Every Wednesday, a group of fourth graders at Winchester Elementary put on black aprons and start packing up cardboard boxes with canned vegetables and mac and cheese.
The young volunteers spend their free periods prepping weekend meal boxes for around 30 Whitehaven families who line up outside the Memphis school building each Friday afternoon. It’s a routine that’s been in place since Winchester opened its food pantry in March.
Denise Wilson, a fourth grade math teacher who runs the pantry, said families typically show up once a month for help. She expects the number of families seeking food to increase in the coming weeks because of delayed and missing SNAP benefits, which are affecting one in 10 Tennesseans as the federal government shutdown drags on.
A Nashville education blogger takes on the use of scripted learning:
At a time when recruiting and retaining teachers is harder than ever, scripted instruction is a surefire way to push more of them out. After all, who needs trained professionals when you can browbeat employees into reading from a script?
This relentless pacing will ultimately cost the district its most talented educators. As one high-school teacher told me, “We’re getting to a point where I need to evaluate how much teaching I’m actually doing. Maybe it’s time to do something else.”
When it comes to addressing Tennessee’s teacher shortage, Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R-Cookeville) believes it’s time to “think outside of the box,” but his idea to possibly drop the state’s bachelor’s degree requirement for teachers is drawing some criticism.
During Speaker Sexton’s state-of-the-state address last month, he suggested creating a two-year associate degree program for teaching to churn out more educators in Tennessee.
When all else fails, just make it easier to become a teacher and “churn out more educators.”
It apparently hasn’t occurred to Sexton that there is a reason (or several reasons) why people aren’t exactly lining up for teaching jobs.
Perhaps if Sexton floated the idea of improving both pay and classroom resources, more college students would consider K-12 teaching a viable career option.
As it stands, Tennessee teachers are among the lowest-paid in the Southeast and school funding in the state lags behind our regional peers.
Now, though, there’s also an example of what might happen. A school district in Oregon moved starting pay in the district from $38,000 a year to $60,000 a year. In the process, all teachers received at least a 15% raise.
The move was approved by 100% of union members voting.
After announcing the salary schedule change, we had pools of qualified applicants to consider. It was a fun spring. Our administrators were having to have these rich conversations about best fit, really digging into things like, ‘Here’s a full table of highly qualified people; who is going to best fulfill the needs of our school? It’s a conversation that most districts don’t get to have right now.
Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is studying school start times – perhaps with a look toward changing them to better meet the needs of students and families.
Nashville Public Schools, in partnership with Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s Office and the Metro Nashville Board of Education, is conducting a districtwide review of school start and end times to better align with student well-being, family needs, and transportation efficiency.
This process is just beginning. No decisions have been made. The goal is to gather feedback, data, and community input to make informed decisions about potential changes that will be considered in the early part of 2026.
TC Weber notes that a new nonprofit wants to essentially end public education in the Volunteer State.
But a new nonprofit, Tennessee Leads, has even bigger ambitions: 200,000 voucher students and 250,000 in charter schools by 2031.
If those goals are met, traditional public schools would serve just 550,000 students—a seismic shift.
Gov. Lee and Speaker Sexton want to double the number of voucher students in 2026 – from 20,000 to 40,000 – with a total of 100,000 by 2030. But, Tennessee Leads is pushing for more than that.
The result of meeting this goal would be a rise in unaccountable private education sources – and an end to traditional public education in our state.
A press release from the Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) highlights Nashville’s 2025 Blue Ribbon Teachers:
Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) and Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) designated 25 educators as new Blue Ribbon Teachers at a ceremony hosted by Vanderbilt University on October 30. Each Blue Ribbon teacher received a $2,000 cash prize, professional headshots, a trophy, media mentions and two round-trip airline tickets, courtesy of Southwest Airlines. Since 2014, the Blue Ribbon Teacher awards have recognized and celebrated more than 475 of Nashville’s top teachers.
The 2025 winners are:
Courtney Antonello, H. G. Hill Middle
Brooke Adler, Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet
Tony Berg, Wright Middle
Deanna Boorsma, Meigs Middle Magnet
Hudson Christian, Stratford STEM Magnet High
Christopher Collins, Hume-Fogg Magnet High
Sarah Diaz, Maplewood High
Abbie Gunkel, Charlotte Park Elementary
Manda Hackney, Tusculum Elementary
Heather Hall, East Nashville Magnet High
Samira Hardcastle, John F. Kennedy Middle
Dr. Brittany Harrington, Cockrill ES
Maegan Hickey, Cambridge Early Learning Center
Joshua Latham, Republic High
Matthew Laurence, Hume-Fogg Magnet High
Valerie McAnally, Cole Elementary
Jennifer Murray, Hume-Fogg Magnet High
Meredith Musgrove, Paragon Mills Elementary
Marti Profitt, Nashville School of the Arts
Likisha Rhodes, Cane Ridge High
Alex Robinson, John Overton High
Zakeisha Appleton Smith, Tusculum Elementary
Mary Alice Strickler, KIPP High School
Debbie West, Waverly-Belmont Elementary
Courtney Williams, Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet
“Teaching is an admirably tough profession that requires creativity, patience and unwavering commitment. We are so proud to honor the top teaching talent in our city each year and show Nashville how educational excellence can help students thrive, said Dr. Diarese George, NPEF President & CEO. “The Blue Ribbon Teacher designation recognizes the hard work of these teachers and shines a spotlight on the innovation and leadership that happens daily in MNPS classrooms.”
NPEF Blue Ribbon Teacher Awards held at the Wyatt Rotunda
Nashville education blogger TC Weber takes a look at a debate over words in Sumner County – and argues that words matter:
Let’s talk about Sumner County, where a school board meeting turned into a culture war showdown over whether to call the December school break “Winter Break” or “Christmas Break.”
The name had been “Winter Break” for over 30 years—until last year, when the board changed it to “Christmas Break” without public input.
Board member Wade Evans admitted, “We did a bad job as a board because we did not represent everyone.”
Others disagreed. Member Andy Lacy said, “Christmas is Christmas. Why do we have to offend the masses to appease the 1%?”
This is the kind of debate that often gets passed off as minor or symbolic, but it reveals something deeper: who gets to define the public space, and whose identity is centered by default. Language matters—especially in public education, where every student is supposed to feel seen. It’s not just about semantics; it’s about belonging.
Katya Schwenk takes a deeper dive into this horror-scape.
Academic instruction in Price’s schools is delivered via a suite of online education apps for two hours per day, leaving the afternoons free for Cybertruck construction and tech CEO make-believe. This is the brand around which her work revolves: 2 Hour Learning, which is billed as an “AI tutor” that can entirely replace all classroom teachers via a few hours spent glued to a laptop screen.
And, this bad idea is multiplying:
Buoyed by the hype, 2 Hour Learning is seeing rapid expansion. In January, Price was approved to launch a virtual charter school in Arizona, 2 Hour Learning’s first foray into public education. The company claims that this fall, seven new brick-and-mortar private schools, from New York to Florida to California, will open their doors to students.
Lee, who’s out of state this week on an economic trip to Asia, has thus far declined to tap state resources to help mitigate the loss of more than $145 million in monthly food aid intended for the state’s poorest residents – among them more than 300,000 children living in poverty.
The Tennessee Justice Center explains the challenges faced by the loss of SNAP:
On November 1, over 700,000 Tennesseans will face the unthinkable loss of access to the food they depend on through SNAP.
For the first time in history, we are up against an unnatural disaster. Families across Tennessee will be forced to make impossible choices about meals, bills, and basic needs as food support disappears.
Lee has directed state resources to launch a website that provides information on where Tennesseans can find food assistance – though the Governor is not directing additional state funds to help provide this assistance.
Lee announced that the FeedTN.org platform will connect Tennesseans with resources and opportunities to serve.
“Instead of serving 700,000 Tennessee children through Summer EBT, TDHS’s program will reach a max of 25,000 children. Despite spending nearly as much as it would take to serve the entire state, the Tennessee program will reach less than 4% of the children that received Summer EBT in 2024.”
Lee rejected $75 million in federal funds that would have supported a program to add funds to EBT cards for families whose kids receive free/reduced lunch during the school year.
