NASHVILLE, Tenn (WTVF) — "Don't Hate, Educate" was the message of parents, community leaders and librarians gathered outside the Cordell Hull building Thursday afternoon.
Community group — Nashville Organized for Action and Hope — hosted the rally, calling on the Tennessee General Assembly to stop injecting politics and partisanship into education. Supporters also want the state to fully fund education.
The group said they were voicing their concerns about a range of legislative proposals they said aimed at erasing the teaching of history, banning books and excluding children from public education and participation in school sports.
Parent and MNPS board member Emily Masters said she's concerned about legislation targeting the teaching of history and the banning of books.
"School librarians and teachers are highly trained, highly educated, clearly very caring individuals or they would not be doing this work to begin with," Masters said. "We need to trust them."
Supporters are calling on the legislature to focus on the values that unite and the tools of all parents for their children to have in need to grow and thrive.
"We will fight you at every turn because what we believe in is every child known, every child loved, every child getting what they need to achieve an education here in Tennessee," Masters said.
In order for this to happen, parents like Hines want to see more dollars poured into public classrooms.
"Now, from what I've heard from our teachers, the big thing is funding. In order for us to educate these 89,000 students in Nashville, we need money to do that, said rally attendee Bibi Hines.
Hines is a Metro Nashville Public School parent.
“I think I'm just here speaking for some of my friends who are trying to get the right players at the table,” said Hines, “So we're putting the table together. We would like legislators to join. We want our teachers involved because we leave our kids with the teachers for eight to 10 hours every day for 10 months, every year for about 12 years. So we need to take the teachers involved as well. But we also want to be part of this as well.”
NOAH calls on all Tennesseans to contact their legislators.
