Tennessee students may soon be able to use their HOPE Scholarship to obtain a master’s or other advanced degree.Legislation filed earlier this month by State Representative William Lamberth and State Senator Bo Watson would open the scholarship program to students who’ve completed their first baccalaureate degree early.

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.

Newly elected Republican Representatives William Slater and Kevin Raper don’t even have their pictures posted yet on the Tennessee General Assembly website, but both are now occupying leadership positions in key House Committees.Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton appointed Slater as the Vice-Chair of the House Education Administration Committee Thursday and assigned Raper to be the House Education Instruction Committee Vice-Chair.

State Senator Dawn White was always going to make an impact on education. The Murfreesboro legislator says even as a young child growing up in Eagleville Tennessee, she was attracted to teaching. “I mean my mother will tell you the stories of when my sister and I would play when we were little kids, I would always be the teacher so it’s just something that I always had a passion for and a heart for,” said Sen. White. 

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.

Perhaps no issue was more impactful in last year’s legislative session than education. The 112th General Assembly ended with the historic passage of the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) Act that completely overhauled the way public schools are funded in Tennessee.The 113th General Assembly that begins at noon today likely won’t pass legislation as sweeping, but that doesn’t mean legislators won’t have an opportunity to make an impact on K-12 education.

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.

As instructional leaders in our district, we are fortunate to spend lots of time in classrooms. Cathy loves to share the story of popping in on one fourth-grade lesson to observe student writing. The room was cool, dim and quiet; the only sound was the scratch of pencils on paper as students brainstormed ideas for the poems they were going to write, a culminating task to wrap up an EL Education module on poetry. The teacher circulated as students pondered topics that were especially important to them — topics that were worthy of an entire poem.One word at the center of a student’s brainstorm was particularly striking: “education.”

The state of education is dire, and parents are seeking options. The achievement gap across the state in every subject, with a 23% spread between black and white students and a 19% gap between Hispanic and white students, is widening.In Knox County, just 10% of black students and 16% of Hispanic students are proficient in 7th grade math. Only 23% of black students and 27% of Hispanic students are proficient in ELA in 4th grade in Knox County. The alarms should sound off at the need for better education options for minority students.

When the Tennessee General Assembly returns to Nashville next Tuesday, Representative William Slater will be among 19 new members in the State House.Slater won the Republican primary for House District 35 last August and then ran unopposed in November to represent Trousdale County and part of Sumner County.  He’s succeeding former Representative Jerry Sexton who decided not to seek another term in office.

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.

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.