THE KING SCHOOL OPTION

We believe the Hamilton County Schools district is trying to turn things around in its Opportunity Zone schools, but many parents whose children would attend the low-performing schools don’t want to wait.

For such a reason, The King School at Olivet Baptist Church is being birthed.

The school, a partnership between the large church and 50-year-old Chattanooga Christian School, will launch this fall with one kindergarten and one first-grade class but eventually will be a K-5 private school.

The desire for school choice is the same reason Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy and Chattanooga Preparatory School (for boys), both public charter schools, were created.

For too long, in general, parents of students in struggling schools who couldn’t afford to send their children to private academies have been told to stay the course. They were told charter schools, pilot projects and voucher bills only took money out of the public schools, and that open enrollment was out of the question. All of those would only make things worse, they were told.

They were wrong, and in the meantime the struggling schools rarely got any better. And studies showed those schools continued to be staffed by the least experienced and least effective teachers.

The rise in private schools over decades, especially in Hamilton County, should have been a wake-up call for the district. But for too many years, it wasn’t.

The King School will be able to foster both the faith aspects of a church-based school — impossible in a public setting — and offer students the professional services and infrastructure of well-established Chattanooga Christian.

Its tuition of $6,500 per year will be not quite two-thirds the cost of Chattanooga Christian, and that price is set to make the school more accessible to low-income families. The tuition still may be seen as exorbitant to families who cannot pay individual public schools’ annual fees of $25 or $50, but some families may look at the amount as a significant investment in their child.

Instead of offering what has been characterized as the “lowest common denominator” education in public schools, the mission of The King School is to build prepared, young leaders, said Chris Sands, youth pastor at Olivet Baptist.

The school is expected to have small class sizes, a low student-teacher ratio, an engaging curriculum and extracurricular opportunities.

“When you know who are and whose you are, you can impact a generation,” Sands said.

We’re optimistic our public school district is taking positive steps for the schools and students who most need them, but we’re also delighted students who might attend those schools will have another option. All those who truly value the best education for each student should too.