The first Metro Nashville Public Schools board meeting of the year took place on Tuesday, and revolved primarily around three major topics: ACT testing, the district’s public-comment policy and Tennessee’s third-grade retention law.
Director Adrienne Battle's report reviewed ACT testing information and what the district is doing to prepare students and educators for the test moving forward. Board chair and District 2 representative Rachael Anne Elrod then prefaced the public participation portion of the meeting by explaining implementation of a new comment policy, which she also explained on her Facebook page. Though Elrod hasn’t changed the policy itself, she is enforcing it differently than the last chair, and will allow folks to speak only about agenda items — though they will be able to comment at both of each month's two meetings, unlike before.
“We will, as a board, be reviewing kind of the effectiveness of this, as this has been the request,” said Elrod. “So we're going to be discussing that and going through the motions for this month to see kind of how it works and what the feedback is.”
One commenter, Jeremiah Wooten, said: “I think when you restrict people's public comments at meetings to only items on the agenda and direct them to email you instead, you're really limiting the ‘public’ part of public participation.”
“Public participation is very important on many levels,” Nashville Organized for Action and Hope leader Lynda Miller tell the Scene. “It involves parents, organizations and teachers to bring up things the board may be unaware of and gives the board an opportunity to address any and all comments and should not be limited to only subjects on the meeting agenda. A policy that puts undue restrictions on public input at a public meeting is a deterrent to First Amendment rights and democratic processes. … We urge Ms. Elrod and the board to clarify and simplify the process.”
The evening’s handful of public participants mostly spoke out against the state's third-grade retention law, set to go in effect this year. After a quick approval of the consent agenda, District 3 representative Emily Masters read a resolution pertaining to the law, which would require third-graders who don’t pass the English language arts portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program to be held back unless they attend summer school, receive tutoring or in some cases both. The resolution, which you can read on pages 50 to 51 of the meeting's agenda, states: “The Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education urges the Tennessee General Assembly to amend TCA 49-6-3115 to allow school districts to make retention decisions for third and fourth grade students based upon all school district information for each student and without delegating the final authority for such decisions to the State Board of Education.” The resolution passed.
