Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is considering making changes to Martin Luther King Academic Magnet School (MLKAMS), one of Nashville’s highest-performing high schools.
At Tuesday’s school board meeting, district Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Battle unveiled plans to move seventh-grade and eighth-grade students to Head Middle School and rebrand that school as Head Middle School at MLK. If MNPS goes forward with its plans, MLKAMS will become a traditional high school serving ninth-grade to 12th-grade. MLKAMS currently teaches students from seventh-grade to 12th-grade.
The planned action would take place over the next four years. It represents the next phase of the district’s ReimaginED initiative.
MLKAMS is an academic magnet. According to MNPS, magnet schools “are visionary, innovative schools that attract students interested in unique themes such as: sciences, the arts, languages, International Baccalaureate and more.”
All students must meet the required academic criteria to enroll in the school. Those requirements are an 80 or higher GPA, no missing or failing grades, and met or exceeded expectations on TCAP.
Head Middle School is a themed school open to all with no academic requirements for enrollment. Zoned students receive priority enrollment.
In informing the MNPS school board of the district’s plans, Battle pointed to increased seats as a student benefit.
MLKAMS currently serves 1,220 students, with 270 enrolled in seventh-grade and eighth-grade. Building capacity for MLKAMS is set at 1,500 students.
If the roughly 270 middle school students are phased out, MNPS data trends show MLKAMS with a 9-12 enrollment of 930, putting MLK at 62 percent capacity.
Under the current configuration, qualifying students have an automatic sixth- seventh-grade pathway from Head to MLKAMS. Those who qualify from Head and Rosebank middle schools have an automatic pathway to MLKAMS from eighth-grade to ninth-grade. Neither Head nor Rosebank are academic magnet schools. Meigs Middle School, Hume-Fogge High School, and MLK are Nashville’s only academic magnet schools.
This year, the MLK received 229 applications. Of those 229 applications, 106 were accepted from the pathway, 20 students were accepted from outside the pathway, and 75 students were waitlisted. That waitlist was cleared by the start of the school year.
Battle did not indicate to the board how the newly created seats at both Head and MLKAMS would be filled.
In phasing seventh-grade and eighth-grade out of MLKAMS, the district is reducing the academic magnet middle school seats by 44 percent.
Niche listed Hume-Fogg as first, and MLKAMS as fourth in this year’s ranking of the best public high schools in Tennessee.
The current action is separate from recent efforts by MNPS school board members to end automatic pathways to the district’s academic magnet schools. Board members hold community meetings to gather feedback before deciding to move forward.
Sources, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Tennessee Star that school administrators shut down a planned student protest. Â Students had planned on holding signs in opposition outside the building before the start of school.
District leaders met with the teachers and faculty on Monday, 24 hours before presenting the plan to board members.
A community meeting with three MNPS board members will be in the MLKAMS on December 18th from 5-7 p.m.
In the fall of 2013, Dr. Jesse Register, the MNPS superintendent at the time, presented a similar plan. The MLKAMS community (parents, students, faculty, etc) mobilized and successfully advocated to keep middle school seats at MLKAMS.
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TC Weber is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. He writes the blog Dad Gone Wild. Follow TC on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected]. He’s the proud parent of two public school children and the spouse of a public school teacher.
We have something that is working well, so let’s change it. We need equity! The results are too good at this school. We need to go back to the old model and be sure to separate the age groups.
I’m sorry, this sounds stupid at first glance. Why not innovate within the current model. If they are not already doing so, let those who are capable take more advanced classes at higher grade level. More like a homeschool situation where the student is able to advance at their best pace.
If the current model is a success, then start to implement it at other schools and make seats available in that way.
Battle would screw up a toddler’s class if she were given control. But she checks all of the right boxes to get the “job” she gets paid to do. Even if itis very poorly done.