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.

Wednesday the Tennessee Department of Education announced over $800,000 in grant funding to 34 school districts throughout the state. These dollars will be used for middle school career and technical education (CTE), school-based enterprise projects at the high school level and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.The department awarded  Middle School STEM Start-Up & Expansion Grants to 52 schools and 29 are receiving Middle School CTE Start-Up and Expansion grants. Seven schools will receive High School School-Based Enterprise grant funding. 

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.

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) announced another sign of education recovery from the pandemic this week.The department says ACT participation among public school students is now back to pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, participation across the state sunk to 96%, but it has now risen to 98%. The 2018-19 graduating class is the last to have a participation rate that high.

A new report by the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) found fewer Tennessee teenagers are taking drivers education classes in high school.According to the report, 60 school districts in Tennessee received state funding to provide more than 12,000 students with driver education classes last school year. That’s a noticeable decline from just four years ago when 65 districts received funding to provide the class to 15,000 students.

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.

Last week’s Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board of Education meeting provided yet another example of how differently the state’s two largest school districts choose to work with their public charter schools.MSCS school board members unanimously rejected a proposal to shut down four public charter schools that have been designated as Priority Schools.  Arrow Academy of Excellence, Memphis Business Academy Hickory Hill Middle School, KIPP Memphis Academy Middle, and KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle all made the Priority Schools List for the first time this year.

By any measure, Chattanooga Preparatory School’s first high school basketball season was a slam dunk success.The newly established public charter school entered the 2020/2021 season with only a 9th grade class, so the varsity boys team consisted solely of freshmen. The Sentinels still went 10 and 5 on the year, coming one game shy of qualifying for the 8-team state tournament.That record included a 5 and 1 district result for the only public charter school in Tennessee’s Division I Class 1A Region 3 District 5. The Sentinels only district loss came to Polk County rival Copper Basin. The two teams split their season series and then faced off in the district championship game where Copper Basin won a nail-bitter by just two points.It would appear one season of facing the Sentinels was more than enough for Copper Basin.During last month’s Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) annual regional meetings, the small Polk County school proposed moving all public charter schools out of the Division I that they are currently in with traditional public schools. Under the proposal, public charter school athletes would instead compete in Division II with private schools.

Beverly Davis, president of the Whitehaven Empowerment Zone PTSO, believes the next superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools should possess one main asset: Bluff City roots.Davis, who is also a member of the MSCS board’s superintendent search advisory committee, addressed a group of about 60 who gathered at Healing Cathedral Christian Church in Whitehaven Wednesday to share their thoughts on who should succeed Joris Ray.

Tennessee’s private school voucher law, which now only affects districts and some students in Memphis and Nashville, would widen to include Hamilton County Schools under new legislation filed this week.Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican, wants the legislature to expand the eligibility criteria for the education savings account program to include students in districts with at least five of the state’s lowest-performing schools, as identified in the last three “priority school” cycles since 2015.

Districts throughout Tennessee and the nation are working to help students recover from learning losses spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. But another respiratory illness is threatening to undermine that work.Last month, flu outbreaks sparked school closures in at least 10 districts. And while the spread of flu hasn’t prompted closures in any Shelby County schools, the area isn’t immune to the threat.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board on Thursday announced a sped-up timeline for its superintendent search and launched a website to give the public more visibility into the process.The new timeline calls for the board to name the next leader of Tennessee’s largest school district by April 2023 — several months sooner than initially proposed last month. The new superintendent would start between May and July, at least a month before the start of the 2023-24 school year.

K-12 teacher shortages — one of the most disputed questions in education policy today — are an undeniable reality in some communities, a newly released study indicates. But they are also a hyper-local phenomenon, the authors write, with fully staffed schools existing in close proximity to those that struggle to hire and retain teachers.The paper, circulated Thursday through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, uses a combination of survey responses and statewide administrative records from Tennessee to create a framework for identifying how and where teacher shortages emerge.

There had been a previous state championship, and some national acclaim.Yet as Tennessee High School’s legendary squad entered the 1972 football season, the Vikings’ players approached their gauntlet with a twofold mindset: Play for the man on each side of you and “show them we can play a little football up here in Bristol.”Mission accomplished, in a superlative standard that has stood the test of time five decades henceforth.

The Tennessee Department of Education, in partnership with the Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation, announced a free reading opportunity for students and families Wednesday. This winter, parents will have the opportunity to order free, at-home reading resources for children in grades K-2.Based on the child’s age, they will receive an At-Home Decodable Book Series. Decodable books are sequenced to include words familiar with the reader and allow the reader to practice word sounds, phonics and decoding at their grade level. These books allow families to work with their students to practice word sounds and advance the student’s reading skills.

Two charter schools that have been at odds with Memphis-Shelby County Schools administrators won approval from the school board for their requests to expand.In a pair of 8-0 votes at a specially called meeting, the board allowed Memphis STEM Academy, a K-5 charter school in Frayser, to increase its enrollment, and gave Believe Memphis Academy, a South Memphis college preparatory charter school, permission to add four grade levels beyond its current 4-8.

Tennessee is taking steps to ensure that private schools get the opportunity to receive nearly $60 million in unused federal COVID relief funds set aside for them in 2021.But the state is considering loosening some of the strings that the federal government initially attached to those funds. In particular, under several options outlined Monday by Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, private schools wouldn’t necessarily have to serve a “significant” share of students from low-income families to be eligible for aid, as the Biden administration had required.