The Williamson County Schools (WCS) Board of Education unanimously approved new plans proposed Monday by Superintendent Jason Golden to address budget concerns relating to teacher pay and bullying within the district.¶
According to Golden’s strategic goals for 2025, the Middle Tennessee school district will place more focus on programming geared toward educating students, WCS team members, and families about bullying, harassment, and “non-discrimination expectations to ensure appropriate reporting.” As part of that plan unveiled at Monday’s board meeting, WCS team members will receive additional training to identify and report bullying, harassment, and discrimination to provide “appropriate and uniform discipline.”¶
In addition, Williamson County Schools leaders will establish a “district task force” on student behavior and bullying, which will review bullying data in the district and examine current prevention and response practices to formulate new recommendations for the 2025-26 school year. Golden said he aims for the district to develop a new action plan by Spring 2025. ¶
“There's value in all of us spending some time building each other up and supporting each other,” Golden said.¶
Golden said his strategic plan also calls on the district to explore budget revisions relating to teacher pay, as Williamson County Schools students and community members continue to urge the board to support raises for arts and theater teachers, among others.¶
According to the plan, the district will “improve or develop competitive compensation to recruit the highest quality candidates for all roles.” It added that district leaders will present a proposed pay increase within available funding to improve teacher pay and supplements, with particular focus on hard-to-fill positions. Board member Dan Cash commended Golden for making this a point of focus moving forward.¶
“I think you've learned from this group that there's a lot of money out there. We just got to get out there and seek it, and raise the money [to] get these art teachers and [others] paid,” he said.¶
Relating to funding, Golden said his goals will include identifying opportunities to access alternative funding sources for WCS academic, arts, and athletic programming, through collaborative efforts and support from other stakeholders such as parent-teacher organizations, booster clubs, local businesses, philanthropists, and private individuals.¶
“I think we've got an opportunity to get some stakeholders involved to see where our community is,” he said. “We've got some incredible support focused on students, and we'll see what we can do to work on building on that.”¶
For more information on Golden’s strategic goals and other board discussion items, visit www.wcs.edu.¶
