WILL LEE’S UNELECTED CHARTER PANEL OVERTURN SCHOOL BOARD VOTES?

Throughout September, the Tennessee Charter School Commission’s 13-member staff of the state’s unelected, nine-member charter school commission will be determining whether decisions by elected school boards to deny charter school petitions “were contrary to the best interests” of students, local education agencies and communities.

Then, come October, that commission — handpicked and appointed by charter school advocate Gov. Bill Lee — will vote yea or nay to overturn the decisions of the duly elected school board members who Tennesseans, county by county, voted into office.

This will happen in at least 13 new charter-start appeals. At least three involve proposals affiliated with Hillsdale College — three among the 50 Lee said in January that he and Hillsdale president Larry Arnn agreed to bring to the Volunteer State.

Arnn is the guy who — on stage in Lee’s presence in Franklin, Tennessee — said teachers “come from the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”

Tennesseans got to hear those and other Arnn insults and mocking remarks thanks to a nearly two-hour video from a hidden camera. The video was turned over to NewsChannel 5 in Nashville and aired in bits in late June. Lee never disputed those comments in their joint appearance. Instead, he offered praise for Arnn’s “vision.”

Later, answering questions from a number of reporters, Lee still did not — has not — publicly repudiated Arnn. Rather, Lee, who is up for re-election on Nov. 8, tried to blame liberals saying it was his belief Arnn’s comments were aimed at “activism on the left.”

“I do believe that the comments that you referenced was a conversation about the influence of left-leaning activists in the public education system in this state and this country, frankly,” Lee said. “It really was a national conversation. It wasn’t about Tennessee teachers or Tennessee schools as much as it was about activism in education in this country.” Those who saw the entire video denied that assertion. When the Hillsdale “bombshell” exploded, groups that had spent the previous six months flirting with the college’s charters or curriculum began pulling out.

Within days, Skillern Elementary charter school, which opened this year in Soddy-Daisy, terminated its agreement with Hillsdale to use the college’s curriculum. Within weeks, Rutherford County, Jackson-Madison County and Clarksville-Montgomery County school districts voted down applications from American Classical Academy, the college’s brand for its charter network schools.

And by the end of July, those three counties’ charter school proposals affiliated with Hillsdale had appealed the rejections by the local school boards.

In two of its appeals, American Classical Academy downplayed its link to Hillsdale College and accused the school boards of politicizing the process.

“We ask the Commission to do what the Board did not: keep politics out of the process, conduct a rigorous application review,” American Classical Academy said in a statement about appealing the Rutherford County decision.

No, we’re not kidding.

Let us just say again: The state’s new charter school commission — envisioned and handpicked by Lee and blessed by the super-majority-Republican Tennessee General Assembly — has the power to overturn rejections by local school boards. And Gov. Lee stands by his request for Hillsdale to establish scores of new charter schools in Tennessee using the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum. That so-called “patriotic” curriculum emphasizes American exceptionalism was published in response to efforts like The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which has attempted to offer students a more unvarnished telling of the nation’s founding.

Could we describe anything — from Lee’s and Tennessee’s first embrace of “patriotic” lessons to Lee’s effort to relabel Arnn’s teacher insults as some kind of liberal plot doublespeak — that might smack more of politics?

But now the question: Will this panel — with new heat from the Associated Press — actually show some independence or will it fold like the Lee-inspired encircling wagon train it was intended to be?

When no one showed up to make the case for the Hillsdale-affiliated school application in one of those counties in mid-summer, the charter commission staffers charged with keeping track were dumbfounded, according to texts obtained by the AP.

“What !!!! They invited both schools to speak and (they) did not show!!!” texted Beth Figueroa, the commission’s director of authorizing. In another text, when another board voted 6-1 to reject a charter, Chase Ingle, commission spokesperson, wrote, “… that’s a tough look. This does not help us.”

The texts are telling. They unintentionally speak truth to power and present a challenge to Lee and his hand-picked commission.

Mark White, a Memphis Republican and fierce charter advocate who sponsored the legislation that created the commission in 2019 at Lee’s behest, acknowledged as much to Chalkbeat.

“The charter conversation now has nothing to do with charters, but it has everything to do with a comment that you can’t explain away,” he said. “It’s set us back years.”

Or — from our view — gave us new opportunities to strengthen public education without all of the political shadings.