WKRN reports on a tenured Sumner County teacher facing potential dismissal over a range of issues, mostly related to classroom management.
Sumner County Schools intends to let a tenured teacher go, in part because of political comments officials claimed she made.
The school board voted last week to dismiss Stephanie Braswell, a Spanish teacher at White House High School.
Langford’s memo lists other alleged issues during Braswell’s teaching tenure, including poor classroom management and interactions with students, delayed grading practices, recording students on video without consent, and being “unprofessional” with parents.
As a result of the [network] breach, on Tuesday night the Sumner County School Board voted to change the first day of school. Instead of Aug. 4, students will start back on the 10th.
School board officials said parents will receive a message from the superintendent about the new start date.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security are all investigating the breach.
We wanted to share some information about an occurrence that will impact the start of our school year.
On July 20, 2026, Sumner County Schools became aware of unauthorized access into our network. We promptly notified local and federal law enforcement and the Department of Education and engaged third-party forensic specialists to investigate and respond to this matter. Please understand that our team is diligently working around the clock to minimize the impact to schools and overall operations.
However, this will impact our school calendar in the following ways:
Below is a link to our Board Approved Revised Calendar.
New student registration, originally scheduled for tomorrow, has been postponed to August 4th-5th.
Student Registration Nights have also been moved to August 4th-5th & will include New Student Registration.
Schools will communicate details to their families for Registration Nights in the next week.
The first day of school is now August 10.
We will share further information with our community as it becomes available.
More than 200 Burrus Elementary students, along with others at Knox Doss Middle, are being reassigned to new schools after the Sumner County school board approved rezoning this week.
Most affected families in the Hendersonville area will start the next school year at Beech Elementary and TW Hunter Middle.
Nashville education blogger TC Weber takes a look at a debate over words in Sumner County – and argues that words matter:
Let’s talk about Sumner County, where a school board meeting turned into a culture war showdown over whether to call the December school break “Winter Break” or “Christmas Break.”
The name had been “Winter Break” for over 30 years—until last year, when the board changed it to “Christmas Break” without public input.
Board member Wade Evans admitted, “We did a bad job as a board because we did not represent everyone.”
Others disagreed. Member Andy Lacy said, “Christmas is Christmas. Why do we have to offend the masses to appease the 1%?”
This is the kind of debate that often gets passed off as minor or symbolic, but it reveals something deeper: who gets to define the public space, and whose identity is centered by default. Language matters—especially in public education, where every student is supposed to feel seen. It’s not just about semantics; it’s about belonging.
