WCSB Substack

New Superintendent, Election Results, Five Board Members Finish Their Terms

Cory Martin — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:56:11 GMT

Hello all, I need to do some catching up. So this will be a long post, covering the June 29, 2026 meeting, the recent elections and the August 17, 2026 meeting.

Leigh Webb Appointed Interim Superintendent and Budget Approved

The Williamson County School Board held a specially called meeting on June 29, 2026.

Donna Clements was absent and Drason Beasley arrived late.

Initially, this meeting was called to approve the budget that was sent back to the school board from the County Commission. After Jason Golden announced his resignation, the appointment of an interim superintendent was added to the agenda.

Superintendent

As required by state law, Mr. Golden gave 45 days notice for his resignation. That would have made his last day August 7th. The board and Mr. Golden mutually agreed to shorten that window so that his last day was on July 14th.

There was a motion to appoint Leigh Webb as interim superintendent. The listed salary was $275k and Eric Welch proposed an amendment to raise that to $295k. That motion passed. Mr. Golden praised Dr. Webb saying that she “is as complete of an administrator as I’ve ever worked with.” Her appointment passes unanimously.

Josh Brown requested authority from the board to form a committee to search for a new superintendent. There is some discussion, but the board grants him this authority.

Budget

The county commission’s budget removed $2.2 million for some textbooks. The idea would be that they would have to amend the budget during the school year to request these additional funds. After discussion, the budget passes 10-1, with Eric Welch voting no because of the $2.2 million cut.

They then talk about the pay scales. Initially, there was to be a 4% raise across the board. But Jason Golden suggested that be reallocated to give a 5% raise for hourly staff, a 2% raise for administrators, and a 4% raise for everyone else. That plan is adopted.

Jay Galbreath warned future boards that the problems that the salary study found will not be fixed without more funding. Josh Brown reiterated for the next board: “you’re not going to cut your way out of this problem.”

2026 Election Results

In the 2026 elections, here were the results:

District 2

Randy Allen (R) defeated Jason Greathouse (D)

District 4

Traci Anderson (R) was unopposed

District 6

Kimberly Calcote (R) defeated Kristi Bidinger (I)

District 8

Donna Clements (R) won re-election over me (I)

District 10

Jennifer Parker Konyn (D) defeated Elliott Franklin (R)

District 12

Jessica Lucyshyn (R) was unopposed

Five Board Members Have Their Last Meeting

The Williamson County School Board held its August meeting yesterday.

All members were present, with Drason Beasley joining remotely.

The agenda was pretty light this month, but it was notably the last meeting for Dan Cash, Josh Brown, Jay Galbreath, Eric Welch, and Drason Beasley.

Public comment

There were six folks who signed up for public comment. Two football coaches advocated for an athletic period during the school day. One high school father spoke out against the district’s use of an electronic hall pass system called Securly, arguing it collects proxy biometric data and is a lawsuit waiting to happen. One speaker was concerned about the board engaging a new law firm. Another speaker urged the board to take their time in selecting social studies textbooks. And finally Beverly Purvis thanked the board, admin, and teachers for an excellent start to the school year.

New TN laws

The Consent Agenda was quite lengthy due to many policy changes that were required to comply with new state laws. Some examples are as follows:

Employees must have their information verified using E-Verify
Instruction on child trafficking prevention and awareness will be included in the Family Life Education program
Public comment during specially called meeting does not have to pertain to the agenda

Board Members rolling off

Each of the five board members attending their last meeting was presented with a plaque from Leigh Webb. They each took a turn to give their thanks to the community for the opportunity to serve.

Mr. Cash said that it was the “greatest job I’ve ever had.”

Mr. Galbreath expressed the importance of being able to disagree and still collaborate.

Mr. Beasley said that it has been a highlight of his life. “Thank you for letting me serve.”

Mr. Welch recounted his experience over the last 16 years, and concluded his time on the board by extolling Dr. Webb’s virtues, saying that she is the best person to be our new superintendent.

Mr. Brown talked about how he came to a WCS board meeting while he was in high school here. To think that he would be on the board 30 years later is wild. “It’s been a privilege to serve.”

Next meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, September 21, 2026 at 6:30 pm.

Board Extends Superintendent's Contract

Cory Martin — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:06:20 GMT

The Williamson County School Board voted 9-2 on Monday, June 16 to extend Superintendent Jason Golden’s contract, capping off a contentious discussion about whether the vote should happen at all.

Melissa Wyatt was absent for the Work Session. All board members were present for the voting meeting.

The Superintendent’s Contract Extension

Mr. Golden was hired as the superintendent in 2019 on a 4-year contract. Every June since then, he has requested an extension of one year to keep the contract at 4 years. That is until last June, when he did not request an extension.

This month he did request an extension, and the board voted 9-2 with one abstention to grant him that request. And it was an interesting discussion that led to that vote.

First, Margie Johnson made a motion to delay the vote until September. Her reasoning was that there will be many new board members after August and they should make the decision. (Six board seats will be elected in August. And five incumbents are not seeking reelection.) There was a pause when the chair asked if there was a second. Then Donna Clements verbally seconded the motion while Tony Bostic pressed the button on his iPad to register his second.

Seven of the other nine board members took to their microphones in turn to state why this delay was a bad idea. After the discussion, the motion to delay failed 9-2 with Margie Johnson and Tony Bostic voting to delay and Donna Clements abstaining.

Shortly after, the contract extension passed 9-2, with Margie Johnson and Tony Bostic voting no and Donna Clements abstaining.

Budget

Back in March, the school board approved the 26-27 school year budget. It was sent to the county commission for approval there and is still awaiting finalization. Once the county commission comes to their final determination of what the budget should be, the school board will reconvene for a special meeting at 5pm on June 29, 2026. This just barely beats the June 30 deadline of when it needs to be submitted to the state.

Next meeting

As I mentioned, the board will reconvene for an ad hoc meeting at 5pm on June 29. The board does not meet in July, so the next regular meeting will be on Monday, August 17 at 6:30pm. Have a great summer!

Service Delivery Logs, Continued Pushback on T2 Consolidation

Cory Martin — Tue, 19 May 2026 19:42:43 GMT

The Williamson County School Board held its May meeting yesterday.

Eric Welch was absent for the Work Session. Josh Brown and Drason Beasley were absent for the voting meeting. Since Mr. Brown is the chair, Claire Reeves presided in the voting meeting because she is vice chair.

There were many topics discussed at these meetings. First, the Transition II program’s proposed changes have been met with some pushback. Second, there was a proposed institution of a Service Delivery Logs system to track the services that are rendered to students with IEPs. Third, screens and technology use were a topic of discussion. Fourth, reports of bullying in the district have increased.

Transition II

One parent of a Transition II student spoke up during public comment, expressing her displeasure with the proposed changes to the Transition II program. As I said last month, this WSMV article lays out the story well.

Margie Johnson, Tony Bostic, Donna Clements, and Dennis Driggers each took time to express their displeasure about the proposed changes. They have heard from parents and teachers that this change was not welcome.

Dan Cash and Eric Welch defended our educators and admin, disputing the rumors that they were uncaring. Mr. Cash has heard from teachers who are in favor of this change and asks if they can poll the teachers to get their opinion. Mr. Golden said that it’s a very small number of teachers, but yes, they could ask them.

Superintendent Golden again laid out the reasons why these changes were proposed. The admin overseeing this program saw the job performance data from our T2 students after they age out, and thought we could do better. This change was an attempt to serve those students better. They did not anticipate the pushback that they have received. The reaction to this proposed change has shown them that they did not communicate adequately nor sensitively enough.

Mr. Bostic asked if they could at least delay these changes by a year, but did not get a commitment on that. He added that he would love to see a poll to get the teachers’ opinions on this topic.

Service Delivery Logs

Last year at the April meeting, Mr. Bostic wanted to require educators to maintain a service delivery log for each student with an IEP. The purpose is to increase accountability, have a record that parents can access to see that their child is receiving services, and to protect the district in case of litigation.

At the time, there was pushback from front office personnel and Eric Welch, saying it would add an unnecessary burden on our educators. And our legal counsel explained that this type of a system would not enhance our protection against IEP complaints. Compliance with an IEP is driven by results, not by process. This pushback was enough to withdraw the recommendation at that time.

This month, the same change was back on the agenda. Three members of the public spoke to special education, with one specifically endorsing the idea of service delivery logs.

The change passed for First Reading by a vote of 9-1, with Mr. Welch being the “no” vote. If it passes for second reading next month, this policy would be in place for the beginning of this coming school year.

Technology

One elementary school mom spoke about her kid being exposed to inappropriate material through the school issued Chromebook.

A middle school mom had a similar incident, but using cell phones. She called for the board to adopt an “away for the day” policy, where students cannot access their phones all day.

Mr. Golden cited the work that the recent technology committee has done in bringing recommendations regarding reducing screen time and limiting cell phone access. That committee was scheduled to end its work this year, but many members have agreed to stay on and meet twice a year to continue the conversation. There was nothing on the agenda pertaining to these issues, but they will certainly be top of mind going forward.

Bullying

One member of the public spoke about bullying. He cited a WKRN article that reported that WCS ranked third in bullying reports.

Mr. Golden responded during his report to the board that the increased bullying numbers are because the incidences are now actually being reported. Before a recent effort, the numbers were artificially down because there was a sense that reporting bullying was useless because no action would be taken. That has changed. The district has shown that it responds to each incident and that has caused an uptick in the data. So the bullying numbers rose because reporting has improved.

Lighter Note

One parent spoke during public comment to commend the Ravenwood Indoor Percussion team for winning the World Championship last month. [source] Congrats!

Next meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, June 15 at 6:30pm.

Special Ed Parents Push Back on Consolidation

Cory Martin — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:51:19 GMT

The Williamson County School Board held its April meetings recently.

All board members were present for the Work Session. Jay Galbreath was absent for the voting meeting.

The agendas were light this month, leading to meetings that were pretty short.

Three main topics were discussed: the Transition II program’s consolidation, a change to the punishments for skipping class, and the budget that was passed last month.

Transition II

Transition II is a program that serves students with special needs between the ages of 18 and 22. The idea is to give them a more gradual transition from being a student to having a job in the community. The district decided to consolidate some of the programs which will essentially re-zone some of these students. One mom spoke up during public comment and was quite upset. This WSMV article lays out the story well.

Superintendent Golden responded to her during his portion of the meeting, saying that he wants to make sure that everyone is involved in the decision making process. You can hear his comments here.

Skipping Class

The board unanimously adopted a change to the disciplinary actions available to an administrator when a kid skips class. Essentially, there will have to be a harsher punishment now than there was before. One mom spoke to this topic during public comment, saying that administrators should have discretion because they know the kids better. But this change was adopted as a part of the consent agenda, which means that all board members were on board with the change before the meeting started.

Budget

With the budget already passed during the March meeting, Beverly Purvis spoke during the public comment section again to thank the board on behalf of WCEA for the 4% raise for teachers.

The County Commission will vote in June on whether or not to approve this budget. If they do approve it, the commission will have to find an additional $19m or so beyond the current projected revenue.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, May 18, 2026 at 6:30pm. See you there!

Board Unanimously Approves Budget

Cory Martin — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:46:01 GMT

I need to make a disclosure at the top. I am currently running for school board this year. This substack will continue to be reporting on the board, but if you would like to follow my campaign, here are a few resources:

Board Meetings

The Williamson County School Board held its March meetings recently.

Tony Bostic and Dan Cash were absent from the work session. Mr. Bostic also missed the voting meeting this month.

Budget

The biggest agenda item this month was the annual budget.

Beverly Purvis spoke during the public comment section to thank the board on behalf of WCEA for the 4% raise for teachers that is included in this budget.

Also, Amie Cooke and her two daughters spoke about the need to include more funding for arts teachers’ supplemental pay in the budget.

A few weeks ago, the budget was set based on projected needs for the coming school year. The projected expenditures were about $39 million more than the projected revenue. That’s a problem. So, Rachel Farmer and her team scrutinized each line item and cut it down so that the gap was only $20.1 million. Some of the cuts included eliminating positions that they were trying to fill. This allowed them to cut positions without anyone losing their job. They also eliminated a line item for elementary textbooks that we know we will need next year, the plan being to request dipping into our scant savings when that need arises.

Dan Cash gave an impassioned prepared speech about how valuable this school system is to our community. I recommend watching it here. He is upset that the projected revenue is not keeping up with the projected expenditures. He wants the County Commission to fully fund our schools.

During the work session, Margie Johnson pushed back against the idea of having instructional coaches. These positions are folks who mentor and coach our teachers to expedite their journey to proficiency. I think Dr. Johnson’s position is that we are paying these salaries to teachers who are not in the classroom and that money would be better used if they were teachers and not coaches. As she said, she just has a philosophical difference of opinion. So during the voting meeting, she said that she wanted to combat a narrative that she doesn’t support teachers. She is frustrated that more money is going into education, but it is being siphoned away from the classroom by programs and educational packages that are expensive and not helpful. To that end, she made a motion to completely cut all educational coaching positions from this budget to the tune of about $11.3 million. That motion did not receive a “second,” which means that no other board member was willing to give this proposal any support. So it failed.

Josh Brown then made a motion to add the elementary textbooks back in. That would add $2.2 million to increase the gap to $22.3 million. He reasoned that these textbooks are needed one way or the other, so we might as well ask for them now. It’s actually detrimental to our educators if they don’t have their materials early enough. That motion passed unanimously.

Eric Welch then chimed in right before the whole budget was voted on to say, “So, we voted for this. If the commission says no, are we going to roll over like normal?”

The budget passed unanimously, which means that it goes to the commission for approval. That means that the commission will have to decide whether to find the extra $22.3 million to fully fund the schools or deny the budget and force the school board to cut even more. As Jason Golden said, any further cuts would mean a reduction in services.

Skipping Class Policy

Jason Greathouse spoke during public comment about the policy change regarding skipping class. This policy change does a few things, most notably removing “skipping class” from the list of level 1 offenses and leaving it as a level 2 offense, necessitating harsher punishments. It also includes language about punishing students who encourage others to skip class. Listening to the policy meeting here, it is clear that this is a response to the walkout protests regarding recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities. Mr. Greathouse indicated that this will have unintended consequences and will prevent student organizing.

The policy change was a part of the consent agenda and passed unanimously for First Reading. That usually means that it will be approved for Second Reading next month and then go into effect.

Candidates for 2026

Here are the candidates for the school board races this year. You can click on each candidate’s name to see their info page which includes a link to their website. If I couldn’t find their website, I linked to their ballotpedia page. If you have better info, please let me know and I’ll update it.

District 2

Randy Allen (R)
Jason Greathouse (D)

District 4

Traci Anderson (R)

District 6

Kristi Bidinger (I)
Kimberly Calcote (R)

District 8

Donna Clements (R)
Cory Martin (I)

District 10

District 12

Jessica Lucyshyn (R)

Next meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, April 20, 2026 at 6:30pm. See you there!

Board Addresses Recent Student Protests

Cory Martin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:43:24 GMT

The Williamson County School Board held its February meetings recently.

Josh Brown was absent for the work session and Claire Reeves joined by phone, so Jay Galbreath was the acting Chair for that meeting. Every board member was present for the voting meeting.

The agendas were light again this month, so the meetings were a bit shorter than normal.

Most of the discussion centered around two topics. First, there was a lot said about recent student walkouts, protesting ICE. Here is a link to that story. Second, a few board members asked a lot of questions about the policies around students with IEPs.

Student Walkouts

Two members of the public, Steve Hickey and Elliott Franklin spoke about the recent student walkouts. Mr. Hickey stated that there needs to be a new policy about when kids skip class. Mr. Franklin cited the policy that talks about students interfering or disrupting school activities.

Jason Golden addressed these concerns, pointing to the InFocus article that was released yesterday. You can read it here. He reiterated that WCS does not condone or coordinate student walkouts. In fact, the opposite. Administrators proactively reach out to students who plan to walkout and try to encourage them to find an alternative way to demonstrate.

He clarified that policy 6.300 addresses when students skip class. And this policy was followed in these recent cases.

Jay Galbreath added that he thought they might need a new policy, particularly when a student is encouraging another student to skip class. He will be bringing that to a future policy meeting. He also asked for aggregated data around skipping class and the punishments that are given for the past 3 semesters.

IEPs and Classroom Disruptions

Dan Cash and Dennis Driggers both brought up recent situations where an elementary student severely disrupted a class. According to this student’s IEP, the school is not allowed to remove them from the classroom. This has led to repeated disruptions, causing problems for the other students in the class.

Tony Bostic asked if students with an IEP can be assigned to the Alternative Learning Center (ALC). Mr. Golden said that it depends. If the IEP states that the student should not be removed from a general education classroom, then by law, the student must stay in the classroom. The law requires daily services for the student, allowing for no more than 10 missed days. So the student could go to the ALC for up to 10 days. If the behavior is egregious (drug possession, causing severe bodily harm, etc.) that limit can be extended to 45 days.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, March 23, 2026 at 6:30pm. They will be voting on the budget, so it could prove to be quite long. See you there and bring your popcorn!

Carol Passes Baton To Cory, Reward Schools Celebrated

Cory Martin — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 01:05:09 GMT

The Williamson County School Board held its January meetings recently.

Jay Galbreath was absent for both the work session and the voting meeting. Drason Beasley was absent for the work session and was late for the voting meeting.

The agendas were quite light, which led to relatively short meetings.

The most notable items were Carol Birdsong‘s finale, the celebration of our Reward Schools, the board receiving updates on ongoing projects during their Work Session, and a preview of re-zoning for the 27-28 school year.

Carol

Carol Birdsong has long been the Executive Director of Communications for WCS and she is scheduled to retire on January 30, 2026. She received a lovely send-off at the voting meeting, with effusive praise being shared all around. She “passed the clicker” to her hand-picked successor, Cory Mason, whom she has been prepping for a long time.

Reward Schools

Many principals and vice principals were present for the meeting, receiving a rousing applause for their schools achieving the status of being a Reward School. This indicates that they have demonstrated high levels of performance and/or improvement in performance.

WCS broke our previous record with 35 of our 52 schools attaining this recognition. To hear the list of schools, start the livestream at the 46:50 mark.

Updates

There were many good updates on different projects during the Work Session.

First, the Entrepreneurship Center is pretty much completed. It is located near Franklin High, where the animal shelter used to be.

Next, there was an update on the next round of textbook adoption. This year, the board will be considering CTE and PE/Health Education curriculums. Next year will be social studies.

Finally, there was an update on the technology use guidance committee. The upshot is that they will be delivering a draft recommendation in February.

Re-zoning

For the 27-28 school year, there will likely be some rezoning to alleviate the increased demand on the Page and Nolensville communities. That process hasn’t started yet, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Next meeting

The next meeting with be Tuesday, February 17, 2026 at 6:30pm. See you there!

Cell Phones Allowed During High School Lunch

Cory Martin — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 02:31:38 GMT

The Williamson County School Board held its November meetings over the past week. The main topic was the adoption of a new policy regarding cell phones and other wireless communication devices.

All board members were present for both the Work Session and the voting meeting.

Work Session

Agenda
Live Stream - 3:18:09

Voting Meeting

There were three students and one parent who spoke during public comment in favor of allowing high schoolers to have access to their cell phones during lunch.

Three parents spoke in favor of banning access for the entire day.

There were also four folks who spoke about various safety incidences. Mr. Golden responded to them as a group, saying that “we have some room to grow” when it comes to communication regarding SPED students.

Cell Phone Policy

There was a very lengthy discussion regarding the cell phone policy that was up for a vote. The bottom line is that high schoolers will have access to their cell phones during their assigned lunch time. They are still trying to figure out how best to implement the restriction for all other scenarios.

They discussed the possibility of using velcro bags that act as faraday cages, so that the student could keep the phone in their backpack, but it wouldn’t be functional until it was removed from the bag. There was also some mention of having a centralized location for the cell phones to be stored. Each solution has is limitations and the board has asked Mr. Golden and his team to figure out an implementation strategy.

Five Year Capital Plan

The board also voted on their Five Year Capital Plan, which is how they tell the County Commission what to expect from their budget requests for the next five years. It is not binding, but it gives a good indication of where money will be spent. For instance this year, the board is requesting $4m for a renovation at Grassland Middle and $17m is being requested to start work on a new elementary school on the “Split Log Property” which will need another $43m in each of the 27-28 and 28-29 budgets to complete it.

Calendars

Each of the next two school year calendars were approved. They will be very similar to recent calendar with the first day of school being Monday, August 10th in 2026 and Monday, August 9th in 2027.

Textbook Adoption Committee Policy

A proposed addition to the textbook adoption committee policy that was brought to this meeting contained the sentence “One Board member shall be appointed to serve on the committee and shall subscribe to the oath required by state law.” There was a discussion about the second “shall” in that sentence. Jay Galbreath motioned to change it to “may” so that the board member does not have to take the oath. That amendment passed 10-2 with Melissa Wyatt and Eric Welch voting in the negative.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be in 2026! Monday, January 20th at 6:30pm. See you there!

Cell Phone Policy Compromise

Cory Martin — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:44:08 GMT

The Williamson County School Board held its October meetings, covering topics ranging from textbook policies to cell phone use in schools

Dan Cash, Josh Brown, and Drason Beasley were absent for the work session

Agenda
Live Stream - 3:22:26

Their regular voting meeting was Monday night and all board members were present.

The public comments addressed disparate topics:

A parent spoke for the third month in a row about death threats that their kid received.
A recent WCS grad spoke about the Summer EBT program, asking the board to advocate Gov. Lee to opt in next year.
A parent who is a professor spoke in favor of the proposed changes to the cell phone policy, which would disallow wireless communication devices for the entire school day.
A parent asked for an investigation into the wrongful termination of Sunset Elementary’s principal.
Two folks asked that the textbook selection policy include a requirement that board members take an oath regarding conflicts of interest.
Beverly Purvis asked the board not to make changes to the cell phone policy mid-year.

The rest of the meeting focused mainly on two topics: the textbook committee policy and how to regulate students’ cell phone usage in schools.

Textbook Committee Policy

The board voted on a change to the policy that handles the textbook selection committee. This change will instruct textbook committees to provide more information around their recommendations going forward.

Committee members are required to take an oath, stating that they have no conflicts of interest that will influence their recommendations. There was some discussion about making board members take this oath as well. There were minor disagreements about this. Dana Ausbrooks clarified that board members are already required to disclose conflicts of interest. Melissa Wyatt still wanted to add the oath requirement for extra protection. Tony Bostic expressed minor reservations about adding the provision.

Cell Phones in Schools

Claire Reeves rewrote the wireless communication policy based on the technology committee’s recommendations. She also proposed that this new policy be implemented in January of 2026. At the Work Session, Eric Welch took exception to this proposed timeline, citing the technology committee and school principals whose consensus was to avoid changing the rules in the middle of the school year. There were some heated exchanges during the work session. But at the voting meeting yesterday, Dr. Reeves amended her proposal to be implemented in August of 2026.

This proposal passed for first reading 11-1, with Drason Beasley voting no.

Next Meeting

There’s only one school board meeting left this year and it will be on Monday, November 17, 2026 at 6:30pm. Your presence makes a difference.

Teacher Suspended Pending Investigation

Cory Martin — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 20:46:27 GMT

The board met for their September Work Session last Thursday.

Tonja Hibma was absent, and Donna Clements joined remotely.

Agenda
Live Stream - 3:18:56

They also held their regular voting meeting Monday night.

Tonja Hibma was absent from this meeting as well.

Earlier in the month, on September 4th, the district hosted its annual presentation of the Family Life Curriculum. I was one of three members of the public who attended. Ms. Hibma was also in attendance. It was very similar to the presentation from last year, which you can read about here.

There were four topics from the school board meeting that stood out to me. First, the board elected a Chair and Vice Chair for this school year. Second, a public commenter returned to discuss how the district has dealt with his child receiving death threats. Third, they are beginning discussions about the next budget, including concerns regarding "class voluntary fees." And fourth, a WCS high school teacher was suspended pending an investigation into a social media post she allegedly made.

New Vice Chair

Josh Brown was the only nominee for Chair, so he continues in his leadership role.

Claire Reeves was the only nominee for Vice Chair, so she will step into that role for Dan Cash.

Death Threat

As I wrote last month, a parent spoke about his dissatisfaction with how the district responded to his kid receiving death threats. He returned this month with some of his friends to speak on his behalf as well. There was some confusion when the first speaker asked to give his time to someone else. Mr. Brown conferred with counsel and decided not to allow this, so the speaker yielded his time. After the father finished, he claimed his friend had not been allowed to speak. In a rare moment, Mr. Brown directly rebutted him, clarifying that the other speaker was allowed but had chosen not to speak.

Budget

It's very early in the budget process, but Jay Galbreath is beating the drum again for change to the way that "class voluntary fees" are treated. Basically, they are categorized poorly and it's not just semantics. It makes it so that schools have to beg for donations to cover classroom costs. He laid out the issue very clearly in the Work Session. You can see it by clicking here. The pertinent section is about 5 minutes long.

Teacher Suspended For Social Media Post

Monday morning, a WCS teacher was suspended without pay pending an investigation into her social media post regarding Charlie Kirk's death. You can read the WKRN story here. An important detail that is omitted from that story is that this post was intended for a private audience. Someone then took that private post and publicized it.

By my count, four or five members of the public spoke to encourage the board to terminate the teacher. One member of the public spoke to ask the board not to terminate her. This one member has a child in the teacher's class.

Mr. Golden clarified for everyone what the protocol will be for the investigation. The next step is to schedule a meeting with the teacher and her legal representation, if she chooses to have representation. What they hear in that meeting will drive the next steps.

It is my understanding that the superintendent will decide whether she receives disciplinary action, and what that action will be.

She will have an opportunity to appeal any decision. And I believe the school board is the body to hear that appeal. I'm not 100% sure of that, so if you have better information, please put it in the comments and I'll update this.

Mr. Golden repeatedly said that the post from the teacher does not reflect the values of Williamson County Schools. You can see the official statements at this WKRN article.

Dan Cash mentioned another incident involving a teacher saying something inappropriate in a classroom. That teacher has also been suspended without pay, pending an investigation.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, October 20, at 6:30pm. Your presence makes a difference.

Diversity Goal Removed

Cory Martin — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:52:57 GMT

The board met for their August Work Session last Thursday.

Josh Brown and Dan Cash were absent. And Drason Beasley joined remotely. Since both the Chair and Vice Chair were absent, Jay Galbreath presided.

Agenda
Live Stream - 1:10:43

And they met for their regular voting meeting Monday night.

Dan Cash, Melissa Wyatt, and Drason Beasley were absent.

Both of these meetings were much shorter than usual. This was mostly due to a lack of agenda items that required much discussion. But also, the board had recently had their strategic planning session recently, so they were eager to be expedient.

There were a few items that caught my attention, coming from the public comments at the voting meeting.

The removal of a personnel goal regarding diversity
A recent death threat toward a student
Removing cell phones from schools.

Diversity Personnel Goal

In the Policy Meeting this month, council recommended the removal of policy 5.100, which would effectively remove diversity as a personnel goal for our district. Specifically, the policy used to say that the board should "set goals for educator diversity that take into consideration the diversity of the student population."

Before this year, TN state law mandated that each school district have a policy to this effect (49-1-302(g)). With the new "Dismantle DEI" bill, this has been completely reversed to prohibit such a policy. See the last paragraph on this link.

I spoke to the board, asking them to continue to broaden the applicant pool for our educators as wide as possible so that we can have the best chance of hiring the best educators. Diversity amongst our applicants will lead to diversity in our educators. Citing a 2018 TN Department of Education Report, I emphasized that diversity improves student outcomes.

WKRN reached out and ran a story, highlighting our concerns. You can watch it here.

Death Threat

One parent spoke about a traumatizing incident. His daughter, among other students, received death threats from another student. The alleged offender was given In School Suspension and was still able to interact with the victims. This parent was very dissatisfied with how the situation was handled and promised to return next month with a plan for how this can be better dealt with in the future.

Removing Cell Phones

Another citizen spoke about a desire for our cell phone ban to go further, advocating for a "bell to bell" restriction.

This prompted Jason Golden to talk about how the existing ban has been going. He said that it has gone more smoothly than they anticipated, but warned that they may be in a "honeymoon period."

New School Year Starting Strong

Enrollment

Mr. Golden cited many numbers, indicating a strong start to our new school year. Enrollment is higher than expected. We expected a 0.4% decrease and it has only been a 0.2% decrease. Each cohort has higher enrollment than last year. Though there are about 1300 fewer kindergartners this year than seniors who graduated last year, which leads to the overall decrease.

Teacher Bonuses

The teachers across the district received their bonuses that were issued from the state of Tennessee in conjunction with the voucher bill.

Retention in 3rd and 4th Grade

Fewer than five 3rd and 4th graders were retained this past year. And for those who were retained, the decision was made based on conversations with the families and school admin. This is a continuation of what our schools have been doing for years.

Mature Reading Lists

Parents can now proactively opt their children out of having access to materials that are deemed "mature." Thirteen percent of parents district-wide have chosen this option. Here are the numbers by grade band:

Elementary: 18%

Middle: 13%

High: 7%

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be Monday, September 11 at 6:30pm. I'd love to see you there!

2025 Superintendent Evaluation

Cory Martin — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 21:39:33 GMT

Each June, the school board evaluates the superintendent against the goals he set for himself the previous August. Those goals have to be approved by the board and then they guide his efforts over the school year. Each board member ranks the superintendent's performance on a scale of 1 to 5 pertaining to each goal, with 1 meaning "Significantly Below Expectations" and 5 meaning "Significantly Above Expectations." These ranks are then weighted and compiled for an overall evaluation score.

This year, for the first time, he has not accompanied his evaluation with a request for a contract extension. I thought it might be useful to look at the past few years to see how an individual board member's evaluation of the superintendent correlates to their vote on whether to extend his contract. The disaggregated data has not been included in the published agenda until this year. (Thank you to Josh Brown for including these data for the 2025 evaluation.) So, I submitted a FOIA request for the disaggregated data from 2021 through 2024.

Unfortunately, the data from 2022 is incomplete, as only 6 of the 12 board members' evaluations were available. However, there is still enough to get an idea of how these two sets of data interact.

There were also myriad calculation errors in the 2023 data. The final result was not off by much, but the reported averages were incorrect by my calculations.

Here is a link to a spreadsheet that has the data for each year (link).

And here's a table with with an overview:

Yr | Avg | Min | Max | Vote   
---|-----|-----|-----|-------
21 | 3.4 | 1.5 | 4.5 |  8-2-1 
22•| 3.8 |  ?  |  ?  |  9-1   
23 | 3.7 | 2.7 | 5.0 | 11-0   
24 | 3.8 | 2.5 | 5.0 |  9-2   
25 | 3.3 | 2.5 | 4.4 |  N/A

I can't know min and max for 2022 because of missing data, but the average was published in the June 2022 meeting agenda.

The lowest score over this time period was from Jay Galbreath in 2021, when he gave the superintendent a score of 1.5 out of 5. This was largely due to Mr. Galbreath's dissatisfaction with Mr. Golden's leadership coming out of the pandemic. Not surprisingly, Mr. Galbreath voted not to extend Mr. Golden's contract that year.

The highest score is a tie between Drason Beasley in 2023 and 2024. Both years, he gave Mr. Golden perfect marks. Each score is accompanied with an opportunity to explain the score. But both of these years, Mr. Beasley literally had no notes.

The highest score that received a "No" vote on the contract extension was from Donna Clements in 2024. She presented a 3.28, which would be between "Met Expectations" and "Above Expectations." She cited concerns regarding the superintendent's salary not being explicitly noted in the amendment as her reasoning for voting against the extension.

The lowest score that received a "Yes" vote was from Angela Durham in 2021. She gave Mr. Golden a 2.25, which is second lowest only to the aforementioned 1.5 that Mr. Galbreath assessed that same year. But, she voted to extend his contract.

Obviously most of these scores are from members who are no longer serving on the board, so there may be very little signal to derive here. But if we take Ms. Clements's line of 3.28 as the high water mark for a "no", there were 6 evaluations below that line this year. If, however, we take Ms. Durham's 2.25 mark as the low end for a "yes," all 12 evaluations were above that line.

I've glossed over a lot of nuance here. But overall, it seems that the current board is less satisfied with the superintendent's performance than it has been in the recent past.

Superintendent Evaluation and Cell Phone Free Schools

Cory Martin — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 18:28:03 GMT

The board met for their May Work Session last Thursday

Agenda
Live Stream - 3:54:53

And their regular voting meeting Monday night.

There were three main topics discussed this month.

Jason Golden's evaluation
Giving students and parents access to graded tests and quizzes
How to limit devices like cell phones from educational settings.

Superintendent Evaluation

When Mr. Golden was hired, it was on a 4-year contract. Each June since then, the board has voted to extend his contract by one year, which has kept his deal perpetually with 4 years on it.

Each June has also brought the board's annual evaluation of the superintendent. I'm going to go into a deeper dive on these next month, but the most interesting difference this year is the fact that Mr. Golden did not ask for an extension, so there was no board vote on whether to extend his contract.

His given reason was the fact that half of the board has only worked with him for a few months, so he wanted to spend more time working with them before asking for an extension.

He was clear that this was not an indication that he is leaving. He will be asking for an extension, just not right now.

Tests and Quizzes

This is a new policy that basically states that the default action should be that a teacher returns tests and quizzes to students after they are graded. There is an exception for when test security concerns justify restricting access. But this should enhance transparency.

Cell Phone Free Schools

There is a new TN law that requires public schools to adopt a policy that limits cell phone use during educational time. The extent of that limitation is up to each district. Our board was divided on whether to disallow cell phone possession from "bell to bell" or if students could keep them and just not use them.

Claire Reeves led a group advocating for the "bell to bell" policy, joined by Tonja Hibma, Donna Clements, and Jay Galbreath. The idea here would be that cell phones would be stored in a secure locker (or something like that) as soon as the student enters the building and returned at the end of the day.

Ultimately, that effort failed and the board adopted a policy that wireless communication devices must be "silenced and not used during the school day." But the student may remain in possession of them. This includes devices like watches, cell phones, laptops, tablets, and gaming devices. There is a carveout for high school lunchtime. Cell phones will be allowed then.

The main reason for not wanting to go "bell to bell" is the difficulty in implementation. It seemed like every board member wants to get to that policy and the board probably will get there eventually. But it was going to be such a big change, they felt that it would be burdensome to the administrators to go all the way too quickly.

Next Meetings

Because of a timing issue with getting the approved budget from the county commission, the board will have a special meeting this Friday to approve the updated budget. It should be very short.

The board does not meet in July, so the next regular meeting will be Monday, August 18, 2025.

Board Protects Admin Pay

Cory Martin — Tue, 20 May 2025 19:43:07 GMT

The board met for their May Work Session last Thursday

Agenda
Live Stream - 5:22:36

And their regular voting meeting last night.

All board members were present for both meetings.

Compared to recent months, these were pretty boring meetings. Three issues stood out to me though: service delivery logs for educational service providers, homeschool students' ability to participate in marching band, and the conversation around teacher and admin salaries.

Service Delivery Logs

As mentioned in April, Tony Bostic would like to require educators to maintain service delivery logs for students who have IEPs. He maintains that this will help inform parents about their kids' education and will help protect the district when it is challenged to prove that it is complying with IEPs.

He added language to a policy amendment last month to enshrine this requirement, but front office personnel and Eric Welch resisted this idea, saying it would add an unnecessary burden on our educators. So it was removed for further consideration.

At the work session this month, Mr. Bostic told the board that he intended to propose an amendment at the voting meeting to add similar language back in. Claire Reeves suggested that the board look into seeing whether this could be accomplished with TN Pulse.

At the voting meeting, Mr. Bostic told the board that he had reconsidered and will not be proposing the amendment. He wants to see how the conversation around TN Pulse goes and then will reassess.

Homeschool Participation in Marching Band

Four community members from the Page High School community showed up to ask the board to consider the ability for a homeschool student to participate in marching band and/or color guard.

After public comment, Jason Golden and Dana Ausbrooks clarified that the district does not have a policy regarding this topic and state law is silent as well.

Jay Galbreath confirmed that the next step would be to bring this up at a policy meeting and proceed from there. It sounds like these community members were heard and the board will address the issue.

Teacher and Administrator Pay Charts

The rest of the meeting was filled with unanimous votes on budget issues and small policy tweaks until we got to the last agenda item. The Pay Charts define how district employees are paid. They break down each employee type (teacher / principal / vice principal / etc) and define their salary or hourly wages. Vickie Hall submitted the Pay Chart for board approval for this month.

Margie Johnson proposed an amendment that was complex, but she basically wanted to shift money away from administrators toward teachers.

Claire Reeves and Eric Welch were both concerned about the lack of time available to consider this change, which led to a conversation about delaying the approval of the Pay Charts. Ms. Hall said that would be problematic because they are currently trying to hire teachers. So the board agreed that a deferral was a bad idea.

The amendment failed, 8-3-1 with Tony Bostic, Dennis Driggers, and Margie Johnson voting in favor of the amendment and Donna Clements abstaining.

The unamended Pay Charts were approved 10-1-1 with Margie Johnson voting no and Tony Bostic abstaining.

Some Board Members Sue TN Department of Education

There was some school board news this month that happened outside of their public meetings. Tony Bostic, Margie Johnson, and Donna Clements are suing the Tennessee Department of Education for the alleged "chronic underfunding of Williamson County Schools." The Williamson Scene wrote a great article on it. You can read it by clicking here.

Call to Action

The last meeting of the school year will be next month, June 16, 2025. Come say hi!

Parents Show Up To Support Teachers

Cory Martin — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:03:57 GMT

The board met for their April Work Session last Thursday.

Agenda
Live Stream - 2:50:18

And their regular voting meeting last night.

All board members were present for both meetings except Margie Johnson - she was absent from both.

The following is a summary of both meetings.

Science Textbook Adoption

K-8 STEMscopes

Last month, the board adopted STEMscopes as the textbooks for K-8 science classes, eschewing the recommendations of our science teachers. This month, nine parents and educators showed up to voice their displeasure during public comment. Dozens more wore stickers, saying "We Trust Teachers" and applauded for those who spoke.

One speaker praised the board for adopting STEMscopes.

Any of the board members who voted to adopt STEMscopes could have added a reconsideration to the agenda for this month, but none of them did.

AP Psychology

Two public speakers asked the board to adopt the Myers AP Psychology textbook, as the committee recommended. One of them was an AP Psych teacher in WCS.

Last month, this vote was postponed in order to give the board more time to analyze the selection.

The board unanimously approved the Myers textbook that the committee recommended.

Library Materials Policy

The board voted on a few changes to this policy.

New TN Laws regarding age-appropriate materials

Counsel suggested changes to the library materials policy, to bring the district in line with new TN state laws. If I understood correctly, the law in question has been challenged in court and found to be unconstitutional. So this policy change basically says that we, as a district, will align with state law unless it is overturned in the courts. If it is overturned, we will revert to the standard that is found to be constitutional. This was a complex legal conversation, and you can hear it laid out at the 1:38:28 mark.

"Williamson County resident"

This change also removes "Williamson County resident" from the list of persons who can file an official complaint. Instead, it would only allow "any current WCS employee, student, and parent/guardian" to raise a complaint.

Mature Materials List

It also requires librarians to develop a "Mature Materials List" in order to comply with TN state law, as mentioned above. There was some concern about the label "Mature" as it might imply that there are inappropriate materials, specifically in elementary schools. The policy's intent is to identify materials that might not be age-appropriate.

Vote

Dan Cash seemed confused about why these changes were necessary. Dana Ausbrooks and Jay Galbreath tried to explain the reasons, but he was apparently unconvinced, asking "do we implement policies, anticipating that laws will change?"

Jason Golden recommended the approval of these changes and they passed 8-3, with Melissa Wyatt, Eric Welch, and Mr. Cash voting against it.

Last month, some folks in the community who were pleased with the adoption of STEMscopes said that the board should not always "rubber stamp" the superintendent's recommendations. Notably, Mr. Welch and Ms. Wyatt voted against Mr. Golden's recommendation on this vote.

Special Education

At the work session, there was a long discussion about the Individual Education Program process. Tony Bostic seemed displeased with the way the district interacts with parents of students with an IEP. At the work session, he proposed instituting a program where educators would be required to maintain service delivery logs to ensure that they were complying with IEPs. Front office personnel and Eric Welch resisted this idea, saying it would add an unnecessary burden on our educators. Dana Ausbrooks further explained that this type of a system would not enhance our protection against IEP complaints. Compliance with an IEP is driven by results, not by process. If the required services are rendered and the student does not make progress, the education system has still failed. The SDL system would not protect the district in such a case.

So, Mr. Bostic's proposed changes were excluded from the vote this month.

Screen Time

The board will be forming a committee to evaluate how much screen time students are getting in school. Each board member will recommend one parent to this committee. They will start meeting in May and continue for one year. The goal will be to bring recommendations to the board regarding policies for screen time and use of devices like cell phones in school. This is modeled after a similar effort in Bentonville, AR.

Action Plan

Join the party! We had a great turnout this month. Thanks for showing up! The next board meeting will be Monday, May 19 at 6:30. See you there!

Teachers and Parents Give Feedback on the Rejection of their Science Textbook Recommendations

Cory Martin — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:46:25 GMT

At the March board meeting, the board voted to adopt STEMscopes as our textbooks for K-8, in spite of it being the least recommended textbook by teachers (in some grades, STEMscopes got zero teacher votes). Click here to see the specifics of which textbooks the teachers preferred.

I was interested in seeing what the public reaction was to the board's decision. So I submitted a Public Records Request to see all emails that were sent to or from any school board member between the dates of March 17, 2025 and April 1, 2025 with any of the following terms: "StemScopes", "STEM Scopes", "Science", "Textbook", and/or "Textbooks".

I received a PDF that was 1,426 pages long, containing 632 emails.

This post is a 10,000 foot overview of what I found: Public Opinion Data, Responses from Board Members, and Quotes from Teachers.

Pro means the emailer liked the choice of STEMscopes.

Anti means they didn't.

Category       | Pro | Anti | Total
---------------|-----|------|------
General Public |  20 |  167 |   187
Teachers       |   1 |   93 |    94
WCS            |   0 |   81 |    81
Committee      |   0 |   10 |    10

I identified 187 unique individuals who wrote about the science textbook adoption for K-8 grades. Twenty of those individuals (around 11%) said they were pleased with the outcome. The other 89% ranged from angry to bewildered in their displeasure with the outcome.

Teachers includes current and former teachers, from WCS and other districts.

WCS includes current WCS teachers and employees.

Committee includes folks who worked on the Textbook Adoption Committee

Some of these emails were only sent to one or two board members, but the vast majority went to all of them.

Responses From Board Members

Dan Cash (District 2)

Dan Cash only replied to folks who agreed with his vote to adopt STEMscopes, mostly thanking them for their support.

Dennis Driggers (District 3)

Most of Dennis Driggers's emails were internal to other board members or front office employees.

He asked for some help formulating his Williamson Herald Op Ed

He also coordinated with Moms For Liberty's local chapter chair, Genevieve Pahos, to try to get a copy of the AP Psych book for her to peruse.

Josh Brown (District 4)

Josh Brown only showed up in two emails that I saw.

First, he corrected the record when Margie Johnson said that Jason Golden blamed the board for the rush at the end of the process.

Second, he confirmed that he would not speak to the media.

Margie Johnson (District 5)

Margie Johnson didn't show up much either. She sent some internal communications, upset about the textbook adoption process. And replied to 3 outside emails.

Jay Galbreath (District 6)

Jay Galbreath sent 18 emails in response to criticism, defending his position and better understanding constituent concerns. Some were short messages of thanks, others were long email threads where he discussed the situation in depth.

He also arranged to meet with some teachers to hear what they had to say in person.

He also hosted a very lengthy discussion on facebook. Click here to see it.

Melissa Wyatt (District 7)

Melissa Wyatt voted against the adoption of STEMscopes. Most of her replies to constituents were thanking them for their efforts.

Donna Clements (District 8)

Donna Clements had a block of text that she copied and pasted as a response 105 times over the course of about an hour. The first one was at 6:46 PM on 3/26 and the last was at 7:47 PM that same night. She spent an average of about 35 seconds reading each teacher or constituent's email before pasting in her reply. Some emails were sent less than 10 seconds apart.

Claire Reeves (District 9)

Claire Reeves engaged in dialog with one teacher who wrote in. It was a civil and in-depth discussion.

Eric Welch (District 10)

Eric Welch also voted against the adoption of STEM Scopes. Most of his replies to constituents were thanking them.

Others

The only emails from Tony Bostic and Tonja Hibma were internal to other board members and/or front office personnel.

I found no emails from Drason Beasley. He was absent from the board meeting and did not vote on this textbook adoption process.

Work Session Agenda

The board will have their monthly Work Session on Thursday, April 17. The agenda has already been posted and there is no mention of revisiting the science textbook adoption decision. So that likely means that it will not be reversed.

Quotes from teachers

I would love to include every word that the teachers wrote to the board. And perhaps I'm sharing too many quotes here. But I want to impress upon you how strongly our educators felt about this decision. It is a rare thing to have a teacher write to the board about their displeasure with a decision. The teachers are writing to people who have a good deal of power over them. The following are quotes from brave educators in our district.

"During my time teaching in the district, we've lost many excellent teachers to other districts because of pay, climate, and decisions like those made at last night's meeting regarding textbook adoption. How can you spend the first part of the meeting discussing things like increasing teacher pay and then come back from break so blatantly disregarding us as professionals?" - WCS high school AP teacher

"Do not waste our taxpayer dollars on an inferior curriculum. Trust your educators." - WCS middle school science teacher

"The board chose to go with the one publisher who doesn't offer a printed textbook, meaning our students will spend another 8 years in front of a screen to use it." - WCS middle school science teacher who was a member of the textbook adoption committee

"If you were so concerned, why did you not contact the ones who made this decision for clarity? I am still open to discussing this with all of you." - another WCS middle school science teacher who was a member of the textbook adoption committee

"(The other three textbook options) are high-quality publications with attractive color photos and illustrations. They are all clearly written and student friendly... STEMscopes is an outlier. It offers a one-volume, non-consumable, hardcover encyclopedia and a black-line lab manual. It does not offer a consumable 'textbook.' It does offer a vast and impressive video library... All four of the vendors offer digital options. We will use those options in moderation. Sometimes paper is best. Sometimes digital is best. I have always used hands-on science activities in my classroom. All four vendors offer lab activities with kits." - WCS elementary science teacher

"Teachers are tired. They are tired of their expertise being second guessed. The school board should be their cheerleaders. This vote is a slap in the face. Shame on you." - substitute teacher in WCS for 18 years in WCS

"Every company gave us their own results, but as scientists, we both know independent proof is what really counts. What's also troubling is that STEMscopes didn't give us much to work with during our review. Unlike the other options, they only showed us a few hands-on materials during their short presentation at our February 14th training. It was tough to get a real sense of how their product would hold up in the classroom. They were not impressive in their presentation and, frankly in retrospect, a little cavalier in their presentation. Our rubric - the one where STEMscopes came in last - was designed by teachers who actually use this stuff every day." - WCS middle school science teacher who participated in the textbook adoption process

"In my 18 years in public education, I have never witnessed a school board go against teacher input for a textbook adoption. This raises red flags as an employee, parent, and community member." - WCS middle school instructional coach

"The textbook committee's evaluation was not a casual undertaking. It represented months of rigorous assessment by experienced educators who possess a deep understanding of our students and their learning styles. When the professional judgment of these educators is disregarded, it sends a clear and concerning message about the value placed on their expertise." - WCS substitute teacher

"I will make this curriculum work, but I will do so in spite of the Board's decision. You have lost the trust of most of your teachers as you decided not to follow our recommendations" - WCS elementary math and science teacher

"During our evaluation process, my science team at (redacted) Middle carefully reviewed textbooks to select the best curriculum for our students. Unfortunately, the textbook approved by the board does not meet the level of rigor our students require, especially since the majority are in the highest achievement group in the state. To maintain our learning standards, the curriculum must be robust and challenging for high-achieving students. The teacher-recommended textbook was one of the best options for providing that rigorous curriculum." - WCS middle school science teacher

"By choosing to overlook the insights and opinions of those who interact with students daily, the board is sending a troubling message: that the voices of educators and parents are not valued in the decision-making process." - six WCS english teachers

"As a teacher and parent with children in Williamson County schools, I find it crushing that the careful recommendation by our district's educators was dismissed. My colleagues that served on the committee are among the most thoughtful, intelligent, dedicated and hard-working people I know. And in our district's current state, with it already hard to find AND keep good teachers, the board's decision felt like a shocking slap in the face." - middle school instructional coach

"Having experienced a dysfunctional curriculum as a Spanish teacher, I can tell you that overtime, it takes the light out of teaching. Please reconsider STEMscopes for middle school. Listen to your teachers." - WCS high school ESL teacher

"I petition you to reconsider your vote to negate the voices of hundreds of professional educators who are required to work under the consequences you exact upon us with the use of your power." - WCS middle school science teacher

"As an educator and professional, I am going to make the best of anything (OER for example) and make it work in the classroom.....that's what we do. We are now at a place where you all have made a LARGE group of educators feel devalued! Not only do you have a large group of teachers that feel the sting of your decision, but you ALSO have a majority of parents that have lost respect for their elected officials." - WCS third grade math and science teacher

One elementary school teacher calculated the man-hours spent on the selection process and came up with 32 weeks of teacher time. She also calculated the financial cost and arrived at more than $42,000. "This money was NOT spent in selecting these materials; it had NO impact whatsoever on the purchase of textbooks for our students. It was squandered. Squandered because no board member bothered to come to the meetings to get their questions answered. Squandered, in fact, by the very people who have been elected to spend the county's money wisely on the best education of its students."

"We feel unheard, unvalued, and discouraged. We respectfully ask you to reconsider your decision and honor the recommendation of the many teaching professionals who want only the best for their students." - WCS middle school science teacher

"You really should listen to the experts as we are in the trenches every single day and know what works best for our students. This really is all part of a larger problem of communication and respect. In my 28 years of teaching, I have never once reached out to a board but strongly urge you to reconsider approval of the Science Curriculum you passed for WCS." - WCS elementary teacher

"The lack of regard for the research and opinions that you asked for from us is an insult to the extra time and effort we put forth. I hope you will consider the injustice done and reconsider the voice of your educators." - WCS elementary math and science teacher

"I have been teaching in Williamson County for the past three years, and prior to my move to Tennessee, I taught 6th and 8th grade science in California for four years. I wish to share my perspective and firsthand experience with the Accelerate Learning STEMscopes curriculum... I found it insufficiently engaging and lacking the rigor necessary for our student success in Williamson County... I want to highlight that while STEMscopes presents a 'textbook' - which I contend is merely a collection of articles - my classes could not utilize the physical versions. They were riddled with inaccuracies, grammar issues, and spelling mistakes. This forced me to rely on online readings or print materials myself, as the digital platform updated those textbook mistakes." - WCS middle school science teacher

"This decision was a huge blow to morale. I have personally been in education for 20 years and have never seen a school board choose a curriculum in such a manner. It is disrespectful to every WCS teacher for the school board to go rogue and choose curriculum that is completely outside of what teachers and administration and parents believe is best for our schools." - WCS elementary school teacher

"I am concerned about the adoption of STEMscopes, and my reason extends beyond comparing the available options side by side. My former district adopted STEMscopes. It proved to be an extremely challenging adoption for teachers to implement. The components were not user friendly, and the material did not help teachers cover the content with the necessary rigor, not to mention valuable time that was lost trying to figure out how to utilize the materials as well as time spent finding additional supplemental materials." - WCS elementary teacher

"I am an elementary school counselor in Williamson County for 23 years. I have never contacted the entire board in my tenure here but I'm so saddened and disappointed with your decision on Monday night that I feel I must reach out. By choosing the textbook option that did not receive the majority support, you are undermining the educational goals that teachers and parents dedicated so many hours on. I also believe with this decision many exceptional science educators will be looking elsewhere for employment."

"I'm writing to you to say how incredibly disappointed and angered I am, along with hundreds, if not thousands of teachers and members of the community over the recent science textbook adoption. Your decision is a slap in the face to teachers who have spent hours of PD and personal time researching, discussing, and diving into the textbook materials" - WCS elementary teacher

"If anyone on the board ever questions why teaching positions are so difficult to fill please look directly at this science textbook adoption cycle to get your answer." - WCS employee

"I watched the morale in my building this week deteriorate as teachers processed this decision made by the board. All teachers, not just science teachers, questioned whether their voices mattered." - WCS math and science instructional coach

Pro STEMscopes emails

One former WCS teacher wrote in to express her gratitude for the board's adopting of the STEMscopes textbooks.

Another person wrote in claiming that there were "hateful and disrespectful messages" being sent by teachers and staff. It was revealed in another email that this claim was made before he had any evidence. I can confirm that there were many teachers and staff who wrote in about this topic. Some of them were certainly angry, but zero of them were hateful or disrespectful.

Board Rejects Teachers' and Parents' Textbook Recommendations

Cory Martin — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 20:35:49 GMT

This was a long meeting with a lot of discussion about the 25-26 budget and some votes on the adoption of textbook materials that will be used for the next 8 years. All board members were present except Drason Beasley.

Public Comment

There were 3 folks who spoke about the OneWillco event where students of color were asked to share their experiences in WCS. There were stories of inequity in discipline, opportunity, and expectations. The students also reported that they would prefer a less tech-reliant education.

Two other speakers, including a current high school student, echoed that last point, calling for more hands-on learning.

An elementary school librarian urged the board not to adopt the policy that would direct librarians to label books as restricted.

And Angela Frederick implored the board not to delay the adoption of the new science textbooks, as was floated at the Work Session.

25-26 Budget

There was a lot of conversation about this budget. There was an $11m gap between projected revenue and this budget. This includes a reduction in spending from the current year's budget. They project a decrease in student population of around half a percent due to more seniors graduating than kindergarteners coming in.

Tonja Hibma submitted an amendment to spend an additional $909k on carts so that Chromebooks can be charged at school. This is an attempt to keep kids from having to take their computers home with them. This amendment unanimously passed.

The General Purpose School Fund Budget passed by a vote of 10-1. Donna Clements voted against it.

Library Material Policy

The board voted to change the Library Materials Policy, as I described in the Work Session. So there is now a requirement for librarians to catalog their collection with labels for different types of mature content. Melissa Wyatt voted against this change, but it passed 10-1.

Science Textbook Adoption

K-8 Textbooks

The board had a slate of fifteen different science subjects for which they needed to adopt new textbooks. The state of TN has a list of approved materials from which districts may choose. There was a lengthy process where two different groups analyzed each available textbook. One group was the teachers who will be teaching the subject. The other was comprised of educators and parents. At the end of this process, the members of these groups voted and came up with recommendations for their preferred resource.

Claire Reeves proposed an amendment to change the books used in K-8 from the recommended Savvas and McGraw Hill publishers to STEMscopes instead. In K-2, the teachers preferred Savvas over STEMscopes by a 2:1 ratio. In 3-5, over 80% preferred Savvas. In 6-8, it was split pretty evenly between Savvas and McGraw Hill. Nobody in the groups who reviewed materials for 6-8 voted for STEMscopes.

By a vote of 8-2-1, the board decided to override the committees' recommendations and use STEMscopes textbooks. Melissa Wyatt and Eric Welch voted against this amendment and Margie Johnson abstained.

AP Psychology

Dennis Driggers noted that he received many emails that expressed concern over the materials chosen for AP Psychology. He proposed an amendment to extract that book from the approval process for this month and delay it to next month, so that he can have time to review the book further.

During that discussion, Donna Clements proposed an amendment to that amendment that would select the Cengage textbook for this course, noting that this was an area of expertise for her. Dave Allen and Leigh Webb talked about the 9 AP Psychology teachers in the district. Their students have consistently performed exceedingly well on the AP Psych exam, and they unanimously chose the BFW Myers textbook. The parent/educator committee chose the BFW Myers textbook unanimously as well. But Ms. Clements wanted to choose Cengage instead. This effort failed by a vote of 2-9, with Tony Bostic joining Ms. Clements in the affirmative.

After that, they were back to merely delaying the adoption of the AP Psych textbook. That amendment passed 7-3-1. The dissent was Melissa Wyatt, Eric Welch, and Jay Galbreath, with Margie Johnson abstaining. So they will vote on this textbook probably next month.

Vote to Adopt the Textbooks

The board then adopted the amended slate of textbooks by a vote of 9-2, with Eric Welch and Melissa Wyatt in the dissent. They dissented because they would have preferred to take the recommendations of the educators instead of the other board members' overriding preference.

Call to action

Do you have a student who has taken AP Psych or might want to in the next 8 years? Please email the board and let them know how you feel about the options they have.

Also, if you want to join the OneWillco NCAA bracket challenge, click here

March 6, 2025 Work Session

Cory Martin — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 03:51:02 GMT

The board met for their March Work Session on Thursday. Drason Beasley was absent.

Agenda
Live Stream - 5:31:52

In case you didn't see it just above, the meeting was over 5 and a half hours! There were many discussions, but three stood out to me: the budget, the library materials policy, and the science textbook adoption.

Budget

There was a good presentation on where the budget stands as the board prepares to vote on it. That vote will happen on Monday, March 17th. There's still a good bit that is up in the air because the state funding formula hasn't been finalized, but this is based off of projections and trends.

I found it fascinating that 37.75% of the district's funding comes from the state of TN, and 62.64% comes from the Williamson County Commission. Less than one quarter of one percent comes from federal funding.

They talked a lot about Chromebooks and whether we need as many as was originally budgeted. And in fact many have been taken out of the budget. K through 2nd grade are now not getting replacement computers since they are used so infrequently in the classroom.

Library Materials Policy

Decision Tree

The board adopted a decision tree to guide their process to determine whether a book should be restricted. They will be voting on a change to that decision tree. The change does not add or remove any steps, but just moves them around so they happen in a different order.

Removal of First Amendment Guidance

There was a section of the policy that specified that materials may not be removed "because of doctrinal approval/disapproval or based upon disagreement with viewpoints, political ideas or social perspectives discussed in the books." The board will be voting on whether to remove this section.

Mature Materials List

If the proposed changes pass, librarians will be required to categorize books onto a "Mature Materials List" and assign criteria to those books like "Language," "Sexual Content," "Mature Themes," "Disturbing Imagery," and/or "Violence."

Parents will be required to opt-in each school year if they want their student to have access to books on this list. Parents can also specify certain books to opt-in and exclude others.

Allowing Any Resident To File a Complaint

The discussion around this sounded like they will be adding to the policy that you don't have to have a kid in school (or be a WCS employee) in order to file a complaint. However, the policy amendment makes it look like that language is being removed. So I'm confused here. Hopefully this will be cleared up on Monday.

Science Textbook Adoption

Over the past month or so, the district has had viewing sessions so that the public could come inspect the science books that the district is considering adoption for the next 8 years. These materials range from Kindergarten to basically college textbooks for AP classes.

There are only a handful of books for each subject that are approved by the state of TN. Some subjects only had one!

There was a committee comprised of teachers and parents who reviewed the available materials and voted on which ones to adopt.

The timeline is important here. The district needs to select the books this month in order to place orders with the publishers in time to receive them for the teachers to get trained on the new materials.

Claire Reeves said that she feels rushed by this process and wants to delay the vote.

Jay Galbreath pushed back slightly and asked what info could they could gain that would inform us to go against the recommendation of the teachers?

Dr. Reeves said that she'd like to have more time to meet with teachers and get their opinions. She was the liaison from the board for this process. But through a mixup of communication, she only attended 1 of the 7 sessions that were provided to the public to review the materials. She said that she received the dates in September, but expected to receive reminders.

When folks were discussing delaying the vote, Eric Welch said that it sounded like we don't trust our science teachers. And if so, we should fire them and hire new ones. We shouldn't ask for a delay that will hurt students because a book says the word "climate."

Tony Bostic responded, but the mic didn't pick up what he said.

Mr. Welch clapped back, "Shut up, Tony!" Mr. Welch then caught himself and apologized to Mr. Bostic and to the board.

Jay Galbreath suggested that maybe they could approve the books that everyone is ok with and talk about delaying the problematic ones.

The problem is that even if they don't like certain aspects of a book, they don't have many other choices. So we'll see what they decide on Monday.

Come Say Hi

If you've read this far, consider coming to say hi to me on St. Patrick's Day! I'll be partying at the Williamson County School Board Meeting. Doors are at 6, starts at 6:30. 1761 West Main Street, Franklin, TN 37064. Wear green!

February 18, 2025

Cory Martin — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:37:32 GMT

Work Session

Agenda
Live Stream - 2:45:33

The board held their monthly Work Session on Thursday, February 13. Dan Cash presided again in Josh Brown's absence. Melissa Wyatt, Claire Reeves, and Eric Welch were also absent. The vast majority of this meeting was spent going over the rough outline of the proposed 25-26 budget. They are starting their reviews early this time to make sure the board members have plenty of time to ask any questions and provide any feedback.

There was also some discussion about the policy changes regarding Public Records Requests. Most of the changes are updating the policy to reflect an updated request form or adding specificity to some definitions. Donna Clements spoke up to ask that the policy more clearly define what is discoverable. That change will not be reflected in this round of changes, but will likely be discussed in a policy session in the near future.

Voting Meeting

Overall, this was a rather uneventful and short meeting. Dan Cash presided again as chair in Josh Brown's absence. Mr. Brown missed last month's meeting as well. Jay Galbreath was absent for this meeting and Claire Reeves joined remotely.

There wasn't much to report from the board this month. The most interesting parts of this meeting came from public comments. Kate Keese (of OneWillco) spoke about the racial inequities in our educational settings. There was also a mom and her two kids who spoke in favor of increasing the supplemental pay for fine arts teachers. And there was a parent who was upset about the contract that the district has with a supplier of sporting equipment.

The comment that stood out to me the most was from Genevieve Pahos (of Moms For Liberty). She spoke out against the process that has been followed to review the proposed new science textbooks. She claimed that the process has been insufficiently transparent. She also alluded to current court challenges to school materials that are unresolved. Because of these factors, she proposed that the adoption of these new textbooks be delayed by a year.

Upcoming Events

Next month's school board meeting will be Monday, March 17th. Come say hi, but be sure to wear some green for St. Patrick's Day.

Also, this Saturday is a OneWillco event called "the Students speak." It is an opportunity to hear Williamson County students discuss issues that are important to them. Click here for more info.

WCSB Meeting with TN State Legislators

Cory Martin — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 23:04:09 GMT

On Friday, January 24, 2025 at 9:30am, our school board gathered to meet with our legislators. This is an annual meeting to discuss issues at the state level that effect Williamson County Schools.

Ten board members were present. Jay Galbreath was connected via phone because of an illness and Drason Beasley was absent.

From the legislature, the following were present

Tonja Hibma presided over the meeting, guiding the conversation.

There were 3 main topics covered: age-appropriate materials, gun safety, and funding/vouchers.

Age Appropriate Materials

There was not much time spent on this topic, but Gino Bulso expressed his concern that 5 Williamson County librarians concluded that the books that were banned last month were appropriate.

Joey Hensley jumped in to say that publishers can now be punished for sending inappropriate books to schools.

Gun Safety

Melissa Wyatt cited the recent school shooting in Antioch and asked the legislative delegation about taking action to address the fact that gun violence is the number one cause of death for TN children and that TN is the 4th most dangerous state to raise children link.

Gino Bulso replied by blaming Memphis for skewing our state-wide numbers. He also asserted that the problem is not the guns, rather it is a societal issue. He seemed to pine for a time when there was more prayer in school and divorce was more difficult to attain, implying that gun violence would be stemmed if these societal shifts were rolled back.

Eric Welch asked about enhancing red flag laws to remove firearms from folks who are mentally ill, citing the Covenant shooting.

Jack Johnson said that there is a process to temporarily remove firearms if an individual is adjudicated as mentally ill. In the case of Covenant, that process broke down. It was not a failure of policy, but a failure of implementation.

Senator Johnson and Mr. Welch interacted contentiously for a bit, talking over each other. Ms. Hibma interrupted and moved the conversation to a different topic.

TISA Funding / Vouchers

For some background, the state uses a formula called TISA to determine how much money each school district gets from the state. There are many factors that go into the formula, but a major factor is called "fiscal capacity." That term is basically a measurement of how much money the state thinks that the local government could afford to spend on education. To see each county's numbers, click here. Williamson County has been deemed to have a high fiscal capacity, so we receive less state funding.

Jack Johnson gave us a history lesson on TISA funding. It came about in the 1980s because of a lawsuit brought against the state, saying that it wasn't providing enough funds to smaller, rural counties. Williamson county was a part of that lawsuit because at that time, it was more rural! Now, we have grown a LOT and are on the other side of that equation.

In order to get more money for Williamson County, they added a provision for "fast-growing" districts to receive more money. But then Williamson County stopped growing so much.

So now, they're looking at going outside of the TISA calculation to add funding for high-performing districts.

Eric Welch noted that this is all talking about how the "pie" is divided up. But couldn't you increase the size of the pie?

Gino Bulso said that the state's budget for education is over $7b and the schools are failing. More money won't help. But if we provide vouchers, we'll get better educational outcomes by giving parents more options. "All students" means public school students, private school students, homeschool students - everyone.

Melissa Wyatt cites the fact that 51 of the 95 TN counties do not have a private school option. Also, there are 184 schools in TN that would qualify for vouchers and the voucher amount only covers the tuition for 19 of them.

Senator Johnson says that it's not designed to cover the entire amount, but just to help out. Maybe a family can't pay $11k, but they could pay $4k.

Mr. Bulso also mentioned that there aren't private schools in many rural counties YET. He's confident that the demand will draw in new institutions, including religious schools.

Margie Johnson brought up the fact that private schools don't have accountability. Over 70 TN school districts passed resolutions against vouchers. And the metrics for judging these schools are incongruous. Privates schools are judged on "parental satisfaction" while public schools are judged on TCAP scores.

Jack Johnson: "I reject the assertion that we need to burden these other schools with the same standards we hold public schools to." They don't have to take TCAP - that's the kinda the point of having a private school.

Mr. Welch and Senator Johnson had another heated exchange.

Josh Brown wanted to know about the "hold harmless" clause.

(This is Cory interjecting now with some background) The "hold harmless" clause says that if a school district loses enrollment because of folks using vouchers - or for any other reason - their funding will not be negatively affected. At the institution of the voucher bill, there will be a "floor" of funding established for each district and their funding will not go below that floor. There is some confusion about whether this floor is in perpetuity or whether it gets re-drawn after each school year. Okay, back to the meeting...

Gino Bulso said that the floor will last for "as long as we have an education system."

Senator Johnson even said that if a factory shuts down in some county and everyone moves away, the education funding will remain at the same level.

Lee Reeves said that this was designed to "remove the fear" around the issue.

WCSB Substack

New Superintendent, Election Results, Five Board Members Finish Their Terms

Leigh Webb Appointed Interim Superintendent and Budget Approved

Superintendent

Budget

2026 Election Results

District 2

District 4

District 6

District 8

District 10

District 12

Five Board Members Have Their Last Meeting

Public comment

New TN laws

Board Members rolling off

Other notable topics

Next meeting

Board Extends Superintendent's Contract

The Superintendent’s Contract Extension

Budget

Other topics

Next meeting

Service Delivery Logs, Continued Pushback on T2 Consolidation

Transition II

Service Delivery Logs

Technology

Bullying

Lighter Note

Next meeting

Special Ed Parents Push Back on Consolidation

Transition II

Skipping Class

Budget

Next meeting

Board Unanimously Approves Budget

Board Meetings

Budget

Skipping Class Policy

Candidates for 2026

District 2

District 4

District 6

District 8

District 10

District 12

Next meeting

Board Addresses Recent Student Protests

Student Walkouts

IEPs and Classroom Disruptions

Next meeting

Carol Passes Baton To Cory, Reward Schools Celebrated

Carol

Reward Schools

Updates

Re-zoning

Next meeting

Cell Phones Allowed During High School Lunch

Work Session

Voting Meeting

Cell Phone Policy

Five Year Capital Plan

Calendars

Textbook Adoption Committee Policy

Next Meeting

Cell Phone Policy Compromise

Textbook Committee Policy

Cell Phones in Schools

Next Meeting

Teacher Suspended Pending Investigation

New Vice Chair

Death Threat

Budget

Teacher Suspended For Social Media Post

Next Meeting

Diversity Goal Removed

Diversity Personnel Goal

Death Threat

Removing Cell Phones

New School Year Starting Strong