In the News

One of the most comment complaints parents and citizens are lodging against books in public schools and libraries is that the material breaks obscenity laws. This, along with citing pornography laws, is the justification being cited in both formal and informal complaints. It’s the language being shared in social media “parents rights” groups to prop up argumentation. Several would-be censors have found this a natural lead-in to creating police reports about so-called obscene books like Gender Queer, Out of Darkness, and All Boys Aren’t Blue.

A Chattanooga mom accurately describes the approach of Moms for Liberty at a Hamilton County School Board meeting.

Teaching is our trade; also, I confess, it's our weapon." Those are the words of Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, a small private Christian college in Michigan that, in recent years, has quietly become a driving force in nearly all of the country's ongoing fights around education. During the Trump years, the college functioned as a "feeder school" sending alumni into the administration and the offices of its allies on Capitol Hill. Hillsdale officials led Trump's controversial 1776 Commission, established to create a "patriotic education" alternative to contemporary scholarship on America's racial history. The school's lecture series and magazine serve as a testing ground for the right's most ambitious and outlandish ideas: that diversity isn't a strength but a "solvent" that destroys national unity; that Vladimir Putin is a populist hero; that Republicans should aspire to lure so many children out of public schools that the entire system might collapse.

For weeks, messaging from state officials about Gov. Bill Lee's proposed new education funding formula has aimed to assure local communities they will not have to contribute more funding for schools in the first few years of the plan.

The Senate Education Committee chairman said Monday he believes county commissioners should sock away money to prepare for the effects of a new K-12 funding formula on local taxes.

Senators are trying to figure out the effect of a $9.5 billion funding formula shift on local governments, which are to be held harmless for three years, meaning the portion they pay in a 70-30% split will not force them to pay a greater share until the fourth year.

Celebrities like John Rich and Victoria Jackson were among those to testify that librarians were pushing porn to students, but where is the proof?

Ali Wallace Adair, a lifelong resident of Williamson County and Williamson County Schools alumnus, recently announced her candidacy for the Williamson County Schools Board of Education District 10 seat.

A Florida school board member scrolling Facebook became outraged when learning a book with a “sexually explicit” passage was in her school’s library, and called the police on the district’s superintendent and attorney.

A mayor in Mississippi held the local library hostage by sitting on its funding, demanding the institution remove “homosexual materials.”

In 1925, Lela V. Scopes, twenty-eight, was turned down for a job teaching mathematics at a high school in Paducah, Kentucky, her home town. She had taught in the Paducah schools before going to Lexington to finish college at the University of Kentucky. But that summer her younger brother, John T. Scopes, was set to be tried for the crime of teaching evolution in a high-school biology class in Dayton, Tennessee, in violation of state law, and Lela Scopes had refused to denounce either her kin or Charles Darwin.

Tennessee’s legislature is sending a school library bill to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk aimed at scrutinizing library materials for “age appropriateness.”

Along partisan lines, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted 73-21 Monday night to approve the Republican governor’s proposal following the Senate’s quick passage of the measure last month.

Williamson County Schools Superintendent Jason Golden outlined the effects of Gov. Bill Lee's recently proposed “student-based funding formula” on the district’s finances at a work session on Thursday.

According to projections presented by Golden, WCS would receive over a $22 million increase in overall funding in the fiscal year 2024, when the new formula intends to be implemented.

Gov. Bill Lee’s sweeping proposal to change how Tennessee funds public education faced an uphill legislative battle just weeks ago, but Republican leaders now sound optimistic about the prospect of approving his plan before adjourning next month.

“I think it will pass the Senate this year,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said Thursday, as his chamber prepared to start discussions in committee.