Local blogger exposes sexist emails allegedly sent out by MNPS male supervisor

Over at Gemna Speaks, Gemna Holmes broke some rather provocative news regarding an email allegedly sent by Metro Nashville Public Schools Food Services Director Jay Nelson (I added the emphasis below):

Recently, a Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) male supervisor sent an email to female subordinates that has gone viral. In the food service department, the female to male ratio is 9 to 1. An email with a cartoon depicting a caveman telling another caveman that he has decided to teach the woman to talk and asking “what harm can it do?” is not funny. Period ....

I contacted several MNPS food service staff members at area schools to ask them about their work environment which the email made me question right away. No one wanted to go on record for fear of losing their jobs but all agreed that email that I read was a glimpse behind the drawn shades of a school system that has become synonymous with devaluing its support staff.

Jump to Gemna's blog to see the offending cartoon and get more details. These allegations are chilling for MNPS given that they come on the heels of a complaint filed against Jesse Register for "overreaching" and attempting to "silence" MNPS support staff. What kind of climate do service workers weather under the MNPS umbrella?


By the way, this is not the first time Director Nelson has had his oversight scrutinized. In 2004, MSNBC found conditions in Metro school cafeterias in bad shape under his watch:

...unlike last year [when new crews popped in], there were no mouse droppings under food service lines. But mice still roam other parts of some Nashville school cafeterias.

But the Nashville school district had its most serious problems with food temperatures, worse than any other city we visited. When checking hamburgers, one of the most dangerous foods if not cooked thoroughly and held at 140 degrees, inspector Steve Crosier couldn't believe his eyes as the thermometer needle fell. It finally bottomed out at around 78 degrees.

Hansen: "How quickly does bacteria grow, bacteria that could make a kid sick at 78 degrees?"

Prof. Berg: "It grows really, really quickly. 78 degrees, 110 degrees, these are optimum temperatures for bacteria. Not for us."

Cold pizza may be a staple around college dorms, but health officials say it could pose a danger for a young child if not kept at 140 degrees to kill bacteria. At 60 degrees the pizza was 80 degrees too cold.

Prof. Berg: "It is that cheese. It's almost like a Petri dish with bacterial growth."

At McGavock High, inspectors saw something a lot scarier than cold pizza -- shards of glass mixed in with fruit in a cooler. Apparently, the light shield, the metal cover that goes over the glass dome shield, fell.

Jerry Rowland, Health Director: "I can't remember the last time that I saw an inspection where there was glass inside a food in a school cafeteria or in a restaurant."

Inspectors also found a fifty pound bag of USDA-donated flour in a storage room infested with bugs. Jay Nelson is the head of food services for Nashville schools.

Hansen: "Don't the people look around and say, this needs to be cleaned. This has bugs. This is rotten. This is at the wrong temperature. Before kids come in to eat in these rooms?

Jay Nelson: "Chris, I would have fully expected that happens. But as we can see it doesn't."

Hansen: "How can you guarantee that the next time we come down here, we won't see some of these very same things?"

Nelson: "Chris I'd be a fool to guarantee you that you're not going to see some of the very same things. What I want to see is our total scores of all the schools improving, and continually improving."

Maybe it's good news that the MNPS dining services brain trust is no longer having to defend alarming food conditions in its cafeterias. Is it too much to expect that Mr. Nelson find a way to stop imposing demeaning cartoons on rank-and-file workers?


UPDATE: MNPS's cartoon fiasco hits the airwaves.

Every next big thing has a next big flip side

There is a lot of buzz in the mainstream media and local social media about food trucks. They are today's latest rage. While food trucks are fun and novel (for those who've never noshed at a roach coach), they also have unintended consequences for neighborhoods that require some forethought toward regulations. For instance, should food truck owners be held responsible for litter that their customers throw down? Should a food truck be allowed to blare Tijuana Taxi for hours straight? Can a food truck set up shop anywhere on or off the street? What obligations does the vendor have to protect public health?

Real life concerns may be a buzz-kill on food truck fun, but these are important issues to people who live in the vicinity of these good times. Jump to a draft of the regulations Metro Traffic and Parking is considering for mobile vendors.

Thus Relieving Council President Pro Tem Greg Adkins of Having to Explain Why Health Regulations Equal Punishment

The State Senate has ostensibly robbed me of the enjoyment of listening to any future Metro Council debate on the power of Metro Health to regulate large chain restaurants. Since the Metro bill telling the Health Department that the council knows more about health risks than the Health Department does was probably destined for defeat, CM Greg Adkins has likely been spared a chance at any further futile foolishness.

Council President Pro Tem Greg Adkins Redefines "To Regulate" as "To Punish"

Apparently, the writers of our Metro Charter should have held off several decades and talked with Council Member Greg Adkins before writing that the Metro Board of Health should exercise administrative functions pertaining to the regulation of privately owned institutions for the purpose of sanitation and public health. CM Adkins, who while filling in for Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors broke the tie to move an anti-regulation bill on to second reading, obviously has a better grasp of how the Health Department should function than did the writers. After all, this is what he just told the Tennessean tonight:

In this day and age of where we are with the economy, I don’t want to punish restaurants in any way, shape or form

Well, perhaps Metro should also stop doing those health inspections and scoring restaurants on hygiene and food storage. If regulation amounts to punishment, why ask the Board of Health to apply and enforce any rules?

Greg Adkins should have made a more presidential argument for his tie-breaker (which could eventually constitute a veto of Health Department rules, if this bill passes all three readings) than "regulation equals punishment."

After 8 years of failed voluntary self-regulation, why do they deserve 1 more day?

The Obama Administration is giving the meat industry another chance to adopt stricter package label guidelines on their product before forcing them to reform. I'm trying to understand what makes Tom Vilsack assume that the past decade of soft GOP voluntarism has not been enough of an opportunity.

Green Drinks on New Organic Market

Further advancing the perception that East Nashville has everything.

Now that Governor Bredesen Has Opened a Free Trade Office for Tennessee in China

Let that insecticide-laced Chinese food start flowing into the Volunteer State. Because if you don't promote free (a.k.a., "unregulated, sweatshop") trade, then you are a hopeless idealist, and you can stick a dumpling in it.

Tennessee General Assembly Has Not Yet Preempted Local Food Control

According to Environmental Commons, 15 states have already passed legislation to preempt and prohibit local regulation and restrictions on seeds and plant species. These laws are the result of a two-year effort on the part of lobbyists with the American Farm Bureau Federation and biotechnology industries to stop local communities from specifically regulating genetically modified foods (GMOs).

The harshest restriction of local autonomy seems to be a Texas law, which states: "a political subdivision may not adopt an ordinance or rule that restricts the planting, sale, or distribution of noxious or invasive plant species." Texans cannot even stop "noxious" or "invasive" plants from being put upon their municipalities and neighborhoods?

I searched for evidence of trends in the Tennessee General Assembly that might suggest that the agribusiness and biotech lobbyists were trying to generate legislation, but I could not find any. The most I could find was a passing reference to the controversy around GMOs in a January 2004 Economic Report to the Governor (p. 33). Even if there is no indication of a drift that way, one would have to assume that Tennessee is probably in play for these lobbyists, especially with the corporate-friendly environment that exists up on the Hill. Three states bordering Tennessee have either passed preemption laws or flirted with doing so.

Environmental Commons has a continuously updated bill tracker for each state. We need to keep our eye on it and challenge any GMO-related bills that come up in future sessions. I've added the tracker to my sidebar for your convenience.