The Metro Nashville Public Schools district is ready to make some changes to Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School. Some members of the MLK community are not. Serving seventh through 12th grades, MLK is one of two academic magnet high schools in the district, along with Hume-Fogg Academic High School, and is listed among the top middle schools in Tennessee.
In December, MNPS leadership announced its plan to gradually phase out seventh and eighth grades at MLK. The plan aligns with MNPS’ long-standing ReimaginED initiative, meant to standardize district schools into three structures: pre-K/K-5; sixth through eighth grades; and ninth through 12th grades. MNPS is planning to remove seventh and eighth grades from MLK by the 2027-28 school year. As MLK would gradually become a ninth-through-12th school, seventh and eighth grades would be folded into nearby Head Magnet Middle School, which has served as an automatic pathway to MLK and will continue to do so (though it will be rebranded as MLK at Head Magnet Middle). Students don’t and won’t have to meet academic requirements to enroll at Head, but they do receive an automatic pathway to MLK if they meet its academic criteria. The district’s plan would not affect students who are currently enrolled at MLK or Head.
In September, before MNPS announced these changes, District 3 school board member Emily Masters introduced a policy to “eliminate automatic pathways into academic magnet high schools.” While any student who meets the academic criteria for academic magnet high schools can attend, students from certain middle schools currently get enrollment priority via automatic pathways. Masters introduced the policy hoping to “increase access to the application process.” The board deferred voting on the policy until it could garner more community feedback.
Masters tells the Scene that, while she anticipated some kind of change at MLK, she was unaware of MNPS’ forthcoming plan when she introduced her policy. Between the new MLK changes and community feedback she’s received, Masters says she is rethinking the policy.
“I no longer feel it is appropriate to remove — or to try to remove — an automatic pathway from Head to MLK,” Masters tells the Scene. “It doesn’t change how I feel about the way that so many families who have children who qualify for academic magnet high schools are sort of disenfranchised by the fact that there is priority status given to children in certain middle schools. … It’s still an issue I want us to look at as a board.”
District leaders say the change will open seats for the schools. However, citing current open seats at the high school level (and not enough at the middle school level) and several empty classrooms in the building, members of the MLK community disagree with the district’s plan. Some, like MLK staff member Sarah Laos, would prefer to see MLK add sixth grade so middle school teachers who work in the building could stay, and so the school’s academic programs and structures wouldn’t be disrupted.
“It’s disappointing that MNPS would want to eliminate two of the grades that feed into the high school, because it is a part of what makes them so successful as a whole,” says MLK parent Arica Rucker. Rucker has two children who have attended MLK, plus a fourth-grader she was planning to enroll there. Because these changes would affect her fourth-grader, Rucker says her family is considering other options.
MLK community members are also upset about how the district has handled related communication. No community meetings were held by MNPS to specifically discuss these changes — though an MNPS representative says there will be future opportunities for that, and notes that the overall ReimaginED plan has been previously communicated at board meetings. Laos says faculty members were told about the changes an hour before they were announced at the December school board meeting, and that questions from her colleagues and herself still haven’t been answered.
“It’s like talking to a wall,” Laos tells the Scene.
After the announcement was made, students and staff began organizing a before-school protest to take place across the street from MLK’s campus, but it was snuffed out by school administration.
“I felt very strongly about trying to do anything to raise awareness and try to stop what was happening,” says MLK senior and president of the student government association Trey Madison. Madison confirms that he was asked not to go forward with the demonstration that morning — though he talked with school leadership about the changes afterward.
In 2013, a similar plan was introduced to remove seventh and eighth grades from MLK, but the MLK community successfully fought it. An extension was added to the school instead.
Complicating the matter further is the fact that MLK isn’t currently represented by a school board member. Former District 5 representative Christiane Buggs resigned from her position in January to take over the education nonprofit PENCIL. Whether the city will appoint a temporary board member before this year’s election is unclear.
