Interim superintendent Tutonial “Toni” Williams is no longer a contender to lead Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) on a permanent basis.At Tuesday evening’s school board meeting members approved a contract for Williams to continue serving as interim superintendent through August 29, with the key stipulation that she devote full-time attention to her duties of interim superintendent and not seek the position permanently.

Special needs students in Rutherford County may get to live out their dreams of becoming superheroes in the near future.At Thursday’s Rutherford County School Board meeting, The Every Kid Is A Hero Foundation presented board members with a proposal to give special needs students in the district a chance to become heroes in a comic.“What we have done, we’ve become a foundation called The Every Kid Is A Hero Foundation,” said foundation representative Lee Colvin. “Within this county’s school system, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to come in and we’re trying to work with the special needs high school programs.”

Members of the Metro Nashville Public Schools Board of Education plan to consider using Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding approved for COVID expenses, to address an inequality in pay raises for teachers.Last week Metro Council approved a 6 percent cost of living (COLA) raise for Metro employees but the budget only included a 4 percent COLA for school district employees.

Shelby County Commissioners voted in favor of building two new high schools and providing a substantial raise to teachers Monday night.Both are key educational priorities in the county’s 2023/2024 budget that could receive final approval Wednesday morning.The capital spending plan approved by commissioners includes $65 million for building improvements and the construction of high schools in Frayser and Cordova. The backing from commissioners follows last month’s event in Frayser where students held a press conference to rally support for the new school.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Tennessee’s largest district, received almost $776 million in federal relief funds to help students recover from the pandemic — more than any other school system in the state.But anyone interested in learning how the district spent that hefty sum might be left scratching their heads.

Mentoring program tnAchieves opened its 2024 mentor application with a goal to recruit a total of 9,000 mentors.“In 2024, we're ready to confront challenges created by the pandemic and to create opportunities for students. We can't do this alone, though. Mentors are needed across the state to support and encourage local students as we work to reverse negative enrollment trends. tnAchieves stands ready to serve students, but we can't do it without your help!” wrote tnAchieves on their application page.

The path that Pathways in Education (PIE) takes its name from began decades ago with the challenges organization founder John Hall faced when he was in school.Hall has a learning disability and couldn’t read until the age of 13. 

The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) says the impact COVID-19 has had on children in Tennessee doesn’t end with declining test scores.OREA released an updated report Thursday that found rising chronic absenteeism has been one of the biggest challenges since Tennessee schools re-opened post-lockdown

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) announced current Jackson County Schools Superintendent Kristy Brown will take over as the department’s new Chief Academic Officer on July 15.

Kalen Sy learned the value of education at an early age.His grandmother and mother repeatedly stressed the importance of education, and it charted a path forward.“I was like, 'I'm gonna go to college, I'm (going to) successfully complete college, get something and obtain something out of it other than just a piece of paper and a handshake.' I wanted to get something out of it. So, yes, my mom, single parent mom, she really wanted my brother and (me) to just be something great. She always wanted us to value education and soak up education and anything that we were doing in a public school. Because like my grandma always told me, she said, after high school you have to pay for every little thing, even a pencil is not free,” said Sy.

Metro Council approved a 6 percent cost of living increase for Metro Nashville employees Tuesday night, but teachers won’t be receiving the same amount. The council’s $3 billion substitute budget only included the 4 percent cost of living raise for Metro Nashville Public School employees that Mayor John Cooper proposed last month.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools paid a lawn care vendor more than its contract allowed, lost some lawn equipment to theft, and paid an employee for days they didn’t work.The lapses surfaced in a regular independent financial audit of the district for the 2021-22 school year and were detailed in a report shared with state officials in January.

Tennessee has begun its process of accepting applications for $194 million in school safety grants after Gov. Bill Lee signed a $230 million school security bill in early May.The largest portion of the grants are $140 million toward full-time school resource officers at Tennessee schools. The grants will pay up to $75,000 a year for an officer. Local law enforcement agencies are asked to apply for the grants, which will be reviewed by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security on a rolling basis.

Members of the Williamson County Schools Board of Education voted 8 to 2 to keep five challenged books on the shelves Monday night.Those books include Speak, Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The books contain a common theme of the main characters being outcasts based on their own personal experiences and earlier this year, a district committee recommended against removing them from Williamson County School libraries.“A book that, in my opinion, makes a teenager kind of dive into and recognize that everybody is different and people at based upon their own personal experiences is a valuable piece of literature that’s a whole lot deeper than just the subtext or the specific sexual content, or bullying content, or drug content that’s being called out here,” said board member Eliot Mitchell.

This month school districts across the state are continuing a learning strategy that saw success during the pandemic.Summer learning camps played a valuable role in 2021 and in 2022 helping Tennessee students regain ground they lost during virtual learning. Education leaders considered the camps such a success, the Tennessee General Assembly made them permanent with legislation this year.

Memphis-Shelby County School Board members voted in a major salary increase for teachers in the district’s 2023/2024 proposed budget.Under the spending plan, the district would increase the starting base pay from $42,000 to $47,000 for new teachers. This increase comes from an additional $27.3 million investment in teacher salaries and a new teacher salary schedule.

When Wyatt Bassow and Ava Buxton missed classes one morning this spring to see democracy in action in Tennessee, they witnessed history that they acknowledged probably wouldn’t be fully taught at their high school less than a mile away.

The Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) announced Thursday that the state is seeing the largest increase in students going straight from high school to college since the Tennessee Promise launched in 2015.According to the THEC report, Tennessee’s statewide college-going rate for the class of 2022 is 54.3 percent, an increase of 1.5 percent from the year prior. 

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) says it has approved the appeals of more than 81 percent of students who filed one hoping to avoid retention under the new Third-Grade Retention Law.TDOE opened the appeal process May 30 and the department has received appeals from 8,206 students since then. 

Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Director Dr. Adrienne Battle unveiled the district’s new plan to keep students safe during Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.Battle says that plan involves strong collaboration with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to help implement safety protocols and prepare faculty, staff, and students for different scenarios.“As we know, the impetus for this current discussion was a tragic shooting that took place in our community at the Covenant School which took the lives of three young children, three administrators, and the shooter. My heart goes out to the victims’ families, and we stand with the Covenant community in making sure they have the tools and the resources needed for the long road to recovery,” said Battle.