The House Government Operations Committee advanced Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act Monday with a positive recommendation following a sometimes testy debate on accountability and costs.The legislation would expand on the concept of the existing Education Savings Account (ESA) pilot program in Davidson, Shelby, and Hamilton counties to allow families across the state to send their children to private school with taxpayer dollars.

A new poll from the National Parents Union (NPU) found a growing concern for the negative effects of social media consumption.That survey found 83 percent of parents believe there should be a minimum age restriction for when kids can have their own social media account.Most social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) require their users to be at least 13. Out of more than 1,200 parents polled, 20 percent found this to be the appropriate age restriction for children having their own social media accounts. Slightly less (16 percent) believe that age should be 16.

Members of the House Education Administration Committee advanced legislation Wednesday that supporters say will help the state do a better job connecting students with the actual jobs available in their communities.That bill, sponsored by Representative Chris Hurt, R-Halls, would require the state to create a publicly available dashboard that includes data employers and students could use to see how well various instructional programs are working in Tennessee.

Legislation that would vacate the Tennessee State University Board of Trustees and allow Governor Bill Lee to appoint eight new members advanced from the Senate Education Committee Wednesday on an 8-1 party line vote.Senator Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, says he sponsored the bill as a response to the issues identified in an audit by the Tennessee Comptroller. Roberts told the committee that it’s time for a new vision and this change will be an opportunity for cooperation.

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.

The House Education Instruction Committee advanced legislation Tuesday that would require Tennessee students to watch a fetal development video created by a group that opposes abortion rights.The committee voted on party lines in favor of Representative Gino Bulso’s, R-Brentwood, family life curriculum bill requiring schoolchildren to watch “Meet Baby Olivia.” Abortion rights opposition group Live Action created the three-minute ultrasound computer animation focusing on the development of a fetus for family life curriculums.

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.

The House Higher Education Subcommittee killed another attempt to change discrimination protection policies at Tennessee universities and higher education institutions.Committee members voted down proposed legislation from Representative John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, Monday that would have prevented state universities and universities that receive state funding from creating antidiscrimination policies or recognizing protected classes that are not recognized by the state.

Memphis parent advocate Sarah Carpenter is among those blasting President Biden’s proposed FY 2025 budget for potentially cutting valuable support for public charter schools.The president’s budget plan includes a $40 million cut to the Charter School Program (CSP) that provides grants to support the startup of new public charter schools and the replication and expansion of existing public charter schools.

Students at Knoxville’s Farragut High School will be able to earn a full elective course credit in Bible studies next school year.Tennessee is one of several states that provide parents with the ability to request released time for their children, allowing schools to excuse a student to participate in an off-campus religious instruction.

Stephen White Eagle approached the Rutherford County School Board Thursday evening to fight for his son’s right to wear an eagle feather in his graduation cap.White Eagle’s son is a senior at LaVergne High School and he says school administrative staff and district administers told his son he wouldn’t be allowed to weather the feather because of school policy.

Tiffany Matthews says a team of teachers oversees her son’s individualized education program (IEP) for autism at Knoxville’s New Hopewell Elementary School.Matthews is grateful for the work they do, but she says those teachers are largely unsupported in their work, which includes making modifications.

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.

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).

Eight State Representatives who currently don’t have public charter schools in their home counties played a crucial role in advancing a bill to support the more than 40 thousand students who do attend those schools elsewhere.Representatives Ryan Williams, Cookeville; Mark Cochran, R-Englewood; Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby; David Hawk, R-Greeneville; Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain; Tim Hicks, R-Gray; Jerome Moon, R-Maryville; and Charlie Baum, R-Murfreesboro all voted in favor of legislation designed to provide better school facilities to charter students at Wednesday’s House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee. The vote was considered to be one of the larger hurdles the bill will face this session.The legislation would require local school districts that have public charter schools in them to provide a list of vacant and underutilized buildings on an annual basis. Under the bill, school districts would additionally be required to make those properties available to public charter schools at a fair market value and give charters a first right of refusal for either purchase or lease.“There are school buildings that are also vacant or underutilized all across the state but often access to these buildings is extremely difficult if not impossible. Instead, charter schools in Tennessee must finance, locate, build, update, or renovate facilities to use as school buildings,” said bill sponsor Representative Williams.Supporters say the legislation will go a long way towards helping with the facilities funding gap charters across the state are facing. A recent report by the organization ExcelinEd found current state funding is only meeting 50 percent of charter facilities needs and this gap is expected to grow to just 42 percent of facility needs met in five years as more families choose to send their children to public charter schools.This gap also disproportionately impacts economically disadvantaged students and students of color because public charter schools serve a higher percentage of those student groups.Finding a building harder than finding staffThe challenge of finding a building is one STRIVE Collegiate Academy founder LaKendra Butler remembers well from when she founded her school nearly a decade ago in Nashville’s Donelson community. Butler says finding vacant space was more difficult than finding staff to work there.“There wasn’t a ton of spaces in this area that we could utilize so we had to be creative,” said Butler. “The search of a space was clearly impossible.”Butler ended up reaching an agreement to lease space in a building that used to be a hospital.STRIVE has since built out the second floor of the building to serve as a middle school but there have been obstacles to overcome, including a lack of outdoor space for children and classrooms with structural pillars in inconvenient places.Butler says it was luck that made the space possible.“We just so happened to communicate with a community member who had space. It’s not that we found the building, it was we found the person who then was like, oh I may have some space that works,” said Butler.The Tennessee Senate passed the charter facility bill earlier this month on a 23 to 1 vote. It now heads to the full House Finance, Ways, and Means Committee.

The timeline for Memphis-Shelby County School’s new superintendent to get to work is officially moving up.Members of the Memphis-Shelby County School board voted Tuesday afternoon to move Dr. Marie Feagins’ start date to April 1. Previously Feagins was scheduled to start after the end of this school year.

Dyersburg Middle School agriculture teacher Melissa Lowry told members of the House K-12 Subcommittee Tuesday that it’s important for her to be able to watch the kids in her class.This is so she can monitor them when handling dangerous equipment such as a table saw.“I have one set of eyes and right now they’re responsible for watching 25 kids. If that number goes to 35, my eyes can’t watch that many kids and so all of those opportunities are then taken away from them,” said Lowry.

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.