A school board's agreement to not say anything disparaging about a director of schools it fired violates the First Amendment free speech rights of school board members, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in a case upholding a lower court's decision.
Davidson County Chancellor Anne Martin on Wednesday allowed a claim of an Open Meetings violation against the Metro Nashville School Board to go forward, including depositions of school board members and other attendees of the closed meeting. Davidson County Chancellor Anne Martin: "... the public interest is best served by enforcing the Open Meetings Act, the purpose of which is to ensure that the public’s business is conducted in the public. " Martin, in her order in Knowledge Academies v. Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools Board of Education, granted a temporary injunction to the charter school operator who claimed that the school board's closed-door meeting [...]
Chalkbeat has provided in-depth coverage of the escalating fight over release of student directory information to charter school operators who want to use it for recruitment. The state this past week filed a lawsuit against the Nashville school district to force the production of the student directory information, which includes student's addresses, phone numbers and other information, after the school district refused the state's order earlier this year. Chalkbeat explains in its most recent report a different tack taken by Memphis schools, which is notifying parents of their rights to have their student's information not released if they "opt out." The Nashville school district's refusal to turn over the information [...]
Chalkbeat reports today that the school boards of Memphis and Nashville are resisting an order from state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen to give charter school operators a list of student names, ages and addresses. The school boards think that the charter schools will use the lists to recruit students, which they think is not consistent with a new law governing charter schools. But the new law appears to require the school districts to turn over the lists at no cost to the charter schools. From Chalkbeat's story "Tennessee’s two largest districts defy state order to share student info with charters": Candice McQueen, Tennessee Education Commissioner At issue is [...]
Nashville's school board is scheduled to discuss tonight potential adoption of public accountability standards for charter schools that would require, among other things, more transparency about how they operate and how public money is spent. Charter schools in Tennessee are already required to abide by the state's Open Meetings Act (T.C.A. 49-13-138) and Public Records Act (T.C.A. 49-13-140), as well as abide by whatever governance requirements laid out by the school district that granted the charters. But instances of fraud and malfeasance by charter school operators across the country have prompted school advocates and lawmakers in some states to propose additional accountability measures that provide more transparency for charter schools. Nashville's [...]
