Nashville teachers protest Betsy DeVos' agenda after Tennessee visit [View all]
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.
Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/11/30/betsy-devos-nashville-teacher-protest-tennessee-schools/910917001/