School district sends internal email within hours of WSMV4 airing story of discrimination claim

NOLENSVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - After WSMV4 aired a story Wednesday night about a Nolensville family’s discrimination claim against the Williamson County School District, our team learned the district had sent out an internal email providing guidance to teachers on the problem our story exposed.

To this point, the district has only communicated to WSMV4 that it has not received the formal complaint from the Office of Civil Rights. WSMV4 has reached out to both the regional and national OCR offices for an update on their notification procedures.

The Goodman family filed a formal discrimination complaint October 31, 2024, citing missing grades and the district’s unwillingness to pay for specialized training for its teachers who work with 13-year old Blakely Goodman. The 8th grader is non-verbal due to a rare genetic mutation that affects 1 in 10,000 girls.

“These girls are trapped in their own bodies,” says Brittany Goodman, mother to Blakely. “This is a kid who’s writing sentence type essays about the Diary of Anne Frank.”

The plight of a girl with Rett Syndrome is that cognitive function remains intact while motor function is compromised to varying degrees.

The internal email, which was sent to Williamson County Employees who work in Student Support Services (SSS) included a link to an online document highlighted as being “for WCS Staff only.”

The document is titled “Modification Guidance Document” and provides insight on the difference between modifications and accommodations when dealing with a student who may have a special education need.

“This guidance document shows that there is a lack of understanding just what’s an accommodation and what’s a modification,” says Kristee Bailey, an education advocate who works with family across Tennessee to know their rights.

WSMV4 asked Bailey to review the internal email and provide perspective on what it indicates.

At the end of the 4,770 word guidance document, a section is bolded, titled “Modified Grading and Best Practices.” The description for the section reads “every student deserves to be assessed, given feedback, and have grades reported to legal guardians.”

The content of the section is notable as it highlights the exact issue that initiated the Goodman family’s discrimination claim.

“She turned in work that we never got back and never got graded for,” says Brittany, who discovered on April 18 Blakely had no recorded grades for her daughter’s 7th grade English Language Arts class.

“Sadly [the Goodman’s] story is not unique,” says Bailey. “I think [the district is] in repair mode and so they want to get something on the book that says ‘we’ve trained our staff.’ Instead of being proactive, it seems to be very reactive and its too late because you can’t make up that instructional time that that little girl has missed.”

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