Jeremiah Wooten

The MNPS Board voted tonight to end their universal mask mandate on March 11, signing onto director Adrienne Battle's recommendation. Fran Bush voted no. Sharon Gentry was absent. I'll add an embed of the video once it's posted on YouTube. Of course, Fran Bush's "no" vote wasn't because she wanted the mask mandate to remain in effect; rather, she wanted it to be removed effective immediately. As usual, student board members Abenezer Haile and Angelie Quimbo had some of the more articulate comments of the evening. They gave some clear reasoning, provided evidence albeit anecdotal, and, most importantly, kept their comments relatively brief. But what stuck out to me most was the director recommendation part. I tried long and hard to think of a time that this board has voted against any of Battle's recommendations, and I can't think of one. Now, I haven't been watching school board meetings closely for all that long — really just the better part o...

One of the biggest challenges I encounter in MNPS is this idea that "we've always done it this way!" It's an attitude that seems to pervade many of the daily decisions in the district, and sometimes is (accidentally) explicitly stated. I wasn't raised in Metro Schools, so I know that while MNPS may have always done it this way, other districts haven't. At Tuesday's MNPS Board governance committee, board member Emily Masters said something that gave me a little bit of hope that students' voices are being heard and changes can be made, even in a district like MNPS. In the clip below, Masters proposed a change to district policy around dress code to state that the dress code should be gender neutral and not contain gender-specific language, and that "Dress code enforcement shall be based solely on the guidelines, and shall not be based upon biases, gender norms, or gender assumptions." At the 30:28 minute mark, after adopting the changes, Ms. Ma...