Community members gathered at William Henry Oliver Middle School on Thursday to address concerns about its leadership and safety protocols. Alongside Principal Hawaya Wilson and her staff, several Metro Nashville Public Schools leaders attended the event.
While some attendees showed up with students to learn more about the coming school year, others were there to ask questions about past incidents. Allegations of a toxic, unsafe environment for both students and faculty cropped up at Tuesday night’s school board meeting and again on Thursday. Testimonies included claims of unruly behavior, incidents where teachers were mistreated by students and not properly supported by leadership, a lack of behavioral accountability with students, poor communication from Oliver leadership and the district, and a mishandled response when a student brought a gun to school in April. (No one was hurt during that incident.)
This is the third community meeting about Oliver, but the first one with MNPS leadership present. The school district's representative Rachael Anne Elrod attended the first and last meetings. She encouraged folks to attend the July 14 meeting and expressed frustration via a Facebook post about another meeting, the second, which was held on June 16.
According to some parents, more than 20 teachers have left since the end of the school year, and they’re worried about how those positions will be filled. The district has not yet confirmed how many teachers left since the last day of school, but MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted says 29 staff members have left since August of 2021 for various reasons, including staff cuts, promotions, transfers to other schools and retirement. He says there are currently five teacher vacancies at Oliver.
Several community members brought signs with phrases like “Principal Wilson NO MORE LIES” and “Parents want TO BE HEARD.” Some complained that the meeting had been hijacked because they were planning on an open question-and-answer format, but were told to split up in groups and attend different information sessions throughout the school — though attendees were able to ask questions at the end of each session. When they were asked to break into groups, some attendees objected — two people were escorted out for yelling. One of those escorted out was Stephen Slater, a retired school resource officer who worked at Oliver Middle School for 14 years. Slater has a plaque honoring him outside the school.
“We have a right [for] our voices to be heard,” Slater yelled before being escorted out of Thursday’s meeting. “This lockdown was not handled, kids could have been hurt,” he said in reference to April’s gun incident. “You’ve got to know, this is on Ms. Wilson.” Parents complained that the district did not properly handle the incident, and that they did not get phone calls. Wilson, however, said phone calls and emails went out, and that the proper procedures were followed.
“As far as the lockdown happening 30 minutes later, I don't have the timeline,” Wilson told a parent later that night. “I do know that when I was informed that there was a gun in the building, that we went on lockdown immediately after.”
“I am so in love with this school, and I am brokenhearted to see what has happened in the rapid decline for the last few years,” Amy Stevens tells the Scene. Stevens is a former substitute teacher and a parent of students who attended Oliver. “My biggest concerns are leadership — that they are not competent to carry out the day-to-day runnings of the building.”
Both principal Wilson and district leadership tried to assuage parents by addressing concerns from last year and discussing plans for improvement in the coming year.
“We hope that parents that want to see the success of Oliver will see this as the first step towards working with the administration to implement further improvement,” Braisted tells the Scene. “We operate on a continuous improvement model, as a district, as schools. And so none of our schools are perfect, none of our principals or people are perfect — everyone has room for growth. And so the point of us as a support hub coming out was to make sure that we've heard the parents over the last few months, we've worked with the school to address the issues that we can address, and to move forward in a productive way.”
“[We’ve been] stiff-armed the whole evening,” says Stevens. “It's ridiculous, and it's very indicative of how they've treated us the last few years as parents. ‘No, no, no, you're wrong. We're right. We've got this, go away.’ That's how they treat us tonight, and this is exactly how we’ve been treated for months.”
