School Board

School Board

Metropolitan Nashville School Board members represent the public’s voice in public education, providing oversight for what the public schools need and what the community wants. An effective school board member has an important role in keeping your local school on track and setting policies that affect the children of their represented district. In 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law allowing partisan school board elections. Prior to that, school board elections were bi-partisan.

The Metropolitan Board of Public Education consists of nine elected members, one member being elected from each of the nine school districts. The term of office is four years. The terms are staggered so that no fewer than four members are elected every two years.

School board members must be at least 25 years old by the beginning of the elected term. The member must be a resident of Davidson County for at least five years and a resident of the school district that the member seeks to represent for at least one year and continue to reside there during their elected term. The member can hold no other elected or appointed public office and must be a qualified, registered voter.

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Rachael Anne Elrod

Rachael Anne Elrod is running for reelection to the school board in District 2. Elrod was originally elected to the School Board in 2018, and presently serves as the Board’s Vice- Chair. She studied Education at Austin Peay State University and has worked both as a teacher and a consultant. Elrod has two young children.

Speaking on her accomplishments during her time on the School Board, Elrod has highlighted efforts to both increase pay for teachers, and to integrate social-emotional learning (SEL) into schools. Additionally, there has been a push for additional psychologists in order to meet national recommendations, and to expand advocacy centers that provide students with spaces to work out emotional issues outside of the classroom.

Within her current campaign, Elrod has outlined a number of priorities for improving schools, including expanded access to high quality pre-k, increasing classroom resources, and supporting a student-focused curriculum that takes into account the needs of the whole child.

Edward Arnold

Edward Arnold earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1978 and his master’s degree in Sociology from Middle Tennessee State University in 1982. He is currently a doctoral student at Tennessee State University.

Until he retired, Arnold worked for the State of Tennessee as an information resource specialist. Arnold is a native Nashvillian who ran for Davidson County School Board in 2014 and 2018 but did not win. He is also the father of three children who have attended public schools in Nashville.

Arnold advocates for removing capital expenditures from the Metro Nashville Public Schools budget. He also proposed a method of funding public schools that he titled, Teacher Incentive for Public Schools (TIPS), where solutions to research identified obstructions to academic achievement are addressed and funded before the budgeting of operational and capital expenditures.

Todd Pembroke

Todd Pembroke is originally from Florida but has lived in Nashville since 2003. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida where he studied finance. Since 2010, he has run an insurance company in Brentwood. He is also an active member of the U.S. Army National Guard.

Pembroke’s tagline is “No Woke Todd Pembroke.” Although he does not currently have any children in school, his eldest daughter is set to start kindergarten in the fall. He has said that he wants to see a return to “traditional forms of education” and wants to remove education about race and gender. Pembroke states also that he wants to see discipline restored as a virtue in schools.

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Kelli Phillips

This is Kelli Phillips first campaign for public office. Phillips, a Nashville native and mother of three, began speaking at school board meetings in August of 2021. She was inspired to do so after seeing her high-school-aged daughter and her toddler’s struggles with COVID-19-related changes to schooling and socializing respectively.

On social media and in radio interviews, she has called for an end to masking policies in schools. Additionally, she has criticized critical race theory and appeared at events hosted by Tennessee Stands, a conservative advocacy group.

Berthena Nabaa-McKinney

Dr. Berthena Nabaa-McKinney is running for school board in District 4, a position she held for 4 months in 2020 following the passing of school board member Anna Shephard. Dr. Nabaa-Mckinney’s focus is “ensuring that all schools in District 4, and across MNPS, will have the equitable funding they need to provide a high-quality education for ALL students.”

Dr. Nabaa-McKinney moved to Nashville in 1997 after growing up in Indiana. She obtained her Doctorate in Educational Leadership & Professional Practice from Trevecca Nazarene University. Dr. Nabaa-Mckinney was formerly a MNPS chemistry teacher, as well as a private school principal. She is a parent of five MNPS graduates and a 3rdgrade student in a District 4 school.

Nabaa-McKinney is the founder of Nabaa Consulting, which focuses on school improvement for Early Childhood and K-12 schools. Her previous positions include Commissioner for the Metro-Nashville Action Commission, Chair of the Director of Schools Evaluation Committee, Co- Chair for the Teaching and Learning Committee for the Board of Education, Board Chair of the Muslim American Cultural Center, and Co-Chair of Women of Color for Educational Equity.

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Cheryl D. Mayes

Cheryl D. Mayes has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from TSU, and is the founder of My Toolbox Consulting, a leadership development and training consulting firm. Mayes works as the Director of Community Relations with the Multicultural Business Synergy Team at Nissan North America and also as District Director in the office of Congressman Jim Cooper.

Mayes was previously elected to the Board of Education for MNPS and served as Chair for her final two years on the board. She volunteers for the American Cancer Society, YWCA of Middle Tennessee, Boy Scouts of America in Middle Tennessee, and Hands on Nashville.

Mayes is endorsed by the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association. In 2016, she received the Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime Achievement Award in Education from the Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE), a division of the National School Boards Association (NSBA). Mayes states that her goals include listening to the community and ensuring the schools receive “the resources and funding that provides equitable and equal opportunities for all students.”

Fran Bush

Fran Bush has been on the school board since 2018. Bush is a native Nashvillian who has resided in the Antioch community since 2001. She has 5 boys who have all attended the MNPS schools. Bush graduated from Tennessee State University with a degree in Healthcare Administration. She began her own childcare center, The Model Kids Learning Academy, which has been running for the past 15 years.

Over the years, Bush has volunteered for several education nonprofit organizations. For the past eight years, she has been volunteering at ACT Prep, which lines up with her stated desire to make sure that all students learn and have an opportunity to be college and career ready. Bush’s self-stated advocacy is to ensure that schools provide social-emotional learning (SEL), in-person learning where masks are optional, and that families have school choice.

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Erin O’Hara Block

Erin O’Hara Block has a master’s degree in Public Policy from Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and a bachelor’s degree in American government and African/African American studies from the University of Virginia.

For over 20 years, O’Hara Block has worked in education policy and research on issues including early learning, afterschool programs, college access, educator preparation, and school leadership. She is currently the Executive Director of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance, a partnership between Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Education, and served as an adjunct faculty member at Peabody College.

If elected, O’Hara Block wants to help create integrated systems to support the mental health of students and educators, both inside and outside of school. She wants to ensure the district provides the resources to recruit and retain high quality staff, and use her expertise to shape education policy and research in Nashville and across the state.

Amy Pate

Amy Pate is a Nashville native, and graduated from John Overton High School. Pate currently works in sales for a construction company. She serves on the JT Moore PTO and is part of the group “Let Nashville Parents Choose” that formed to support schools reopening in 2020-21. She is a mother of three children in the Metro Nashville Public School system and was outspoken about her disappointment about the lack of structure that metro schools had while reopening.

Pate believes in always putting the needs of kids before politics, listening to parents about what they want and need for their children, and holding the district and board of education accountable. Pate is supportive of parents being involved and voicing their opinion regarding issues within MNPS. She emphasizes that her loyalties lie not with a party but with the students and families of MNPS.