Rutherford Students First was formed in 2021 by parents in Rutherford County Schools who want students first in the decision making of our school board. Too often we’ve found political agendas put before students. We now stand together to end this practice, and give parents a united voice to always put our students first.

You can join us here.

Our Ongoing Objectives:

1. Protect parental access to students at school.
2. Keep political agendas and opinions out of curriculum and the class room.
3. Provide parents with a stronger voice: the lone parent is ignored far too often by both the Board and school administrators. United, parents have a group to make each voice matter much more.
4. Enhance communication and information inside and outside of school by providing regular updates to parents on school board meetings and any policies affecting our students.
5. Improve transparency: Board and school administrators make too many decisions without anyone knowing how or why. This leads to cronyism and corruption. We seek to end this practice.
6. End the hyper focus on testing: both time and the purpose of education are lost as teachers focus too much on standardized tests. We seek the right balance of learning and testing.
7. Secure parental control on healthcare decisions when consistent with state law: medications, treatment, vaccines, masks, etc.
8. Guarantee a consistent and equal application of rules and programs: from IEP’s and special ed to the formation of clubs and everything in-between. Too many rules are unequally applied or arbitrarily created.
9. Secure parental control of education funding, so dollars follow students, not just school districts. We believe parents know what is best for their children. For some students, that is their local public school. But for some it’s a private school, and for others it’s a charter school, homeschool, or virtual school.
10. Protect parents who choose to homeschool from new government interventions and control.

Actions to Achieve These Objectives

Build a network of engaged parents and dedicated parent representatives from every RCS school, in addition to Zone specific liaisons with each board member.

Build an army of parents who will engage in School Board elections to support candidates who will focus on our objectives. Candidates worthy of support will be vetted by Rutherford Students First before our support is offered.

Establish working relationships with state legislators in order to advocate for state level policy changes to achieve our objectives.