The Tennessean
Dr. Adrienne Battle
Like many (all?) of us, Dr. Adrienne Battle couldn’t have imagined what was in front of her at the beginning of 2020.
On March 13, 2020, she was named director of Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) by unanimous vote. She had been serving as interim director since April 2019 when she became the first woman to lead the school district, which is the 42nd largest in the country and has a budget of nearly $1 billion.
Battle was tapped to succeed former Director of Schools Shawn Joseph thanks to her experience as a community superintendent, teacher, assistant principal, and a principal. A Nashville native, she attended MNPS schools herself, graduating from Overton High School.
But think about that March 13, 2020 date again. She officially took the helm just 10 days after tornadoes ripped through Middle Tennessee, leading to temporary closures of schools while the district oversaw building repairs. Then, on March 12, the night before her top job became permanent, schools closed again—before Spring Break—due to concerns about the coronavirus.
Now Battle is overseeing the district, which includes 84,683 students at 159 schools (27 charter and 132 district-run), as it navigates how to safely teach during a global pandemic, deciding if and when to resume in-person classes, and planning logistics more complicated than the trigonometry problem you forgot how to solve the second you left the classroom.
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“We are a large urban school district and we’re very diverse. With that diversity comes other challenges. We’ve got to be sure that we’re meeting all the individual needs of our students,” she says, citing, for example, the hundreds of different languages spoken by students and parents in the district.
“We have so many families that live in poverty. There’s no one size fits all for us here in Metro Nashville Public Schools. We take that as a strength of our district. We have to be very diligent, very aware of those individual student and family needs.”
While no one is happy about the current public health crisis and related operational educational uncertainty, Battle sees some long-term positives that might come from the necessitated changes. She is optimistic that every student in the district will now have access to a laptop and a hot spot, something that had been a long-term goal for MNPS. She’s also hopeful that becoming more comfortable with remote learning and video conferencing will serve students well in the future, as such tools will continue to be used in colleges and workplaces after the pandemic ends.
Working across the city from East Nashville to Antioch in a variety of capacities throughout MNPS has helped Battle “be able to see what it takes to support students and to make sure we’re helping them realize their potential.” She changes figurative hats daily, thinking as a student, parent, teacher, and administrator. Her perspective is helping her not just focus on the book learning.
“I’m also particularly proud of our focus on meeting the social-emotional learning needs of our students first.” MNPS has continued to run its cafeterias, prepping meals daily. Families can pick up those grab-and-go meals at schools or meet the school bus to get meals delivered in the community.
The teachers and administrators Battle encountered as a student fostered her own leadership skills.
“I am keenly aware that every student hasn’t had the same experience that I had,” she says. “I want to continue to make sure that we have great examples of mentors to support our students so that they can see themselves in those same roles or beyond once they graduate from high school.”
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For the most part, Battle says, there was “no playbook around for what we’ve experienced over the last few months. And so while on the surface, some [of these] decisions might appear to be simple, there tends to be a lot more complexity, given the diversity of our school district. We recognize that the traditional face-to-face models are ideal for our students, and we are very optimistic, hopeful, and eager for the days that we can get back to a sense of normalcy.”
As a former track athlete, Battle is walking and running on Metro community center park trails to keep mindful while navigating these big decisions. But mostly, she’s missing one thing.
“I miss the connection with everyone. I miss being able to walk into our school buildings, into our classrooms, down our hallways, seeing the smiling faces of our students, hearing their giggles, listening to their questions—the hugs and the handshakes,” Battle says of in-person school life. “I just cannot wait for the day that we can welcome everyone back into our facilities so that we can have that sense of joy.”