Teachers protest Betsy DeVos’ agenda after Tennessee visit

Chanting and holding signs calling for her departure, public school teachers and parents gathered by the downtown riverfront Thursday night to voice their opposition to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

“We want the people of Nashville to know that we feel it is really important to send a strong message to Secretary DeVos that we don’t agree with what she’s doing,” said Amanda Kail, a teacher in Metro Nashville Public Schools and advocacy chair for the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, which organized the protest.

“As teachers, we find her budget to be immoral,” Kail said of the billions of dollars in education cuts proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. “The amount of money she is cutting from the education budget will have devastating effects on public education.”

Earlier Thursday, DeVos spoke to a crowd gathered at the Omni Nashville Hotel for the ExcelinEd conference, an event founded by one-time Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Protesters’ chief worry was DeVos’ support for voucher programs, which use public school funding to send students to private schools.

Although the Tennessee General Assembly has rejected private school voucher programs, during her speech Thursday, the longtime Republican Party donor spoke in favor of school choice for students and encouraged education reform groups to continue their efforts to fight for vouchers.

DeVos, appointed by Trump in February, has received widespread criticism from public school teachers around the country, including education groups in Middle Tennessee, for her support of vouchers and charter schools.

Among those who have spoken out against DeVos’ agenda is Larry Proffitt, a Robertson County resident who teaches 8th-grade U.S. history at Dickson Middle School in Dickson County and who attended the rally Thursday.

Proffitt, a “second-career teacher” who began teaching 13 years ago when he was 40, said he worries about public school teachers and students losing resources if thousands of dollars were given to private schools for children electing to leave the public system.