ALCOA, Tenn. — The Alcoa School Board approved a first reading of policy changes on Tuesday, Aug. 25, that would allow future candidates for the Director of Schools position to be interviewed behind closed doors and have their resumes hidden from public records requests.
The policy shift, passed unanimously and without discussion during a board meeting at Alcoa High School, marks a major departure from local transparency practices. The board is leveraging an option offered by a new state law enacted in May 2026 to restrict public access to candidate details.
A LEGISLATIVE LOOPHOLE AIMED AT WEAKENING GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY
The newly enacted state law amends the Tennessee Open Meetings to permit local governing bodies to conduct private, executive-session interviews for “director-level” hires—such as school directors—with no public notice required for those sessions.
Cite: Tennessee Code Annotated Title 8, Chapter 44, Part 1—specifically T.C.A. § 8-44-102—which is the core statute of the Tennessee Open Meetings Act (the Sunshine Law)
Discretionary Executive Sessions: The statute allows—rather than strictly mandates—local governing bodies to conduct interviews in closed sessions for qualifying director-level positions (such as school directors or agency heads). A board can still choose to hold its candidate interviews in open public meetings if it prefers. The Alcoa School Board appears to be electing to hide the interviews from public view and public video recordings.
LOCAL LEGISLATORS SPONSORED THE BILLS:
State Representative Jerome Moon (R-Maryville) sponsored the House companion bill (HB 2616).
Senator: State Senator Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville) sponsored the Senate bill (SB 2162), which ultimately became Public Chapter 1048.
Crucially, the law gives candidates the power to shield their application materials from the public. If an applicant requests confidentiality, their application and resumes are kept entirely confidential and exempt from public records inspection. Only after they are under contract and have become employees their records now are accessible via a public records request.
This new law directly bypasses Tennessee’s older public openness statute, § 10-7-503(f), which states that director-of-schools applications “shall” be open unless otherwise provided by state law. To override this, the 2026 law uses explicit “notwithstanding § 10-7-503” language to ensure unselected applicants who request privacy remain permanently hidden. Transparency groups strongly opposed the law for this reason, pointing to how it systematically shields top-level local searches from community oversight.
Shutting Out the Community and Staff
During the board meeting, Director of Schools Jake Jones explained that the policy updates stem from these new state provisions. “They also allowed those individuals who are applying for the director of schools to keep their information private, if they so desire, meaning that if someone made a public records request for their information, we would not be able to submit that information to them,” Jones told the board.
Under Alcoa’s proposed policy, public and staff involvement will be drastically reduced:
Only board members will be permitted to ask questions during the closed executive-session interviews.
The policy completely removes existing language that previously involved “meetings with various staff and community groups” in the hiring process.
Resumes of applicants will only be available for public inspection if the candidate does not request privacy.
While the minutes of the closed executive sessions must be published, and candidate deliberations, voting, and the final appointment must still occur in open meetings, the critical preliminary vetting stages will be completely closed to public view.
The Choice for Secrecy
According to the meeting agenda, Alcoa school board members had the option to preserve their existing, more transparent process. Instead, they chose to approve the first reading of the confidentiality policy. The changes will require a second reading and vote at a future meeting to be officially adopted.