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.

A Tennessee bill would allow every public school teacher in the state to have $500 to spend on classroom supplies.The bill would be an adjustment on the $200 initially stipulated for each teacher’s use in the new Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement funding formula, set to begin in the 2023-24 school year.

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.

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.