2024 Year in Review: School threats, voucher debate, book bans and more

From K-12 book bans to school threats and higher-ed funding debacles, 2024 marked a year of controversy and contention among education policymakers.

Voucher legislation fails, leads to creation of a ‘clean’ bill

Among the most notable legislative developments this year was the failure of school vouchers legislation that would allow families to use public funds for private school enrollment. The legislation failed after leaders in the House and Senate proposed vastly different plans and could not agree on a path to reconcile those differences. The failure led lawmakers back to the drawing board to reintroduce a “clean version” of the voucher bill.

Republican leaders have since filed the Education Freedom Act of 2025 after that previous iteration of the bill failed. The new legislation will fund 20,000 scholarships for Tennessee students starting in the 2025-26 school year. The bill will also devote half of those scholarships to students from families who meet income requirements and other special populations and ensure that school funding doesn’t decrease from one year to the next due to enrollment declines. Critics however believe the legislation would divert much-needed funding away from traditional public schools - a common criticism among many Democratic Party lawmakers and others traditionally opposed to vouchers.

Senate Education Chair Jon Lundberg voted out in November election

Bobby Harshbarger, the son of U.S. Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger, won the November GOP primary with nearly 52 percent of the vote to oust Senate Education Chair Jon Lundberg from the Senate district 4 seat he’d held since 2016. Following the controversial race, the state began investigating whether Harshbarger broke the law to attack Lundberg with text messages and other allegations of misconduct.

Donald Trump recently took to social media to congratulate Harshbarger and take a swipe at Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who supported Lundberg.

“Congratulations to Bobby Harshbarger, a fantastic candidate for Tennessee State Senate, who won against a long-term incumbent supported by RINO Governor Bill Lee, whose endorsement meant nothing,” the former president and 2024 president-elect wrote.

In Tennessee Senate District 8, Republican candidate Jessie Seal of Claiborne County decisively defeated his Democratic opponent R.E. Ellison, with 74,557 votes versus Ellison’s 14,672. Those results follow Seal’s August primary victory against three-term State Sen. Frank Niceley.

Click here to take a deeper dive into the November 2024 election results.

Memphis school board hires new superintendent, then tries to oust her

The Memphis Shelby County Board of Education is considering terminating its contract with Superintendent Marie Feagins, a former Detroit Public Schools leader who was selected for the role in February. Tensions between Feagins and MSCS were almost immediately apparent after Feagins unveiled a new personnel plan in the spring that aimed to cut over 1,000 positions. At that time, several board members criticized Feagins for not clearly communicating the plan and for the pace of the process.

Tensions also arose after Memphis city leaders first turned down the district's proposal for a new high school site in Cordova to replace Germantown High School. Several board members said they believed Feagins should have encouraged them to network with city leaders to advocate for the plan, among other criticisms.

The board had planned to vote on Feagins’ termination earlier this month but postponed the vote until Jan. 14, following criticisms from parents and community activists supportive of Feagins.

Tennessee State University experiences financial difficulties           

Tennessee State University leaders are currently fleshing out a plan to stabilize the university’s finances, amid fears that the historically black university is “running out of money.”  The ongoing plan comes after several leadership changes, including the recent resignation of former Interim President Ronald Johnson and subsequent appointment of Interim President Dwayne Tucker. It also comes after state legislators ousted TSU's board in March over similar financial concerns and grilled TSU leaders in November about ongoing financial difficulties. University supporters have however continually made the case TSU has been underfunded compared to other state colleges that are not HBCUs.

“I think if we put together the right plan, that plan could be executed efficiently and effectively where we can mitigate some of that expense before we get [to May],” Tucker told lawmakers earlier this month, following his appointment to the role.

“I think it's incumbent on us to really look deep across the organization and then figure out how we adjust the university to meet the current projections around enrollment.”

School threats lead to several arrests

Several arrests were made this year in Tennessee after a slew of social media threats against schools that left many parents concerned about school safety and security measures.

According to Rutherford County Schools officials, local law enforcement arrested two students for spreading false threats of violence against the district over the fall. Officials in Memphis Shelby County Schools also announced several arrests in connection to violent threats that circulated online, which led to lockdowns earlier this year. In addition, Williamson County Schools sent parents an email over the fall to debunk claims of a “school threat” list on social media.

Book ban debate continues across Tennessee

Several books were banned this year in Knox County Schools, Rutherford County Schools, Wilson County Schools, and Williamson County Schools as school boards across the state work to comply with state guidelines that require schools to remove books with inappropriate or sexual content. The book removals have fueled debate at school districts across the state about how schools should interpret legislation such as the Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022 and the state’s obscenity law.

While proponents of the book bans and the state law say their aim is to protect students from graphic material and sexual content, opponents of the state law and book removals say the bans are a violation of the First Amendment. Many also believe that current state laws and book bans are designed to target books that discuss controversial topics like racism and LGBTQ issues.

The ACLU argued in a recent statement that the label “obscenity” in particular is “typically reserved for pornographic, sadomasochistic, and purely, patently offensive, sexual material.”

“Under the First Amendment, books cannot be removed from school libraries simply because they are about same-sex relationships or contain characters with LGBTQ+ identities — as many of the titles you are considering removing do … Likewise, books cannot be removed from school libraries simply because they tell stories about race, racism and the history of racism in the United States,” the organization said in a letter to Rutherford County Schools leaders.