You may remember we reported that Coffee County and the Tennessee College of Applied Technology Center in Shelbyville wanted to open a location in Manchester.
The county was turned down for a state grant in the amount of $350,000 to open the site.
Director Ivan Jones of the school in Shelbyville said he will continue to search for chances to establish a technology school in Coffee County because there is a need.
This year, there were 32 applicants for the grants and only 12 of them were awarded.

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a report of a stolen tractor just outside Coffee County. The report states that a person(s) took a tractor from a filed in the Deans Shop Rd. area between 10/6/16 at 10:00pm and 10/7/16 at Noon.
The tractor was a 2016 Case Farmall 90C red in color with a front loader attachment and a red canopy. The tractor’s estimated value is $50,000. Anyone having any information regarding this incident is asked to contact Investigator Todd Hindman at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office at 931-962-0123 or Investigator Mike Whaley with the Agricultural Crime Unit at 1-844-242-7463.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear two death-penalty cases this term, and while the court will primarily consider constitutional law in reaching their decisions, research shows that half of the country does not support capital punishment.
A new study released by the Pew Research Center found that the number of Americans in favor of the death penalty is at its lowest level in four decades.
The shifting opinion is often rooted in distrust in a broken system, according to Kristin Collins, a spokeswoman for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. She noted that more than 150 people on death row have been exonerated in recent years, including three in Tennessee.
“Seeing these kinds of cases, I think people are seeing that the system, it’s not fair and it can’t be trusted to decide which people deserve to die and which people deserve to live,” Collins said.
According to Pew, in the 1990s eight in 10 Americans supported capital punishment. The latest report showed that while support has declined across the spectrum, Republicans favored the death penalty more than two-to-one over Democrats.
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, there are currently 64 people on death row, some of them with convictions dating back to the 1980s.
Collins said people are beginning to understand that a life sentence is not the “country club” atmosphere sometimes portrayed in movies.
“Life without parole is a really harsh sentence, and I think anybody who might think it’s sort of some fun, cushy sentence should go try it out,” Collins said. “If you’re in central prison, you never even get a contact visit. You only visit through thick glass and bars with your family. It’s not a pleasant life.”
It has been over two years since anyone has been sentenced to death in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol cautions motorists to watch out for deer on or near the roadways this fall season. An increase in deer-related crashes is likely during the months of October through December due to deer mating season and hunting season.
In Tennessee, between 2011 and 2015, 22 percent of deer-related crashes occurred on interstate highways. Last year there were 6,953 deer-related crashes, including 351 that involved injuries. That was up by 8 percent from the previous year.

A new report sheds light on the millions of additional dollars announced earlier this year by the state for teacher salaries in Tennessee.
According to The Tennessean, the state Comptroller of the Treasury report explains that when Gov. Bill Haslam said in his State of the State address that he was putting $105 million into the Basic Education Program for teacher salaries, it didn’t necessarily mean raises for educators statewide.
That’s because the report says local school districts get to decide how to spend that money on positions, whether it be through employee raises or on hiring new staff.
The report states that because the BEP is a formula for funding education, rather than a spending plan, increases in BEP dollars doesn’t necessarily mean larger paychecks for every teacher.