Acknowledgements

The Chamber Purpose:

To Create Economic Prosperity By Facilitating Community Leadership

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce is committed to quality public education in the region and has produced some version of this report since 1993. The Chamber Education Report committee members are community leaders from across Nashville who meet weekly over nearly five months to hear presenters from the local and state level.

This report is a product of those conversations and offers a constructive overview of the challenges, successes, and opportunities within Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Thank you to our Sponsors for making this work possible.

Presenting Sponsor:

Pivotal Partners:

Friends of the Chamber:

Supporting Sponsor:

Our thanks and farewell to nine of our committee members who have served two consecutive years with the Education Report. We would like to recognize the following for their contributions as they will be rotating off at the completion of this report:

Brooke Allen, Susannah Berry, Judge Sheila Calloway, Rachel Dyer, Anna Haryutunyan, Eric Higgs, Ellen O’Neal, Wes Payne, and Stan Weber.

These individuals will continue to engage with the report process as they follow-up with Metro Schools on the progress of 2023 Recommendations.

Thank you to our full 2023 Education Report committee.

The production of this report would be impossible without the full support and cooperation of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, especially the MNPS liaison to the committee, Director of Strategic Communications, Michael Cass. A special thank you to the faculty, staff, and students at Isaac Litton Middle School, John Overton High School, and Stratford STEM Magnet High School. Visiting school sites is an invaluable part of the Chamber Education Report process and we applaud the excellent work taking place in Metro Schools every day.

Next, we would like to thank the Chamber staff who provide support for the committee’s work. We appreciate Stephanie Coleman, Chief Talent Development Officer, Jennifer Mills McFerron, Vice President of Education and Talent Development, Daryl Curry, Director of Education & Workforce Partnerships, Victor Sanchez, Director of Talent Pipelines, Laurel Herrell, New Skills Ready Project Manager, Alexis Clark, Coordinator of Talent Development, and our communications team Sara Zakhary, Vice of Marketing and Communications, Nate Hutcheson, Director of Public Relations, Malick Gaye, Director of Public Relations, and Nicole Miller, Digital Content Strategist, for making sure this document is grammatically correct and finalized.

Lastly, we want to say a very special thank you and farewell to Shohreh Daraei. Shohreh has been a key contributor, not only to this year’s report, but every report since 2019. We wish her well in her new role as Workforce Development Manager at Ascension St. Thomas.

The Chamber Education Report is the collective work of many.

We hope it spurs dialogue and action around the progress of our public schools while serving as an important resource for education stakeholders and all Nashvillians.