In the News

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — These days on Capitol Hill, the big drama playing out is a push by some to reshape public education here in Tennessee or, in the view of some, to destroy it.

Advocates say that push is coming from families.

A slate of new charter applications in Tennessee's suburban communities are increasingly pointing to a cultural shift in the types of families the schools hope to attract.

Details are limited in Governor Bill Lee’s deal with Hillsdale College, the controversial conservative-leaning school in Michigan. The school has a network of charters and the governor and some in his cabinet are reaching out to them to bring dozens of new charter schools to Tennessee.

One of the many reasons book challenges have grown in the last year is that it creates tremendous paperwork and time investment on the behalf of a school district. This, in turn, allows those who challenge to point to inadequacies in how schools are being run because they’ve invested so much time and money into having a book in the facility they believe should not have been there to begin with. It creates a compelling argument for how tax money is misspent, furthering the belief many of these censors have that they should have the right to receive vouchers (on taxpayer money) to send their children to whatever school they wish.

Tennessee lawmakers advanced a bill targeting "obscene" books in school libraries after multiple hearings featuring testimony from congressional and school board candidates, pastors and even a country music star.

GOP legislative leaders on Thursday maintained that parents need more transparency on what students are being exposed to inside Tennessee's public schools, but a handful conceded the arguments recently used to condemn teachers and libraries had crossed a line.

The Republican supermajority at the capitol is going after more books, this time books the GOP says contain pornographic material in them.

Eight Republican candidates for the Williamson County Schools Board of Education participated in a candidate forum Thursday, their first chance to answer questions in front of constituents ahead of the May 3 county primary.

Tennessee Textbook Commissioner and potential House of Representatives candidate Laurie-Cardoza Moore testified before House subcommittee yesterday that she believed the commission on which she serves should have expanded authority to be able to regulate books that appear on school library shelves.

The ACLU of Tennessee has requested that the state of Tennessee release all records regarding its announced charter school partnership with Hillsdale College in Michigan.

The removal of "Maus" from McMinn County Schools — located in East Tennessee — caused the phrases "book banning" and "book burning" to go viral across the internet in January.

When award-winning author and illustrator Jerry Craft learned last October that his virtual visit to a school in Katy, Texas, was canceled and his popular book New Kid had been removed from the library’s shelves, he was shocked. A mom had complained that his humorous graphic novel—about his childhood experience as a Black student attending a mostly white school—gives students a distorted view of race.