WSMV-TV Nashville reports that a Metro Nashville Schools bus driver was struck by an elementary school student:
A driver was injured Monday morning after being struck by an elementary student while on a school bus.
Metro Nashville Public Schools confirmed a Waverly-Belmont Elementary School student struck the driver on a general education bus Monday morning, “causing minor injuries.”
Education blogger TC Weber looks at the stagnant graduation rate in Metro Nashville Schools – and a concerning decline:
A recent TDOE report shows MNPS recording its second-highest graduation rate ever. Several historically disadvantaged groups—economically disadvantaged students, Black students, and students with disabilities—posted their highest rates on record.
Sounds impressive.
Until you look at the details.
The district’s overall graduation rate: 83%.
Hispanic students? Their rate dropped 6.1 percentage points in the 2024–25 school year, landing at 73.2%.
Should Half of All TN Public School Students Go to Private or Charter Schools?
Nashville education blogger TC Weber offers a critique of MNPS’s “Every Child Known” slogan in light of the district’s policies and actions.
“Every child known” may actually be more accurate than “every child valued.”
That shift in wording—just one verb—changes everything.
Because when a district knows a child is in danger, knows their history, knows their struggles, knows the warning signs… and still fails them, what does that tell us about the hierarchy of value? What does that tell families? What does it tell students?
Nashville education blogger TC Weber takes a look at “Every Child Known.”
Relationships drive effort and loyalty. But relationships can’t be graphed on a data dashboard or condensed into a performance metric, and that’s where the system breaks down.
The modern education machine loves data points—graduation rates, proficiency scores, chronic absenteeism percentages. What it doesn’t love are messy, unquantifiable things like trust, rapport, and empathy.
It also loves micromanagement, often as much as it loves its spreadsheets.
This year MNPS doubled down on its scripted lesson plans, demanding that every class at every grade level in every school be on the same page, every single day. Besides flying in the face of nearly every best practice ever written, it strips teachers of the flexibility—and time—needed to form authentic connections with their students.
The best teachers have always known the importance of relationships. They’ve built them instinctively, often despite the system rather than because of it.
Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is studying school start times – perhaps with a look toward changing them to better meet the needs of students and families.
Nashville Public Schools, in partnership with Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s Office and the Metro Nashville Board of Education, is conducting a districtwide review of school start and end times to better align with student well-being, family needs, and transportation efficiency.
This process is just beginning. No decisions have been made. The goal is to gather feedback, data, and community input to make informed decisions about potential changes that will be considered in the early part of 2026.
The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) is celebrating 25 teachers in a “Blue Ribbon Teachers” event.
More from an email:
Please join us in congratulating the 25 educators named Blue Ribbon Teacher award winners this year! These talented and dedicated teachers demonstrate an exceptional commitment to ensuring all students thrive and have earned the Blue Ribbon Teacher designation in this year’s award categories of
leadership, instruction, and student success and opportunity. We are thrilled to honor them and are grateful for all they do for our public schools and community!
The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) offers the following professional learning opportunities:
Teacherpreneur
Are you a Nashville public school educator with an innovative idea for improving student outcomes? Teacherpreneur is a unique opportunity to focus on an issue you are passionate about, research the root causes of the issue, and develop a solution and implementation plan to help advance the positive change you wish to see. Teacherpreneur is a professional learning cohort experience for educators who are looking to grow as teacher leaders, expand their networks, and learn how to make changes that last.
At the end of the 5-session experience, Teacherpreneurs will present their ideas at a pitch event to a panel of judges. Top concepts are awarded a collective $25,000 in cash prizes ($10,000 for first place, $7,500 for second place, $5,000 for third place, and $2,500 for the community favorite award). The top three concepts receive access to additional seed funding to implement their ideas.
Leadership Public Education
Are you passionate about supporting public schools and are looking for ways to get involved? Leadership Public Education is a leadership development cohort experience over the course of six months designed to grow participants’ knowledge and skills as public schools advocates. Cohort members will learn from experts about key topics related to Metro Nashville Public Schools, including school funding, education policy, and talent pipelines.
The Leadership Public Education program, in partnership with the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, is designed to help participants learn more about the unique challenges and opportunities facing our public schools and position them to serve in community leadership roles that benefit our students, schools, and district.
Nashville education blogger and MNPS parent TC Weber suggests that some of the sloganeering over at MNPS (Metro Nashville Public Schools) doesn’t match the reality on the ground.
Metro Nashville Public Schools will gladly sell you a t-shirt stating “every child known” and then proceed to ignore those children, both gifted and struggling, whose needs fall outside of the norm.
During Teacher Appreciation Week, educators are showered with gifts and accolades while the rest of the year is spent making them feel underachieving, incompetent, and lazy. All this is done under the guise of doing what’s best for kids as if these classroom educators are unaware of the needs of the children they interact with daily.
The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) launched a website focused on recruiting people to teach in Nashville’s public schools.
From a promotional emal:
At NPEF, we believe teachers are the best positioned to move the needle for students and advance the positive outcomes we all want for kids. That is why we created the Teach Nashville website to support Metro Nashville Public Schools’ recruitment efforts by acting as a one-stop-shop for information on becoming a teacher in our district.
The online resource contains a variety of information that new and aspiring teachers need to solidify their decision to work in our district. On the Teach Nashville site, prospective MNPS educators can hear directly from teachers in our district about their experiences, find out what makes MNPS unique, learn about the teacher licensure process, explore different Nashville neighborhoods, find information about salary and benefits, and more.
Image provided by NPEF
MNPS school board member Emily Masters has some questions about a survey recently publicized by the Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF).
Masters took to her campaign blog to post some thoughts about the survey – and took issue especially with the idea that there is significant support among Nashvillians for the state’s new school funding formula, TISA.
While Masters goes into some detail about survey methodology and survey questions, she also uses a paragraph to point out her belief that NPEF is not aligning itself with the goals of MNPS.
The thing I find most interesting about NPEF is that their NTEE (National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities) code is B11 (Single Organization Support: Educational Institutions and Related Activities), and the mission they state on their FY20 990 filing (the most recent one publicly available) with the IRS is “to ensure every child in Nashville has access to a great public education,” so clearly that “single organization” they’re supposed to be supporting is Metro Nashville Public Schools. And yet – they do things that contradict that, such as supporting legislation that clearly isn’t in the best interests of public school students in Nashville and conducting surveys about education without collaborating with the very organization they’re created to support.
You can read more from Masters about the poll, the press release, and the results here.
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