Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett is launching a hotline in an effort to help students impacted by the recent misadministration of an ACT test at Bearden High School. Mayor Burchett traveled to Nashville yesterday to meet with Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, Education Commissioner Candice McQueen, Comptroller Justin Wilson, Rep. Eddie Smith (by phone) and ACT executives in an effort to convince ACT to release students’ scores from the Oct. 17 exam.

“By the end of our meeting, it became clear that ACT has no intentions of helping our students by releasing their ACT scores,” said Mayor Burchett. “To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. I’m angry. The same arrogance I sensed in previous phone conversations with ACT was on display in our face-to-face meeting. Over 400 Knox County students are being punished for a mistake they didn’t make, and these people have the ability to change that and they’re refusing to do so.”

In an effort to help impacted students, Mayor Burchett set up a hotline for parents to call and leave contact information so someone from his office can reach out to them to gather additional details about individual students and the schools to which they’ve applied.

Parents may provide their information by leaving a message at 865-215-2017 or by emailing community.outreach@knoxcounty.org.

“I’m going to work closely with Commissioner McQueen to ensure that each school these students apply to is made aware of the situation they’ve faced and ask admissions personnel to take this information into consideration as they review students’ applications,” said Mayor Burchett. “We may not get any help from ACT, but we’re going to do what East Tennesseans always do: take matters into our own hands and keep fighting for a solution.”