KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

The Tullahoma Board of Mayor and Alderman heard a special presentation from Tullahoma City Schools (TCS) Director of Schools Dr. Catherine Stephens and former mayor Lane Curlee regarding K-3 reading proficiency.

Stephens spoke to the board during its June 26 meeting by providing an update of where the school district stood in relation to the state’s third grade retention law. The law, T.C.A. 49-6-3115, was revised by the Tennessee General Assembly and restricts third-graders from moving up to fourth grade if they score below proficient on the state-wide TCAP English-Language Arts test.

She informed the city board that the school board, educators, leaders and parents were against the law as it stood. She added that as the board listened to the presentation she hoped they hear some of the positives as the districts want to find the positives and work towards solutions and how they can work with the law as it stands. Back in September, the school board passed a resolution urging the General Assembly to amend T.C.A. 49-6-3115 to allow the school districts to make retention decisions for third and fourth grade students, like all other grade levels, based upon all school district information on each student.

Stephens said across the state 40% of third graders were proficient in the ELA portion of the TCAP test, with 41.79% the TCS third graders being proficient.

“A positive note I will lift up is that is 17% higher than the previous year’s cohort of students who took the same exact exam, so there were positives there,” Stephens said.

She went on to share some of the caveats in the law that gave allowable exemptions to students. These students can be promoted to the fourth grade if they are an English language learner and has received less than two years of ELA instruction; have an IEP that outlines deficiencies in reading; was previously retained in grade K through 3 prior to the year; or if they attend a learning loss bridge camp, maintains a 90% attendance rate at the camp and demonstrates adequate growth on the post-test.

She said these caveats helped increase the school districts’ proficiency percentage went up to 59%.

“That was positive, again we are making these moves positively,” Stephens said.

The last caveat for this year Stephens shared was that parents are allowed to make an appeal, as long as they met certain criteria previously listed. She said thus far of the parents who have appealed and met the criteria have had 100% approval, which bumped up the school system’s proficiency percentage to 76%. She said starting next year the school district will be able to make those appeals on the parents’ behalf. She said there were 39 TCS students who fall in the approaching proficiency have to either attend summer school or fourth grade tutoring, while students who scored below will have to do both.

Stephens noted that this year’s third graders had what she considered a normal educational year, due to their start in education was during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stephens said during this process she and others were trying to come up with proactive ways to work with the law and help students. After the scores were released, she was contacted by Curlee where he simply asked how he could help. She then introduced him to the podium to talk about the project, which she said they already working with several civic groups and organizations as well as having volunteers in place and a process for background checks.

Curlee said he was at home with his wife Evelyn when they read about the article about nearly 60% of the TCS students didn’t pass the proficiency test. He said she asked him directly “what are you going to do about this?”

Curlee said after meeting with Stephens and talked about “flooding the K through 3” with volunteers within the community to help them. He then introduced the program as “Reading Buddies,” where the volunteers are the “big buddies” and the K-3 students will be the “little buddies.”

“The plan is for a volunteer to spend an hour a week, that’s it, an hour a week in one of the schools,” Curlee said.

Curlee said with four elementary schools, four grades, kindergarten through third grade, and an average of four classrooms in each grade in each school comes out to 64 total classes for all four elementary schools. He said goal is to have two volunteers in each classroom for the year, which comes out to 128 volunteers needed.

 “What’s in it for our volunteers?” Curlee asked. “Volunteers will have an opportunity for some gratification in small victories. Can you imagine sitting next to a child in the back of a classroom or in the cafeteria or in the library and a lightbulb goes off in that child’s head where he or she finally grasped a vowel sound or reads for the first time a complete sentence and you’re there? There’s an extreme amount of gratification in small victories.”

Curlee said “Reading Buddies” will give those in the community an opportunity to help children in schools who may not know how.

“This gives the adults of Tullahoma an opportunity to be a part of potentially changing a child’s life,” Curlee said.

Curlee welcomed any member of the board and audience to participate of the program. Mayor Ray Knowis said he hopes they are flooded with volunteers and thanked them for their efforts.

Anyone interested or has questions about the program can contact Curlee at 931-581-0360 or lcurlee@lighttube.net.