Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville Public School District 6 School Board member Fran Bush in studio to explain her goal of implementing common senses into the school board and holding people accountable.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper backs school defiance of Governor Lee’s (R) executive order allowing parents to opt their kids out of mask mandates. Cooper called the order “disappointing.” The order follows the Nashville Metro Public Schools (MNPS) board voting to mandate masks in classrooms less than two weeks ago. As reported by The Tennessee Star, over 1,000 individuals signed a letter asking the Nashville Metro Public Schools to instate a mask mandate for the 2021 school year.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Dr. Adrienne Battle on Wednesday announced she will ask members of the school board to implement a universal mask mandate.
According to Battle, the mandate would require all students, seemingly regardless of their vaccination status, to wear a mask indoors and on school buses.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board Chair Christiane Buggs caught parents’ ire for continuing to keep schools closed in light of her activities in recent months. Shortly before the ongoing school closure began in November, Buggs hosted an election watch party and then vacationed internationally.
Buggs defended the board’s initial decision in the fall to adjust all schools to virtual learning. She described it as a necessity, explaining how her own father was concurrently battling COVID-19. Buggs explained that he was infected while working at one of their middle schools. She stated that preventing the spread was paramount to in-person learning, which she described as a “convenience.”
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Sharing his letter of resignation with the public via Twitter, Metro Nashville Public School Board member Will Pinkston called out the body on which he serves “impossibly inept,” just as another school board member has announced plans to make a motion to terminate School Director Dr. Shawn Joseph. Elected to Metro Nashville Board of Public Education in 2012 representing the 7th District of South and Southeast Nashville, Pinkston graduated from Metro Nashville Public Schools and, as a senior advisor, “helped Gov. Phil Bredesen shape the education agenda that made Tennessee the fastest-improving state in the history of the Nation’s Report Card,” according to his campaign website. Pinkston’s letter addressed to Dr. Sharon Gentry, Chair of the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education dated March 25, whom Pinkston praised, was not voted into the position as Chair without dissension, The Tennessee Star reported. Pinkston told Gentry in his letter that while his resignation from the Board is effective April 12, his resignation as Chair of the Budget & Finance Committee chair is effective immediately. Pinkston’s Twitter release of his letter of resignation included the comment, “Talk amongst yourselves. I decided this about a month ago, but Friday’s insane board retreat expedited…
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The Metro Nashville Public School Board was scheduled to decide Tuesday night whether to arrange for high school students to learn Kurdish, according to Nashville Public Radio. According to the station, schools would add this to its list of world language curriculum for high school credit. Metro officials want to do this because of Nashville’s sizable Kurdish community. Nashville Public Radio did not say precisely how many Kurdish people live in Nashville. But the station did say there are more than 1,100 students from that community attending Nashville’s public schools and that many live in South Nashville. Educators are on board with the proposed plan because “they believe it will boost students’ academic performance.” “Research has shown that when a student is literate in his or her own native language, it helps them become literate in a new language faster, such as English,” the station quoted Jill Petty as saying. Petty manages literacy and world languages for Metro schools, Nashville Public Radio reported. “That would actually help them in the long run,” Petty reportedly told the station. Nashville Public Radio then quoted Nawzad Hawrami, who directs the Salahadeen Center, which caters to the growing number of Kurds in the area,…
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