Members of the House K-12 Subcommittee turned their focus to school safety Wednesday by voting on a series of bills designed to prevent future school shootings, including prior legislation from last year’s Special Session on Public Safety.One that received considerable attention is a bill to update safety measures listed in the Safe Schools Act of 2023, by requiring an improved standard of window film or security glass on each exterior door and any glass adjoining an exterior door. This change would include replacing the quarter-inch thick windows in schools with thicker and stronger glass that would be considered bullet-resistant.

Viktor Nemykin heads up a chemistry department that’s ranked second in the world for its polymer program and boasts the third largest number of undergraduate credit hours on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus.As solid as the department’s foundation is academically, it couldn’t be standing on shakier ground physically.The department operates out of a 113 thousand square foot Buehler Hall that’s slowing sliding off the hill it sets on.

University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd told members of the Senate Education Committee that there are three myths tied to higher education.Those myths are that no one is going to college, it’s unaffordable, and debt is inevitable.Boyd said the UT College System has seen total enrollment grow by 7 thousand students over the last five years and it’s planning to increase enrollment from 59 thousand students to 71 thousand students by the year 2030. 

Walter Blanks Jr. says his experience with public schools growing up in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio was hard.Blanks says he struggled to learn how to read and was bullied to the extent his mother feared for his safety.  That changed when his family took advantage of a school choice program that allowed Blanks to attend a private school.

Two years ago, Linton Beck unexpectedly suffered a cardiac arrest in his chemistry class.The Station Camp High School senior is alive today and able to talk about his experience thanks to the quick work of school staff and their training.Beck says a school nurse and teachers responded within minutes to perform CPR and a school resource officer restarted his heart with an automated external defibrillator (AED).

The Tennessee State Board of Education is joining the list of government entities that have expressed an interest in changing the state’s new Third-Grade Retention Law.The board unanimously approved a resolution from board member Ryan Holt on Monday asking state lawmakers to reconsider the law and move back the grades where interventions take place to as early as kindergarten.

Members of the House Higher Education Subcommittee unanimously shot down a bill Monday that would establish prohibitions for public universities and other public institutions of higher education regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.Before the vote, bill sponsor Representative John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, told committee members that DEI promotes discrimination. Ragan said his bill is designed to be colorblind and sex neutral.

When Governor Bill Lee announced his Education Freedom Scholarship Act last year, he made it a point to say the Tennessee General Assembly would work some out critical details like whether participating students will have to take state assessments.That decision has led to three different versions of the Governor’s basic proposal to let up to 20 thousand families use public dollars to attend private school. That question about state assessments is a key difference in each.

Tennessee teachers could receive help with childcare under legislation that advanced from a key House committee Wednesday.Representative Scott Cepicky’s, R-Culleoka, bill would authorize school districts and public charter schools to reimburse teachers 66 percent of their monthly childcare expenses.

A much talked about bill that would ban the display of pride flags in Tennessee public schools passed the full House on Monday following another heated debate.The 70-24 vote went mostly along party lines with every present Democrat opposing the bill and all but two Republicans voting to support it.Representative Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, proposed the bill to ensure only certain types of flags are displayed in schools. Bulso said he brought the legislation to the Tennessee General Assembly after parents and a school board member in his district came to him about the issue.

State Representative Justin Jones, D-Nashville, represents a district that touches four school clusters with some of the highest performing public charter schools in Nashville.Those charters in east and southeast Nashville include a dozen that outscored the average grade district run public schools received in their cluster on the state’s School Letter Grades assessment. The remaining public charter schools scored equal to the cluster average and 40 percent of the Reward schools in these four clusters are charters.

Tennessee Democrats continued their push for the resignation of Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds Monday, announcing a bill that would allow lawmakers to impeach her for failing to met the necessary qualifications.Representative Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, and Senator Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, are co-sponsoring a bill that would require a Commissioner of Education in Tennessee to reside in the state and provide a process for the legislature to impeach a commissioner for cause.

Three school voucher proposals now before Tennessee lawmakers would create a new statewide program that eventually could open eligibility to all K-12 students, regardless of family income.But the similarities end there.The latest version, filed Monday by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, of Portland, has no testing requirements for students who accept public funding to attend private schools. Gov. Bill Lee’s version doesn’t either, but Senate leaders say that approach is a non-starter.

A bill that would ban pride flags in Tennessee classrooms narrowly managed to advance on a 5-4 vote in the Senate Education Committee Wednesday afternoon following questions from members of both political parties about its potential consequences.Senator Joey HensleySenator Joey Hensley’s, R-Hohenwald, bill would only allow certain flags to be displayed in the classroom. The bill’s House counterpart sponsored by Representative Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, advanced through key House committees and faces a vote on the House floor next week.

A bill that would change the age cutoff date for children enrolling in enrolling in kindergarten failed to advance out of the House K-12 Subcommittee Tuesday.Representative Jody Barrett, R-Dickson, says he initially sponsored the bill following a request from a director of schools in his district who wanted to change the cutoff date for when a child must be five years old to start kindergarten.

Proposed legislation that requires firearm safety to be taught in schools advanced from the House Education Instruction Committee Tuesday morning.Representative Chris Todd, R-Madison County, says he created the bill with the hope that it would save lives by teaching kids what to do when they encounter a firearm.“It’s certainly not about how to handle a firearm or proper techniques or anything like that. This is literally going to be more on the lines of ‘if you see a gun, tell an adult.’ And that’s the general concept that I think all of these type courses are going to have,” said Todd. “I think this is definitely going to save some lives.”

A key House committee voted 12 to 4 to advance a controversial bill that would effectively ban pride flags in Tennessee classrooms Wednesday. That vote followed a vocal debate that even involved questions of whether the bill would allow Nazi and Confederate flags in classrooms.Representative Gino Bulso’s, R-Brentwood, says he’s proposing the bill to ensure children aren’t exposed to values in the classroom that their parents oppose.“(This bill) really addresses one issue, which is whether parents should be the ones who decide what values their children are exposed to when they go to school. Prior to filing this bill, I received complaints from parents in my county and other counties about the presence of different political flags in classrooms across the state,” said Bulso.

Knox County School Board members failed to pass a resolution Thursday night that would have denounced Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act. The tie 4 to 4 vote followed a debate from the board’s work session earlier in the week when board member Jennifer Owens proposed the resolution.

Representative Gino Bulso’s, R-Brentwood, bill that would prohibit pride flags in classrooms advanced from a House Subcommittee Tuesday, but not without vocal opposition from Representative Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville.That bill would only allow the Tennessee State Flag, the United States Flag, and other flags representing a country or political subdivision to be displayed. Representative McKenzie called the bill dangerous.

Representative Ed Butler, R-Rickman, is proposing a change to help keep high schoolers enrolled in technical college courses on track after they graduate.Butler presented a bill to the House Higher Education Subcommittee Monday afternoon that would give students taking dual enrollment in high school priority if there’s a waitlist for slots at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) they want to attend after graduation.Representative Butler told the subcommittee that he got the idea for this bill from his daughter.