Zach Young wins local office, makes history as LGBTQ+ member of Nashville school board

The day after he officially won his seat on the Metro Nashville Public Schools board, Zach Young was scrolling through a rash of hateful comments on social media.

As someone who's held public office for more than a decade, he's grown used to it.

"That's just part of being an LGBT person in elected office in the world we live in, unfortunately," Young said as he settled in with an iced mocha during the bustling lunch hour at Fido on 21st Avenue South. "You get a lot of hate, but you also get a lot of love."

The Aug. 1 election made Young, who is gay, the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to a school board in Tennessee. But there's a small caveat, he said: Mauricio Calvo, who told Chalkbeat he is part of the LGBTQ+ community, was appointed by city officials to the Memphis-Shelby County Schools board to serve after a board member abruptly resigned last summer. However, Calvo did not win the election this month.

"It was never my mission to set out to make history," Young said. "I'm happy to serve my community but also happy to be an example for children so that they can see that it's OK to live their authentic life."

A long history of public service

Running for office again was the last thing on Young's mind when he got the call last year from outgoing MNPS board member Emily Masters to consider taking her spot.

At that moment, Young was fresh off four years on the Metro Nashville Council that ended with a difficult campaign and lost re-election bid. While he held onto his longtime role on the city commission in Goodlettsville, where he was born and raised and lives to this day, Young was burnt out on campaigning.

All that changed when he traveled to Washington, D.C., for a conference with an advocacy organization called LGBTQ+ Victory Fund. He said he listened to "horror stories" from school board members across the country, especially when it came to their fight with conservative parental rights group Moms For Liberty. The group was formed in 2021 and has led charges to end mask mandates during the pandemic and ban library books. It has also dominated school board discussions across the nation and launched a super PAC to support political candidates. The group was labeled as "extremist" and "anti-government" by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year.

The group has a chapter in Davidson County, along with several other Middle Tennessee counties.

"They're on our doorstep," Young said. "We can't let our school board meetings and our schools get distracted by these social wars. We need to be focused on providing our students with everything that they need to succeed."

After the conference, Young only had a few weeks to file to run. He got his papers together and ran unopposed, sailing through the March primaries and August election to secure the District 3 seat.

A realtor by trade, Young will take up his new spot on the MNPS board Sept. 10. He does not plan to run in November for re-election to the city commission in Goodlettsville, where he has served for 12 years.

Moms for Liberty: How an army of education activists has become a national political force

What Young brings to the MNPS board

Young plans to bring his know-how from his years on council to his new role on the MNPS board. As someone who sat on the other side of yearly budget conversations, he hopes to contribute his expertise in the process to the district. He also wants to help rebuild trust between the district and city leaders, who have had a fractious relationship at times.

Young also draws inspiration from growing up in public schools and in a family full of public servants. He especially credits his mother with instilling an interest in public service in him.

"From a young age, she would have me watch the nightly news with her," he said.

That formed his worldview, helping him understand the society around him and the part he could play. The idea of local government has always appealed to Young, even if it involves seemingly mundane things like traffic lights and trash collection.

"Even though it's not as sexy as, like, Congress … it's the level of government that touches your life more than any other," he said. "It's all these things that we take for granted and that we just assume and trust are going to happen the way they're supposed to."

With the latest election, the board will officially be all Democrats after a new Tennessee law allowed school board races to be partisan. Young said he's especially excited to join a board that is more cohesive and united after previous years saw bitter division over things like district leadership, the pandemic and charter schools.

"They’ve got a really great group that really works together really well," Young said. "The attitude that they project to the administration and the teachers … is so important."

He joked that he and Robert Taylor, a Democrat who defeated Republican opponent Demytris Savage-Short in a landslide, are breaking up the all-female board.

"I can still go get my nails done with the girls afterwards," Young joked.

Don't worry, he said. Taylor is invited, too.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville school board: Zach Young makes history as first LGBTQ member