Sports and school safety
Hello and welcome to School Zone. This is education reporter Meghan Mangrum.
I'm out of the office this week, but my Tennessean colleagues will keep you updated on the most important education news.
A somber end to the school year
Last week saw renewed conversations about school security after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 students and two teachers dead.
News of the tragedy at Robb Elementary School broke during a Metro Nashville school board meeting, prompting swift reaction from school leaders, board members and eventually Tennessee lawmakers.
Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake directed all 70 elementary schools in the city be visited by a police officer and asked school resource officers stationed at middle and high schools to review safety protocols and reassure staff and faculty.
The city budgets for at least one SRO at every middle and high school, but even their law enforcement presence in schools is often debated — a debate that will likely grow as details of law enforcement's mistakes and delays emerge from Uvalde.
Meanwhile, Metro Schools Director Adrienne Battle spoke out about the massacre during a budget hearing before Metro Council Wednesday, urging city leaders to work together to find ways to combat gun violence and making pointed comments about the availability of guns.
Last year, there were 48 victims of gun violence under the age of 17 in Nashville, many of them Metro Schools students.
"This is not a school issue. This is a society issue," Battle said Wednesday. "Our students deserve to learn in safe environments."
Keep reading for more from Battle and other Tennessee officials.
Charter school students now blocked from participating in middle school sports leagues
Parents of students who attend charter schools in Davidson County are speaking out after Metro Nashville Public Schools announced that charter school students will no longer be able to participate in the district's middle school athletics programs.
The district notified it's more than two dozen charter schools of this decision in April, but the news only started making local headlines last week.
The decision comes as Metro Nashville Public Schools' grapples with a $22.6 million shortfall in state funding next year, increasing funding going to charter schools and the state's new K-12 school funding formula.
District spokesperson Sean Braisted said in an email that with $234 million going to Davidson County charter schools in the upcoming budget year, charter schools "receive an equal per pupil portion of state and local funding to serve the needs of their students."
The move, Braisted said in an email to The Tennessean, will give charter schools "the autonomy to develop and manage their academic and extracurricular programming. This would include the sports offerings for their students."
But charter school students have participated in the district's middle school sports leagues for years, Dwayne Tucker, CEO of LEAD Public Schools, said in an email last week.
"Although our schools are run by charter school operators, our students are MNPS students. They deserve the right to keep playing with their peers as they have for years."
Tucker emphasized that many charter school students have played on sports teams at local schools with a "historic tradition of competition in MNPS' leagues."
Extra credit
► With students walking out of class to call for gun law reform following last week's massacre in Uvalde, a "March for Our Lives" rally in Nashville is planned for June 11. The organization formed after a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and spawned chapters of youth advocates nationwide calling for gun control.
► New rankings from the National Education Association put Tennessee close to the bottom when it comes to how well we pay our public school teachers. What does that mean for recruitment? Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Natalie Parks reports more.
► Jacob Philadelphia, the then-5-year-old from the iconic "Hair Like Mine" photo with President Barack Obama is one of the newest University of Memphis Tigers. Keep reading for more from Memphis from The Commercial Appeal's Laura Testino.
► The mother of a Hawkins County, Tennessee, eighth grader says in a lawsuit filed last week that her son was repeatedly subjected to racially-motivated attacks and the school system did nothing to stop them.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greeneville Tuesday, details a slew of racially motivated attacks by white students, at least three of which were recorded by the students and posted on social media. The Tennessee Lookout has more on this lawsuit — and another alleging sexual abuse in Nashville public schools.
► Metro Nashville Public Schools' Promising Scholars summer program kicks off Thursday. Get more information here.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Charter school sports and school safety
