Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to weigh in on the continuation of federal mask mandates and new federal law banning gum chewing in schools.
Read the full story
Knox County Schools (KCS) will close for the remainder of the week due to illness-related staffing shortages, according to a release from the district.
The closure, likely connected to the rise in coronavirus cases in the state, will grant students and staff members two days off, in addition to the weekend.
Read the full story
Knox County Schools (KCS) approved a dual enrollment course from East Tennessee State University (ETSU) that has historically taught critical race theory. The KCS board of education approved the course offering, “SOWK 1030: Cultural Diversity,” as part of a larger list of ETSU dual enrollment courses during their meeting last week.
The course is characterized as pre-professional social work curriculum focused on social justice topics such as “diversity within diversity,” referring to intersectionality – a concept coined by preeminent critical race theory scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Read the full story
The Knox County Schools (KCS) Board of Education is considering whether to hire an outside consultant for reinstating law enforcement in their schools. In a letter submitted to the Knox County Board of Education (KCBOE) last week, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs said that the proposed facilitator would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“Please let this letter serve as official notification that I strongly oppose using taxpayer dollars to pay an outside consulting firm to tell the district what every parent in Knox County already knows: armed law enforcement officers are a necessity in schools,” wrote Jacobs. “[I] simply cannot ignore that physical security is absolutely critical in keeping our students safe at school. I am deeply disturbed that any governmental body would even consider removing law enforcement from any of our schools.”
Read the full story
Knoxville schools will no longer have a police presence, per a joint letter issued by Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon and the Knoxville Police Department (KPD). The mayor and KPD pulled the plug on an agreement in which KPD supplied officers as security for Knox County Schools (KCS).
KPD officers will be pulled from schools by June 12 – the latest date of graduations occurring. The letter explained that KCS’s internal security and mental health professionals have grown since the agreement took place, making it unnecessary to have KPD assistance.
Read the full story
A Knoxville News-Sentinel reporter last week shared the local school superintendent’s creative math to accuse Gov. Bill Lee of cutting education spending by nearly $6 million, when in fact the state’s BEP contribution had increased by that amount. On April 1, reporter Tyler Whetstone tweeted, “New today – @GovBillLee‘s BEP proposal would cut @KnoxSchools funding by approximately $6 million. That’s a lot of 0s when you’re trying to scrap together a budget.” New today – @GovBillLee's BEP proposal would cut @KnoxSchools funding by approximately $6 million. That's a lot of 0s when you're trying to scrap together a budget. https://t.co/vEMD7mVNqH — Tyler Whetstone (@tyler_whetstone) April 1, 2019 Whetstone’s story quoted Knox County Schools Superintendent Bob Thomas as lamenting a roughly $6 million cut in budgeted funds from the state’s Basic Education Plan going to the district. Thomas cried that the sky would fall in the form of the district not building three planned school buildings and changing a planned pay raise. But guess what, Thomas’ math might as well have been an April Fool’s joke. The state has typically added roughly $180 million new dollars into the BEP statewide in recent years. This, plus other smaller percentages of state funds,…
Read the full story
Knox County Schools are spending $170,000 out of their $928,677 in-service budget on “cultural competency” training for teachers even as the Williamson County School System uses increased expenditures to tell white teachers they are over-privileged. Knox County’s Fiscal Year 2019 expense is in the KCS General Purpose School Fund, under “Disparities in Education Outcomes.” The “In-Service/Staff Development – Schools,” is located under the “Other Expenses” line. The note for the $170,000 line item specifies, “Cultural Competency training.” The school budget details are here. Another note on the page, E-6, says, “The Disparities in Education Outcomes programs is a district initiative aimed at eliminated education disparities. The FTEs contained in this program are Restorative Interventionists. Also included in this program are resources for Cultural Competency training and supplies needed to support the program.” The overall Disparities in Education Outcomes budget for FY 2019 is $1,533,099. Knox County Schools’ general fund budget for 2019 was $484.5 million, an increase of $13.4 million from the previous year, according to the FY 2019 Knox County budget. The overall in-service training budget for FY 2019 is $928,677, a 4.2 percent decrease from the previous year total of $918,635. In 2016, a school board task force…
Read the full story
Editor’s update: Despite the risks associated with maintaining the creation of additional, vaguely defined “protected classes,” the Knox County school board acquiesced to Mayor Madeline Rogero’s wishes and voted Wednesday night to keep the extended language in the employee and student handbooks with regards to the school system’s harassment policy. New language was added in 2012 that authors say was intended to protect LGBTQ persons from harassment, however, Chief Deputy Law Director David Buuck told the Knoxville News Sentinel that the change could imperil the school system with more – not less – lawsuits: “It has cost the taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars just to defend those. It’s just not right,” he said. “We have a duty to protect this board also from frivolous lawsuits, and despite what the professor of law said, as soon as you put in some of this wording that people out in this audience are wanting, it’s creating another protected in class in violation of equal protection for all students. “And the minute that happens, one or two of those same attorneys is going to be filing a lawsuit, and we’ll have to go to federal court and defend it.” The News Sentinel broke down the school…
Read the full story