400 Attend Nashville Rise Forum

DSC_0264After controversy and boycotts, the Nashville Rise forum was held Thursday night with an estimated crowd of over 400. There were parents, families, teachers, administrators, and elected officials in the crowd. The crowd included many non-native speakers who were receiving live translation directly to the headphones they were wearing.

In all, four candidates did not attend. Will Pinkston, Amy Frogge, and Jill Speering boycotted the forum. Janette Carter, who is running against Sharon Gentry, was ill and was not able to make it.

Those who attended included: Sharon Gentry, Jane Grimes Meneely, Christiane Buggs, Miranda Christy, Corey Gathings, Erica Lanier, Jackson Miller, and Thom Druffel.

The questions for the candidates mainly came from parent members of Nashville Rise. While there are around 100 parent leaders in Nashville Rise, a few were selected to ask questions of the candidates.

“Tonight was important to inform the community on where candidates stand on issues,” said DeMica Robinson, a parent of Nashville Rise who also asked questions of the candidates. “There was also a consensus that change needs to happen now and that makes me hopeful.”

The questions asked during the forum were about traditional and charter schools collaborating, how we can best serve schools with a high ELL population, student based budgeting, retaining teachers, and closing the achievement gap. The questions allowed all the candidates to give their vision for the school board, something that would have been nice to hear from the three candidates that boycotted.

Will Pinkston, Amy Frogge, and Jill Speering refused to speak to 400 community members who care about the future of Nashville’s education. The stage would have been theirs to describe why they disagree with the other candidates and state where they see the future of Nashville’s education going under their watch.

Last night, many spoke to the future of respectful collaboration with Dr. Joseph and all members of the school board. This was an incredible opportunity for all candidates to participate in a positive, collaborative exchange.

Instead, there were empty chairs with their names on it.

8 thoughts on “400 Attend Nashville Rise Forum

  1. It is a shame these parents didn’t show up for our fight against Common Core. And even now after our Governor deceived Tennesseans again with a rebrand of Common Core parents do nothing.

  2. This is devoid of any real evidence. The two links are your own work. It appears to be based on the hearsay of tweets. Seriously lazy work.

    • Confused. I attended the event. We at TNEdReport cite our previous blogs all the time (for instance, latest Andy post cites two of his previous blogs).

      Not lazy work (or hearsay) if you attend the event, write up a piece about the event, and refer to previous controversy around the event. That’s called journalism.

  3. This certainly is not journalism. It simply repeats the opinionated tweets and misinformation about the subject (400 in attendance? That’s number has been criticized by those critical of the organization and the event and those in favor of it). You may relate events, but at points it seems purposefully vague (such as members in attendance). Furthermore, I don’t mind self-sourcing, but that’s all of you’ve done and journalism is far more than what’s present. The also interview, follow-up, fact-check, and are edited. In journalism, as well as academia as I’m sure you well know, it’s called triangulation and it’s absent in this work. So yeah, it’s lazy piece with an agenda. Alluding to this as journalism is a farce.

      • Hey, man, you’re mistaken, Not me. I’ve been busy in a conference for the last week and off social media for grant application season for longer. So please don’t try and throw my name on comments. Also, I’d rather not hear about ish like this through the grapevine like I did today. I put my name on my words. No need for Keemstar doxxing tactics.

        • My apologizes. I was mistaken. The IP addresse for you and Bertrand have been the same in the past (it pops up when you comment) and the IP address for Bertrand is now in Europe. So I just made the leap it was you. Maybe it’s a loved one of yours or a coincidence.

  4. You can keep your apologies and your allegations, dude. I met Bert, who taught in the Memphis area, once at one of the community ASD meetings. He’s caused problem for me personally and been a hassle on BCE in general. So, yeah, don’t take kindly to that sort of crappy doxxing. Especially with public networks, vpns, etc. You might see I’m “in” NY right now.

    And when in the world do I come on here to comment? So yeah, save it. This is especially touchy for me since I know folks that have been misappropriately doxxed and caused lots of problems. Like, swatting level crap. And that kind of nonsense on the internet is why I unplugged for awhile. You want to talk? email.

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