WCS Superintendent Mike Looney Refuses to Answer The Tennessee Star’s Questions About Violations of State Law

Williamson County School Superintendent Mike Looney has long evaded The Tennessee Star’s questions about the “white privilege” in-service training he imposed on teachers during the current academic year, but Thursday he made clear he refuses to talk to us. “You have mislead [sic], editorializied [sic] and been less than honest in your ‘reporting’ [sic] until this changes I will not recognize your online publication as legitimate and will not respond to requests for comment,” Looney wrote in an emailed statement. In his email to us, Looney failed to identify a single factual error in any of the stories The Star has published regarding the “white privilege” “Cultural Competency” series. This was the first time Looney responded directly to The Star, even though for weeks we have sent several emails with several questions to him and his public information officer Carol Birdsong. As reported, the “white privilege” training is part of a “Cultural Competency series of videos that preach left-leaning social justice themes and America’s supposed dysfunctional history. On Thursday, The Star tried to ask Looney about an email he sent a parent about the fourth video in that “Cultural Competency” series. We also wanted to ask him about his claim to that…

Read the full story

Tennessean Reporter ‘Rage Tweets’ Because of Tennessee Star Article ‘Discrediting My Story About the Racist Wall Incident at Sunset Middle’

Amelia Knisely, the Tennessean reporter whose March 8 story titled “Racist incidents are occurring in Williamson schools,”  was discredited by the subsequent Tennessee Star article on March 15, “Williamson County Parent of Sunset Middle School Student Says Alleged ‘Racist Incident’ at School Claimed by Tennessean Never Happened,” went on a self described “rage tweet” on Monday morning about the two stories. “A thread of Monday rage: I don’t normally feel inclined to respond to @tnstar “reporting,” but a story has come out discrediting my story about the racist ‘wall incident’ at Sunset Middle,” Knisely, who “Prior to moving to Tennessee, Amelia was a television reporter and producer in West Virginia. She holds a master’s degree from Marshall University,” according to her Tennessean bio, tweeted. Her bio also notes that, “She previously served as editor of The Contributor in Nashville, and she has written extensively on poverty and homelessness.” At the end of her “rage tweets,” Knisely apologized for directing her tweets to @tnstar, rather then the Twitter account of The Tennessee Star, which is @TheTNStar. “Ah, yes, sorry @tnstar as you are not the @TheTNStar. Never rage tweet before coffee, y’all,” Knisely tweeted. Between those two tweets, Knisely added a…

Read the full story

Williamson County Parent of Sunset Middle School Student Says Alleged ‘Racist Incident’ at School Claimed by Tennessean Never Happened

A Sunset Middle School parent familiar with details of what The Tennessean alleged last Friday was a “racist incident” that occurred on January 18 at Sunset Middle School in Brentwood told The Tennessee Star in an exclusive interview on Thursday, “The alleged incident at the school did not happen.” “That was a lesson in the classroom about the Irish settlers. The lesson was how people locked arms to block the Irish settlers. That is where that all came from, and it has been grossly exaggerated into this story where students locked arms to block minority students. There was no Trump wall being built. There was no students arm-in-arm blocking any other students. None of that happened,” the parent told The Star. The parent, who confirmed they have a child who currently attends Sunset Middle School, contacted The Star by email on Thursday and offered to talk anonymously about the allegation, as well as the current environment at Sunset Middle School. This parent, our first source for this story, portrays a situation where media accounts of alleged racism at the school are a gross mischaracterization. Another person familiar with the alleged January 18 “racist incident,” a second source for this story, confirms the…

Read the full story

The Tennessee Star Wants to Hear from Parents, Students, and Teachers for Eyewitness Accounts of Alleged ‘Racist Incident’ at Sunset Middle School in Brentwood 

An alleged “racist incident” occurred in January at Brentwood’s Sunset Middle School, according to Friday’s Tennessean, five months after the Williamson County School System launched a system-wide “Cultural Competency Series” of In-Service training days for teachers. Allegedly, some students at the school linked arms in between classes, formed a human chain, and then barred non-white students from passing as a play on U.S. President Donald Trump’s border wall. As The Tennessee Star reported, the In-service training for teachers included several videos the school system created that focused on “white privilege.” The Tennessean offered rather thin evidence to support their assertion that a racist incident had, in fact, occurred Jan. 18. The paper’s evidence included on-the-record statements from two members of the WCS cultural competency committee. Neither of the two women quoted apparently witnessed the alleged incident. Williamson County Schools addressed the details of the alleged incident in a way that was unusual. A Tennessean reporter emailed school system officials to confirm the event. But rather than respond to The Tennessean reporter, WCS officials printed out the email and someone hand wrote “Yes it happened,” on it and included that document — unsolicited —in a package to The Tennessee Star, along…

Read the full story

Williamson County School System Director Apologizes for ‘Gross Error in Judgement’ on Slavery Assignment

As part of an assignment, eighth-grade social studies teachers at Brentwood’s Sunset Middle School asked students to pretend their family owns slaves. Students then had to create a list of expectations for the family’s slaves. The assignment didn’t sit well with Williamson County Schools Superintendent Mike Looney, who has publicly apologized for what he said was a “gross error in judgement from WCS personnel.” [Editors note: “Judgement” is not generally accepted as the proper spelling of ‘judgment” in American English, although it is considered acceptable in British English, primarily in legal documents.] “We have been providing professional training to our staff members on cultural awareness this year, but I admit that we have more work to do in this area,” Looney said in an email sent out to school parents Thursday. “Please know, we are absolutely committed to ensuring all of our students feel welcome, wanted and worthwhile.” Looney also tweeted a copy of his letter. School officials pulled the assignment, and they will not take grades on it, Looney went on to say. In the same email, school Principal Tim Brown said he was “very remorseful that this situation occurred.” “I recognize this assignment was inappropriate, and steps are…

Read the full story