Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has opened the optional schools application process for the 2023-24 school year.This process provides families and parents with the convenience of being able to select from over 100 open enrollment school options within the district. That includes many public charter schools that are among the highest performing in the district.

Memphis-Shelby County School Board members received a clearer picture of the priorities parents want the next superintendent to have Wednesday night and two of the biggest are a focus on diversity and the ability to create change.The board held the second of three public input sessions this month to give parents and community members a chance to weigh in on the search that began when former Superintendent Joris Ray resigned last August.

The search for a new superintendent to lead Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) is seeing disagreement over whether the ideal candidate is already on the job.At last Thursday’s community input session on the superintendent search, some pushed for the permanent instatement of interim superintendent, Tutonial “Toni” Williams, rather than continue the nationwide search.

A new report from the State Comptroller’s Office found nearly $60 thousand in inappropriate fuel card spending by employees of the Cheatham County School District transportation department.Auditors didn’t specify how the cards were misspent or when the alleged spending occurred, but they do believe the misuse occurred because of deficient policies.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board is poised to choose a firm by the end of the month to lead its national search for a new superintendent.MSCS received applications from four search firms ahead of the board’s Dec. 21 deadline, Kenneth Walker, the district’s general counsel and chief legal officer, told board members during committee meetings Tuesday afternoon.

Nashville State Community College has partnered with BGSF to create the Darrell Freeman Fellowship, an opportunity for students pursuing careers in Information Technology.Through this partnership students who graduate with an Associate of Applied Science degree in programming, networking, cyber security and data analytics will be provided additional certification training and other resources.

A state audit revealed that Dyer County Schools wrongfully used over $63,000 from a COVID-19 grant to award bonuses to administrative staff without proper approval or documentation.

Plaintiffs behind two lawsuits challenging Tennessee’s private school voucher law plan to appeal a judicial panel’s dismissal of their remaining legal claims.Metropolitan Nashville and Shelby County governments, which jointly challenged the 2019 law that applies only to their counties, notified the Tennessee Court of Appeals late last month that they will appeal the latest ruling. Attorneys representing parents and taxpayers in a second lawsuit submitted a separate notice of appeal.

Metro Nashville Public Schools is celebrating ten years of the Community Achieves initiative and its work to positively impact students.Founded in 2012 with 9 schools, Community Achieves has grown to serve 58 schools and nearly 35,000 students. The initiative is led by the district’s Support Services Department to connect students and families to various opportunities and community resources.

When schools closed abruptly in 2020, derailing education for students across Memphis and the country, Jairia Cathey, a teacher at Evans Elementary, scrambled to provide virtual learning any way she could think of.Plummeting enrollment in MSCS early childhood programs during the pandemic left just a handful of students in her class. When classrooms reopened in the spring, the families of Cathey’s four students decided to keep them learning remotely. And by the time students returned to her classroom after 18 months of distance learning, the few students who came arrived with a severely disrupted preschool experience or having attended no school at all, at risk of falling behind academically, socially, and emotionally.

Tennessee’s largest school district is asking parents to play a larger role in the process of picking its next leader.The Memphis-Shelby County School Board is encouraging parents to take a five-minute survey at MSCSSuperSearch.com and provide their thoughts on what qualifications the next MSCS Superintendent needs to have.

School districts across the state received 23 letters of intent this month for applications to open new public charter schools next year. That’s the first step potential charter operators must take before submitting their formal application by February 1, 2023.The letters of intent include proposed schools in four counties that do not currently have public charter schools and they’re coming from both existing charter operators in Tennessee and those who were rejected this year.

The job wasn’t even one for which he had applied, and after three years and 13 wins, it hardly seemed destined to result in one of the most remarkable coaching journeys in the history of Tennessee high school athletics – or anywhere, for that matter.Now, nearly four decades and more than 800 wins later, Jody Wright remains an institutional icon at Knoxville’s Fulton High School, where he has guided the Falcons to a trio of state basketball championships, five runner-up finishes and more than 10 additional trips.He’s also the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association’s Distinguished Service Award winner for December.

The decade-old dispute between Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the Germantown Municipal School District ended Thursday as the two districts’ school boards signed off on a deal that allows Germantown to take over two schools currently operated by MSCS.The resolution, spurred by a new state law, means that thousands of MSCS students who attend the Germantown Elementary, Middle and High schools — known collectively as the “three G’s” — will be able to remain in those schools as the buildings begin a transition to the Germantown district’s control.

The Shelby County Commission Wednesday moved closer to resolving a decade-old dispute over control of three schools in Germantown, approving a deal that would, among other things, provide funding for a new high school in Cordova.But their vote wasn’t a slam dunk. Five commissioners voted against the pact, some of them citing the cost to county taxpayers, and others objecting to the state law that put the future of the Germantown schools and their students in limbo.

City leaders in Germantown unanimously backed an agreement Monday that would allow its municipal school district to take over two schools currently operated by Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the first in a series of votes needed to settle a long-running dispute between the two districts.If the Shelby County Commission votes for the deal Wednesday, and MSCS and the Germantown Municipal School District sign off on it Thursday, Germantown would pay MSCS $5 million for Germantown Elementary and Middle schools, which are both located in the Memphis suburb.