By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — Mayor John Cooper spent most of his first 100 days trying to keep State Comptroller Justin Wilson away from City Hall. “Now that we have a balanced budget we’ve removed ourselves from the controls that the state controller’s office has over city finances,” Cooper told the Tribune. Cooper said finding $42 million to balance last year’s budget wasn’t easy. He did it by trimming $34 million from the Water Department, Music City Center, MDHA, and the Convention & Visitors Corporation. That still left an $8 million shortfall. He took $5 million from the Barnes…
Author: Article submitted
By Marta W. Aldrich A lawsuit charging that Tennessee underfunds its schools by hundreds of millions of dollars has been dismissed, while a separate education funding case is inching closer to trial in 2020. Hamilton County Schools quietly dropped its 5-year-old lawsuit against the state last week in a Nashville court. The school board for the Chattanooga-based district voted unanimously in October to pursue the dismissal after commending legislators for working to improve the level of state education funding. The case had been inactive in recent years. “This is something that certainly this board and previous boards have…
By Vincent L. Hall NNPA Newswire — “If Malcolm was alive today, he would tell you that the chickens have come home to roost again. Dallas Texas, specifically the very spot where Kennedy was killed is a heavily visited landmark. However, the sites at Southerland Springs, El Paso and the twin cities of Midland and Odessa will mark the notable gravesites that hate has unearthed.” Many historians have tried to dilute the power of Malcolm X’s frankness by comparing him to Martin Luther King Jr. Not only is that an unfair comparison, but it’s a useless argument. When it was…
NASHVILLE, TN — The TN Promise Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) filing deadline is quickly approaching. Saturday, February 1, 2020 is the final day for both TN Promise high school and college students to complete the 2020-2021 FAFSA to retain scholarship eligibility. The FAFSA, a federal application, is the primary financial aid application that any student enrolling in post-secondary must complete in order to determine state and federal scholarship and grant qualifications. “tnAchieves strongly encourages all students, regardless of post-secondary plans, to file the FAFSA as soon as possible,” says Amanda Schneider, tnAchieves Senior Director of Communications. “The…
By Cora Jackson-Fossett Religion Editor/Las The Rev. Dr. Clyde W. Oden and U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee united in holy matrimony during a ceremony on Dec. 31. Oden, who retired in 2019 as pastor of Bethel AME Church in Oxnard, served many years as the pastor of Bryant Temple AME Church in L.A. and was a former CEO/president of United Health Care. He was widowed in 2016. Lee has served 11 terms representing Oakland and the East Bay in the House of Representatives. She wrote on Twitter, “I look forward to welcoming Clyde to the East Bay community and introducing him…
NASHVILLE, TN — United Street Tours presents the “Secret Network of Women in Civil Rights Tour,” a Nashville walking tour about women civil rights leaders. This walking tour shines a light on Nashville as a historically rich city with strong ties to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Organized by Chakita Patterson, the founder of United Street Tours, the walking tour will launch January 18, 2020 and January 20, 2020 at 10:00 AM as a Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorative event, through October 31, 2020. The tour will spotlight extraordinary women such as Diane Nash, Gloria Mckissack, Mary…
By NCI Staff Clinical recommendations on who should be screened for lung cancer are based largely on how long a person smoked and the number of cigarettes they smoked. But current recommendations may need to be reviewed when it comes to African Americans who smoke, a new study suggests. In the study, only about one-third of African American smokers diagnosed with lung cancer over a 12-year period would have met the criteria for annual lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) laid out by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). In contrast, more than half of white smokers…
At a Sunset Hearing January 13, 2020, members of the Joint Subcommittee of Government Operations listen to testimony by Tennessee Department of Corrections Commissioner Tony Parker. Despite a damning audit of Tennessee prisons, lawmakers voted to let TDOC operate for another four years. NASHVILLE, TN –At a Sunset Hearing January 13, state lawmakers gave the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) until 2024 before revisiting the question of whether it should be abolished. The Comptroller’s office released a scathing audit last week of Tennessee prisons, both private and state run. TDOC still has many of the same problems cited in a…
By Caroline Bauman, Marta W. Aldrich Tennessee wants to return 30 state-run schools to local districts in Memphis and Nashville no later than the fall of 2022, but also wants to retain its state-run district to possibly take over other chronically low-performing schools, says a proposal being unveiled this week. Even so, the district wouldn’t go away under the state’s proposal. “The Achievement School District remains a necessary intervention in Tennessee’s school framework when other local interventions have proven to be unsuccessful in improving outcomes for students,” the presentation says. The state’s proposal will be unveiled this week by Chief…
NASHVILLE, TN — Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley K. Clark (ret.) and Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee will share a conversation on Belmont’s campus about civility and important issues facing America on Monday, January 13, 2020. Clark, a retired four-star U.S. Army general and 2004 Presidential candidate, is appearing on campus as part of his “Renew America Together” initiative. Huckabee, who will join Clark in the discussion, was a candidate in the United States Republican presidential primaries in both 2008 and 2016. Longtime journalist Demetria Kalodimos will moderate. The event, which will begin at 6 p.m. in…