Democrats directs the state education department to develop a program that public schools can use to teach students the skills of nonviolent conflict resolution.

Lawmakers exit the House of Representatives at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on April 25 after adjourning their two-year session.

Social media and technology also were on the minds of lawmakers.

They signed off on legislation requiring minors to have parental consent to create social media accounts.

In addition, school districts, charter schools, and higher-education institutions must develop and implement their own policies on the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, if they haven’t already done so. Those policies could include restricting or outright prohibiting the use of AI.

Amid that discussion, one bill requires that Tennessee history be taught in fifth grade. Having that issue codified in state law settles, for now, a debate that erupts whenever the state revises its academic standards for social studies.

Memphis was the focus of more legislation

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, both Memphis Republicans, drafted several proposals aimed at education in their community.

The legislature passed one bill allowing the University of Memphis to create its own K-12 school district and expand its innovative University Schools model beyond campus borders. University officials said they’ll launch the district this fall, even as they’re still in talks with Memphis-Shelby County Schools about their contract that runs through fall 2026.

Another proposal — giving the governor the power to appoint up to six new members to the board of Memphis-Shelby County Schools — was never heard in committees after White agreed to hold off and work with the existing board and the district’s new superintendent, Marie Feagins, on an improvement plan.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson D-Memphis, has sought for years to shut down the Achievement School District.

A Democratic-sponsored proposal to end the Tennessee Achievement School District, the state’s sputtering takeover and turnaround initiative, passed out of the Senate but not the House. Rep. Antonio Parkinson, the sponsor there, pulled the legislation on the last day of session when White sought to amend the bill. Still, the ASD continues to shrink on its own as its 10-year contracts with charter operators end.

An effort to expand a separate pilot school turnaround project — which started in 2021 in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga — failed to clear budget committees.

Lawmakers passed House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s charter school proposal to create new alternative education options for Tennessee’s at-risk youth. The plan opens the door to residential charter schools, a concern of disability advocates who warned against any measure that could lead to the institutionalization of youth or commingling distinct student populations facing varying issues such as substance abuse, juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, and teen pregnancy.

Sexton trumpeted his and other charter school legislation headed to the governor’s desk. One bill rewrites state law governing vacant and underutilized public school properties to give charter operators the “right of first refusal” to purchase those public assets.

“This session did more than it’s ever done in our history to continue to put (charter schools) on a path to give parents the choice and alternative to traditional schools,” Sexton said.

A tighter budget meant fewer education initiatives

Passing a budget for state government is the legislature’s only required constitutional duty, and the task was more challenging this year as tax revenues flattened and federal COVID relief funding ended.

Still, Republican lawmakers approved a $1.9 billion package of tax cuts and refunds to corporations and businesses.

Representatives on the floor of the Tennessee House in 2022

They ultimately approved a nearly $53 billion spending plan that allocates an additional $126 million to raise the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500. The goal is to get to $50,000 by the 2026-27 school year.

Also included is $8 million to hire more school-based behavioral health specialists amid record reports of students experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. Another $15 million in non-recurring funds will help charter school operators pay for school facilities and maintenance.

But the legislature killed efforts to hire more school-based nurses and counselors, reimburse teachers for some of their child care expenses, and provide free feminine hygiene products in high schools, as well as separate proposals by a Democrat and a Republican to make school meals free for all students. It also said no to a bill to use tax revenue from Tennessee’s growing sports betting industry to offer child care scholarships to low- and middle-income families.

When the 114th General Assembly convenes next year, it will look somewhat different after this year’s elections. All seats of the 99-member House of Representatives and half of the Senate’s 33 seats will be on the ballot.

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

Tennessee’s at-risk youth could see a new education option under charter school bill

2024-04-10T14:00:00+00:00

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A proposal to create new education options for at-risk youth in Tennessee is drawing interest from charter school networks, both inside and outside the state.

Labeled “opportunity” charter schools, the campuses would serve middle and high schoolers dealing with a range of challenges, such as substance abuse and juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, or being at risk of dropping out.

“We’re very interested in the proposal, because it’s directed at a lot of students we already serve,” said Jocquell Rodgers, executive director of Green Dot Public Schools in Memphis, which views the network’s Hillcrest High School campus as a good candidate to become an opportunity charter school. Green Dot’s charter contract to run Hillcrest ends in 2026 under the state’s Achievement School District, or ASD, which appears to be on its way out.

Rodgers likes that the Republican-sponsored bill calls for the state education department to develop different expectations for opportunity charter schools. Those measures likely would focus on college and career readiness instead of academic proficiency.

“It’s very hard to get some of our students to proficiency, which was the promise of the ASD. But we can give them job training and workforce development and make sure they’re on track to graduate, get a job, or go to college or a trade school,” Rodgers said.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools views alternative education programs — for students who are struggling to attend and succeed in traditional public schools — as a growth area for the sector, especially if accountability expectations are adjusted. Nationally, charter schools already serve 42% of students who are enrolled in alternative education campuses.

Under the legislation by House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, enrolling in an opportunity charter school would be a matter of choice. At least 75% of the school’s students would have to be classified as at risk, and the school also could include a residential setting.

That would be significantly different from most of Tennessee’s current alternative education schools, which were created as mandatory short-term learning programs for students who were suspended or expelled from their traditional public school.

“It has worked in some other states,” Sexton told reporters recently about his charter school proposal. “We think it gives us another public option that could help kids in bad situations.”

Not everyone is on board with the idea.

Even some Republicans are wary of the prospect of opening the door to residential charter schools — a new type of publicly funded but independently run school of choice — or the potential of commingling at-risk student populations on one campus.

And leaders of traditional public schools say they’d prefer to meet the needs of at-risk students in existing local settings. They just need additional money to hire more teachers, counselors, behavior specialists, and social workers, they say, not new programs that divert funding from their school systems.

“We’ve said time and again that districts want to provide our students with more behavioral and mental health supports,” said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendents organization.

Despite those tensions, the opportunity charter school legislation has advanced quickly since sponsors introduced it last month.

Last week, it passed the full Senate 19-7 along mostly partisan lines. It’s scheduled to be taken up Wednesday by the House’s finance subcommittee.

Sexton’s bill is narrower in scope than his 2023 charter proposal

A longtime charter school advocate, Sexton introduced a much broader charter bill last year that riled up the home school community and quickly stalled. That legislation proposed charter schools to serve home school students, in addition to a charter boarding school component.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, answers reporters questions on April 4, 2024, at the state Capitol.

It also would have allowed operators to apply directly to the state-appointed charter commission without going through local school boards, prompting pushback from leaders of traditional public schools.

This year, Sexton’s proposal removed any reference to home schools. And operators would have to apply directly to the local district for authorization. As under current law, they could appeal to the state charter commission if their application is rejected locally.

“We’re hopeful,” Sexton said last week when asked about the prospects for this year’s bill. “We tried to pass it last year. We had some opposition. We worked through some issues, and I think now we’re in a pretty good place on the House side.”

Proposal goes beyond temporary placement

Tennessee already has hundreds of alternative education schools and programs, mostly through local public school systems.

State law requires at least one alternative school or program for grades 7-12 in each district to serve students who are suspended or expelled, until they can return to a regular school setting. School systems have the option of creating alternative programs for students in grades 1-6. And some districts also have choice-based schools or programs to provide an alternative path for students who, for whatever reason, don’t fit well into a traditional school environment.

Sexton’s opportunity school legislation takes cues from charter school laws in dozens of other states, including California, Florida, New York, and Texas.

“It’s not a temporary placement like under Tennessee law, where students are mandated to attend for a period of time. It’s a choice, where the school becomes a student’s new home school to try to go and learn,” said Greg Lippman, a former California charter leader who recently founded the New York-based Groundswell Network to support local work on alternative education models across the nation.

Last fall, Lippman was in Memphis to talk with educators and nonprofit and community groups during a gathering organized by Bobby White, founder and CEO of the Frayser Community Schools charter network.

And next month, Groundswell will convene a national conversation at Nashville’s Belmont University to discuss school models to serve youths who are overaged and undereducated, involved in the juvenile justice system, foster kids, or facing other educational barriers.

Lippman said that his group is not the source of Sexton’s legislation but that he supports it, as does the Tennessee Charter School Center.

“Many states have a more expansive definition of alternative schools than under Tennessee’s current model,” he said. “It’s not surprising that the speaker’s office would find interested partners with expertise in this area.”

Funding would come through TISA

Under the bill, opportunity charter schools would receive funding through Tennessee’s new K-12 education formula known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. The formula allocates more funding for students with higher needs, and the money follows the student to the school where they’re enrolled.

That’s a concern for the bill’s detractors, who say that dividing a finite amount of funding and resources for the same population of students won’t lead to better outcomes.

“Diverting funds to charter schools only rips funding from educational institutions that are constantly exploring ways to meet the needs of all students,” said Mary Jo Holmes, board president for the Tennessee Alternative Education Association.

“What will a charter school do that is better serving than current practices?” she asked, noting that Tennessee’s alternative education approach is based on collaboration among parents, educators, and disciplinarians.

“It is a team decision, not a menu item,” Holmes said.

Connor Grady, a spokesman for Sexton, said that, in addition to TISA funding, opportunity charter operators could partner with philanthropists or apply for federal grants, just as traditional schools and districts can.

Asked for examples of potential opportunity charter operators, Grady listed Goodwill’s Excel Center and groups in Colorado and Massachusetts.

Haile, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, has said he doesn’t expect many opportunity charter operators to create residential schools due to the cost of such an endeavor. But it’s an option under the bill.

For Rodgers, the Green Dot charter operator in Memphis, the goal is to continue to do “transformation work” in a city with a large number of at-risk youth.

“Memphis-Shelby County Schools doesn’t have enough alternative schools to serve its own population, so maybe this could be a win-win,” Rodgers said. “It’s an opportunity for us to work together to address a big challenge in our community.”

You can track the bill’s status on the General Assembly’s website.

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

Ayden can’t speak. Lead poisoning is probably to blame

2024-02-27T19:54:35+00:00

This story was originally published by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Subscribe to their newsletter here.

Dre Jones remembers watching his wife cry in the passenger seat of his GMC Envoy as they drove their 4-year-old son the 70 miles from their Dyersburg home to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital.

He can still see the inside of the emergency department and smell the alcohol swab the nurse used to prepare his son’s hand for an IV.

“I had to hold him to keep him still while they were doing it because he was fighting and crying,” Jones said.

Jones’ son, Ayden, was diagnosed with severe lead poisoning in August 2019. The current federal standard for concern is 3.5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of a child’s blood. Ayden’s blood level measured 72 micrograms per deciliter.

Now 8, Ayden doesn’t talk. At school, he flips desks when frustrated and doesn’t play with other kids. Lead seems to have swung his brain’s development far off the typical course.

Hundreds of Memphis-area kids are diagnosed with lead poisoning each year, according to state data. While almost all suffer much milder effects than Ayden, their brains aren’t unscathed. Kids exposed to lead perform worse in school and are somewhat more likely to encounter learning disabilities and major mental health issues.

While Ayden’s case is far from the norm, it is a clear picture of the ways lead threatens West Tennessee’s children.

‘Like turning off a light switch’

On Jones’ phone is a video of a 2-year-old Ayden, captured more than two years before his lead diagnosis.

In the video, Ayden shows off his ability to wave and say “hey.” A few moments later, he tells the camera goodbye. He’s giggling throughout.

As far as his parents could tell, Ayden’s brain was developing normally until the fall of 2016 — about nine months into living in a new rental home.

That fall, his parents started to observe little regressions. His mother noticed he would no longer grab the dustpan for her when she was cleaning. His father noticed he’d started running around the kitchen when hungry instead of saying “eat eat” like he had been.

Always bouncing around the house, he seemed less and less able to control himself. He stopped talking in short sentences and asking questions. He stopped saying “momma” or “dada” or anything at all.

“It’s almost like turning off a light switch,” Dre Jones said. “That’s kind of what happened with him.”

The first time his mother, Bianca, asked Ayden’s pediatrician about the regressions, she was told he would “come around.” When he didn’t, the pediatrician referred him to a child psychiatrist in Memphis, but it took a year to get an appointment. When the appointment finally arrived, the psychiatrist diagnosed Ayden with ADHD and autism. Neither the pediatrician nor the psychiatrist suggested testing him for lead poisoning, Dre Jones said.

In recent years, pediatricians have become less alert to lead’s threat, meaning they test far fewer children than they should, according to Michelle Miller, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes.

While it’s possible Ayden’s brain would have developed atypically even without lead exposure, there’s little doubt that lead played a role given his extreme levels, according to Aaron Reuben, a clinical psychology researcher at Duke University.

In kids whose brains would have developed normally otherwise, lead can cause abnormalities. And in kids who already would have encountered neurological disorders, lead can exacerbate the problems, Reuben said.

Whichever boat Ayden was in, he would have been better off if his pediatrician had tested him. His parents could have moved from their rental house, which they would later learn had dangerous lead levels in the paint and dirt.

The State of Tennessee recommends — but does not mandate — that all children have their blood lead level tested when they’re 1 and 2. This is especially important for children living in a house built before 1978, the year lead paint was banned, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the 10 states that mandate testing, about 30% of children under 6 are tested each year, according to a 2017 report. In Dyer County and Tennessee as a whole, only about 17% of kids were tested last year.

Two brutal days

In August 2019, two and a half years after Ayden’s parents noticed him developing atypically, his mom watched her son put his mouth on a doorknob with peeling paint. When she looked at his tongue, she saw a paint chip dissolving on top of it. She tried to grab it but couldn’t.

She started Googling to see if she should worry. The online descriptions of lead paint’s effects seemed to match her son’s symptoms exactly — hyperactivity and speech delays.

“The (listed) side effects of the lead was basically (describing) him,” she said.

She called his pediatrician’s office, asked if he could be tested for lead and was told to bring him by the next day.

The night before he was tested, Dre and Bianca Jones sat on their couch, continuing to search the internet about lead poisoning and crying. Before, it seemed likely their son’s challenges were caused by genetics or something else out of their control. That night, Bianca remembers starting to blame herself. She realized the rental home she and Dre had chosen could have poisoned their child.

The following day, the test found shockingly high levels of lead in Ayden’s blood. The doctor told the couple he’d schedule an appointment at Le Bonheur for later that week, but the Joneses decided to drive the 70 miles that night and wait in the emergency room.

Once at Le Bonheur, doctors started giving Ayden chelation therapy, a measure that’s reserved for extreme cases of blood poisoning.

For a week, the Joneses lived at Le Bonheur. And even when they were discharged, they couldn’t go home. A state health official monitoring Ayden’s case told Jones he couldn’t, under any circumstances, move his son back into the house that had likely poisoned him. They moved in with Bianca’s mother for two weeks before finding another place they could afford.

Chelation dropped Ayden’s blood lead level from 72 into the 50s. Jones and his wife had to rely on time and nutrition to further lower it, adding broccoli and other vegetables into their son’s diet. Studies show that children eating less fat and fewer calories tend to have lower blood lead levels than those living in similarly high-lead environments. Iron, calcium, vitamin D and vitamin C may also help.

Of course, the lead has already done most of its damage. The toxin is most damaging to the brains of kids under 6 — with the danger increasing the younger the child is. But in the more than three years since chelation, Ayden’s blood lead level has fallen to about 15 — a much safer level.

Moving forward

As Ayden’s lead levels have dropped, his behavior has improved. Now, he loves to twirl his mother’s clothes, interact with adults and play with his two younger siblings, born in the years after his lead-poisoning diagnosis. He has a skinny frame and a wide smile. At home, he’s a “sweet” and relaxed child, Bianca Jones said.

When away from his parents, though, Ayden’s behavior has continued to be disruptive and unpredictable, especially if he’s missed a dose of his medicine.

At school, he will still sometimes run circles around his special education classroom, Dre Jones said. He’s bitten his teachers and flipped desks. His teachers have struggled to teach him much.

Studies have shown that students with even moderately elevated blood lead levels are more likely to perform poorly in school or fail to graduate. One study found that 20% of kids with blood lead levels over 25 micrograms per deciliter require special education.

Dre Jones worries about his son’s future. For now, he and Bianca Jones are able to protect their son and provide him with a happy home. But if something were to happen to them, he doubts Ayden would be taken care of adequately.

To better set Ayden up for his future — and to compensate the family for the suffering they’ve endured — the Joneses are suing their old landlord. Though two previous lawyers have withdrawn from his case, he’s hopeful his current attorney will be able to bring him some measure of justice.

He’s angry any landlord would rent a house so dangerous to children. “(That house) ended up destroying our boy’s complete personality,” Jones said.

But mostly, Jones is trying to stay upbeat for the sake of his kids, enjoying the beauty of their play together and raising awareness about lead poisoning.

“I try to tell people about this, and they be like, ‘Naw, I don’t think that’s the case,’” Dre Jones said. “(People) act like it’s not a real thing … (or) a thing of the past. But this stuff is affecting kids today.”

In 2023, over 2,400 Tennessee kids tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their blood, a number that would likely be larger if testing rates weren’t so low.

For many of the affected children, the consequences will be moderate — a lost IQ point or two or a slightly higher risk of heart disease later in life.

But for some, lead’s effects will be heartbreaking.

Jacob Steimer is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email him at Jacob.Steimer@mlk50.com

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee budgets $144 million for statewide school vouchers

2024-02-06T02:39:16+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee renewed his call for private school vouchers for any student across Tennessee on Monday, and he also set aside $144 million in his proposed state budget to pay for the new program for up to 20,000 students in its first year.

For traditional public schools, the Republican governor asked the legislature to raise the annual base pay for teachers from $42,000 to $44,500, in keeping with his pledge last year to get the profession’s minimum salary to $50,000 by the 2027-28 school year. (Raising the base pay has a domino effect and increases the pay of more experienced teachers, too.)

Lee also wants to invest $200 million to grow state parks and natural areas while simultaneously cutting corporate taxes amid a downturn in state revenues. But he maintained that Tennessee has “a very strong economy” to pay for all the changes.

The governor outlined his list of wants Monday evening during his 2024 address before the General Assembly, which will take up Lee’s voucher proposal and the budget in the months ahead.

He opened his remarks by calling Tennessee a “model for economic prosperity” and reminding lawmakers that state revenues are still 40% higher than three years ago.

However, after years of being flush with cash, the state faces a $610 million budget shortfall this year, and many lawmakers are leery of approving a universal school voucher program that Lee wants to be available to any K-12 student in 2025-26. Currently, Tennessee offers vouchers to about 3,000 low-income families in three urban counties, but his Education Freedom Scholarship Act would open them up to families in all 95 counties, eventually with no family income restrictions.

Gov. Bill Lee

“2024 is the year to make school choice a reality for every Tennessee family,” he said, drawing a standing ovation from many legislators — but not everyone in the GOP-controlled legislature — as well as frequent jeers from some spectators in the gallery.

“There are thousands of parents in this state who know their student would thrive in a different setting, but the financial barrier is simply too high,” Lee continued. “It’s time that we change that. It’s time that parents get to decide — and not the government — where their child goes to school and what they learn.”

Lee, a Williamson County businessman who graduated from public schools in Franklin, near Nashville, touted more than $1.8 billion in new investments in public education since he became governor in 2019.

“We can give parents choice and support public schools at the same time,” he said. “You’ll hear me say that over and over again. These two ideas are not in conflict.”

The governor also released his $52.6 billion state government spending plan to begin July 1. The total was down from Tennessee’s $62.5 billion budget for the current fiscal year because of flattening revenues and expiring federal funds appropriated during the pandemic.

He proposed $8 million to hire 114 more school-based behavioral health specialists amid record reports of students experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.

Other recurring funding recommendations include $30 million to pay for summer learning programs; $3.2 million to expand access to advanced placement courses for high school students; and $2.5 million to pay for a universal reading screener as part of the state’s literacy initiative, all to offset federal funding that is drying up.

Lee is asking for $15 million in one time funding to help charter schools with facility costs.

The governor also announced that his administration will bring the legislature a bill designed to help parents oversee their child’s social media activity.

“It will require social media companies to get parental consent for minors to create their own accounts in Tennessee,” Lee said.

Such legislation would widen the state’s push against social media giants.

Last fall, Tennessee joined a coalition of states suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which is accused of violating consumer protection laws and deceptively marketing its platforms to adolescents to the detriment of their mental health.

And some Tennessee school districts have joined a growing list of school systems nationwide that are suing major social media companies like TikTok and YouTube over a crisis in student mental health.

But in the wake of last year’s shooting at a private Nashville school — where three children, three staff members, and the shooter died — the governor offered no new initiatives aimed at improving school safety or decreasing gun violence, other than funding to hire 60 more state troopers.

Last year, after the March 27 tragedy, the legislature approved $140 million in grants to place an armed law enforcement officer in every Tennessee public school. But the legislature rebuffed the governor’s call for a law to help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others.

Remarks about Lee’s universal voucher plan, announced in November, drew quick responses from the leaders of the state’s two largest teacher organizations.

“The concept of universal vouchers would be costly to the state, and we urge the Tennessee General Assembly to move slowly,” said JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

“In particular, we have concerns over the lack of income-eligibility requirements and accountability,” he continued. “Our state must avoid any program viewed as a tax subsidy for existing private school families or a tax bailout for struggling private schools.”

Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association, said Lee’s plan shows that vouchers have never been about helping economically disadvantaged families, as the governor first characterized it in 2019.

“The goal has always been to privatize public education and use public dollars to fund private school education, which goes against our Tennessee values,” Coats said.

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

Vouchers, school safety, retention: Key education issues to watch as Tennessee lawmakers return

2024-01-08T11:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with state education policy and the Shelby County public school system.

Five years after a bruising legislative battle opened the door to private school vouchers in parts of Tennessee, lawmakers are preparing to take up a controversial bill to create a similar program statewide.

Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher proposal, which eventually would make all K-12 students eligible to use public funding to attend a private or home school, is expected to dominate debate after the 113th General Assembly reconvenes on Tuesday.

But other issues affecting students and educators are sure to emerge in a state where education reform has been front and center since 2010, when Tennessee won $500 million in the federal Race to the Top competition to jumpstart changes.

And if the last few years are any indication, a few surprises may surface in the months ahead. Politics and tragedy have shaken up the education priorities of several recent sessions, from an 11th-hour Republican drive in 2021 to restrict classroom discussions about racism and bias to last year’s deadly Nashville school shooting that led to new investments in campus safety and dramatic protests over Tennessee’s lax gun laws.

With the GOP supermajority setting the agenda again this year, here’s a look at some big issues to watch as the opening gavel falls.

School vouchers: Lee’s expansion plan renews long-running debate

In November, the governor said he’ll introduce a new Education Freedom Scholarship Act to offer $7,075 in taxpayer money for each of up to 20,000 students statewide next school year to attend a private or home school, with eligibility restrictions for half of them. In 2025, eligibility would open up to all students, regardless of their family’s income.

The proposal would mark a massive expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which is now limited to three urban counties and still under-enrolled. But more than a month after Lee’s announcement, few details have been released.

“I have yet to understand where the financing is coming from,” said Sen. Page Walley, a Republican whose district includes eight rural counties in West Tennessee.

“If we jump to statewide vouchers, I don’t see how we fund it without robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he added.

School safety: Renewed discussion, but no gun laws (it’s an election year)

Tennesseans were unnerved when an armed intruder shot and killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville on March 27, in the middle of last year’s legislative session. And the growing impact of gun violence on kids across the state is undeniable.

But Republican lawmakers’ response last year was to further harden schools rather than entertain any proposals to restrict gun access — not even for people who are deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, as the Nashville shooter had been.

“We’ll be back in January,” parents wanting stricter gun laws vowed in August after a special session on public safety yielded little action on guns.

Spectators watch the Tennessee Senate doing business at the State Capitol during a special legislative session on public safety in August 2023. Lawmakers were called back by Gov. Bill Lee after a mass school shooting in Nashville in March.

Some of them have organized news conferences and rallies at the Capitol this week for students, educators, and others to voice their concerns. Meanwhile, a group of parents from The Covenant School in Nashville, where the tragedy took place, say they’ll continue to advocate for changes to “ensure responsible firearm ownership, safe schools, and accessible adequate mental health care for all individuals across Tennessee.”

GOP leaders anticipate the legislature will revisit many of the proposals left on the table.

They include several measures to let certain citizens or school employees carry handguns in schools, and a bill to require all public and private schools to create alarm policies that differentiate emergencies for fire, weather, or an active shooter.

A new bill, from Republican Sen. Mark Pody of Lebanon and Rep. Susan Lynn of Mount Juliet, would let schools purchase lanyards equipped with emergency alert buttons for school staff to wear around their necks.

But don’t expect the legislature to look seriously at bills to restrict gun access in an election year, according to several key Republicans.

“I do not believe there’s an appetite or pathway to success for any legislation that might be introduced that is going to infringe on constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, of Franklin.

With the latest State of the Child report ranking Tennessee near the bottom nationally for access to mental health resources, Johnson sees more room for discussion on that topic.

“I think a big conversation in the coming session will be how we strengthen our mental health safety net,” Johnson said, “as well as general access to mental health treatment in Tennessee.”

Third-grade reading law: Lawmakers may revisit retention provision — again

Last year, the legislature widened the criteria, beginning this school year, for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers under a 2021 law targeting pandemic learning lag.

Now under the same law, the state may have to retain thousands of fourth graders who test poorly this spring.

“I think we have to look into it,” said Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chairs a House education committee. “We’ve probably got a lot of fourth graders who have already done summer school and tutoring but still won’t pass that test. It’s never a bad thing to have off-ramps and waivers.”

He added: “I want us to continue looking closer at kindergarten, first, and second grades so we’re not waiting until the third and fourth grades to address these challenges.”

But Sen. Jon Lundberg, who chairs his chamber’s education panel, is less inclined to make more changes in the 2021 law.

“We’ve set the standard for proficiency and for showing adequate growth, and I don’t want to move those,” he said.

Federal education funding: Talk about rejecting it looks like just talk, for now

House Speaker Cameron Sexton surprised many in his own party last year when he floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting more than a billion dollars in federal funding for students, which he said could be offset with state tax revenues.

In November, a task force appointed by Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally held hearings to explore the possibility. But Lundberg, the panel’s co-chairman, told Chalkbeat afterward that he didn’t expect the state to reject federal funds, even if it can find a way.

Legislative leaders polled by Chalkbeat last week said they haven’t heard of any legislation coming out of the hearings.

“It doesn’t hurt to know where our funding is coming from and how it’s being spent,” said White, the House’s education leader, said of the task force’s discussions, “but I don’t see that conversation going anywhere in the short term.”

Teacher shortages: Vacancies could lead to creative thinking

With Sexton declaring that Tennessee has enough state revenues to cover more than $1 billion in federal funding, plenty of public school advocates asked why the state wouldn’t use that excess instead to accelerate the governor’s plan to raise the minimum salary for teachers to $50,000 by 2027. (This year, the base is $42,000.)

Districts struggled to fill nearly 4,000 vacancies statewide last school year, especially in the middle grades, English as a second language, world languages, and special education, according to one report. And shortages of school bus drivers are a nationwide problem.

Lee told reporters that, while state revenues have flattened in recent months, Tennessee’s economy remains strong.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters on Thursday after a tour of a Nashville ministry. “We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

“We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

But with the teaching profession facing a post-pandemic crisis in Tennessee and nationally, the legislature could also pursue other avenues to elevate the profession.

Currently, the state covers less than half of health insurance premiums for its teachers, while state employees get 100% of their premiums covered. Moving teachers to the state employee plan could be a boost to both teachers and the local districts that employ them.

Professional Educators of Tennessee has also called on the legislature to develop policies to address child care access and affordability for teachers, more than 80% of whom are female.

“If you want to keep good teachers,” said Executive Director JC Bowman, “ease their burdens so they can focus on their work in school to educate and nurture our future generation.”

To follow this year’s legislative business, visit the General Assembly’s website for calendars, committees, legislation, and livestreams.

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

Why this award-winning school superintendent donates his bonus back for his students every year

2023-11-02T10:00:00+00:00

If his school community had to choose between himself and its nine therapy dogs, David Snowden jokes that “the director of schools would have to go.”

Now in his 23rd year as leader of Franklin Special School District, south of Nashville, Snowden has championed the canine program since Mattie Grace became the school system’s first trained therapy dog in 2018.

Five years later, each of the district’s eight schools has a canine companion on site, as does its central office, to provide emotional support to students and staff.

Snowden says the program is popular — and needed. Even before the pandemic, faculty and staff were seeing an increase in student anxiety, depression, and mental distress.

But all of the comfort and joy brought by the pups wouldn’t be financially possible if Snowden hadn’t donated his performance bonus back to his home district to help cover the cost. It’s a practice he’s done every year since coming to his suburban district in 2001 — to acknowledge and reward the collective work of the students, teachers, and staff who surround him.

“It takes a team effort to be successful,” he explained.

In all, Snowden has returned about a quarter of a million dollars in bonus money to pay for various needs over the years, whether to hire tutors, buy chargers for Chromebooks, or provide water bottle refilling stations during the pandemic.

His colleagues call him a “true servant leader,” but his peers across the state recently gave him another title: Tennessee Superintendent of the Year. Because of the honor bestowed on him in September by the state’s superintendents organization, Snowden will represent Tennessee in February in San Diego at the national competition sponsored by the American School Superintendents Association.

In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, Snowden talked about why he chose a career in education, how he tries to bring out the greatness in others, his strategy for dealing with negative politics, and what gives him hope for the future.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to a career in education?

Other than my parents, the most influential and inspiring people in my life were teachers and coaches. Any and all successes I may have had, both personally and professionally, are directly related to their support and mentorship. With my own career, I wanted to provide students with those same positive influences to help them become as successful as possible.

Tell us about your own experience as a student and how it affects your work today.

Growing up in rural Mississippi, I was an average student who enjoyed school but struggled with self-confidence. Fortunately, I had teachers who supported and inspired me to achieve higher than what I thought I could. With those influences, I became a fairly good student by high school. But those early struggles still resonate with me as I watch our great teachers positively connect with and encourage students each day. Every child is not going to excel at the very highest levels, but we know every child can be successful with the help and support of great teachers.

Describe an interaction with a student or teacher that made a lasting impression on you.

When I was an assistant high school principal in Pascagoula, Mississippi, my initial interaction with this particular student didn’t make a lasting impression. However, the note I received from her 20 years after she graduated made me realize that we, as educators, can have a positive impact on the lives of students, even when we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labor.

This young woman was constantly late to school and class and seemed to have a terrible attitude in general. I tried to get through her tough exterior but never thought my counsel resonated. When I wrote her a detention note, she routinely wadded it up like trash as she left my office. She managed to graduate from high school, so that end result was positive. Fast forward 20 years. I received a note from her (written on the back of a detention notice, no less) thanking me for all of our interactions through the years and the advice I had given her. She wrote that she never would have graduated, had it not been for those “tough love” conversations and my support. I still have that note!

What’s the best advice you ever received, and how have you put it into action on the job?

“Be yourself.” “Do your very best each and every day.” “Listen more than talk.”

Leaders shouldn’t try to be someone they are not. No matter how hard they may try, most people can see through the facade.

Doing our best means to never accept the status quo and to always be open to new ideas and growth.

I strive to be a good listener and to model one of Stephen R. Covey’s principles of highly effective people: “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” If someone doesn’t understand a person, there is no way they can effectively address their problem, issue, or idea. When we are engaged listeners, we understand better.

Kindergarten students at Moore Elementary School surprise Snowden at a 2023 leadership team meeting to congratulate him for his Tennessee Superintendent of the Year award.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

Many years ago, I read “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins, about why some companies become great, while others merely remain good. It made me realize the importance of always striving for continuous improvement. “Good is the enemy of great,” he wrote, so we know if we are not improving, we are regressing. He also said that you have to be willing to “face the brutal facts” of why you are not where you want to be in order to achieve greatness. It is important to create a culture of collaboration and trust in order for continuous improvement to occur.

In education, as we constantly analyze and utilize data, we must do our best to determine the root causes of our successes, as well as what’s at the root of areas that need improving.

What were the biggest challenges for you as a school leader during the most recent school year, and how did you address them?

The negativity we heard from some corners about public schools and public school educators in Tennessee was definitely a challenge. Those comments were not based on fact but came from people who want to disparage public education — in my opinion, for their own benefit. We responded by accentuating the positive aspects of public education at every opportunity and highlighting the work of public school teachers in our district and across the state. Our school board members also spoke out publicly about the unfair and unfounded attacks on public education.

What were the biggest rewards?

One of the biggest rewards centered on the resolve of our teachers and leaders to work together for student success, despite the challenging political environment. Our parents were great partners and supporters as they gave our teachers perks on a regular basis and frequently volunteered their time. And we saw continued local investments in facilities for our students, including a new state-of-the-art performing arts center, a new gymnasium, and a new athletic complex. All of these facilities provide our students with high-quality venues to showcase their gifts and talents.

Many students are facing heightened challenges with mental health. What do you think are the root causes, and how is your team helping to support them?

Schools are a microcosm of society, and we’re seeing the struggles of many people from all walks of life. This was true even before the pandemic.

Snowden checks in with Blake, a therapy dog at Franklin Elementary School, and his handler, art teacher Jennifer Alvarado.

We provide training related to trauma and how best to help individuals and groups of students to overcome the residual effects of adverse events. Being better informed about the effects of trauma is important so we can recognize those signs and provide specific support.

Through a partnership with a local clinic that provides behavioral health counseling services, we now have a mental health therapist at every school in our district, most of them five days a week.

In 2018, we launched a therapy dog program with one canine at Johnson Elementary School. The initial plan was to add a dog each year. But seeing the clear positive impact, we fast-tracked the initiative and now have a therapy dog in each school. We even have a dog at the central office to provide support for both students and adults.

How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

The goal is to stay active, whether it’s walking or working out. I enjoy playing golf, which gives me an opportunity to soak up some Vitamin D while trying to improve a not-so-good golf game. My wife, Kathy, and I like to travel, so we are always thinking about our next adventure.

What gives you hope at this moment?

My hope always lies in people and their human spirit. Even though there is a great deal of divisiveness today in our society, we believe that through perseverance, love, and character, we will return as a society to that place of mutual respect and understanding. Obviously, that doesn’t mean everyone will agree on every issue, but we can disagree without being disagreeable. As educators, we have to model how best to interact and effectively communicate with each other to enhance our community, state, and country.

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

Tennessee’s special session on public safety ends with little action on guns

2023-08-30T01:56:49+00:00

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Parents who lobbied for curtailing access to guns after a horrific school shooting in Nashville blasted the Tennessee legislature’s special session on public safety, which ended Tuesday without the passage of a single bill targeting the state’s lax gun laws.

In their six days of work, lawmakers approved three bills designed to speed up background checks, provide free gun locks to Tennessee residents, and require an annual state report on human trafficking.

Another approved measure, which appropriates money to cover the estimated $340,000 cost of the session, also includes extra funding for school safety officers, mental health resources and workers, and an advertising campaign encouraging gun owners to lock up their weapons.

But none of the bills that passed specifically address concerns about easy access to guns that were raised by the March 27 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, where a 28-year-old intruder used legally purchased guns to shoot through glass doors and kill three students and three adults. Authorities said the shooter, who died after being shot by police, was under a doctor’s care for an “emotional disorder.”

The disconnect — after days of protests, prayers, and pleas for meaningful reforms — left parents, students, and gun control activists angry.

“We’re talking about life and death, and this legislature has basically done nothing,” said Sierra Barnett, a mother of two preschoolers in Mt. Juliet, near Nashville.

Barnett was among the throng of mostly female demonstrators who showed up daily during the session to urge lawmakers to pass a bill letting judges order the removal of firearms from people at risk of hurting themselves and others.

“I’m devastated, and I hope people are paying attention,” she said tearfully in the Capitol Rotunda after lawmakers had exited. “I’m praying there’s an uproar across the state of Tennessee.”

Governor calls extra funding a victory

Gov. Bill Lee, who was largely absent during the gun debate after lawmakers convened on Aug. 21, framed the session’s output as “important, difficult, and hopeful.”

“We made progress and elevated a conversation about public safety that will continue into the future,” he told reporters.

In his remarks, Lee cited the legislature’s appropriation of more than $100 million in additional one-time funding as a victory, including:

$50 million to bolster community mental health agencies;
$30 million for safety upgrades at higher education education institutions;
$10 million in K-12 safety grants to provide school resource officers for charter schools or school safety officers for schools that can’t immediately hire an SRO due to a shortage of law enforcement officers;
$12 million for sign-on and retention bonuses for mental health workers in the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services;
$4 million for behavioral health safety net grants;
$3 million for a scholarship program for people wanting to work in the mental health field;
$1.6 million to provide free gun locks to Tennessee residents and to pay for an ad campaign on gun safety through the state Department of Safety

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters about the results of Tennessee’s special legislative session on public safety that adjourned on Aug. 29, 2023.

“Our state is safer today as a result of this session,” said Lee, noting that the legislature also invested $230 million more in school safety earlier this year.

But outnumbered Democrats slammed the governor and GOP leadership for results that they called “fluff” and “solution-less.”

“It’s been a complete waste of time,” said House Minority Leader Karen Camper, of Memphis. “The people wanted more and expected more.”

“No one should leave this building saying we made Tennessee safer,” said Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, also of Memphis, where 115 children have been injured or killed in gun violence since January.

“People made a lot of promises. When we come back in January” for the regular legislative session, Akbari added, “we sure as hell better do something.”

Lee’s proclamation put gun control proposals out of reach

More than a hundred bills were filed based on Lee’s official proclamation, which called lawmakers back to the Capitol and identified 18 potential topics, from school safety to juvenile justice to mental health. But the governor backed off of his early proposal for a law to keep guns out of the hands of people having a mental health crisis.

Democrats complained that parameters set by Lee left little room for meaningful gun reforms in one of the most gun-friendly states in America. For instance, Lee said lawmakers could pass measures that encourage safe storage of firearms, but not enact penalties for failing to do so.

A gun control advocate holds up a sign outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on August 21, 2023, the first day of the legislature’s special session on public safety.

Lee’s proclamation opened the door, however, to proposals that could put more guns in schools — several of which advanced out of House committees but ultimately stalled.

One proposal to let citizens with enhanced permits carry handguns in schools narrowly failed in the House Education Committee after clearing two earlier panels, while Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville pulled his bill to arm teachers who meet certain requirements. Williams said the legislature can take up his bill next year in regular session.

The House sought to pass more than a dozen bills, including ones requiring all public and private schools to create alarm policies that differentiate emergencies for fire, weather, or an active shooter; expand handgun carry policies at private schools to include pre-K; enact harsher penalties for juvenile offenders; and increase penalties for stalking.

But the Senate worked to limit the number of bills debated. On the session’s third day, its education committee met for less than a minute and tabled all 21 items on its agenda.

Ultimately, the Senate’s refusal to negotiate differences with the House led to an abrupt adjournment of both chambers.

“You’ve done nothing!” “Do your job!” “Vote them out!” chanted spectators as Republican leaders gaveled out their daily sessions.

Legislative process unraveled amid political infighting

Democratic Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis speak with supporters and reporters after adjournment.

The session in Nashville was frequently chaotic, with issues about school and public safety often overshadowed by political infighting, the expulsion of protesters, GOP efforts to limit public access to the Capitol, a lawsuit over new House rules prohibiting spectators from holding up paper signs, and several incidents of representatives shoving each other on the floor of the House in the tense minutes after adjournment.

“Things got hot,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton said about brief physical interactions that involved him, Republican Reps. Justin Lafferty of Knoxville and Scott Cepicky of Culleoka, and Democratic Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis.

“We’re moving forward from it,” Sexton said when asked if he would pursue disciplinary action against those involved. “At this point, I think everybody needs to figure out how to calm down.”

Parents of several students at The Covenant School, who actively lobbied for several bills to bolster school safety and mental health, said they had hoped for more out of their elected officials. Several were in tears at various points throughout the week as they tried to advocate for legislation on behalf of their children and the victims killed at their private Christian school: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9; custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Sarah Shoop Neumann, joined by other parents at The Covenant School, speaks during a press conference on the steps of the Tennessee State Capitol on August 21, 2023.

“Today is a difficult day,” said David Teague, a father of two children at Covenant. “A tremendous opportunity to make our children safer and create brighter tomorrow’s has been missed. And I am saddened for all Tennesseans.”

Sarah Shoop Neumann, another Covenant parent, called for respectful, thoughtful, bipartisan debate going forward to work to diminish gun violence.

“Those who are not of this mindset do not deserve a seat in the House or the Senate,” Neumann said, “and we will work toward ensuring every one of those seats is replaced by someone who has a true desire to listen to their constituents over firearm association lobbyists.”

“We will be back in January.”

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

Tennessee legislature will avoid gun control in special session prompted by mass school shooting

2023-08-22T00:12:11+00:00

As Tennessee lawmakers and lobbyists returned to the state Capitol Monday to discuss guns and public safety, 12-year-old student Juliette Dominguez showed up too, in hopes that her perspective would make a difference.

Fresh from two days of classroom instruction on how to respond if an armed intruder breaks into her school, Juliette was frustrated that Tennessee is focusing on preparing school communities to defend themselves from people with guns — instead of taking action to restrict gun access from people at risk of hurting themselves or others.

“Why is this something that children should have to worry about?” asked Juliette, a seventh grader in Goodlettsville, north of Nashville.

Gov. Bill Lee called the special legislative session in response to a school shooting in Nashville in which three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed. The session is expected to last a week.

But any drive to tighten Tennessee’s gun laws has been squelched by a Republican supermajority in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states, even as a recent poll of Tennessee voters showed significant bipartisan support for various gun regulations.

More than a hundred bills have been filed based on Lee’s official proclamation identifying 18 potential topics, from school safety to juvenile justice to mental health. But Lee’s proclamation never uses the word “gun,” and it mentions “firearms” only in relation to measures that would encourage safe storage of weapons, but with no new penalties allowed.

The House also passed new rules Monday in response to the body’s dramatic expulsion in April of two Democratic members for the way they protested the body’s failure to pursue significant gun reforms this spring. Under the changes, Speaker Cameron Sexton can suspend recognition of members for escalating amounts of time if he determines they are disrupting legislative business, speaking off topic, or impugning another member. The rules also limit the number of people allowed in the chamber’s galleries, as well as the nearby rotunda.

“The rules that are being put forward now are to limit freedom of speech,” said Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis, who was expelled and then reelected in a special election this month. “With these rules, you are silencing our constituency.”

Lee called lawmakers back after acknowledging that the March 27 attack on The Covenant School confounded many elements of Tennessee’s school safety policies, including a sweeping plan that Lee had proposed just weeks earlier to require all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, among other things.

Eventually, the legislature increased funding to further fortify both public and private schools but rejected the governor’s late proposal for a law allowing authorities to temporarily remove guns from people having a mental health emergency.

Gun control advocates, who held mass demonstrations after the tragedy and while lawmakers were in their regular session, returned to the Capitol as lawmakers prepared to start the special session, even as Nashville police recommended that people avoid the downtown area this week if possible.

At the invitation of a coalition of Christian groups, hundreds of people, including Juliette and her family, encircled the stone building in the morning to pray for passage of meaningful gun restrictions.

“I’m tired of people saying there’s nothing we can do, because we seem to be able to do things about everything else,” said Juliette’s mother, Jen. “We’re quick to yank books off of library shelves, or limit how students can dress. Why are guns impossible?”

Jen Dominguez stands outside of the state Capitol with her children Juliette, Alice, and Celia, after participating in a prayer circle for gun control on Aug. 21, 2023.

Meanwhile, a group of parents of surviving students at The Covenant School endorsed 10 bills that they said offer a start. They praised proposals to beef up school safety plans but said there’s an urgent need for new laws to keep guns out of the hands of people having a mental health crisis and for the state to provide more mental health care. They also criticized several bills that could allow teachers to be armed in school.

“As the spouse of an educator and the child of a retired educator, I am acutely aware, especially this time of year as we head back to school, of the heavy demands and lack of margins many of our teachers currently have,” said David Teague, the parent of two children at The Covenant School. “We should not add armed security guard to their list of extracurriculars.”

The Covenant School serves about 200 students in preschool to sixth grade. The six people killed there were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9; and three school staff members: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Authorities said the 28-year-old shooter was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder” and had legally obtained multiple weapons.

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

Tennessee governor calls lawmakers back to address guns, public safety after school shooting

2023-08-08T23:09:47+00:00

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Defying Tennessee’s powerful gun lobby, Gov. Bill Lee said Tuesday he’s calling lawmakers back to the state Capitol on Aug. 21 to take up public safety proposals after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Nashville school this spring.

The Republican governor, whose wife knew several of the adult victims at the private church campus known as The Covenant School, wants legislators in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states to pass a law to keep firearms out of the hands of people who could hurt themselves or others.

The 28-year-old shooter at The Covenant School was shot and killed by police on the campus after using legally purchased firearms in the March 27 attack. Authorities later said the shooter was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder.”

In calling for a law allowing “temporary mental health orders of protection,” Lee has tried to satisfy gun rights advocates who view any restrictions as an infringement of Second Amendment rights.

“As our nation faces evolving public safety threats, Tennessee remains vigilant and is taking continued action to protect communities while preserving the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Lee said in a statement.

But Democrats said Lee’s official proclamation doesn’t go far enough to try to address the proliferation of guns across Tennessee.

“For such a broad call, this proclamation somehow manages to miss the target,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus.

Lee’s proclamation is important because it sets the legal parameters for what they can and can’t take up.

The list of what’s fair game is long and includes mental health resources, providers, and related Medicaid coverage; school safety policies; measures encouraging safe storage of firearms; and timely law enforcement access to criminal and juvenile records, as well as to records for individuals “who are subject to mental health commitment.”

It also includes stalking offenses, reports from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation regarding human trafficking, the structure or operations of state or local courts, and limiting the circumstances in which juvenile records may be expunged.

The call comes after the governor met privately this summer with small groups of lawmakers to talk through his proposal and their ideas for quelling gun violence and increasing school safety in hopes of eventually passing meaningful legislation.

Then just a week ago, police in Memphis shot a man suspected of trying to enter a Jewish school with a gun.

Meanwhile, advocates on both sides of the gun debate have pressed Lee to pursue or abandon the special session.

Last weekend, the state’s Republican executive committee adopted a resolution encouraging Lee to back off, while groups like the National Rifle Association and the National Association for Gun Rights have urged legislators to oppose any gun control measures.

“We expect Tennessee Republicans to stand firm in their defense of the Second Amendment and vote to adjourn the special session upon its start in August,” Dudley Brown, president of the gun rights association, said last month.

On the other side, numerous gun control advocates have launched campaigns promoting firearm safety legislation. A Democratic-backed bus tour of the state kicks off Wednesday in Memphis to talk with Tennesseans about gun violence. Everytown for Gun Safety is spending $100,000 on digital ads, while Voices for a Safer Tennessee released a video message featuring the mother of Evelyn Diekhaus, one of the victims, on what would have been her 10th birthday.

“What’s more important?” asked Katy Dieckhaus, in her emotional plea for “responsible firearm safety laws that will work toward protecting our children and their right to life.”

The shooting at Covenant happened as lawmakers were meeting in their regular session, sparking daily mass demonstrations at the Capitol by Tennesseans protesting loose gun laws, especially those allowing easy access to military-style semiautomatic weapons.

Lawmakers responded by passing the governor’s sweeping school safety plan, which pumped $230 million more into hardening public and private K-12 schools by hiring additional armed security guards, upgrading school buildings, and placing a homeland security agent in every Tennessee county, among other things.

But most of them rebuffed Lee’s proposal to pass a law to restrict gun access for people experiencing a mental health crisis. Instead, after a House vote to expel two Democratic representatives for the way they protested the failure to pursue significant gun reforms, the GOP-controlled legislature rushed to adjourn in May without revisiting those laws. Lee quickly vowed to call a special session on the matter.

The governor has lobbied for Tennessee to pass a law on “extreme risk protection orders” and has avoided references to a so-called red flag law, which he has described as a “toxic political label.” Nineteen states have such laws on the books, including Florida, which passed its version after 17 people were murdered in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, despite numerous complaints to law enforcement about threatening statements by the 19-year-old gunman.

An extreme risk order allows courts to temporarily remove guns — typically for up to a year — from people deemed a threat to themselves or others. Family members or law enforcement often must petition a court for an order.

Soon after issuing his proclamation, Lee came under fire from both sides of the debate.

Senate Democratic Leader Raumesh Akbari of Memphis said the governor’s proclamation will prevent most gun safety reforms from being debated during the upcoming session.

“A promise to do something to stop future shootings was made to Covenant parents, but sadly this proclamation eliminates many paths forward,” Akbari said in a statement.

Victims in the Nashville shooting were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9; and three school staff members: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

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

Tennessee school district sues social media companies over student mental health ‘crisis’

2023-05-26T16:22:07+00:00

A Tennessee school district has joined a growing list of school systems across the nation that are suing major social media companies like TikTok and YouTube over a crisis in student mental health.

Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools filed its lawsuit earlier this month through California-based Frantz Law Group and Tennessee-based law offices of Lewis Thomason.

Chris McCarty, a Knoxville attorney who is helping to coordinate litigants, said other Tennessee districts are interested in joining the suit.

The case’s arrival in Tennessee comes as the nation’s top health official issued a warning this week about the risks of social media to young people.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said that while social media can be beneficial, its effects on adolescent mental health are not fully understood and it “can also have a profound risk of harm.”

His 19-page advisory could strengthen the case of school systems complaining that they’ve been left to deal with the fallout of apps that they contend are harmful to the social and emotional health of children and adolescents.

In Clarksville-Montgomery County, school officials say they’ve fought an “uphill battle” in recent years against cyberbullying, mental health disorders, classroom disruptions, threats of school violence, and young people’s access to inappropriate content. Located along the Kentucky border and near a U.S. Army base, the district operates 45 schools for its 38,000 students and is Tennessee’s seventh largest school system.

“It is time for social media companies to be held accountable for the lack of monitors, controls, and cooperation to protect children and our society,” the district wrote in a May 11 email notifying parents, employees, and other stakeholders about the lawsuit.

Among other things, the district is seeking changes to the companies’ products, funding to pay for education and treatment programs on excessive use of social media, and an unspecified award for damages.

“This is an effort to bring about real change,” McCarty told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

Problems tied to social media are ‘a daily thing’ in school

The school system’s 109-page complaint charges that social media giants like the owners of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube are causing harm to students who use their products via algorithms that are designed to cause addiction.

The lawsuit also contends that the companies have caused a mental and emotional health “crisis” among students that is marked by an increase in anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and exploitative content that encourages disorderly behavior, unhealthy social comparison, and cyberbullying.

“If you ask any principal or teacher how often they deal with problems related to social media, it’s not a monthly or weekly thing. It’s a daily thing,” McCarty said.

A spokeswoman for Google, which owns YouTube, called the complaint’s allegations “simply not true.”

“Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work,” said Ivy Choi. “In collaboration with child development specialists, we have built age-appropriate experiences for kids and families on YouTube, and provide parents with robust controls,”

A Snapchat spokesman said the safety and well-being of the app’s users is a top priority and that Snapchat is not designed to encourage passive scrolling.

“We aren’t an app that encourages perfection or popularity, and we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the promotion and discovery of potentially harmful material,” the company said in a statement. “While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping friends feel connected, informed, happy, and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”

The other companies named in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Suit follows school district cases against Juul Labs

In January, when Seattle public schools became the first district to sue tech giants over student mental health, legal experts were split on the potential impact.

One expert told Chalkbeat the suit could lead to sweeping changes in the industry. But others said it could fizzle out.

In the months since, dozens of other school systems have filed similar lawsuits charging that social media companies are maximizing profit at the expense of the mental health of young audiences. Those audiences spend significant amounts of time on the platforms and report associating them with stress and anxiety, according to plaintiffs.

An attorney for Frantz Law Group, which specializes in class-action and mass-action lawsuits, said Thursday that about 500 school systems in 32 states have retained the firm to pursue similar litigation.

The firm represented more than a thousand school districts in earlier lawsuits against Juul Labs Inc., which makes nicotine vaping devices, over claims about the company’s marketing to adolescents. A series of settlements in recent months have funneled billions of dollars in payouts to individuals, states, cities, and school systems.

Many of those same school systems, including Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools, are now working with the same lawyers to pursue legal action against social media companies.

“When we mentioned social media was the next fight, the district was the first one to jump out of the gate,” said McCarty about Clarksville-based school system.

Proving a mental-health link could be difficult

William Shinoff, the attorney leading the litigation for the Frantz Law Group, said this week’s U.S. surgeon general advisory backs up many of his firm’s claims.

“It’s extremely helpful,” Shinoff said, “as it restates what we are alleging in our lawsuit.”

But while there’s significant frustration with social media companies in the court of public opinion, drawing a direct connection between their products and student mental health isn’t necessarily straightforward. For instance, what about the pandemic’s emotional effect on children and teens, as well other stressors and the role of parent supervision?

“We’re having a mental health crisis in general and everybody wants to point the finger at social media,” said Pamela Wisniewski, a social media expert and Vanderbilt University associate professor of human-computer interaction.

She noted that a severe shortage of therapists and affordable treatment options contributes to a public health threat spanning racial and ethnic groups, urban and rural areas, and the socioeconomic divide.

“We should look at reform holistically,” Wisniewski said, “to better support schools, provide more mental health training, and create stronger communities to create a network of social support.”

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

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a response from Google.

Tennessee governor sets special legislative session for Aug. 21 after Nashville school shooting

2023-05-08T22:45:00+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he will call the legislature back Aug. 21 for a special session to address firearms and public safety concerns following a deadly school shooting in Nashville this spring.

“There is broad agreement that action is needed,” Lee said in a statement.

The goal, he said, is to “pursue thoughtful, practical measures that strengthen the safety of Tennesseans, preserve Second Amendment rights, prioritize due process protections, support law enforcement and address mental health.”

The governor also invited Tennesseans to provide input about the issues through an online form.

Lee’s announcement came just over two weeks after GOP lawmakers raced to complete their business early for the year while refusing to take up gun reform legislation from the Republican governor or their Democratic counterparts.

It was an anemic ending to a tumultuous session gripped by massive citizen protests after the shooting at The Covenant School left six victims and the gunman dead. The tragedy sparked calls for stricter gun laws and led to the ouster of two young Black lawmakers who took the protest to the House floor. Both men, Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, were quickly reinstated by local officials.

Meanwhile, gun violence continues to ravage communities across the nation, most recently in Texas where a gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others during a weekend shooting spree at a Dallas-area outlet mall.

In Tennessee this spring, lawmakers approved new policies and funding to further fortify school campuses, including at private schools like Nashville’s Covenant. Legislative discussions about limiting gun access mostly focused on people who are having a mental health crisis. Authorities said the Nashville shooter, who was later killed by police, was seeing a doctor for an “emotional order.”

Lee signed an executive order aimed at strengthening background checks on firearm purchases. He also proposed legislation that he said would help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, his first embrace of a gun reform measure in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states.

But his proposal hasn’t garnered much support from either side in the intense debate about gun access.

Joining forces with gun lobby groups, Republican leaders called Lee’s plan a “non-starter” and ended the session without taking up the measure. Groups advocating for gun control argued that Lee’s proposal — which allows three to five days before a court hearing would occur after law enforcement petitions for an order to seize firearms — doesn’t go far enough. That waiting period “could be the difference between life and death,” according to the group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Lee has avoided the phrase “red flag law” in describing his desire for new “order of protection” legislation.

“My proposal is not a red flag law,” he told reporters last week in Memphis. “It is unique to Tennessee (and) based on existing laws that we have in place.”

He continued: “We all believe that we should find a way to separate those who are of a dangerous mental condition who are a danger to themselves and others from having access to weapons. I have asked the General Assembly to look at multiple ways to do that. I’ve actually given a proposal to find a way forward to do that. We have to remember, too, that it is important that while we find a way to separate those that are a danger from weapons, we also have to protect the constitutional rights of every Tennessean. That is a balance that we have to find going forward.”

On Monday, Lee said he expects the General Assembly to bring forth its own ideas and pledged that discussions will take place throughout the summer before the session convenes.

Gov. Bill Lee delivers his 2023 state address to a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly on Feb. 6.

But Doug Kufner, a spokesman for House Speaker Cameron Sexton, was cool about Sexton’s leadership in forging a workable solution.

“The speaker will continue his travel schedule throughout the state this summer and fall to assist members and meet with Tennesseans on a wide array of issues and policies,” Kufner said. “He is looking forward to those discussions as we all await Gov. Lee’s proposed legislative package for the announced special session.”

Democrats, by contrast, called the special session an opportunity to address the longstanding problem and growing threat of gun violence.

“The people demanding action have brought us to this moment,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, “and now we need every Tennessean who cares about this issue to tell their elected leaders to show up in August and support legislation that truly addresses gun violence.”

Akbari, who is Senate minority leader, added: “Once we see the official call for the special session, we’ll know exactly what kind of legislation can be introduced. But we already know that broad majorities of voters, from all parts of the state and all political backgrounds, support common sense gun reforms, like extreme risk protection orders, waiting periods, and universal background checks.”

According to a recent Vanderbilt University poll, 82% of registered Tennessee voters support a so-called red flag law that would temporarily restrict access to guns for individuals who are at a high risk of harming themselves or others.

Two former governors, Republican Bill Haslam and Democrat Phil Bredesen, wrote recently that red flag laws are a good place to break through the impasse over gun reform.

And in an opinion piece published last week by Forbes, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, a Republican who is also a physician, wrote that lawmakers should not only pass a red flag law, but consider raising the legal age for purchasing guns and banning high-capacity magazines and assault-style weapons.

Frist called firearm-related deaths “an official public health crisis.”

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

Chalkbeat reporter Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis.

Tennessee legislature dismisses gun bills in rush to adjourn, defying protests after school shooting

2023-04-21T00:12:59+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy.

Tennessee’s legislature raced Thursday to complete its business early for the year while refusing to take up gun reform legislation from Republican Gov. Bill Lee or Democratic lawmakers, three weeks after a mass shooting at a Nashville school.

The inaction on guns came despite weeks of daily peaceful protests by thousands of students, parents, and gun control advocates calling for new laws to restrict gun access.

From the Senate floor, Majority Leader Jack Johnson announced the legislature was on track to wrap up this year’s session by Friday after his chamber approved the state’s $56.2 billion budget for next year — the only measure it’s constitutionally required to pass. The House approved the spending plan a day earlier.

Several recent surveys of Tennessee parents and voters show strong support for gun safety measures such as background checks and so-called red flag laws to prevent people who may be experiencing a mental health crisis from having access to weapons. Authorities have said the Nashville shooter, who was shot and killed by police, had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder” before killing six people at The Covenant School on March 27.

But with prospects for gun reform dimming this year, Tennesseans who have been raising their voices were aghast Thursday at the Republican supermajority’s unwillingness to look seriously at their concerns about lax gun laws.

“They are shrugging their shoulders at us and ending their session quickly. But we are not going to stop,” said Nashville mom Leeann Hewlett, who was among the first demonstrators to show up outside of a legislative office building on the day after the shooting.

“We are not going to forget the children and adults who died at The Covenant School. We’re not going to forget that guns are the leading cause of death for kids in Tennessee,” said Hewlett, who has an 8-year-old daughter.

Leeann Hewlett, a Nashville mom, speaks at a rally organized by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America on March 28, 2023, the day after a shooter killed six people at a Nashville school.

Lee, whose wife was a close friend of one adult victim in the Nashville shooting, offered up his own proposal Wednesday after lawmakers ignored his call last week to bring him legislation that would help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others. Nineteen states have such a policy.

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association mobilized its Tennessee members this week against any legislation that resembles a red flag law. And the House Republican caucus released a statement labeling any such proposal a “non-starter.”

In a last-ditch effort on Thursday, Sen. Jeff Yarbro delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor asking his colleagues to take up gun reform legislation stuck in a key committee that voted to defer action on any gun-related bills until next year.

Yarbro said his legislation is based on Florida’s red flag law, which passed with bipartisan support after a shooter killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018. The Nashville Democrat is also the sponsor of a so-called safe storage bill to require people to secure weapons left in vehicles and boats so they don’t fall into the hands of criminals.

“How do we not feel shame for failing to do anything?” asked Yarbro, noting that Nashville also has suffered mass shootings at a church and a Waffle House restaurant in recent years.

“We have the substance, we have the process, we have the time. The only question is whether we have the will,” said Yarbro, pleading for at least 17 of the Senate’s 33 members to support his request to call up his bill.

The Senate responded by voting 24-7 to table his motion, mostly along partisan lines.

Afterward, Yarbro tweeted that adjourning the session without voting on a single bill to limit gun access means the legislature is betting voters will “move on” to other issues when it reconvenes next January.

“Prove them wrong,” he said.

The developments came as the legislature has been under national scrutiny over the House’s expulsion of two young Black lawmakers, who have since been reinstated, over their demonstration on the House floor to highlight their body’s inaction on gun violence.

Still, lawmakers sent a bill to the governor this week to shield Tennessee gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers from lawsuits. That measure had been in the works before the shooting.

Thursday also marked the 24th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher before taking their own lives.

From the Columbine shooting in Colorado to the Covenant shooting in Nashville, 175 people have died in 15 mass shootings connected to U.S. schools and colleges, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University. (The database defines a mass shooting as resulting in the death of four or more people.)

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

Governor calls for Tennessee law to keep guns from ‘dangerous people’ after Nashville school shooting

2023-04-11T19:46:00+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee called Tuesday for a new Tennessee law to help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, his first full embrace of a gun reform measure in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states.

Lee said that he’s asked legislative leaders to create and pass new “order of protection” legislation that strengthens existing law designed to protect domestic violence victims. He wants the GOP-controlled General Assembly to deliver a broader bill to his desk in the next month, before adjourning for the year.

Later Tuesday, the governor signed an executive order to strengthen background checks for buying firearms in the state.

The announcements came two weeks after a shooter killed six people at a Nashville school and one day after another mass shooting at a bank in neighboring Kentucky.

“We can’t stop evil, but we can do something,” Lee said. “And when there is a clear need for action, I think that we have an obligation … to remind people that we should set aside politics and pride and accomplish something that the people of Tennessee want us to accomplish.”

Lee’s call to action comes after thousands of Tennesseans rallied for stricter gun laws during daily protests at the State Capitol since the March 27 tragedy left three children and three staff members dead at The Covenant School, a private Christian campus serving about 200 children.

The shooter, who authorities later said was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder,” was shot and killed by police on site.

Authorities in Louisville are still investigating what led an employee of Old National Bank to pull out a rifle and open fire in his workplace on Monday, killing five people and injuring nine others.

“What happened in Kentucky yesterday might be averted by a piece of legislation that we’re talking about delivering today,” said Lee, who said he spoke with that state’s governor, Democrat Andy Beshear.

The two mass shootings hit close to home for both leaders. Lee’s wife, Maria, who is a former teacher, was a friend and former co-worker of two of the adult victims at Covenant. And Beshear said he lost one of his closest friends.

Extreme risk protection orders allow law enforcement to intervene and temporarily take away a person’s weapons if a judge deems that person is at risk of hurting himself or others. Florida passed a so-called red flag law allowing such protection orders after a shooter killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

Lee did not use the phrase “red flag law” in describing his desire for new ”order of protection” legislation.

Instead, he called his proposal the next step beyond his comprehensive school safety package, which overwhelmingly passed the House last week and is expected to clear the Senate in the next week.

After the Covenant shooting, Lee’s administration revised the package and his proposed budget to include more than $200 million more next year to place an armed security guard at every Tennessee public school, boost physical security at public and private schools, and provide additional mental health resources for Tennesseans. Currently, about two-thirds of the state’s public schools have a law enforcement officer on site.

Lee held his press conference at a Nashville police precinct after meeting earlier with officers who responded to the active-shooter alert at Covenant.

“Protective orders are led by law enforcement,” Lee said. “They have a high standard burden of proof. There is due process.”

The governor acknowledged that passing an order-of-protection law in the legislature could be difficult — a key Senate committee voted last week to defer action on any gun-related legislation until next year — but said he is hopeful for bipartisan support “to get this done.”

“I’m one that believes that really difficult circumstances can bring about really positive outcomes,” Lee said, adding: “I certainly believe it’s that time.”

Democrats already have proposed several pieces of legislation aimed at gun reforms, including one on expanded protective orders. Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, the Senate’s top Republican leader, said after the Covenant shooting that he’s open to that approach, as long as it includes protections against false or fraudulent reporting.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton raised similar concerns on Tuesday.

“As we look at mental health orders of protection, they must have a level of due process, protections from fraudulent claims, and a quick judicial hearing for individuals who pose imminent threats,” Sexton said in a statement.

But Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari expressed no reservation. The Memphis Democrat praised Lee for prioritizing legislation to restrict gun access and curb gun violence.

“We are ready to work with the governor,” she said, “and we urge our Republican colleagues in the legislature to move quickly to put gun reform legislation on his desk.”

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in America.

After a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed a law to provide federal funding for states that enact red flag laws. And in February, President Joe Biden announced that the Justice Department would give $231 million to states to implement crisis intervention programs like red flag laws.

Red flag laws are relatively new, and their impacts are still being studied.

In Colorado, where a law went into effect three years ago, nearly 400 cases have been filed so far seeking protective orders against gun owners, according to a review by Colorado Public Radio. Of those, more than a dozen respondents had allegedly talked about carrying out mass shootings in places like grocery stores, theaters, and neighborhoods, with varying levels of planning. More than a dozen others talked about a “suicide by cop” or otherwise ambushing police officers, and one had threatened to assassinate political leaders.

In most cases, the person was reported to own multiple guns, in one case as many as 31 firearms.

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

Tennessee lawmakers advance bill to let teachers carry firearms without notifying parents

2023-04-05T23:06:20+00:00

Legislation to let some teachers carry firearms in Tennessee public schools advanced Wednesday in the House as state lawmakers and citizens clashed over the best way to protect students after last week’s deadly school shooting in Nashville.

The proposal would let a teacher or staff member carry a concealed handgun at school after completing 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, as well as passing a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

The 12-6 vote in the Education Administration Committee came with one member present but not voting: Republican Rep. Kirk Haston, who works for Perry County Schools.

It would be up to the local district whether to let teachers go armed under the legislation sponsored by Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville and Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta, both Republicans.

Williams said the principal and district director would be notified who in their schools are authorized to carry, as would their local law enforcement agencies. But the school’s parents and students would not be notified under his legislation, which runs counter to the GOP’s emphasis on parental rights and notification in other areas of education such as curriculum and library materials.

The development in Tennessee comes more than a week after an armed intruder shot and killed three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members at The Covenant School, a private Christian school with about 200 students in Nashville’s Green Hills community. As gun violence at schools has spiked over the last few years, educators nationwide have grappled with how to address acute safety concerns without militarizing their campuses or ignoring the rights of students, their parents, and educators.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 29 states allow individuals other than police or security officers to carry guns on school grounds.

Most Tennessee parents say school-based gun violence is one of their top concerns, but significantly fewer agree that schools are safer when teachers are armed, according to the latest poll conducted by the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy.

Williams told the committee that his bill is permissive.

“If your district and your local law enforcement agency does not want to participate, they simply do not have to do that,” he said. “But if you’re from a small rural district where resources are limited and you don’t have the ability to provide [school resource officers] for your community or an SRO at all, this would give you an opportunity to find a different pathway.”

Even if the Tennessee bill clears the full House, it’s not likely to pass in the Senate this year.

Bucking gun control advocates who have called for an urgent response to the tragedy, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to defer all gun-related legislation — including the companion bill to let teachers go armed — until 2024, the second year of the legislature’s two-year session. Chairman Todd Gardenhire, a Republican from Chattanooga, said he didn’t want to rush legislation as the city mourned the victims and police continued their investigation.

Emotions have been running high about the issue, including at the state Capitol.

Williams’ House bill would apply to public schools but not schools such as Covenant, which is a ministry of the Presbyterian church that sits on the same campus. Staff at Tennessee private schools already have the option to let some staff go armed if their administrators approve.

During Wednesday’s debate, people spoke passionately for and against the policy proposal. Here’s a sampling of what we heard:

“If more guns in more places made us safer, we’d be the safest state on the planet, and we’re not.” — Jason Sparks, Nashville parent, representing Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which opposes the bill

“The greatest benefit, I believe, in this bill is it allows our local [districts] to put a sign outside the front of their schools that says there may be someone in this facility that carries a concealed weapon. … Deterrents are the greatest asset we have.” — Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, the House bill’s sponsor

“It’s terrifying to know that I could go to school and not know who has a firearm.” — Keernan Reed, student, Hillwood High School in Nashville

“If you think that we’re going to have an SRO in every one of our schools tomorrow, you’re fooling yourself. … Folks, that’s four to five years away that your children will be at risk.” — Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, who voted for the bill

“This approach may harm the very ones that we say that we are trying to protect — harm that comes when someone overpowers a teacher, takes their gun, or a young teacher is mistaken for an active shooter by a law enforcement officer, a teacher losing their cool with a student and aiming a gun as a threat or worse.” — Krista Westerfelt, mother of three children, who opposes the bill

“I’ve checked with one of my school superintendents in my district, and he’s for this bill.” — Rep. Todd Warner, R-Chapel Hill, who voted for the legislation

“As I looked at the [police] body camera footage [from the Covenant School shooting], these men were extremely nimble, tactical, and they took that building systematically and left no stone unturned. This is not easy work in terms of the training and preparation.” — Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, who voted against the bill

“According to Giffords Law Center, armed adults frequently mishandle guns in schools. Their study shows that there have been nearly 100 publicly reported incidents of mishandled guns in schools over the last five years, including a case where a teacher unintentionally fired a gun in class during a safety demonstration, and a loaded gun falling out of a teacher’s waistband while on the playground.” — The Education Trust in Tennessee, in an April 5 letter to House Education Committee members asking them to oppose the bill

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website.

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

With Nashville school shooting fresh, Tennessee Senate panel defers gun bills until 2024

2023-04-04T23:10:21+00:00

A day after thousands of Nashville students marched on the Tennessee State Capitol demanding urgent action to restrict guns, a key legislative committee voted instead to defer action on any gun-related legislation until next year.

The move in the Senate Judiciary Committee came eight days after a 28-year-old shooter killed six people, including three children, at a small private Christian school in Nashville.

The 7-2 vote, spearheaded by Chairman Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga, came along party lines in the Republican-controlled panel.

The delay was anticipated after Gardenhire told Tennessee Lookout recently that he planned to move for an extended delay and would not allow the committee to be “turned into a circus by people with other agendas.”

“The agenda on the table now is respecting the privacy of the victims’ families that were gunned down and (to) let that healing process start,” Gardenhire told the news organization.

Gun control advocates, however, suggested that any delay would be an affront to the memories of the six victims of the March 27 shooting: 9-year-old students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs; and school staff members Mike Hill, Katherine Koonce, and Cynthia Peak.

“We don’t need a day to mourn. We need a day of action,” said retired teacher Linda McFadyen-Ketchum, who leads the local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, at one of several demonstrations near the Capitol since the shooting.

Nashville students and others favoring stricter gun laws protest outside the Tennessee State Capitol on April 3, 2023, during a demonstration against gun violence, mobilized by the youth group March for Our Lives.

The Judiciary Committee already had passed a bill that would drop Tennessee’s legal age to carry a gun from 21 to 18. The Senate panel removed a provision, which is still in the House’s version, to apply the legislation to rifles as well as handguns.

Among the deferred bills are several opposed by gun control advocates, as well as some legislation they support.

One bill would arm public school teachers and staff with a concealed handgun if they are willing, have a state-issued permit, and complete firearms training. Staff at Tennessee’s private schools already have that option if their administrators approve.

Gun control advocates support a so-called safe storage bill requiring people to secure any weapons they leave in vehicles and boats as a way to keep them from falling into the hands of criminals. That measure was deferred, too.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, the bill’s sponsor, had planned Tuesday to introduce new legislation to the Senate panel to create a so-called red flag law, similar to the one that passed in Florida after a 2018 shooting killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Such laws create a process to petition the courts so police can step in and temporarily take away firearms from a person who threatens to commit suicide or kill others.

“Pathetic,” Yarbro tweeted after the committee’s vote to defer all the bills.

The Nashville Democrat added: “We’re not going to give up. We’ll do what we can to bring SB1029 or some other bill to the floor to move this legislation forward.”

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who leads the Senate and said last week that he would support a red flag law, left an open door.

“Chairman Gardenhire and the Judiciary Committee elected to roll a handful of bills to the beginning of next year, as is their prerogative,” McNally said in a statement. “While the committee will likely close today, this does not mean the committee cannot reopen at the call of the chair.”

The committee’s vote came after little discussion. Two Memphis Democrats, Sens. Sara Kyle and London Lamar, were the sole votes against a delay in hearing Yarbro’s bill.

“Every member has a right to be heard,” Lamar said. “This was a bad move, and I’m disappointed.”

Vanderbilt University student Helena Spigner was also mostly disappointed in Tuesday’s developments. A local leader of Students Demand Action, which helped organize Monday’s student walkout in Nashville, the 19–year-old does not favor arming teachers. But she had hoped lawmakers would show a sense of urgency to reevaluate Tennessee’s lax gun laws because of last week’s mass shooting.

“These deaths could have been prevented by better laws,” said Spigner, who is studying to be an elementary school teacher. “By taking a year off, we’re waiting for the next tragedy, when we should be preventing the next tragedy.”

Interest in a red flag law rose in Tennessee after police reported that the Covenant shooter, who was fatally shot by police 14 minutes after entering the school, had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder.”

While the Senate’s speaker was supportive of the policy, House Speaker Cameron Sexton has been less interested. He initially said “everything” was on the table in the wake of the tragedy but told reporters Monday that red flag laws are just a way “to take away guns” and have “nothing to do with (mental health) treatment.”

As he brought forth his new proposals Monday that include further fortifying school campuses, Gov. Bill Lee also stopped short of supporting a red flag law. He invited lawmakers to bring him legislation that would prevent people who are in the midst of a mental health crisis from having access to weapons, as long as the measure would not impede Second Amendment rights.

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

Nashville school shooting prompts Capitol protest, and a fresh look at Tennessee gun policies

2023-03-31T02:15:46+00:00

Hundreds of angry protesters, most of them high school students, flooded inside Tennessee’s Capitol Thursday calling for stricter gun laws after an armed intruder killed three children and three adults days earlier at a small private school in Nashville.

Chanting “Save our kids!” and “Not one more!” protesters gathered outside of legislative chambers where lawmakers were in session and could hear the students’ shouts reverberating from the Capitol rotunda.

“I’m terrified,” said 17-year-old Keanna Hoskins, who went to the protest instead of attending school that day. Her message to lawmakers: Legally purchased military-style guns, like the ones used in the Nashville shooting, are “completely outrageous.”

“I want them to do something so schoolchildren aren’t slaughtered,” said the Nashville student, “and I really hope I’m not just yelling for no reason.”

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton expressed openness to a so-called red flag law, which would permit a court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person believed to present a danger to themselves or others. And Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has huddled daily with GOP legislative leaders following Monday’s slayings at The Covenant School, is revisiting his administration’s sweeping school safety proposal that focuses on fortifying public schools, according to the bill’s sponsors.

“We absolutely have to focus on all schools now, public or private, wherever a child in Tennessee is attending school,” said House Majority Leader William Lamberth, who is carrying the governor’s proposal in his chamber.

Jade Byers, the governor’s press secretary, said Lee will share more “in the coming days” about new proposed safety measures and funding to pay for them.

Shooting exposed holes in state’s safety policies

It was a dramatic day on Capitol Hill as elected officials acknowledged this week’s mass shooting confounded many elements of Tennessee’s school safety policies and proposals, including the governor’s bill to require all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation. The measure also requires that private security guards receive active shooter training before they’re posted at schools.

At The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville’s affluent Green Hills community, there was no armed security officer on site. The intruder entered by shooting out the glass in a locked side door.

The tragedy occurred just two months after the governor’s annual address identifying school safety as one of his top priorities. And last summer, following a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, Lee signed an executive order directing school officials and local law enforcement to work together to double down on safety protocols.

But the Covenant shooting, according to 17-year-old Allison McMahan, showed the state’s focus on hardening campuses isn’t enough. Stricter gun laws are needed, too, she said.

“There’s actually a gun shop down the street from my school,” said McMahan, who attends Nashville School for the Arts, a local public magnet school. “I feel so uncomfortable seeing that gun shop as I’m going to school every day. I don’t want guns to be so accessible.”

The protest was organized via social media posts inviting students and parents to rally at the Capitol. More than a thousand people showed up outside for a peaceful demonstration before hundreds moved indoors for several hours. Law enforcement removed some noisy protesters from the Senate chamber’s gallery, where several children held signs that said “I’m nine,” in reference to the age of the three children who were killed.

In the rotunda, where most protesters were milling and chanting, they jeered at adults who, with a police escort, emerged occasionally from legislative chambers to go to a nearby restroom.

A crowd of mostly students chant and hold up signs calling for stricter gun laws in the rotunda of the Tennessee Capitol.

“You can tell we’re being heard, because they’re not looking us in the eyes when they come out,” said a 16-year-old student named Sophia who declined to give her last name.

She said she hoped to “shame” lawmakers into action and added: “They’re supposed to represent us. Even though we can’t vote, we still live in their state. This is our home, too.”

The Covenant School serves about 200 students in preschool to sixth grade. Killed were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney; and three school staff members: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Both Peak and Koonce were friends and former co-workers of Gov. Lee’s wife, Maria, a former teacher, when they worked together at another private school, the governor said in a video message to Tennesseans released on Tuesday.

On Wednesday night, Nashville held a citywide vigil, attended by first lady Jill Biden, to remember the victims. And on Thursday, families began to announce funeral plans as the police investigation continued to reveal more about the shooter.

Lawmakers signal openness to red-flag law

Authorities have not identified a clear motive for why Covenant was targeted by a person they identified as Audrey Hale, a former student at the school. Police reported that Hale, who purchased the guns legally, had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder.”

McNally, who leads the Senate, said he would support a red flag law, provided it has safeguards against false reporting.

Sexton said it’s uncertain whether a red flag law could have prevented this week’s attack, but added, “We should be open to any conversation.”

“We need to talk to law enforcement about what tools do they need in those situations where someone is so dire, they’re planning to commit suicide or harm others,” said Sexton, who also wants to look closely at the role of mental institutions in Tennessee.

Democrats, who are significantly outnumbered by Republicans in the legislature, welcomed discussion about ways to lessen the likelihood that a person having a mental health crisis can legally purchase or possess a firearm.

“It’s just common sense,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville, “and doesn’t strike me as infringing on anyone’s rights.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat last summer, the governor said he has “a lot of concerns about red flag laws — not only on issues of mental health but their effectiveness in general.”

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

Tennessee governor’s safety bill threatens penalties for schools if they don’t lock entrances

2023-03-08T22:42:41+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is proposing sweeping changes to enhance school safety across Tennessee, requiring all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation.

Legislation from the Republican governor, introduced this week in several legislative committees, also mandates several new safety-related drills when students aren’t present; tweaks training requirements for armed and unarmed campus officers; and requires new security features for school buildings constructed or remodeled after this July 1.

In addition, Lee wants more top law enforcement officials on the state’s school safety team and proposes to transfer its oversight from the Department of Education to the Department of Safety, the agency responsible for homeland security and state troopers.

The governor’s proposal comes after the state fire marshal’s office identified 527 unlocked exterior doors during inspections of about 1,500 Tennessee public schools this school year, according to state officials.

Last June, Lee signed an executive order directing Tennessee school leaders and law enforcement to work together to double down on existing school safety protocols after a deadly shooting in Texas, where a gunman entered an elementary school through an unlocked door and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Lee also promised Tennesseans that state troopers and local police would conduct more unannounced security inspections of schools to make sure entrances are locked to prevent unauthorized access. More than 20,000 doors have been checked so far, state officials said.

Lee plans no new limits on firearms

Lee’s plan would continue Tennessee’s emphasis on fortifying its school campuses rather than reducing its number of firearms.

Despite having one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, the state has enacted numerous laws under Lee’s leadership to loosen requirements for gun ownership. In 2021, he signed a law allowing most Tennesseans 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety.

This year, however, the governor’s administration is opposing several new bills from Republican lawmakers who want to loosen those regulations even further.

The new safety legislation fulfills a promise Lee made at his state address last month. “We’ve done a lot to make schools safer,” he said, “but I don’t want to look up months from now and think we should’ve done more.”

His proposal, outlined in a 14-page amendment, would require schools to keep all external doors locked when students are present and to limit access through one secure, primary entrance.

The legislation authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to inspect doors — and requires immediate actions to address any infractions. Written notifications describing violations must be sent within 24 hours to the school’s administrators, district leaders, the parent-teacher organization, and state officials in the departments of education and safety.

Tennessee schools are required to limit access to one secure, primary entrance.

If a campus does not have a law enforcement officer on site and violates the locked door requirements two or more times in a school year, local school officials would have to post a full-time officer there within 30 days of receiving notice and undertake a corrective action plan. If they do not comply, the legislation directs Tennessee’s education commissioner to withhold 2% of its annual state funds, escalating by 2% for each subsequent violation, up to 10%.

A campus that has a full-time officer faces similar financial penalties for its district or charter organization if it violates the locked door requirements.

“To be clear, the purpose of this proposal is to help schools resolve any security flaws and ensure students and teachers are safe,” said Jade Byers, the governor’s press secretary, in a statement to Chalkbeat on Wednesday. “School funding will only be temporarily withheld while the (district) takes corrective action to resolve the issue.”

School officials want a less punitive approach

Tennessee school leaders have lauded the governor’s prioritization of school safety and, in recent years, taken advantage of millions of dollars in state grants to upgrade building security and hire law enforcement for their campuses. For instance, a grant program championed by the governor in 2019 placed more than 200 SROs in schools.

But they say that more money is needed to hire more officers — and that the governor’s proposal doesn’t address their staffing challenges.

According to the state’s most recent school safety report, for the 2021-22 school year, fewer than 1,300 of the state’s 1,800-plus schools had a trained school resource officer, or SRO, on site.

“The attention and focus on keeping our schools safe is appreciated, but financial penalties will not help add the security measures needed,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents organization, which has lobbied for enough funding so every Tennessee school has an SRO.

Money isn’t the only challenge that districts face, according to Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville.

“One of the punishments under this bill is that you might have to hire an SRO within 30 days, but that’s easier said than done,” he said. “Many districts across our state have tried to secure SROs from their local police departments, but there’s a shortage of personnel. Police are losing a lot of officers to the federal government, where they can triple their salary.”

Lee also proposes to add annual drills — without students present — for emergency bus safety, and also to prepare school staff and law enforcement agencies on what to expect in an emergency situation at a school.

State law already requires schools to conduct periodic fire drills and annual armed-intruder drills, plus three additional annual drills to prepare for potential emergencies such as an earthquake or tornado.

Altogether, the legislation serves as “an additional meaningful step to secure schools and further enhance school safety,” said Byers, the governor’s spokeswoman.

But striking the right balance between school safety and educational climate is also a concern, says Winstead, a 2018 finalist for national superintendent of the year.

“We want our schools to be friendly and welcoming to students and their families,” said Winstead, “and we don’t want to make our kids feel like they’re going to school in a prison.”

He says collaborative working relationships between school officials and law enforcement are more productive than punitive ones. He’d also like to see more state investments to support student mental health beyond the governor’s $250 million student mental health trust fund, established in 2021 as an endowment to pay for future services.

“Drills are important, SROs are important,” said Winstead, “but the most important thing we can do is foster strong relationships between students and adults.”

You can track the bill’s progress on the legislature’s website.

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

After Uvalde shooting, 5 questions with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on guns and school safety

2022-06-02T21:58:54+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee said Thursday that his administration began reviewing Tennessee’s school safety policies and programs the day after an 18-year-old gunman walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 children and their two teachers.

“We will be taking steps in the days and weeks to come that will enhance our ability to secure students in the classroom,” said Lee, speaking with reporters for the first time since the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School.

Exactly what those steps will be is still being discussed. But Lee said they won’t involve repealing a bill he signed last year that allows most Tennessee adults to carry a handgun without a permit.

His top two priorities: make school campuses more secure and support mental health, especially for young people.

Lee has sought to strengthen both areas since taking office. In 2019, the new Republican governor raised the state’s annual investment in school safety funding, especially to increase the number of schools supported by law enforcement personnel known as school resource officers. And in 2021, he championed a $250 million mental health trust fund that dedicates annual investment income to support students’ emotional well-being.

He also expects school safety to be on the minds of legislators when they return to Nashville next January.

“There will be a long list of items that people will talk about and propose — one of them being whether to arm teachers, another being passing a red flag law,” Lee said. “I think we’re going to see a robust conversation all across America about what strategies to implement.”

Lee spoke with reporters in Fayetteville, Tennessee, after announcing that Wisconsin-based Ariens, a maker of commercial lawn mowers and snowblowers, will bring nearly 370 new jobs to build its products in the rural Middle Tennessee town.

Gov. Bill Lee discusses new jobs coming to Fayetteville at an event on June 2, 2022.

Asked later by Chalkbeat about the Texas shooting, the governor characterized his office as “very engaged” on student safety.

“I’ve had very emotional conversations with parents who are afraid to send their children to school,” he said about how the shooting has shaken families and school communities anew.

A day earlier, about 50 pastors, parents, and physicians gathered outside of Lee’s office at the state Capitol to call for “common sense” gun control regulations. Among their demands: Ban semi-automatic assault weapons, armor piercing ammunition, and high-capacity magazines.

In Fayetteville, Lee answered five questions from Chalkbeat on gun violence and student safety. Chalkbeat lightly edited his answers for clarity and brevity.

Q: While the school year has ended, school safety is on the minds of Tennesseans after the Uvalde massacre. How are you working to prevent a similar tragedy here in Tennessee?

A: For three years, we have made investments, but we have to do more. From day one after that tragedy, we started an assessment of what has been done, and we’re developing a strategy. Part of the strategy is to make certain schools are using the resources that are available to them.

School resource officers are a key first step. A lot of accountability is necessary to make sure schools are actually carrying out established protocols, and that can be part of the SRO’s responsibility. We’ve learned that, in this event in Texas, a missed protocol or a lack of attention to detail can have tragic outcomes.

Q: After the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, several Tennessee lawmakers proposed letting some teachers carry guns at school. The bills generally stalled, but there’s talk again of turning some teachers into armed security guards. Would you support such legislation?

A: I have said before that I would be in favor of a strategy that includes training and vetting and a very strategic and appropriate plan for (arming teachers). There are a lot of details that have to be right for that to be considered. But if lawmakers brought it forth, I would certainly consider it.

Q: Some of your critics have pointed to the 2021 “constitutional carry” bill you signed as part of the problem by allowing people 21 and older to carry handguns, openly or concealed, without a permit — all at a time when Tennessee has one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths. Was widening gun access the wrong direction?

A: Constitutional carry is a law that applies to law-abiding citizens. What we’re talking about in Texas was criminal behavior. Criminals don’t follow permit laws. They don’t follow gun laws. They break the law. Constitutional carry has nothing to do with criminals who break the law. In fact, when we passed constitutional carry, we also passed laws that strengthened penalties for those who broke the law with guns. It’s very important that we separate criminals who use guns in criminal activity and law-abiding citizens.

Q: What about limiting access to guns by people who are most likely to misuse them? Many are urging passage of red flag laws that permit police or family members to petition a court to order temporary removal of firearms when a person may present a danger to others or themselves.

A: That’s connected to mental health, but who is the arbiter of mental health? There are a lot of concerns about red flag laws — not only on issues of mental health but their effectiveness in general. Buffalo, New York (where another gunman killed 10 people on May 14) has red flag laws. So there’s just a lot of questions around those approaches.

Q: When it comes to support for mental health, Tennessee trails the rest of the nation. The state ranks 34th worst nationally for prevalence of mental illness and lower rates of access to care, and 40th for youth mental health, according to the 2022 report by Mental Health America, the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit for preventing mental illness. How are we bolstering mental health supports?

A: That is exactly why we established the mental health trust fund a few years ago. And our state’s new education funding formula actually strengthens our ability to tap into resources for mental health needs, for children in particular. The pandemic exacerbated all of the reasons why we need to be investing in these areas. So we have a commitment to investing in mental health resources and services across the state.

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

Reading list: CRT and book bans in Tennessee schools

2022-03-31T20:10:11+00:00

Across the country, new laws targeting critical race theory and debated books are influencing the small but pivotal decisions educators make every day: how to answer a student’s question, what texts to read as a class, and how to prepare for a lesson.

Eight states, including Tennessee, now have widely varying laws restricting how schools teach about racism and sexism. And recently, several state legislatures have passed or proposed curriculum opt-out laws and measures that would make it easier to ban books.

This comes during schools’ efforts to provide social and emotional support for all students. A renewed urgency to help students navigate their mental health has been amplified by absenteeism, behavioral issues, and quieter signs of distress as many students grapple with the lingering pandemic and social unrest.

Chalkbeat Tennessee wants to hear directly from students and educators about how these contentious conversations have affected school culture and classroom dialogue. How do students and teachers of color show up as their full selves at school? What are the actual implications of the bill in Tennessee classrooms? How can schools discuss race and other difficult issues in a way that’s safe, empathetic, and empowering?

During a March 31 discussion hosted by Chalkbeat Tennessee and Education Trust, students, experts, and educators will talk about their ideas on how CRT debates and proposed book bans are impacting them and their peers.

Read on for Chalkbeat’s reading list for event attendees and anyone who wants to better understand how these issues are playing out in Tennessee schools and beyond.

We hope you find these compiled stories helpful. Do you have any remaining questions? Or story ideas for us? Reach out at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to bolster school library book bans advances in Tennessee legislature

Tennessee lawmakers gather in the Tennessee State Senate chamber.

Days after Gov. Bill Lee signed a law requiring school libraries to screen their materials for “age appropriateness,” Tennessee lawmakers advanced a harsher bill that could slap school librarians with criminal penalties over books some might label obscene.

The bill under consideration also would require districts or charter schools to pull books from library shelves if a parent or guardian complains the content is obscene or harmful to minors. A local school board or charter school governing body would have 30 days to decide whether to permanently remove the material based on local community standards. And the state could withhold funds from schools that don’t comply.

With book challenges and bans on the rise in Tennessee and across the nation, supporters say the legislation is necessary to create processes for addressing complaints from parents. But critics worry school leaders will feel pressure to pull titles from shelves to avoid controversy. They’re also concerned how local officials would define obscenity.

CRT Map: Efforts to restrict teaching racism and bias have multiplied across the U.S.

Chalkbeat is tracking efforts to restrict — and expand — education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics. This is a screenshot of one of the maps on Feb. 1, 2022. If we have no information available on a state, its icon is gray.

Officials nationwide have raced to enact new laws and introduce new policies meant to shape how students discuss the nation’s past — and its present. Many of these efforts have attempted to ban critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.

In some states, lawmakers have tried to restrict antiracism training or the teaching of what they call “divisive concepts.” But on the opposite end, other states are adding ethnic studies courses or incorporating more about people of color into their learning standards.

Chalkbeat’s map depicts the depth and breadth of these ongoing efforts to both restrict and expand how a core aspect of American life is taught in our classrooms. So far, at least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism. With 2022 state legislative sessions underway, new legislation is in the pipeline.

Not getting into it: How critical race theory laws are cutting short classroom conversations

Students head to class at a Memphis middle school.

Across the country, new laws targeting critical race theory are influencing the small but pivotal decisions educators make every day: how to answer a student’s question, what articles to read as a class, how to prepare for a lesson.

Plenty of teachers say they haven’t changed their approach, and there is little evidence that these laws have led to wholesale curriculum overhauls. But in several states with new legislation, teachers say the ambiguity of the laws, plus new scrutiny from parents and administrators, together are chipping away at discussions of racism and inequality.

As states place new limits on class discussions of race, research suggests such talks benefit students

A page from the book “The Story of Ruby Bridges”.

A handful of recent studies have found that students are more engaged in school after taking classes that frankly discuss racism and bigotry — just as some educators fear such discussions could be threatened by a wave of broad state laws governing classroom conversations.

The laws purport to limit discussion of critical race theory, a concept taught at the university level, but take aim at any curriculum that covers racism, diversity, and inclusion.

Each of these studies on discussions of race focuses on a relatively small program. Still, the findings are increasingly relevant because there appears to have been a meaningful uptick in efforts to acknowledge race and racism in schools.

Tennessee nails down rules for disciplining teachers, withholding money from schools that teach banned concepts about racism

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn talks with a student at Dodson Branch Elementary School in Cookeville, Tenn., on May 12, 2021.

Tennessee has bolstered the financial penalties against large school districts that violate the state’s new law regulating discussions on race and gender in the classroom.

The state also lengthened the amount of time allowed for filing a complaint against a teacher who has allegedly crossed the line, while it stuck with plans to accept complaints only from students, parents, or staff in the impacted district or charter school.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn signed off in November 2021 on emergency rules regulating the teaching of prohibited topics. The state enacted the law this spring amid national fury from conservatives about critical race theory.

As gun violence strikes, this Memphis teacher makes space to grieve

2022-03-30T13:41:40+00:00

On one of the toughest days of his teaching career, there was tenacity, transparency, and tears.

“Today has been heavy,” admitted Adrian Hampton.

Hampton, 41, has spent half of his life as a math teacher at Booker T. Washington Middle and High School, known as BTW. During his time at the Memphis school, he’s lost multiple students to gun violence, including 15-year-old Damien Smith, Jr., who was shot the day before Hampton’s interview with Chalkbeat.

The police charged 38-year-old Marcus Orr with the fatal shooting, and videographer Twan Freeman filmed Smith’s vigil a few days later. Since the beginning of the school year, at least 23 children have died by homicide in Memphis, according to police data.

Scheduled days before the shooting, the interview was initially set as a time to chat about Hampton’s legendary teaching career, which was shaped by two former teachers, Snowden School science teacher Clarence Estes and Central High School math teacher Rick Yates. In 2021, Hampton was a finalist for the district’s teacher of the year award, a nod to both his talent and his longstanding commitment to working in a school where children need extraordinary support. About 90 percent of BTW students are economically disadvantaged, according to the state.

Hampton has served the BTW community for 20 years — or 22 years if you count his two years there as a student teacher. He has now taught math to two generations of families at the school. Just over a decade ago, he and the senior Class of 2011 got a backstage meeting with then-President Barack Obama who served as the school’s commencement speaker.

“The first Black president, and he’s at BTW,” said Hampton.

“The kids cried. The toughest guys were in the back crying when he walked behind the curtain. It was amazing,” he added.

But mixed into a career of incredible highlights are the devastating lows of losing a student, which Hampton discussed, as he reflected on how he teaches while facing sorrowful young faces and an eerily empty desk.

How are you doing today?

Today’s been different. I’ve taught here for so long that I’ve lost a lot of kids, so you don’t ever want that to become normal. Yeah, today’s been heavy.

You could have taken the day off, and you didn’t. You came back to school today. Why?

We got a job to do. We tell kids not to make excuses. And not saying that this would be an excuse, because you got to take care of you first, because if you’re not taking care of you first, then, of course, you can’t take care of everybody else, but you lead by example. You show the kids that it’s OK to corporately come together and grieve.

How do you approach such a heavy time with your students?

It was solemn in the class. I was able to still get in some instruction but not hover over them. We had grief counselors in the building today, so I just kind of let them be to themselves. If somebody had their head down, I didn’t bother them today.

We don’t hear enough Black men discussing and expressing grief, and I just want to acknowledge that and applaud you for that. How do you take care of yourself at this moment?

I think you just helped me in making me talk about it just then. I really hadn’t talked about it for real until you just asked me that question, so that just allowed me to get out some emotions that I didn’t even know that I needed to get out.

So many teachers move around. Why have you stayed at Booker T. Washington?

The relationships — not only with the kids, but some of the other teachers have served just as long as me. The Algebra I teacher has been here 21 years. The guidance counselor, she’s been here 21 years. If you can deal with the neighborhood and working in this environment, our teachers really don’t leave. So you build relationships with your coworkers, and you build relationships with families.

Some of my former students are my parents now. So, I wouldn’t leave at this point. It’s ingrained, and kids know kind of what to expect because I’ve taught so many of their family members that, honestly, it makes it easier every year. I don’t have to adjust. The kids know my reputation.

You have a reputation for being relatable. How do you create such a strong connection with your students?

I let them know that I care from day one. If they play sports, I’m going to their sporting events. If they’re in the choir or in the band, I support them in things that they do. I let them know that I care about them as a person and that they’re not just a student in my class. I bring my kids up here, and they know my kids. My wife used to work here.

What has it been like connecting with and teaching students during a pandemic?

The biggest thing is that the attention span isn’t as high as I saw with those kids two years ago. You have to constantly be doing something to keep their attention and making sure that everything isn’t the same for that full 75 minutes that they’re in class with you. You have to have things in place that are going to allow kids to move around a little bit as much as we can. We don’t want anybody getting COVID or anything, but keeping them moving a little bit. Giving them brain breaks at certain points. Those are things that were talked about before the pandemic, but they’re absolutely necessary now.

As far as socialization, some of our kids never really stopped being around each other to a certain extent, but they weren’t around grown people. Discipline has been something that we’ve had to refocus on. That’s something that we’ve had to hone in on to make sure that they understand how they’re supposed to act when they’re in the building. We teach code-switching, making sure that you know how to act when you’re around your friends, but also knowing how to act when you’re around grown people.

Do you guys actually call it code-switching?

Yeah, we call it code-switching for sure.

As we emerge from the pandemic, what gives you hope at this moment?

What gives me hope is that kids see when you’re genuine. My dad’s a preacher, and he says all the time, all you can do is plant and water. You may not see the increase, but you know that you planted and watered, and that’s what teachers do. We give them instruction. We give them the tools to make them, hopefully, be the best they can be, and you may not see the fruits of your labor during that school year, but you sleep well at night knowing that you did your best.

And do you know that you did your best with Damien?

I regret not saying something to him yesterday. That goes back to what I said earlier, you can’t waste time. You always think, “OK, let me go ahead and get through this lesson, and I’ll talk to him at some other point when I get him by himself.” But, I know he knows — wow, I know he knew that we cared about him.

Bureau Chief Cathryn Stout, Ph.D. oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s coverage. Contact Cathryn at cstout@chalkbeat.org

After Quad-State Tornado, Tennessee teachers comfort students and each other

2021-12-15T21:39:01+00:00

As Dresden children returned to class on Wednesday morning, five days after tornadoes crashed through several states, scenes of devastation filled the drive to school: Mangled homes, debris-blocked roads, twisted trees.

In the wake of the Dec. 10 tornadoes, school buildings in the town about 130 miles north of Memphis stand largely undamaged, but educators and students are suffering. There has been widespread displacement of families, which forced schools to close on Monday and Tuesday.

So multiplication, sight words, and typical lesson plans were low on Wednesday’s agenda at the Tennessee schools most affected by the storm. Instead, the objective was to help students feel safe, secure, and loved, said local teachers as a school year already burdened by a pandemic adds another daunting disruption: rebuilding after the storm.

And with the number of tornadoes increasing east of the Mississippi River, according to weather experts, it’s a disruption that some educators are facing more frequently.

“This has been a very difficult year,” said Debbie Moran, a special education teacher at Dresden Elementary School in the Weakley County Schools district.

“I think everybody thought this year was going to be normal after last year, and it wasn’t as normal as we thought it was going to be,” she added Tuesday afternoon while helping a fellow teacher sort through items spared and damaged by the storm.

The tornadoes or tornado — meteorologists are still investigating — that ripped through the West Tennessee town was a “historic long-track tornado,” according to the National Weather Service. The cell spanned about 200 miles with wind speeds over 130 miles per hour. If weather experts confirm that it was a single funnel, it will be one of the longest tornadoes on record.

The Quad-State Tornado, as the weather community has named it, affected thousands of students in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, and half-dozen or more districts announced closures in its aftermath.

Although school was out in the Weakley County towns of Dresden and Sharon, Monday and Tuesday were not days off for Britne Mansfield, a first grade teacher at Dresden Elementary. She spent those days reaching out to her students and connecting their families with relief efforts.

“I sent messages to my class asking what are your needs,” said Mansfield. “I want to know who’s alright, whose homes are damaged? Where are you staying? Do you need this? Do you need a shower? And any messages I got back, I just tried to direct them to where they needed to go.”

And through their parents, her students sent messages back.

“Remi told me to tell you that she loves you. Caleb said he was worried about you,” she said on Tuesday afternoon while recalling some of the texts.

Mansfield cherished the words because she also needed support. As she prepared to return to school, she accepted the possibility that she may cry in front of her students.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing for them, necessarily, to see me cry because crying is a natural emotion for something like this, and I want them to know that if they need to cry it’s alright. It’s okay to get it out,” she said. “We’ve never had anything like this affect our town, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in.”

As she stood in her parents’ front yard with Moran and a crew of roofers Tuesday afternoon, she recalled the terror she felt late Friday night when she huddled in her parents’ basement with seven other relatives.

“Can I be frank? I thought we were going to die. I literally thought … ,” Mansfield said, unable to finish the sentence as tears overcame her, and Moran leaned in for a hug.

As of Tuesday evening, Dresden had not recorded a single fatality, quite miraculous given the destruction, said Mayor Jeff Washburn, who is also Mansfield’s father. As of Tuesday evening, the national death toll for the Quad-State Tornado had reached 88, with more than 100 people still missing, according to reports.

Yet even with no local fatalities, the aftermath has been difficult.

“It is a traumatic experience, particularly for children, and even adults, alike, even sometimes for 67-year-old mayors of a city,” he added.

His faith and the goodwill of neighbors have sustained him as people have donated equipment, food, and Christmas gifts for local children.

A few blocks away from where the mayor was working Tuesday afternoon, Kinetha and Kevin West had a smoker running in front of their gun shop and pulled off pieces of steaming hot chicken to serve to families without power.

Kinetha and Kevin West served meals to hungry families in front of their gun shop. Kevin West, who is also an industrial engineer at Tyson Foods, got his company to donate the smoker, a cooking team, and food. By Tuesday evening, they had cooked 600 pieces of chicken, 50 pounds of pot roast, 20 pounds of hot dogs, 10 packs of chicken wings, eight logs of Italian sausage, and four packs of ribs.

Kevin West, who is also an industrial engineer at Tyson Foods, got his company to donate the smoker, a cooking team, and food. By Tuesday evening, they had cooked 600 pieces of chicken, 50 pounds of pot roast, 20 pounds of hot dogs, 10 packs of chicken wings, eight logs of Italian sausage, and four packs of ribs.

The biggest needs right now for the families they’re serving are toiletries, temporary housing, and donations to the Rotary Club fund, the Wests said.

Freddie Brasfield, who sat outside beside the couple, added that more tarps and dumpsters are also needed. Brasfield owns a moving company, and he’s been working from dusk to curfew helping families haul away rubble.

Despite efforts by residents and work crews, by Tuesday afternoon, much debris still remained — haunting remnants of the devastating storm. There may be other unsettling reminders Mansfield said as she imagined the days ahead.

“Thunder is going to be a scary thing for kids for a long time,” she said. “And we’ve got thunderstorms coming in again on Friday.”

Memphis students challenge the politics of mourning as cultures clash

2021-12-07T21:42:56+00:00

As the sun set across Memphis Monday night, dozens of grieving students gathered at Hamilton High School for a vigil to mourn the life of 15-year-old shooting victim Phillexus Buchanan, but their grief turned to frustration as police officers ordered them off the campus.

Instead of honoring their classmate with a balloon release on the grounds of her high school, the students, banned from campus after hours, left the large empty parking lot and huddled across the street on a small sidewalk.

The moment, coming in the aftermath of a tragedy, illustrates how the politics of mourning can be complicated for Black children as their grief traditions clash with a litany of rules and regulations.

Donning a “rest in peace” T-shirt violates the dress code in schools with uniforms, a common requirement in Shelby County Schools, a majority Black district. Creating a TikTok tribute with classmates at lunch runs afoul of the district’s cell phone policy that warns that administrators may confiscate phones if they are visible during the school day. Planning a vigil means navigating the city’s park permit application or the district’s procedures.

“As part of district protocol, we require all requested use of facilities or school property to be submitted through our facilities portal which is reviewed by facilities, security, and school leadership,” said school spokesperson Jerica Phillips Monday night. “Unfortunately, we did not receive ample notification for this request to be reviewed.”

Gathering more than 100 shares on social media, posts about the vigil began circulating midday Sunday, two days after Buchanan was killed.

The Hamilton student, known as Lexus, was killed on Friday night after a high school basketball game when the car that she and other students were riding in was ambushed at a gas station, according to police reports. Also killed in the shooting was 16-year-old Breunna Woods, a cheerleader at Wooddale High School.

Family members have announced a vigil and purple balloon release for Woods on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. on Riverfront Drive near Bass Pro Shop.

A young mother and her infant were also wounded in the shooting, with the mother publicly sharing on social media that the “strong” baby boy is recovering from surgery. “Mommy [is] sorry Jr. I tried taking every bullet for you,” she wrote in a post that has been shared more than 2,000 times.

Lexus and Breunna’s deaths are the 28th and 29th youth homicides in Memphis this year, according to the Memphis Police Department. To their loved ones, they were much more than numbers. Lexus loved fashion and selfies and was a devoted friend, her family said. She went out on Friday to support Breunna, who was cheering at the game.

Breunna was a rising hairstylist who aspired to be a brand ambassador.

“Breunna was a gentle individual that performed exceptionally well within the classroom and on the court. Everyday, she embraced us with her smile and fashion,” Wooddale school administrators said in a statement posted on the school’s Facebook page.

Hamilton did not post a statement about Lexus on Monday, an oversight that some students at the vigil took as a slight.

“Hamilton is not doing their job,” said 15-year-old Morgan Dandridge, who attended both middle school and high school with Lexus. “They didn’t even have a moment of silence for her.”

Morgan said the school provided grief counselors, and the counselors coached the students through relaxation techniques. “They say, take a deep breath, take a deep breath. I get tired of taking deep breaths,” she said. “I’m weary.”

Hamilton High proceeded with classes as usual Monday, added Morgan.

The school’s approach is in stark contrast to the path Rhodes College took in October following the shooting death of one of its students. Campus leaders invited classmates to share public tributes to victim Andrew Rainer in the school newspaper, and the administration canceled classes to give students time to mourn. Rhodes is a $51,000-a-year liberal arts college with a majority white student body. Hamilton is a majority Black historic high school in a ZIP code where the median household income is less than Rhodes’ tuition.

Wanting to do something on campus to remember Lexus, determined Hamilton students created and circulated a memorial poster for classmates to sign, a gesture that received mixed reactions from staff but that the principal ultimately allowed, Morgan said. Many students also promoted the vigil on Monday and came carrying balloons in Lexus’ favorite color, pink. No one at the vigil identified themselves to Chalkbeat as Hamilton High School staff.

Parents and older relatives on hand calmed and reassured frustrated students as they were forced off of their school parking lot.

“I feel that it really made the kids feel as though the school was not concerned with the death of one of their fellow classmates,” said mom Melanie Harris, whose 15-year-old daughter had attended school with Lexus since middle school.

Just before 6 p.m. as the crowd size peaked, spilling over from the sidewalk to the street, mourners gathered around Lexus’ aunt Tanya Dockins to hear her tearful plea to “stop killing these babies who ain’t had a chance to find their way in life.”

The flashing blue lights of multiple police cars both protected attendants from drivers on the busy street and served as a reminder of how Black students are banned, policed, and surveilled, even while mourning.

Students who had stood strong all night broke down.

Classmates who were still composed comforted those around them.

And a Memphis police officer got on his loudspeaker and admonished the crowd for standing in the street, ordering them back on the overcrowded sidewalk.

Some booed the police while releasing their pink balloons to float freely in the air, and in the background, the flashing blue lights of police cars both protected attendants from drivers on the busy street and served as a reminder of how Black students are banned, policed, and surveilled, even while mourning.

‘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.”

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 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:

Frayser charter network removes most officers from schools; Memphis district focuses on other disciplinary strategies

2021-08-20T20:50:57+00:00

Seeking a more holistic approach to discipline, Frayser Community Schools reduced the number of law enforcement officers in its schools this year.

The change was prompted by the nationwide dialogue on systemic racism following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, two African Americans who were killed by white police officers. The charter network felt that it had a moral obligation to become a more equitable institution.

Under its anti-racism initiative, the Memphis charter school network removed officers from its two middle schools, Humes and Westside Middle Schools, keeping one private officer in its high school, M.L.K. College Preparatory High School.

“School is the greatest institution that we have. Everyone in America has to attend school,” said Bobby White, CEO of the organization. “So if you recognize that racism is so American, that our institutions are inherently racist, then you recognize that how schools are run are going to mimic what happens in the criminal justice system and in other areas of life.”

White added that Frayser Community Schools are working to change the culture.

A recent report from the Brookings Institute shows that adding police to schools criminalizes typical adolescent behavior. For example, police involvement can escalate graffiti on the bathroom walls to a vandalism charge, cutting class to a truancy charge, or vulgar language or an outburst to a disorderly conduct charge.

Adding police to schools criminalizes typical adolescent behavior. For example, police involvement can escalate graffiti on the bathroom walls to a vandalism charge, cutting class to a truancy charge, or foul language or an outburst to a disorderly conduct charge.

Black and Hispanic students have the greatest risk of being exposed to the long term consequences of officers in schools, including higher rates of arrests, expulsions, and suspensions. The missed class time contributes to the higher dropout rates and lower college enrollment rates for Black and Hispanic teenagers. These effects are particularly troubling for Memphis because more than two-thirds of Shelby County Schools students are Black.

Over the summer, Frayser teachers received professional development training to help prepare them for the shift away from policing.

The charter network also implemented a “no expulsions” policy in all of its schools. Instead of expulsions, students will meet with counselors and three new restorative justice specialists. In addition to an existing social worker in the high school, the district also has hired an extra social worker to be shared between the two middle schools.

Instead of suspending or expelling a child when they have a minor offense like talking back to a teacher or cutting class, specialists will sit down in a restorative circle with students, family members, teachers, and whoever else was involved to get to the root of the issue that spurred the behavior.

After that, the student will “right the wrong” under the supervision of the specialist. For example, if a student was caught vandalizing a bathroom stall, they would be asked to remove the markings.

“We wanted to do something different,” White said. “It pulls in our innovative and thoughtful approach to our disciplinary practices, as well as how we view trauma inside of our schools, given that our babies start off with racism being trauma within itself, on top of all of the other things that happen inside of their neighborhoods and homes.”

Brett Lawson, the network’s executive director, said the school’s approach to discipline starts with changing the conversation around student behavior.

“If you switch the lens, and you say, this student who has done this behavior has had something done to them that makes them believe that this behavior is OK,” said Lawson. “That’s the trauma that we’re talking about.”

Lawson said the only time a student will be suspended, expelled, or receive an “out of school consequence,” is when they violate the state’s zero tolerance policy by bringing firearms to school, committing aggravated assault on a faculty member, or possessing drugs and controlled substances unlawfully.

Shelby County Schools has made its own efforts to change its approach to policing in schools, although not as far reaching as the superintendent had hoped.

In 2019, Superintendent Joris Ray proposed creating its own district police force, called a “peace force,” to replace sheriff’s deputies, but the school board turned down the plan.

Nationwide, at least 28 school districts — including Minneapolis, Denver, and Seattle — have passed resolutions cutting ties with local police forces. Chicago has left the decision to remove officers up to individual schools and Philadelphia has renamed police “safety officers.”

According to a statement from the Memphis district, the district has 125 armed officers, including 45 Shelby County sheriff’s deputies. The statement said officers receive enhanced training in “addressing and recognizing problem areas that contribute to student violence” as well as training in nonviolence, crisis prevention, and gang reduction.

The district has implemented strategies to reduce negative encounters between police and students, including opening ReSET Rooms where students can calm down with a supportive adult after emotional or tense moments, according to the statement.

Since the expansion of the reset rooms in 2019, out of school suspension rates have decreased, dropping from 12.9% in 2018-19 to 9.1% in 2019-20, according to district records. Because the district switched to virtual learning for most of 2020-21, the percentages for last year dropped dramatically.

Education advocate Cardell Orrin, who is against armed sheriff deputies in schools, acknowledged that the district has made improvements. Orrin, executive director for Stand for Children, said that the district has reduced the number of students who enter the criminal justice system because of school incidents.

In 2018-19, there were 487 arrests and juvenile summons following incidents in Memphis high schools, and in 2019-20 there were 253, according to the Sheriff’s department. In 2020-21, a year when most Memphis students did virtual learning, there were only seven.

Orrin said that he hopes the district will continue the reforms that have led to the reductions in campus arrests. He added that the money used for sheriff deputies should be diverted to additional resources such as additional behavioral specialists to solve disputes, and counselors.

Additional staff members can address substance abuse, bullying, and fights. Although officers are often involved in these incidents, Orrin says they don’t have to be.

“It’s a whole community challenge, where we have to look at it differently as a whole, as an entire community,” Orrin said. “There is an assumption that we need some kind of law enforcement there. That’s a reflection of our entire community where we think that violence means more police officers. And that’s not the answer.”

Seventeen-year-old Zahra Chowdhury agrees. A member of Bridge Builders Change, she is part of a local coalition of students and nonprofit organizations that have urged Memphis schools to remove officers.

Zahra Chowdhury

She said her friend still has scars on her wrist from being handcuffed by an officer five years ago during eighth grade.

“She had a verbal altercation with her teacher, and a police officer that was in the hallway saw it and cuffed her,” said Chowdhury.

“And it was like, well, if the police officer hadn’t intervened, they could have solved it within themselves, just by talking,” she added. “Another teacher could have come in, or if a counselor had been there in that situation, that would have been immensely helpful.”

I founded Magic Dads mentor program because gun violence is traumatizing Memphis students

2021-07-15T10:00:00+00:00

At Magic Hands Barbershop in Memphis, boys fill the parking lot each summer day and often throughout the school year, too. They come to get haircuts or shop at the nearby convenience store. From time to time, they stand in front of the store, offering to do odd jobs so they can get something to eat at the Magic Wings next door. Sometimes parents leave their children in the parking lot, using them as bait to panhandle.

When boys congregate, too often, the impulse is to force them to leave, but shop owner Jason Bobo, and the men who run and visit the barbershop took a different approach. We decided to meet the kids where they are, literally; five years ago, in that parking lot, we started a boys mentoring program called Magic Dads.

Long before Shelby County School Board members issued their call to action to curb gun violence and youth violence on Monday, I have been working with my organization Magic Dads to do just that. As a special education teaching assistant, I know that everything children experience in their communities follows them through the schoolhouse doors.

Dedrick Ford

Every day, children are walking to school and summer camp carrying the weight of bookbags and trauma. As a graphic artist, I saw their pain firsthand when I owned a custom T-shirt shop, and about 65-70% of my income was from RIP tees. These shirts, commonly worn at funerals and memorials, feature the name and image of the deceased, and about half the time, the faces staring back at me on shirts were young victims of gun violence, teens, and young adults who never saw their 30th birthdays. Some young boys had an entire collection of these shirts because they had lost so many friends, cousins, and classmates.

I saw how death’s repeated blows disturbed them. The academic struggles. The unhealthy relationships. The compulsive and unexplained misbehavior. The anxiety-driven fears. The depression. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 3.2% of children ages 3-17 have been diagnosed with depression, and 7.1% have been diagnosed with anxiety.

We need our elected officials from the local level to the national level to take immediate action to aid distressed families. Yet our General Assembly has yet to pass a measure that would increase funding for school counselors and lower the counselor-to-student ratio.

Now more than ever, we need additional counselors in our schools because homicides have spiked in Memphis, and virtual learning has created a distance in student-teacher interaction. In the fall, we’ll have the added challenge of returning to school during a pandemic that has led to increases in depression, trauma, and crime. Counselors and educators are the real frontline heroes and, simply put, we need more heroes in our schools.

Until then, the men of Magic Dads will continue our parking lot ministry. Personally, I am dedicated to this work because, in 2009, my cousin was shot and killed during a robbery, and I want to reach our Whitehaven youth before they’re staring at or holding a gun.

Each year, Magic Dads host a back-to-school block parties where they provided free haircuts, free food, and more than 100 backpacks filled with school supplies.

We want to expand our outreach to include tutoring and anti-gang, anti-drug, and anti-bullying initiatives, but all of us who do hands-on work in our communities need more support from local politicians, pastors, and parents. Because a lot of the distress stems from poverty, we need more job placement programs for adults and teens, and we need more financial literacy programs that are easily accessible.

We also need more foot soldiers to join us in the field as we do the gritty day-to-day work of coaching, counseling, and sometimes consoling children. With fewer press conferences and additional community collaborations, we can create more safe spaces for children in the classroom — and out of it, too.

Dedrick Ford is an artist, special education teaching assistant, father of three, and the founder of Magic Dads youth mentoring program.

Flush with cash, Tennessee makes modest recurring education investments in newly approved budget

2021-04-30T00:58:17+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers on Thursday approved a $42.6 billion budget that allocates state funding toward a 4% pay raise for teachers, shores up the pension plan for educators, and creates a $250 million endowment to bolster student mental health services.

The spending plan also sets aside $141 million for learning recovery programs like summer camps and after-school tutoring to help lagging students catch up from the pandemic. And, because next year’s funding for education is based on this year’s enrollment, it includes extra money to ensure schools aren’t penalized for students who didn’t show up during the pandemic.

The final document — described as “fiscally conservative” by Republicans and a “missed opportunity” by Democrats — passed along party lines under a GOP supermajority. It now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who promised teachers in January that he would increase funding toward their salaries.

While adding tens of millions more to Tennessee’s $5 billion-plus budget for K-12 education, the investments aren’t likely to significantly change Tennessee’s national ranking for student funding. Tennessee is 46th based on the latest data from the National Education Association.

Flush with cash in state coffers because of better-than-expected revenues, GOP leaders brushed aside last-minute pleas from Democrats to dedicate more recurring money to public schools through Tennessee’s education funding formula. Instead, they prioritized investments in one-time spending for infrastructure and capital improvement and maintenance projects, most of which aren’t related to K-12 education.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson called the plan a “good budget that makes smart investments in key areas of our economy.”

Republicans voted down proposals to scuttle the governor’s novel trust fund idea, which will dedicate annual investment income toward student mental health needs. Democrats tried to put that $250 million investment instead toward hiring more school-based counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses, which in Tennessee are far below nationally recommended numbers. School leaders have said more specialists are needed to curb soaring rates of student anxiety and depression during the pandemic.

But Republicans stuck with the trust fund, which they said will provide a dedicated stream of resources for student mental health, though it won’t quickly pay for more specialists.

During an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro explained his vote against the budget for the first time since he took office in 2014.

“At a time when we have the largest recurring balance since I’ve been here, I don’t think that we’re meeting the obligations that we have to public schools in the state like we could,” said the Nashville Democrat, who listed other concerns, too.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, said the final spending plan means Tennessee will continue to lag behind most other Southern states in student funding.

“I know that our primary constitutional duty is to pass a state budget, and there are so many good things in here that I think are great,” she said. “My concern is what’s not in here. With this amount of revenue, and also the possibility of other federal funds, we really could have done some transformative things.”

Tennessee also is getting more than $4 billion in federal funds for K-12 education, but that one-time money must be spent by September of 2024 for relief and recovery from COVID-19.

The state budget includes $29 million in recurring funding for school vouchers. The program, which would provide taxpayer money to eligible families toward private school tuition, was halted last year when a judge ruled the voucher law unconstitutional. The case, which the state has since appealed, is awaiting arguments before the Tennessee Supreme Court, and the governor hopes to resurrect the program this fall.

During negotiations with Lee’s administration, GOP leaders halved the governor’s proposed $200 million investment to close internet service gaps. They also cut grants for local governments and a planned food sales tax holiday.

With the savings, they made a one-time deposit of $250 million in the state’s pension fund for teachers and other government employees in order to meet retirement obligations.

They made a $100 investment in the state’s rainy day fund to bring the total for reserves to well over $1 billion. And they didn’t tap into about $238 million in recurring money that could have been allocated for other needs.

“Not only are we back to being structurally balanced, we’ve got excess that will be waiting on us next year,” said Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Franklin.

Beth Brown, president of Tennessee’s largest teacher organization, called the budget priorities disappointing, especially because there’s widespread consensus among educators that students need more specialists to help them recover emotionally and academically from the pandemic.

“The money is there to make a significant increase to K-12 funding, but Gov. Lee and the General Assembly have instead chosen to continue stuffing mattresses full of cash,” said Brown on behalf of the Tennessee Education Association.

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.”

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.

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 teachers could seek to remove unruly students under bill approved by legislature

2021-03-11T23:54:16+00:00

A bill aimed at empowering Tennessee teachers to remove chronically disruptive students from their classrooms cleared the legislature Thursday over objections that such exclusionary disciplinary practices ignore deeper problems.

The Senate’s 25-8 vote came following an 81-15 vote in the House on Monday. The House is expected to concur next week on one minor change in language and send the bill to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.

If the governor signs the measure as expected, the Teacher’s Discipline Act will create a uniform referral process allowing teachers to petition to remove students who repeatedly or substantially interfere with classroom learning. The policy is championed by the Professional Educators of Tennessee, which says out-of-control behavior by some students is driving teachers out of the profession.

The renewed emphasis on potentially punitive discipline comes as educators brace for a wave of social and emotional challenges from students as a result of the pandemic.

Opponents argue the bill, while well-intentioned, could take Tennessee backward. In recent years, the state increasingly has embraced restorative disciplinary approaches that deal with bad behavior without punishing offenders. The tactics also take into account adverse childhood experiences such as physical or mental abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction, which can lead to disruptive behaviors.

“When a teacher faces a disciplinary issue like this, removing the unruly student from the classroom isn’t the problem; the problem is getting that student the help they need so they can be reinstated into the classroom and achieve academically and behaviorally,” said Sen. Page Walley, one of two Senate Republicans who voted against the bill.

Walley, a psychologist who is a former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, said the bigger issue is funding schools adequately to support student mental health and well-being. Currently, Tennessee does not provide enough money for districts to hire the nationally recommended numbers of school-based counselors, social workers, and nurses.

Sen. Joey Hensley, the Hohenwald Republican who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Scott Cepicky, argued Tennessee needs to strengthen the authority of teachers to manage their classrooms, which ultimately will help all students.

Among the proposal’s six steps: Teachers must document actions taken to address the student’s behavior, speak with the student’s parent or guardian, and seek to involve a school counselor or other professional to help.

When all steps are exhausted, the school principal would take action based on the district’s discipline policies or student code of conduct. That could include placement in another classroom, in-school suspension, referral to an alternative education program, or denying the teacher’s petition and finding support to help the teacher.

“It provides for a formalized response that pays attention to the student’s rights, provides opportunities for counseling to find out what the cause of that disruption is, and it also backs up the teacher,” said Sen. Ken Yager, a Kingsport Republican and former teacher, who voted for the plan.

Others raised concerns that Black or disabled students could bear the brunt of the discipline, based on decades of research that schools disproportionately discipline students who are Black or have special needs.

“At a time when students in our country are encountering both a reckoning with racial injustice and a pandemic that has caused massive instructional loss and trauma, it is disturbing to see Tennessee lawmakers focus on legislation that would punish students rather than devote resources to addressing their social and emotional needs,” said Wendy Tucker, senior policy director for the Center for Learner Equity.

While federal law prevents removing students with disabilities from classrooms, several student advocacy groups worried the legislation will lead to the removal of those who haven’t yet been identified as having a disability. Other advocates said the bill doesn’t align with Tennessee’s efforts to understand and address traumatic childhood experiences.

“When it comes to trauma, you cannot discipline trauma out of the child,” said Rikki Harris, chief executive officer of Tennessee Voices, a coalition promoting mental health services for children.

“My concern about [the bill] really is that it advances the pathway to alternative school, and that could be a real setback for our state,” Harris told the Senate Education Committee in testimony last week.

JC Bowman, leader of Professional Educators of Tennessee, said the goal is to create a more objective, methodical, and supportive blueprint for discipline so teachers can teach and students can learn.

“We hope it’s going to be a rare occurrence that a child is removed from a classroom,” Bowman said. “But we live in a civil society, and rules matter. If we don’t have consequences for continued bad behavior, we’ll have more bad behavior.”

Tennessee discipline bill raises concerns about potential bias against Black or disabled students

2021-02-25T01:29:53+00:00

A Tennessee bill that could empower teachers to remove students with chronic discipline problems from their classrooms is moving quickly through the House of Representatives while also raising concerns that it might disproportionately affect students of color or students with disabilities.

The Teacher’s Discipline Act would create a uniform referral process allowing teachers to petition for removal of a student who repeatedly or substantially interferes with classroom learning. The proposal is backed by the Professional Educators of Tennessee, which says out-of-control behavior by some students is driving teachers out of the profession.

However, several student advocacy groups believe the legislation could unfairly affect some historically underserved students. Decades of research shows that schools disproportionately discipline students who are Black or who have special needs. Advocates worry that those students would be far more likely than their classmates to be disciplined, removed from the classroom, suspended, and even expelled under the legislation.

The bill has resurrected the perennial debate over how to help teachers manage disruptive, aggressive, or violent student behavior without targeting disadvantaged students for disciplinary action that could cause them to fall behind academically or even drop out of school.

“There comes a point when we have to do something different for the other 29 kids in the classroom who want to learn. We have to discipline the child,” Rep. Scott Cepicky told Chalkbeat Monday.

The proposal, which is cosponsored by Cepicky and fellow Republican Sen. Joey Hensley, includes a six-step referral process.

The teacher must document actions taken to address a disruptive student’s behavior, speak with the student’s parent or guardian, and bring in a school counselor or other helping professional to offer assistance, among other steps. When all steps are exhausted, the school principal would take action based on the district’s discipline policies or student code of conduct. That could include placement in another classroom, in-school suspension, referral to an alternative education program, or denying the teacher’s petition and finding support to help the teacher.

On Wednesday, the bill sailed through a second House education panel. Supporters testified the legislation would give a voice to exasperated teachers and a common-sense intervention process to keep unruly students from falling through the cracks.

Linda Cash, superintendent of Bradley County Schools, liked that the legislation mandates involvement from a parent, a counselor, and ultimately the principal.

“I know it’s called the teacher discipline bill, but in my opinion, it is more about collaboration,” she said.

While no one has testified against the bill, a few legislators and student advocacy groups oppose it. They believe racial and special-needs disparities will grow more stark if teachers have more leeway to remove students from class.

For instance, severe disciplinary actions against Black students could stem from implicit bias. While federal law prevents removing students with disabilities from classrooms, students who haven’t yet been identified as having a disability could be affected. Behavioral problems are often a key indicator that a student should get screened, said Brian Keller, an attorney with Disability Rights Tennessee, which opposes the bill.

“I think this is a step in the wrong direction,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat and the only Black member of the Senate Education Committee, which is scheduled to take up the bill next week. “Instead of being punitive, we should focus on root problems of misbehavior.”

That would mean investments in social and emotional learning, physical and behavioral health, and social services, plus training for teachers and school staff on trauma-informed care.

“I’m not denying there are behavior issues in our classrooms,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, a former teacher who is state director of The Education Trust in Tennessee. “But we have to decide if we’re about supporting and healing and helping students or punishing them for behavior that often is caused by a whole range of circumstances beyond their control.”

This is the second time the bill has been introduced in Tennessee’s legislature. The measure passed unanimously last year in the House, but the Senate didn’t get to it when the pandemic interrupted legislative business.

Several teachers testified last spring that rowdy students often prevented them from effectively teaching the rest of their class. One said students had assaulted him on several occasions, and another said school administrators routinely ignored her write-ups of chronically disruptive students.

“I believe the general public has no idea how bad these behaviors have gotten,” said Angie McClanahan, an eighth-grade teacher in Columbia. “I know of no other profession where you can be verbally assaulted on a daily basis and there’s no consequence and there’s no outcry from it. We are begging for help.”

Such stories are the reason for the bill, said JC Bowman, executive director of Tennessee Educators of Tennessee.

“When we survey our members and teachers, student discipline consistently ranks in the top 5 concerns,” Bowman said. “Present law requires each school system to adopt a discipline policy or code of conduct, but there’s not a process for how to use those. This bill will make sure there’s a process at the building level.”

You can track the bill here.

Teacher pay, school funding, mental health: Large districts look ahead to Tennessee legislative session

2021-01-06T00:25:43+00:00

The leaders of Tennessee’s four largest school districts asked lawmakers Tuesday to keep funding intact for education, raise teacher pay, and invest more in student mental health as the coronavirus pandemic tests school communities in unprecedented ways.

They also talked about the need to accelerate vaccinations against the virus and praised Gov. Bill Lee’s administration for bumping up teachers and school staff on the state’s priority list for shots.

In addition, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray lauded the state for its newly released plan to invest $100 million of one-time federal funding in early literacy programs.

“Literacy is life,” said Ray, noting that just one in four students in his Memphis district are reading on grade level. “If our students can’t read by the time they’re in third grade, we are in big trouble.”

Ray and his counterparts in Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga appeared virtually for an hourlong panel discussion with members of the House Democratic Caucus ahead of this year’s legislative session. The General Assembly is scheduled to organize next week and reconvene on Jan. 19 for a special session called by the governor to focus on education issues.

Tuesday’s discussion marked the first time during the COVID-19 crisis that all four urban superintendents were asked to weigh in collectively and publicly with lawmakers about their challenges and needs, albeit with members of the legislature’s minority party. Although they oversee more than a fourth of the state’s nearly 1 million public school students, none of the urban leaders were among the six superintendents invited to testify in September when the GOP-led House Education Committee met to discuss learning loss during the pandemic.

“It’s been a year like no other,” said Bryan Johnson, superintendent of Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga. “I’d love to paint it rosy, but it’s been difficult.”

Superintendents described how their school systems have tailored learning models to their local populations and community spread of the virus. Schools in Knoxville and Chattanooga have provided more in-person instruction, followed by those in Nashville. The state’s largest district in Memphis, where spread of the virus is highest, continues to operate virtually.

“Our schools are completely connected to our communities,” said Adrienne Battle, director of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. “Our goal here, and I know across the state, is to bring students back for in-person instruction as soon as possible when it is safe to do so.”

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.

Reflecting national trends, the vast majority of Tennessee’s 147 school districts have experienced dips in enrollment this academic year. Most of Tennessee’s declines stem from families who shifted to homeschooling or private schools or held back students due to start kindergarten, according to Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn.

Superintendents are concerned that the enrollment drop could put hundreds of millions of dollars at risk in next year’s state budget for education, since enrollment from the current school year sets per-pupil funding levels for the next one. Early statewide data shows about 33,000 fewer students started public school in the fall, which normally would decrease Tennessee’s allocation for public education by at least $320 million.

“If we can just make sure that we continue to be funded based on the [enrollment] from last year – in other words, hold us harmless – that would be extremely helpful,” said Superintendent Bob Thomas. He gave a long list of new pandemic-related expenses for Knox County Schools and added that virtual learning options “are here to stay,” even when the pandemic ends, requiring more funding.

Thomas and Ray also asked for more money for teacher pay, as all four superintendents described educators adapting to the pandemic to teach virtually, in person, and sometimes both.

“Teachers and leaders and support staff have been absolutely remarkable and heroic in regards to what we’ve asked them to do,” added Johnson, who recently recovered from his own bout with COVID-19.

School funding and teacher pay are among five key education issues to be taken up during the special session. Legislative leaders have indicated they’re likely to keep funding intact as more students are expected to return to public schools next year. And the governor has said he’d like to boost teacher salaries too if possible, after rolling back a planned 4% hike last year as the economy sputtered.

But new investments in student mental health are less certain. That need did not make Gov. Lee’s list of education priorities to be discussed during the special session, even as superintendents have asked for more counselors, social workers, and other mental health professionals due to the pandemic’s heavy emotional toll.

“We’re trying to do as much as we can to make this as normal as we possibly can in a very abnormal situation for our students and our teachers,” said Knox County’s Thomas.

Last year, before the pandemic emerged, the governor proposed creating a $250 million trust fund to support and grow mental health services for students in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools. But that proposal was quickly scuttled after the pandemic hit.

Other issues slated to go before lawmakers during their special session are literacy, learning loss, and policies designed to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable for their performance.

Tennessee lawmakers want answers from Schwinn after fallout over plan to conduct child ‘well-being checks’

2020-08-28T00:15:07+00:00

When Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn unveiled her plan this month to use $1 million in federal funds to support “well-being checks” on Tennessee children, the goal was to make sure kids were safe, fed, and healthy, despite schooling disruptions created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Within days, Schwinn walked back her plan and apologized to state lawmakers dealing with public uproar about the prospect of families receiving phone calls, emails, or a knock at the door through a new government initiative. “Although well-intentioned,” she wrote on Aug. 14, “we have missed the mark on communication and providing clarity around our role in supporting at-risk students during an unprecedented time.”

The episode highlighted the challenges of supporting children outside of their school buildings, especially in a state that is intent on parental responsibility and wary of government intrusion. It also pointed to Schwinn’s pattern of rolling out initiatives and taking administrative shortcuts without ample legislative input, review, or approval, even as the former Texas academics chief is leading Tennessee through the biggest education upheaval in modern history.

“I sincerely believe that the commissioner’s intention was good because kids have not been in school and there are issues with hunger and mental illness and domestic abuse,” said House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, a Republican from Memphis. “But when things get out without much vetting, we in the General Assembly are the ones getting calls from parents, teachers, and superintendents.”

The resulting tension between the GOP-controlled legislature and Gov. Bill Lee’s administration could hurt Schwinn and the Republican governor’s chances of providing long-neglected social and emotional health support for students at a time when the pandemic has escalated anxiety and stress for families and school communities.

“Our legislature is conservative and wants to keep government small, but some agencies get exuberant about their ability to create programs out of nowhere,” said Rep. Martin Daniel, the Knoxville Republican who chairs the legislature’s powerful Government Operations Committee.

‘Whole child’

Schwinn pinpointed student mental health as a gaping hole in Tennessee education after Lee picked her in January 2019 as one of his most important hires. In a strategic plan unveiled last November, she made “whole child” education one of three priorities and envisioned using schools to expand mental health, wellness, and social services in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools.

Commissioner Penny Schwinn jumps to her feet on Feb. 3, 2020, as Gov. Bill Lee announced new investments to K-12 education, including a $250 million trust fund to grow mental health services for Tennessee students.

But the coronavirus tanked tax revenues and the funding earmarked by the Lee administration to grow those resources. In June, Schwinn convened a 38-member child well-being task force, including four members of the legislature, to explore the challenges of extended school closures and galvanize communities “to check on our kids.”

The group produced a report, and the department created guidance for local leaders about conducting well-being checks on children from birth to age 18. Schwinn also announced that federal funding would be set aside to assist school districts and hire regional staff.

“There’s no Big Brother intent at all,” Schwinn told conservative Nashville talk show host Brian Wilson one day after her announcement created a firestorm on social media. “This is really about, ‘How do we support school-age children if they are not in school buildings?’ ”

Schwinn declined to speak this week with Chalkbeat, but her chief of staff, Chelsea Crawford, said Thursday that the well-being “toolkit” was an optional resource to guide local decision-making. She said the department is “going back to the drawing board” on how to help vulnerable students.

Meanwhile, Daniel said the Government Operations Committee has yet to receive an explanation from Schwinn saying under what authority she was acting to create what amounted to a new state program. She was scheduled to appear this week before the panel but was pulled from the agenda when Lee’s office intervened. Schwinn is now expected to testify in late September before the House Education Committee.

It wasn’t Schwinn’s first reprieve from answering lawmakers’ questions.

In February, a House subcommittee responsible for overseeing the spending of taxpayer money blasted Schwinn’s department for awarding a no-bid contract for $1.25 million a year to manage a new school voucher program that has since been put on hold. The award, for twice the budgeted amount, also bypassed the legislature’s fiscal review subcommittee. Chairman Matthew Hill, a Republican from Jonesborough, ordered Schwinn to appear with documentation showing exactly how the department decided on the award, but the governor’s office talked him down and no public hearing occurred.

A month later, members of the Senate Education Committee grilled Schwinn during back-to-back meetings about the department’s relationships with several private companies over recent textbook adoptions that prompted a lawsuit by one publisher. They also had questions about discussions with vendors over millions of dollars’ worth of anticipated contracts under a major literacy proposal that the legislature hadn’t approved. Lawmakers dropped a third round of questions when they abruptly recessed in March as the pandemic reached Tennessee.

“The whole COVID thing got us off track with addressing a pattern under Commissioner Schwinn,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County and a member of the House Education Committee, which had similar concerns. “I think there’s a general sense that this commissioner does what this commissioner wants and is not consulting those who have been elected by the people of Tennessee to be their voice on education policy.”

Big job

Schwinn was named to Lee’s cabinet just days before his inauguration. She had started her career in a Baltimore classroom with Teach for America and founded a charter school in her hometown of Sacramento, California, where she still serves on the board of directors. She later had brief leadership stints with education departments in Delaware and Texas, the latter of which included a controversial no-bid $4.4 million special education contract award in which an audit found Schwinn failed to follow state policies.

Lee has stood by Schwinn from the outset, even as she raised eyebrows with her very first policy initiative, which failed. Last summer, she proposed quick changes to Tennessee’s pioneering model for holding its schools accountable, then retreated after the chairs of the legislature’s two education committees told her to slow down and engage more stakeholders.

Her department also has had a revolving door, with more than 250 departures — mostly from resignations — in the first nine months of her tenure. That 19% departure rate exceeded those of her two predecessors over comparable periods. (The department has not provided updated turnover numbers as of this year, despite Chalkbeat’s multiple requests since February for that information.)

White said the turnover has hurt Schwinn’s ability to work with the legislature.

House Education Chairman Mark White speaks to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2020.

“When you lose a lot of institutional knowledge and experience, you don’t have the staff there to give you the background that you need and things get out without a lot of vetting,” White said. “I think that’s what happened with this child well-being plan. It wasn’t workable. It added more layers of government when we have two other departments who handle those responsibilities.”

Rep. Vincent Dixie, a Nashville Democrat and freshman lawmaker, has a different perspective after two years of serving on the House Education Committee.

“I think Commissioner Schwinn is stuck in a hard place,” Dixie said. “Gov. Lee has not provided clear direction and leadership during the pandemic, and the commissioner has had to make decisions that she’s not communicated clearly with the legislature. I think that’s caused a lot of confusion, miscommunication, and mistrust, but ultimately it all starts at the top.”

One upshot: Lawmakers’ confidence in the education department has deteriorated, and they’re increasingly leaning on the Tennessee State Board of Education, an 11-member body of appointed citizens that works with staff led by Executive Director Sara Morrison. Because of the emerging public health crisis and its impact on schools, the legislature voted last March to give the board emergency authority to address policy questions that crop up while lawmakers are recessed.

Digging in

Asked about legislative discontent with Schwinn’s leadership, the governor’s office pointed to a four-page list of partnerships and resources provided by the education department to support students, educators, and districts during the pandemic.

“Commissioner Schwinn is leading the department through an unprecedented crisis and the most challenging school year in the history of our state,” said Gillum Ferguson, Lee’s press secretary, adding that Schwinn is equipped for the challenge.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn greets students at Clay County High School on October 20, 2019, as Gov. Bill Lee watches on.

She also has earned points with superintendents for frequent communication since COVID-19 arrived. Three times a week, Schwinn holds statewide conference calls to discuss everything from federal relief funding to waiver requests to questions about staffing and data sharing during the public health emergency.

“This kind of communication and opportunity to provide feedback is extremely important for superintendents and something we have appreciated from the Commissioner during these challenging times,” said Sara Bunch, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents.

Cepicky wants that same commitment to communication and collaboration with the General Assembly.

“I think a clearing of the air is in order,” he said about meetings set for Sept. 22-23 by the House Education Committee.

Sen. Dolores Gresham, retiring chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee after 12 years at the helm, said she also wants answers after fielding numerous calls and emails from concerned constituents. She’s calling for the commissioner to testify before lawmakers this fall.

“I support the House Education Committee and other legislators’ efforts to get further details or to investigate some of these concerns,” Gresham said.

Schwinn’s former chief of schools sues Tennessee for $1.5 million over firing

2020-08-07T17:33:11+00:00

A former member of Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s executive team is seeking $1.5 million in damages from the Tennessee Department of Education in a lawsuit that says she was fired after being hospitalized and taking a medical leave.

Katie Poulos’ lawsuit also charges that she was dismissed in retaliation for filing a complaint against the agency over Schwinn’s treatment of her following the medical emergency.

Poulos was chief schools officer when she was dismissed on Oct. 29, 2019, about seven weeks after returning from a six-week medical leave. She had been responsible for the state’s school improvement work, the school turnaround initiative known as the Achievement School District, and programs overseeing charter, private, and home schools across Tennessee.

In her lawsuit filed July 31 in Davidson County Chancery Court, Poulos charges that her dismissal violates Tennessee laws related to disabilities, whistleblowers, and rehabilitation. She is seeking a jury trial and a judgment that, in addition to $1.5 million in damages, includes back pay and damages for lost benefits.

Spokeswomen for the education department and the state attorney general’s office declined to comment Friday.

Poulos was part of an exodus of employees during Schwinn’s first nine months on the job. Last fall, Chalkbeat reported that approximately 250 people — almost a fifth of the department — had left their jobs, exceeding the departure rates under Schwinn’s two predecessors over comparable periods.

But unlike Poulos, most of the departing employees resigned and were not fired or retiring. Schwinn characterized the turnover as normal during a change in leadership and said the attrition has allowed her to shrink a bloated department and build a team committed to initiatives that will benefit all students.

Numerous other employees at all levels of responsibility have since exited the department, including Deputy Commissioner Amity Schuyler, Policy Director Aleah Guthrie, Communications Director Jennifer Johnson, and assistant commissioners Elizabeth Fiveash, Brian Stockton, and Felicia Everson-Tuggle.

Chalkbeat submitted a public records request on Feb. 20 seeking updated employee departure rates but has not received the data. Chief of Staff Chelsea Crawford responded on Feb. 28 that the education department had begun to “pull the data together.” She has not responded to multiple inquiries about the status of the request.

Poulos has a law degree from Vanderbilt University and had been an assistant education secretary in New Mexico when she joined Schwinn’s cabinet as an assistant commissioner in April 2019, two months after Schwinn left the Texas Education Agency to become newly elected Gov. Bill Lee’s education chief. Within a month, the commissioner promoted her to chief schools officer and promised a $14,000 annual salary increase to $144,000 — a raise Poulos said she never received.

Katie Poulos

In a separate complaint filed with the state human resources department and accompanying her lawsuit, Poulos said she fulfilled her duties and received only positive feedback leading up to her hospitalization in August 2019 during a “major depressive disorder episode.”

After being cleared by a medical specialist to work with some accommodations beginning in September, she returned to her Nashville office to find her security badge disabled and her nameplate removed. She said she was informed by David Donaldson, now chief of human capital, that she would retain her title and salary but had been stripped of her responsibilities. He said she would henceforth work as a “sole contributor” reporting to then-Chief District Officer Eve Carney instead of Schwinn.

Donaldson also told Poulos that she was the subject of two internal investigations, one alleging discrimination and the other related to her oversight of the Achievement School District. Poulos contends that both investigations were without merit and that the ASD probe was launched in retaliation for her medical condition and to pressure her to resign.

In early October, Poulos filed a complaint with the state alleging discrimination and retaliation based on her disability, according to the lawsuit. Less than a month later, she was notified that her employment had been terminated, with “expiration of executive service” listed as the stated reason.

Poulos also has a discrimination complaint pending with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

She now works as chief operating officer for RePublic Schools, a Nashville-based charter network.

First lady Melania Trump talks with Tennessee governor about protecting the health and well-being of children

2020-06-18T21:49:39+00:00

First lady Melania Trump spoke this week with Gov. Bill Lee and his education commissioner, Penny Schwinn, about Tennessee’s efforts to address the mental and physical health needs of children and families.

The call on Wednesday came as Lee’s administration on Thursday named 38 members to its long-promised COVID-19 Child Wellbeing Task Force. The group is tasked with making sure Tennessee students are safe, fed, and supported during extended school building closures caused by the public health crisis.

The conversation between Mrs. Trump and Tennessee’s Republican governor was arranged to discuss aspects of the state’s “whole child” initiative, including how the new task force will partner with local nonprofit agencies, churches, and other organizations to check on at-risk students.

As the nation’s first lady, Mrs. Trump has spoken on issues affecting children, even as President Donald Trump has backed policies separating immigrant children from their parents. Cutting child poverty rates also has not been a focus of the Trump administration, which has slashed an array of federal programs designed to help struggling families and children get by. Still, the first lady’s interest in whole child education and well-being spotlights an approach to schooling that seeks to make students not only healthy and safe but also engaged, supported, and challenged.

“The first lady spoke about the importance of ensuring the well-being of all children, including minority children who may face additional barriers to care,” said a statement from the White House, “and Governor Lee and Commissioner Schwinn described how Tennessee is working to reduce barriers and using COVID-19 testing sites as an additional way to connect communities in need with other critical social services.”

Schwinn made educating the “whole child” one of three priorities in Tennessee’s five-year strategic plan unveiled in November. Since the pandemic hit, she has continued to emphasize the role of students’ social and emotional health in academics, although funding for a $250 million student mental health trust fund was cut from the state budget as tax revenues plummeted this spring.

After the governor urged that buildings stay closed for the school year due to the coronavirus, the commissioner announced on April 15 that she would assemble a well-being task force. Asked why its rollout is coming with six weeks left before the planned start of the new school year, a spokeswoman said the impacts of closing school buildings on students’ wellbeing “will likely continue to emerge throughout the summer, into school reopening and beyond.”

Members of the task force, which is scheduled to meet for the first time next week, are:

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis
Naomi Asher, executive director, United Way of Anderson County
Janet Ayers, president, The Ayers Foundation
Guy Barnard, co-founder, Synchronous Health
Jared Bigham, senior adviser, Workforce and Rural Initiatives, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Molly Blankenship, executive director, Chattanooga 2.0
Sonji Branch, CEO, Communities in Schools-Memphis
Linda Brown, board president, The ARC
Mary Nell Bryan, president, Children’s Hospital Alliance of Tennessee
Juliana Ospina Cano, executive director, Conexión Américas
Nancy Dishner, president and CEO, Niswonger Foundation
Clark Flatt, president, The Jason Foundation
Alexis Gwin-Miller, co-chair, Education Equity Taskforce, Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope
Sen. Ferrell Haile, R-Gallatin
Chief Richard Hall, board president, Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police
Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga
Katie Harbison, president, Chambliss Center
Rep. Kirk Haston, R-Lobelville
Kim Henderson, president, Tennessee PTA
Melissa Hudson-Gant, CEO, Big Brothers/Big Sisters
Beth Goodner, CEO, Trust Point Hospital
Elaine Jackson, president, Rural Health Association of Tennessee
Cato Johnson, vice president, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare
David Jordan, president and CEO, Agape Memphis
Shawn Kimble, director, Lauderdale County Schools
Kati Lohr, co-founder, Synchronous Health
Amy Martin, president, Tennessee Cable and Broadband Association
Jerry Martin, president, YMCA of Memphis & the Mid-South
Johnny McDaniel, outgoing superintendent, Lawrence County Schools
Brian McLaughlin, Tennessee Teacher of the Year
Jeff Moorhouse, director, Kingsport City Schools
Chapple Osborne-Arnold, program specialist, Save the Children
Kristen Robinson, advocacy coordinator, Disability Rights Tennessee
Patrick Sheehy, president, Tennessee Business Roundtable
Flora Tydings, president, Tennessee Board of Regents
LeAndrea Ware, Tennessee Principal of the Year
Angela Webster, executive director, Association of Infant Mental Health in Tennessee
Samantha Wigand, CEO, Communities in Schools

Chief of Tennessee’s student mental health initiative demoted for verbally abusing employees

2020-05-12T19:18:34+00:00

The leader of Tennessee’s new “whole child” initiative that includes anti-bullying programs has been demoted and reassigned after an investigation found she verbally abused employees under her supervision at the Department of Education.

Katie Houghtlin has been stripped of her title as assistant commissioner, as well as her responsibilities managing personnel. She is now handling special projects for Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who recruited her from Texas where they previously worked together.

According to a summary of an investigation obtained by Chalkbeat, a state investigator found that Houghtlin “utilized verbal abuse, micromanagement, as well as harsh and inappropriate treatment” toward a staff member who later filed a complaint, as well as toward other employees.

The summary said Houghtlin’s behavior amounted to “abusive conduct.”

What is surprising about the findings is that Houghtlin’s behaviors were similar to abuse from which she was seeking to protect students.

Schwinn hired Houghtlin to build and manage a major initiative aimed at making students feel healthy, safe, engaged, and supported. The initiative included mental and physical health and citizenship and civics education as Gov. Bill Lee proposed an unprecedented $250 million trust fund to support the social and emotional needs of Tennessee’s 1 million public school students.

But in early March, the state Department of Human Resources opened an investigation into a complaint from one of Houghtlin’s employees who has since resigned. The investigator reported the findings to Schwinn on April 28 “for review and appropriate handling.”

“This department takes employee concerns seriously and all employee complaints should be heard, respected, and handled appropriately,” Schwinn said in a statement Tuesday when asked about the findings. “Every employee’s experience matters.”

Chelsea Crawford, the education department’s communications chief, said Houghtlin’s annual salary was cut from $140,004 to $135,000 and that she is now managing development of Tennessee’s COVID-19 Child Wellbeing Task Force and related online resources. She will be given “other projects as assigned,” Crawford said.

Houghtlin previously was director of elementary, middle, and state programs for the Texas Education Agency, where Schwinn was chief deputy commissioner of academics before being tapped to lead Tennessee’s education department beginning in February of 2019.

Like Schwinn, Houghtlin started her education career with Teach for America. She also worked for KIPP charter school network in Austin before joining the education department in Texas in 2018.

Her Tennessee job was expected to be high profile and with broad responsibilities after Schwinn made “whole child” education one of the department’s three strategic priorities for the next five years. Based on a statewide “listening tour” in 2019, Schwinn identified support for students’ mental health needs as the top concern that she heard from educators.

“We have to think differently. It is that urgent,” the commissioner said in November of students grappling with chronic family trauma like poverty, addiction, and abuse.

The proposed $250 million trust fund was the first big undertaking as the governor announced in February that he wanted to to support and grow mental health services for students in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools. But six weeks later, Lee cut the fund from his proposed budget when the coronavirus suddenly brought the economy to a halt.

The initiative is still viewed as critical, however, as schools prepare to reopen amid a public health crisis. Many returning students likely have experienced stress and trauma due to disruptions to their daily routine, parents who have lost jobs, and illness and death from the coronavirus.

Houghtlin’s responsibilities have been divided among existing staff, and her 42-member team was informed Monday of the changes.

Crawford said whole child has moved to Jean Luna, assistant commissioner of college, career, and technical education; physical health is now under Brian Stockton, assistant commissioner of district operations; and special populations is being managed by Eve Carney, chief districts and schools officer.

Tennessee’s nearly 1 million students will learn less because of coronavirus school closures. Here’s what that could mean.

2020-04-23T18:37:31+00:00

Tennessee’s decision to close its school buildings the rest of the academic year means students will miss at least 50 days of classroom instruction — almost a third of the school year — because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Add in summer break, and most students will miss up to 19 consecutive weeks of in-person instruction. And they’ll be even further behind in the dozen or so districts that canceled up to a week of school this winter because of the flu season or bad weather.

The learning loss will challenge the state’s 147 school systems to take unprecedented steps to help students catch up — a conversation that’s also happening across the nation as leaders consider logistics, funding, and whether there’s the political will to pursue widespread recovery once schools reopen.

Even before Gov. Bill Lee last week urged districts to close for the rest of the academic year, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said Tennessee students would need more classroom time next year because of the historic disruption caused by COVID-19. In a presentation on March 30 to superintendents, she suggested that school systems consider new afterschool programs, optional summer school, and other strategies to extend learning time.

Across the U.S., other options on the table include starting the school year earlier in the fall, shrinking curriculum to cover only core subjects, weaving this year’s lessons into next year’s, and even holding back more kids from being promoted.

Schwinn says Tennessee will need to have a coherent plan to support districts to make up for learning gaps. However, local school boards ultimately will make the call about any changes to their academic calendars.

“I haven’t heard of any district yet that plans to start the school year early, but I think that could definitely be part of the discussion,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state’s superintendents organization.

Kevin Woods, a school board member in Memphis, says he’s open to a calendar adjustment. “This conversation should start with a question and not an answer,” he said. “How do we best recover lost learning time?”

Key to the planning will be determining exactly how much student learning has been stunted by this year’s closures. In other words, if your third-grader had to finish this spring using remote learning methods, will they be at a fourth-grade level come fall, or will they be behind?

A bevy of studies show that losing time in school sets students back academically, especially those who come from low-income families, have disabilities, or are English language learners. And although Tennessee districts have scrambled to shift to online learning options, other research suggests Tennessee shouldn’t count on those programs to replace regular school.

To diagnose how much students know, schools have access to testing tools, and those local assessments will be more important than ever come fall. Teachers also will need to work closely together across grade levels to ensure that essential academic standards are covered.

“You’ve heard of summer slide. Well, this is COVID slide, and it’s going to be much more dramatic, especially in mathematics,” said Stephen L. Pruitt, president of the Southern Regional Education Board, an organization that seeks to improve public education across the South.

His group convened a task force this week to brainstorm best practices for reopening schools with the help of leaders from 16 states, including Tennessee’s Schwinn and Eve Carney, chief officer for districts and schools.

“There’s a thousand ideas out there, but we’re going to develop a playbook that will focus not only on when our schools come back, but how they come back,” said Pruitt, a former education commissioner for Kentucky.

Among topics the group is tackling are:

What’s the best way to diagnose and accelerate student learning?
What kind of social-emotional support will be needed for students who have experienced the most dramatic educational upheaval in the last century?
How should teachers be supported?
What are the financial impacts?

“Schools and districts are going to need to have hard conversations about money,” Pruitt said. “For years, educators have felt like they had to do more with less. Well, now there’s going to be a lot less! We can’t just hope that the money thing is going to work out. We have to have a strategy.”

Tennessee is expected to receive almost $260 million from the federal government to help schools respond to the coronavirus. Districts will get 90% of that amount, with allocations based on their number of students from families with low incomes. The money can go toward learning recovery programs, as well as mental health services, and support for students with special needs, among other things.

“I think recovery will be a multiyear process, and this funding will help,” said Joey Hassell, superintendent of Haywood County Schools, a rural district near Memphis that will get about $830,000 from the emergency package.

He expects his school system to look at possibly extending the school day, reconfiguring daily schedules, and broadening summer learning programs, especially for reading and math.

Equally important to academic recovery, said Hassell, will be assessing and addressing the mental health of students.

“Kids are resilient, but we’ve not experienced this type of mass loss before,” he said, citing athletic seasons abruptly ended, parents losing jobs in the economic slowdown, and illness and deaths due to the virus.

“I think we need to be prepared to spend some time talking — but more importantly listening — to help our students recover from what has been a traumatic experience for our world,” said Hassell.

In response to coronavirus pandemic, Tennessee governor slashes proposed school budget, retains vouchers

2020-03-18T19:02:20+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration unveiled a revised budget plan Wednesday that halves the proposed increase for teacher pay and cuts most of the education initiatives he announced before the new coronavirus created a public health emergency in Tennessee.

Gone is the $250 million trust fund that the Republican governor proposed to support and grow mental health services for students in the state’s highest-risk schools.

Also slashed is $68 million to overhaul literacy instruction, $25 million to bolster low-performing schools in the state-run Achievement School District, and $24 million to help charter schools with building costs.

Lee retained $38 million for education savings accounts, a controversial program set to start this fall to let eligible families in Memphis and Nashville use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.

The bare-bones spending plan is expected to move quickly through committees as the General Assembly seeks to pass a state budget — its only constitutional requirement — before recessing by the end of the week.

“At this point, we want to hold back on all large expenditures,” House Education Committee Chairman Mark White said Tuesday night as the budget was being reworked. “We may have to hunker down and use more funds to support the livelihood of Tennesseans affected by these emergencies.”

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally echoed that attitude on Wednesday. “This proposed budget ensures Tennessee will be in a posture to respond to the fallout and provide the essential services all Tennesseans count on,” he said in a statement.

Lee made K-12 education the centerpiece of the spending plan he unveiled Feb. 3 during his State of the State Address, including $650 million in new dollars — even more than the half-billion-dollar federal award Tennessee received in 2010 as part of the Race to the Top competition under President Barack Obama.

But in recent weeks, priorities have changed as Lee declared states of emergencies both for deadly tornadoes on March 4 and the ongoing spread of COVID-19.

The budget overhaul includes a new fund with $150 million to cover health and safety issues related to the pandemic, plus $350 million for the state’s “rainy day” fund for anticipated economic challenges due to business shutdowns.

“We are now likely embarking on a recession caused by this rare health pandemic,” Finance Commissioner Stuart McWhorter told the Senate finance committee on Wednesday. “Clearly, we are in a time of recovery, a time of preparedness, and a time of many unknowns.”

Asked by Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro whether extended school closures could affect if and how teachers will be paid, McWhorter said Lee’s administration is “sensitive and aware of that issue” as it faces “some really tough decisions.”

“We want to make sure that we’re treating people fairly and understand that teachers who are not in the classroom teaching [should not be] penalized for that,” McWhorter answered.

The new budget proposal, which makes about $400 million in reductions from Lee’s original plan, still sets aside $58.7 million more for teacher pay, half of what Lee proposed last month. That equates to an increase of 2%.

As for other cuts, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said it’s prudent now to take investments in reading, mental health, and school turnaround work off the table from her 5-year strategic plan unveiled in November.

“The Department of Education will remain laser focused on supporting districts, schools, teachers, and students during these challenging times,” Schwinn said in a statement.

The legislature plans to reconvene on June 1.

Teacher pay, literacy, and mental health are priorities in Tennessee governor’s proposed budget

2020-02-04T00:15:11+00:00

Vowing to make Tennessee the best state in America to be a teacher, Gov. Bill Lee proposed $117 million more for teacher salaries and a slew of new initiatives aimed at luring more high-quality candidates to the profession and equipping them for the classroom.

The Republican governor also proposed $68 million for a new literacy program to ground teachers in phonics-based reading instruction and $25 million to support school improvement work. And he wants to create a $250 million trust fund to support and grow mental health services for students in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools.

In all, Lee asked the legislature for nearly $650 million in new dollars for K-12 education to bring the state’s total investment to $5.8 billion — about 17% of his $40.8 billion spending plan.

“Make no mistake: We will do whatever it takes to make Tennessee the best state in America to be a student, and that means making Tennessee the best state in America to be a teacher,” Lee said in his second State of the State Address before a joint session of the General Assembly.

Public education was the centerpiece of Lee’s address after focusing last year on increasing education choices for families beyond traditional public schools through education savings accounts and a new state charter school commission.

“The vast majority of our students are educated in traditional public schools,” he said, “and the majority of our efforts must remain focused there.”

Even so, the governor asked for $24 million to help charter schools with facility costs and $14 million for education savings accounts, which allow families to use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.

This is the second straight year Lee is seeking to bolster teacher pay. His administration set aside more than $70 million for that purpose last year, building on the compensation work of his predecessor, Bill Haslam. If applied statewide, the proposed allocation would amount to a 4% raise, although districts can funnel the additional money toward benefits or hiring more teachers, as long as their average teacher salary is at or above the state’s average of $53,980. Currently, the national average is more than $60,000, and Tennessee trails about half of its eight border states in teacher compensation.

Lee’s proposals come as Tennessee is seeing fewer teacher candidates in its training programs. At the same time, one in three current teachers report that they would leave the profession if they found a higher-paying job.

Over the next two years, the governor wants to increase the base pay for those with a bachelor’s degree and no teaching experience from $36,000 “so that no Tennessee teacher is making less than $40,000 a year.”

“This change to the salary schedule will reward teachers across the state while also making the teaching profession even more appealing to young people considering the high call of becoming an educator,” he said.

To complement salary increases, Lee wants to set aside $8.5 million to launch the Governor’s Teaching Fellowship to provide college scholarships for 1,000 of “our best and brightest” students to train to become teachers. He also proposed grants to help districts create their own teacher recruitment programs and announced plans for a first-of-its-kind competition to develop the world’s best teacher preparation program in Tennessee.

As expected, the governor recommended starting a new approach to addressing the state’s abysmal literacy rate, where just over a third of third-graders are reading at or above grade level. The comprehensive program would set aside $20 million for high-quality instructional materials and more than $48 million to instruct teachers in the “science of reading.” The latest research says the starting point to learn to read is sound, not sight, and shows that phonics instruction is crucial to that process.

In one of the most highly anticipated parts of his budget for education, Lee unveiled his plan for addressing the rising mental health needs of Tennessee students — an issue that Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said was the top problem she heard about while touring schools last year.

Declaring that “help is on the way,” he said the creation of a $250 million endowment will lead to targeted investments in mental health services, which will be determined during a year-long needs assessment for each district.

“We will seek private donations to grow the fund over time and use the earnings to make investments for years to come,” Lee said.

In the meantime, he wants to allocate $3 million to expand services through the Department of Mental Health so that all 95 counties have at least one behavioral health liaison for their schools. Currently, that program covers only 36 counties.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn jumps to her feet as Lee announces new investments to K-12 education.

The Republican governor’s $600 million boost for public schools, while significant, fell significantly short of the level called for last week by the legislature’s Democratic leaders as the state continues to enjoy revenue surpluses. Minority party leaders said Tennessee needs a $1.5 billion boost to fully fund its constitutional obligations under the state’s funding formula for K-12 education. On Monday, they called Lee’s spending plan “an early and modest step on the long road to doing right by our schools.”

“It’s only a record-setting investment in public education because Tennessee has a really bad record when it comes to funding our schools,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville.

During his address, Lee took a swipe at naysayers who contend that he’s more interested in diverting money to private schools than in fully funding public schools.

“When you’re back home in your districts this year, if someone tells you we’re not supporting public education, they’re not telling the truth,” he said.

Lee’s plan drew generally positive reviews from education partners across the state.

“We are encouraged by his proposals to improve and heavily invest in literacy instruction, postsecondary attainment, improving educator pay and support, and innovative approaches to recruiting and preparing the teachers of tomorrow,” said President David Mansouri of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education.

Adam Lister, who heads Tennesseans for Student Success, called it “a bold agenda to continue to drive positive generational change.”

But the president of Tennessee’s largest teacher organization said the funding increase still falls woefully short for a state that ranks 45th in per-pupil spending, especially since Lee also wants to place another $50 million into cash reserves.

“Our public schools need $1.2 billion to get us to the Southeast average and out of the bottom 10 in funding. It is something our state can afford, and it’s the best investment our state can make,” said Beth Brown, a Grundy County teacher who heads the Tennessee Education Association.

She added that the extra money for teacher pay breaks down to about $1,450 per teacher, or approximately $28 a week.

‘Whole child’ among Tennessee’s new priorities amid concerns about student mental health

2019-11-06T00:26:27+00:00

Tennessee’s new blueprint for preparing its public school students for college and career reaffirms current priorities like emphasizing early literacy and elevating the teaching profession but adds one major new one: educating the “whole child.”

The approach refers not only to enhancing academic performance but also the social and emotional well-being of children that can lead to better academic performance. It’s one of three main priorities outlined in Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s long-promised strategic plan, dubbed “Best for All” and unveiled on Tuesday.

The other two priorities are providing quality academic programs and bolstering the education profession.

The plan sets Tennessee’s agenda for the next five years and will bring new attention to students’ social and emotional health in a state that has given more lip service than funding to that need in recent years. Schwinn had identified support for students’ mental health needs as the top concern that she heard from educators during her statewide “listening tour” after becoming Tennessee’s education chief in February.

The former Texas academic chief made her case for whole child education as she rolled out the education department’s plan to about 1,500 people attending Tennessee’s annual conference in Nashville for school administrators.

“We have to think differently. It is that urgent,” she said of students grappling with chronic family trauma like poverty, addiction, and abuse. “There are opportunities right now for us to say we’re going to take a national leadership position in this work.”

But exactly what that initiative will look like — and how much it will cost — remains to be seen.

Gov. Bill Lee is holding budget hearings this week with an eye toward next year’s spending plan, and there already are indications that raising teacher pay will be one priority for the 2020-21 fiscal year.

Schwinn’s strategic plan for a whole child initiative was short on details, but she listed the need for character and citizenship education, as frequently mentioned by the Republican governor. She also called for more family tools for special education to support students with disabilities.

“Part of it is going to come down to resources,” she explained later. “What we have rolled out today is to let people know directionally where we are going. I think that the scale and timeline will be aligned after we think about and learn more from the next legislative session.”

The strategic plan also was devoid of measurable goals, which were central to the department’s last strategic plan under which Tennessee has made steady progress since 2015. Schwinn said those will come later.

“For every single one of the initiatives that we rolled out today, we have very clear metrics” to measure how we’re progressing, she said of goals that will be released early next year as part of the governor’s statewide strategic plan.

Addressing the whole child could come with a big price tag, said Joey Hassell, superintendent of Haywood County Schools and a former state assistant commissioner over special populations and student support.

“If we’re going to address things like mental and behavioral health, Tennessee will have to provide training and it will have to provide a lot of funding,” Hassell told Chalkbeat. “We could start by significantly increasing our ratios of social workers, school counselors, and nurses.”

Those school-based helping professionals are generally the first responders to students experiencing a mental health crisis, but administrators say their districts don’t have nearly enough funds to staff adequately for those needs.

Nationally, whole child education is gaining traction. Tennessee is among states that use a traditional health model, as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control in 1987. That model focuses on needs such as physical education, a safe school climate, and access to health care.

A broader approach seeks not only to make students healthy and safe but also engaged, supported, and challenged, said Sean Slade, senior director of global outreach at ASCD, an Alexandria, Virginia-based nonprofit organization that promotes whole child education.

“There are initiatives happening all over the country,” said Slade, citing Illinois, Ohio, and Washington among national leaders.

Levels of investment can vary, he said, and training can be incorporated into existing professional development opportunities.

“One of the things we learned from the federal No Child Left Behind law is that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always work when you’re talking about different states, different schools, and different contexts,” Slade said.

You can learn more about the department’s “Best for All” plan here.

Penny Schwinn speaks to about 1,500 school administrators during the education department’s annual LEAD conference. (Photo by Marta W. Aldrich/Chalkbeat)

‘Be more than a teacher’: Memphis students share how they think school staff can help them cope with trauma

2019-10-04T00:59:10+00:00

When Se’Quoia Allmond’s cousin was shot and killed last year, she was “mad at the world,” she said. Though she felt cared for by her grieving family, she said she needed another outlet to convey her grief. She eventually saw a counselor and slowly began to express her emotions.

“Some people feel they should bottle up their emotions, but eventually you get to a breaking point,” she said. Counseling “relieved the stress. In counseling, they can’t judge you.”

She and other students at Whitehaven High School on Thursday shared their experiences of accessing mental health services and how school staff can help them cope with the effects of trauma.

The student reflections came after the entire high school heard from a panel of mental health professionals to kick off a daylong career expo.

Shelby County Schools has long operated a mental health center licensed by the state exclusively for its students, the only one of its kind in Tennessee. The district has recently funded more counselors, behavior specialists, and social workers to address emotional turmoil that may result from poverty or trauma.

That’s especially important for students in Shelby County, where a higher than average share of children have experienced two or more traumatic events, such as abuse, witnessing violence, or the death of a family member, according to the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health and the Data Resource Center for Child & Adolescent Health.

School counselor Traci Townsel and district spokesperson Tiffani Perry, both Whitehaven graduates, moderated the talk. Also on the panel were Timothy Terry, a therapist who got his start in alternative schools, and Rosiland Davis, who handles the district’s discipline and enrollment.

Across the front of the stage of the auditorium where the panel was held, large wooden letters spelled “mind, body, spirit” as staff donned “WEZ Strong” T-shirts — a nod to the neighborhood program for school improvement known as the Whitehaven Empowerment Zone.

Davis told students that bullying is “epidemic across the country” and said many of the student offenses that result in expulsion start as cyberbullying on social media.

Rosiland Davis, left, handles the district’s discipline and enrollment and Timothy Terry is a therapist who got his start in alternative schools. They spoke Thursday during a mental health panel event at Whitehaven High School.

Terry said he decided to enter the field of mental health when he was a teacher to help hyperaggressive students. And without strong relationships with adults, students are less likely to be open about their problems before they begin acting out.

“Parents do tell kids, ‘Hey, we don’t talk about what’s going on in our house. So, you be quiet about it,’ ” he said. “So, students come to school struggling with their sexual orientation, they don’t have anybody to talk to, they may have been abused — whatever’s going on in the home.”

Talking about the importance of student mental health, was “needed” and “eye-opening,” said senior Kanah Myers and junior Angeles Rosales.

“Sometimes some people don’t realize something is wrong,” Myers said. “But there’s always better help, professional help.”

She and other students named several teachers who have become like uncles and aunts to them. School staff “have to give you time to cry and adjust before we’re OK… Counselors don’t have time, but we have more teachers than counselors.”

To senior Keith Newsum, teachers are “really like teachers plus counselors.”

Rosales agreed, adding that those relationships are crucial when tragedy strikes, such as sexual abuse.

“There’s a stigma to talk about it,” she said of her network of Mexican family and friends. “No one wants to acknowledge those statistics.”

Allmond said her advice to teachers would be to “have open discussions… be more than a teacher to them, an outlet. Because you don’t know what they are going through.”

Here’s the No. 1 concern that Tennessee’s new education chief heard during her statewide listening tour

2019-06-08T01:29:30+00:00

After visiting classrooms in 30 school districts across the state, talking regularly with superintendents and other stakeholders, and reviewing more than 25,000 comments from teachers, Tennessee’s new education commissioner says one theme keeps emerging: the need to support the mental health needs of students.

“Without question, it’s the No. 1 piece of feedback I heard from every single group,” Penny Schwinn told Chalkbeat this week. “There is a growing concern about how we can support our children, not only academically but also behaviorally.”

Student mental health — an issue that has received a lot of lip service in Tennessee in recent years, but little in the way of funding — is one of 12 priorities identified in the state education department’s proposed five-year strategic plan, released Friday.

“We have an increasing number of children living in predominantly low-income communities and also coming from environments of addiction or abuse. We’re seeing upticks in suicide rates and bullying behaviors,” Schwinn said.

The commissioner unveiled the first draft of what she calls a “roadmap for the future,” after conferring this week with superintendents during regional gatherings in East and Middle Tennessee. She’ll meet with district leaders in West Tennessee later this month.

Schwinn also is inviting all Tennesseans to offer their input via an online survey that ends on June 21. “The voices of our students, our educators, and our superintendents are throughout this document, and we want even more feedback,” she said.

The final strategic plan is scheduled to be released in late July.

In addition to mental health, the proposed version lays out other priorities, including strengthening the state’s pipeline of teachers, developing and retaining school leaders, defining pathways to give students opportunities after graduating from high school, supporting rural schools, engaging with families, and STEAM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math.

When Schwinn left Texas in January to become Tennessee’s new education chief, she promised to “listen and learn” as she kicked off her tenure by touring three schools — one rural, one urban, and one suburban — on her very first day.

She’s since visited more than 175 classrooms statewide and says it’s important that the state’s next strategic plan is rooted in ground-level conversations in school communities, not top-down edicts from her department.

“Commissioner Schwinn has been very open and willing to listen in developing this proposal,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents group. “Right now, I’d give her two thumbs up.”

In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Schwinn identified classrooms, educators, schools, and community as the four main pillars that will set the plan’s parameters. Girding those are academic standards, testing, accountability, and teacher evaluations — four policy strategies that grew out of Tennessee’s overhaul of K-12 education as part of its federal Race to the Top award in 2010.

Those four policies — all of which have generated controversy at one time or another — are “foundational,” Schwinn told reporters, calling them “not something that’s up for discussion.”

But other strategies and needs are on the table.

For school improvement work, the draft calls for “restructuring school turnaround so that there is more shared ownership between the state and local districts.” That suggests that Tennessee could choose to rely less on the state-run Achievement School District — its most intensive model in which the state has taken over low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville and converted them to charter schools — and more on “Partnership Zones,” a collaborative state-district approach that just finished its first year in Chattanooga.

The draft also suggests that rural schools will get more attention under the administration of Gov. Bill Lee, a farmer and businessman who attended public schools in rural Williamson County and has pledged to make additional investments in the state’s more remote areas.

“We have to take a really strong position around how we support educators in those communities,” Schwinn said.

READ: Rural schools overlooked amid Tennessee’s rural focus group, says equity group

The need to beef up student mental health services has been a topic of conversation in Tennessee, especially since 2018 when one former student’s shooting spree killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida. In response, then-Gov. Bill Haslam convened a task force on school safety and urged local districts to explore ways to step up support for students’ emotional needs. However, most of the $25 million in extra funding approved by legislators that year went to improving school security, including upgrades to door locks, entryways, and screening equipment.

More than a year later, Schwinn said it’s becoming more apparent that — whether it’s called mental health or the “whole child” approach — schools need to do more to help their students feel healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged in order to achieve long-term success.

She recounted a powerful conversation with one student in Robertson County, north of Nashville, who told her: “What I need in my school is to have a buddy to eat lunch with in the cafeteria every day and an adult I can go to when I have a problem. Those would make all the difference.”

“Too many of our kids can’t say they have both of those things, and that’s something we have to take seriously,” Schwinn said. “We’ve got to find ways to better support them as they develop as people.”

Below, you can read the first draft of the strategic plan: