Metro Nashville Public Schools board members met on Valentine’s Day for their regularly scheduled meeting as well as an Advocacy Committee meeting. 

Advocacy Committee members heard a presentation from Davidson County Assessor of Property Vivian Wilhoite, who discussed classroom teaching sessions and other programming her office has implemented about property assessment and career opportunities. Board members then discussed the current legislative session and legislation they’re paying attention to, such as the third-grade retention law , which they passed a resolution against in January. District 8 representative Erin O’Hara Block highlighted other notable legislative items, voicing support for bills that would increase classroom stipends , remove professional barriers that increase the teacher pipeline from outside the state and extend free lunch programming . She also expressed concern about bills extending Education Savings Account eligibility, those that would allow firearms on school campuses and other culture-war-inspired bills, many of which the Scene highlighted in a recent legislative preview. 1d Bend

The Nashville School of the Arts Cantabile Choir serenaded the board room at the start of the meeting with an a cappella performance ahead of a forthcoming performance at the American Choral Directors Associations Conference in Cincinnati on Feb. 24. Director of Schools Adrienne Battle then recognized Roosevelt Sanders for winning a Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association Distinguished Achievement Award, along with the 84 MNPS high schools sports teams that won TSSAA awards for the fall semester. 

There were two director’s reports at Tuesday’s meeting — which is rare — and no public participants. The first director’s report reviewed districtwide assessment updates including FastBridge testing data, which is used to identify learning gaps and academic support opportunities, along with benchmark assessment data. 

The second director’s report considered a matter that district officials described as an “emergency” and “unprecedented” situation regarding LEAD Neely’s Bend Middle School — a charter school — in Madison. The school is currently under the purview of the state-run Achievement School District, which was created to turn around the lowest-performing schools in the state. (Its efforts have been largely unsuccessful .) In November, the school’s leaders submitted an application to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission — because it was an ASD school, it did not have to submit an application to MNPS — and the commission approved the application in January. As a result, the school will move from a zoned school to a “choice only charter school,” which will affect sixth- through eighth-graders in the Hunter’s Lane cluster who are currently zoned for Neely’s Bend middle school, including students from Amqui Elementary and Neely's Bend Elementary.

MNPS staff scrambled to figure out how to make space for those students and is “proposing that Amqui and Neely’s Bend Elementary Schools be converted to PK-8 grade structure to provide the most seamless transition for the students,” according to the report. This process would start by adding sixth grade to the schools during the next school year and adding the two additional grades in each subsequent year. In the meantime, seventh- and eighth-graders would be zoned to Madison Middle School, though sixth-graders could attend and receive transportation to Madison Middle if desired. There will be a community meeting to discuss the matter on Feb. 23 at the Madison Branch of the Nashville Public Library at 6:30 p.m.

“MNPS’ goal is to ensure that all students who are currently zoned to LEAD Neely’s Bend College Prep will have a guaranteed seat with an MNPS school,” said MNPS Director of Charter Schools Shereka Roby-Grant.

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