East Nashville-based Episcopal School of Nashville will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a Fall Festival:
The celebratory, community-wide Fall Festival will be held on September 21 from 12PM-4PM at the school’s campus located at 1310 Ordway Place in Nashville.
The free event will feature games, local food trucks, face painting, giveaways, a bounce house, and more.
The expectation that work matters most is on full display in a new policy at Lawrence County Schools.
WSMV reports on a strict, new attendance policy:
Under the Lawrence County School System’s new attendance policy, doctor’s notes will no longer excuse an absence. Students will now just be marked absent or present.
“If you have the sniffles, that is fine,” Adkins said during the meeting. “You are going to have them when you go to work one day. We have all gone to work sick and hurt and beat up.”
The district sent a letter last week to local medical providers asking them to “emphasize the importance of regular school attendance while treating school-aged patients.” The letter went on to say that “medical notes excusing students for two or more days can unintentionally imply the students should remain home even after their health improves.”
House Republicans are not only busy cutting Medicaid, but also working on dismantling American public education while giving the very wealthy a nice tax break.
Yes, a national school voucher scam – supported by President Trump and backed by his former Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos – is taking shape as part of the current budget wrangling.
Here’s what one group that analyzed the bill said:
“. . . we estimate that this tax avoidance maneuver would deprive the federal government and state governments of more than $2 billion in capital gains tax revenue over the next decade. This would come on top of the roughly $21.5 billion cost of the tax credit itself, bringing the net total revenue loss to over $23.6 billion.“
If you wanted to undermine public education – even in states like Kentucky with no vouchers or charter schools – this would be the way to do it.
As an example, Tennessee public school districts are estimated to lose more than $50 million in state investment in year one of the state’s new, universal school voucher scheme.
A bill in the Tennessee legislature would allow school districts and charter schools to refuse to educate children who can’t prove their legal status. The move seeks to challenge a Supreme Court decision that requires that public schools provide education to all children, regardless of legal status.
The bills – HB793 and SB836 – would impact as many as 10,000 students, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
Currently, as a result of a Supreme Court decision (Plyler v. Doe), public school districts must educate all students, regardless of immigration status. The legislation aims to challenge that ruling and would allow schools to limit the provision of a free public education to only those children who could demonstrate citizenship or permanent legal status.
Cumberland Presbyterian pastor Rev. Joy Warren said of the bill:
“As a Christian pastor I believe that every child is made in the image of God and deserves the opportunity to attend a high quality public school in order to help them reach their full potential. So seeing this legislation that attacks our fundamental American rights and liberties that would take away the opportunity of immigrant children to attend public school is an attack on my values, both as an American and as a Christian. These politicians are scapegoating immigrants, including immigrant children, to divide and distract the American public.”
The Christian Nationalist Move to Takeover America’s Schools
What Does Dismantling the Department of Education Mean?
I wrote a bit last week about a lawsuit by 17 states (not TN) that could change or end Section 504 protections.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in September of 1973. Section 504 of that act codified the civil rights of persons with disabilities. “No otherwise qualified individual” can be, simply because of their disability, “denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination” in any program or activity that receives federal funds.
That law has turned out to be hugely important in education, offering an even broader definition of students with special needs than the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Green then highlights the threat:
Then, on page 37, as it reached its third of four counts, the lawsuit switches gears, arguing not for an excision of the new language, but the elimination of Section 504 entirely. The suit argues that Section 504 is “coercive, untethered to the federal interest in disability, and unfairly retroactive” and therefor unconstitutional.
Watching the Department of Education Come to an End
In Kentucky, a Demand for School Funding
So, first – Tennessee is not (yet) a part of this lawsuit that would, if successful, end Section 504 protections for students.
I take a look at what could happen over at The Education Report:
Here’s a summary of what could happen IF the suit is ultimately successful:
Yes. No matter what they say, they are trying to eradicate a fundamental protection for the disabled population that has sustained for over half a century. Yes. They are trying to remove disabled students from public education. They are trying to remove disabled workers from the workforce. Yes. They are trying to bring back schools that “best suit a student’s needs”, which is just a fancy way of saying that they are bringing back the segregated schools and institutions so many have fought for so long to eradicate.
Not great, really.
The Takedown of the Department of Education Has Begun
The Plaid Privatizer has won.
Gov. Bill Lee finally achieved his longtime dream of handing public education funding in Tennessee over to some of his favorite oligarchs.
The Tennessean reports:
Republican lawmakers on Thursday gave final approval to a $447 million statewide publicly funded school voucher program — a long-sought victory for Gov. Bill Lee and a host of school choice advocates who have spent millions pushing the plan.
Tennessee will now have two taxpayer-funded school systems. The private school voucher system will siphon money from public schools, drive up local property taxes, and bust the state’s budget – just as it has done in other states.
The plan is also unlikely to get results – in state after state, voucher scams have failed to improve academic achievement.
Sen. Charlane Oliver clearly illuminated the big picture of Lee’s scam:
Tennessee’s public education system is under siege by wealthy conservative oligarchs, including former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who are bankrolling Republican leaders to push school vouchers. Ultra-wealthy conservatives have made dismantling public education their mission, even descending upon Washington ready to disband the U.S. Department of Education.
As public education in the state unravels and unaccountable private school operators bleed taxpayers dry, just remember: This is all on the Plaid Privatizer, Bill Lee.
As states and school districts explore and implement bans on smartphones at school, the question remains: Will these bans improve the student learning environment?
The answer: Maybe.
Overall, 68% of US adults responding to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey say they support a ban on middle and high school students using their phones during class. The biggest reasons these Americans gave for backing the move? Fewer distractions (98%), better social skills (91%), less cheating (85%), and reduced bullying (70%).
And, bans are in place in a number of areas of the country:
As of November 4, 2024, eight states — California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia — have passed policies that ban or restrict phone use in schools. These broadly take effect during the current school year. Twelve more states have introduced such legislation.
Anecdotal evidence suggests some improvement – students actually talking to each other during lunch, for example. Less instances of social media bullying.
Still, the research is uneven in terms of whether these bans will have a long-term, positive effect.
One analysis of studies that analyzed cell phone bans in schools across the globe found:
“Overall, the results indicated that the ban and no ban schools either did not differ significantly, or there were minimal differences, in terms of problematic use of mobile phones, academic engagement, school belonging, and bullying,” the authors reported.
Kentucky Kids to Lawmakers: Fund Our Schools
A writer tells the story of her own daughter’s math journey – and discusses the implications of middle and high school math choices.
With many colleges dropping standardized testing for applicants, transcripts featuring calculus — preferably Advanced Placement — have come to signify rigor to admissions officers. However, nearly 20% of American high school students have no access to calculus whatsoever. As a result, a scant 2% of science, technology, engineering and math majors who arrive at college needing to take precalculus manage to earn a STEM bachelor’s degree, while those who didn’t progress past algebra 2 in high school have a less than 40% chance of earning any four-year degree whatsoever.’
The point: Unless a student completes Algebra 1 in 8th grade, they won’t be on track to take calculus in high school. And, as the author notes, most kids in 8th grade have little or no idea what they’ll want to do in the future – not offering Algebra 1 to 8th graders limits options.
A National School Voucher Scam
Bill Lee’s Education Policy is Consistently Disappointing
The very first bill filed for the 2025 session of the Tennessee General Assembly is Gov. Bill Lee’s plan for universal school vouchers.
It’s been Lee’s goal since before he was elected to privatize Tennessee’s public schools.
So, what’s the goal of this wholesale transfer of public funds to private entities?
Carol Burris takes to The Progressive to offer a possible explanation:
The “school choice movement,” which Coulson’s documentary promoted, has always been a classic bait-and-switch swindle: Charter schools were the bait for vouchers, and vouchers the lure for public acceptance of market-based schooling. While narrow debates about accountability, taxpayer costs, and the public funding of religious schools raise important concerns, the gravest threat posed by the school choice movement is its ultimate objective: putting an end to public responsibility for education.
Burris notes that incoming President Trump appears to be on-board with this agenda:
The America First Policy Institute, where Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon serves as board chair, states in its recent policy agenda that “the authority for educating children rests with parents.” As public responsibility for schooling shifts to parents, educational subsidies will be gradually reduced until Friedman and Coulson’s dream of a fully for-profit marketplace that competes for students is achieved.
A Story About School Lunch Debt