Metro School District Appeals Transfer Mandate

In the next few days, the Metro School District is supposed to start allowing students in underperforming schools to transfer to a better school. It’s required by law, but the district is asking the federal government for a break from that mandate.

The issue comes down to timing. The results of year-end assessment tests were released six months late in mid-January. That’s when the district learned it had seven new struggling schools. Students at those schools are supposed to be given the option to transfer.

This all typically happens in the summer, allowing kids to get situated in their new school of choice before the first day of classes.

Fred Carr is the district’s Chief Operating Officer. He says transferring kids now would interrupt learning right before spring assessment testing.

“To put a student in a new environment, new classroom, new school, new teacher, new friends right before testing it would be just disruptive.”

Metro is asking the federal government to skip the transfer option this school year. Carr says the district will add extra tutoring and after school programs at those seven schools, in exchange for not being forced to offer transfers.

The state asked the federal government to waive transfers for all Tennessee schools. That request was denied. So now it’s up to districts, like Metro, to plead their individual cases.