Tag Archives: MNPS Elections

Posted on by

What Can you Buy for $750,000?

Apparently, not a lot of Election Night victories. While the Tennessee affiliate of national group Stand for Children spent $750,000 in local and state elections last night, they came away with very few wins. In Nashville, the group spent more than $200,000 and lost all four races in which it backed candidates.

Dave Boucher at the Tennessean has the story:

More than $750,000 buys plenty of campaign mailers and advertisements. But it doesn’t necessarily buy election wins.

Stand for Children, an education advocacy organization, found that out the hard way Thursday night. After spending a small fortune, all four candidates it backed in the Metro school board election and a handful of state GOP primary candidates lost their races.

While Stand for Children attempted to change the face of the Nashville school board by opposing three incumbents, ultimately, voters overwhelmingly rejected their preferred candidates — with the exception of the District 7 race, which was decided by less than 40 votes.

More on Stand for Children in Nashville:

Stand on the Defensive

Stand for Children Buys Its Way Out of the Race

Stand with Charters

MNPS School Board Race Spending

Nashville’s Not Alone

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

 

Posted on by

Facts Not Included

Steve Cavendish at the Scene offers some insight into the Tennessean’s recent dealings with MNPS board member Will Pinkston. Specifically, Cavendish notes that key facts seem to be optional in the paper’s reporting.

He writes:

That Sunday story by Jason Gonzales, which described Pinkston as a bully, interviewed a lot of critics. It quoted a former director of schools that Pinkston stopped from getting a contract extension, an innovation director who routinely fought with Pinkston and other board members and a paid political operative working for (Jackson) Miller.

And points out that the Tennessean also endorsed Pinkston, a fact not mentioned in the Gonzalez piece.

Of course, on the same day, the Tennessean did allow Pinkston to respond.

But, as Cavendish points out, it would have been a lot easier to just include the relevant facts in the first place.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

Posted on by

Will Pinkston Responds

Will Pinkston offers his response to a piece that appeared about him in the Tennessean by way of the paper’s Op-Ed page.

Here’s how he starts:

“I have excellent relations with MNPS employees and I am proud to have earned the endorsement of our teachers and support employees. Our employees have told me countless times that they’re grateful I stood up to a Central Office bureaucracy that had failed students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers

“Nashville’s schools are thankfully under new management, and we’re now heading in the right direction. The voters in South and Southeast Nashville know me personally, and they will see through this flimsy attack by a handful of disgruntled individuals, four days before Election Day.”

This is the statement I provided to the Tennessean in advance of a smear piece that appeared in Sunday’s Tennessean. The newspaper declined to publish the statement in its entirety. Instead, it printed a report based on lies and half-truths leveled by a four former Metro Nashville Public Schools employees.

I won’t dignify the baseless allegations. But I will briefly address the two former employees who orchestrated this smear:

Read his full response here.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

 

Posted on by

Complaint Filed over Martha O’Bryan Political Activity

Following emails sent by Marsha Edwards of the Martha O’Bryan Center asking for volunteers and/or paid canvassers for School Board candidates endorsed by Stand for Children, complaints have been filed with the IRS and Tennessee Attorney General by MNPS board member Will Pinkston.

Nate Rau of the Tennessean reports:

In a letter to Attorney General Herb Slatery, Pinkston said Edwards’ emails constitute a violation of the federal law that prohibits direct or indirect political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits. Pinkston told The Tennessean that Edwards should apologize to the school board and resign from her job.

“Through her actions — including forwarding Stand for Children’s email request to all of her tax-exempt organization’s employees — Ms. Edwards caused Martha O’Bryan Center to directly or indirectly participate in political campaigns on behalf of (or in opposition to) multiple candidates for elective public office,” Pinkston wrote in his letter outlining his complaint. “As email correspondence indicates, Ms. Edwards not only forwarded Stand for Children’s email request to all of her tax-exempt organization’s employees, but she also identified her preferred candidates as being ‘friendly to charters.'”

Edwards has denied any wrongdoing.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

 

Posted on by

MNPS School Board Race Spending

Amanda Haggard has an interesting piece out about the MNPS School Board race and the key players.

She covers groups like Project Renaissance/Nashville RISE and Stand for Children.  And she notes their top targets: Will Pinkston and Amy Frogge (they are less aggressively against Jill Speering).

It turns out, the same donors and backers supporting Renaissance/RISE are also spending to unseat Pinkston and Frogge.

Frogge penned a pieced not long ago about why school board race spending is skyrocketing.

Here’s Haggard on the spending this year:

And then, of course, there’s the money. So far, Druffel has outraised Frogge by $10,000, bringing in almost $37,000 — $20,000 of which came from donors in District 8. Pinkston has secured a little under $70,000, along with endorsements from Mayor Megan Barry and former Gov. Phil Bredesen, for whom Pinkston was a top aide.

Miller has brought in around $90,000, with the largest contributions coming from charter school backers like DeLoache and Trump supporter and English-only backer Lee Beaman. Stand for Children’s O’Donnell says checks are on the way from his organization and mailers have already been sent out in support of its endorsed slate. Additionally, Beacon Center board members other than Beaman have donated the maximum amount in multiple races.

It’s worth noting that Beaman and the Beacon Center are supporters of school vouchers. Likewise, as was noted in an earlier piece on Nashville RISE, the umbrella group Education Cities is backed in part by voucher advocates:

And here’s something interesting about all that: The funders of Education Cities include The Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and The Gates Foundation — the Big Three in corporate education reform.

Perhaps more interesting is the group of partners, including the pro-voucher Fordham Institute.

Early voting begins tomorrow. Stand for Children says it is sending mailers and more money is coming to defeat Pinkston and Frogge (and ostensibly Speering). This in spite of some rather odd reasoning around Stand’s endorsements.

What does all this mean? The next few weeks will likely see the MNPS School Board races turn a bit ugly, as those who want a new agenda spend aggressively to defeat the very incumbents who have brought about mayoral collaboration and the arrival of a much-heralded new Director of Schools.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport