The Tennessee Department of Education announced a rapid expansion of charter schools last week, including the potential authorization of charter schools in five districts that currently have not authorized any charters. To be clear, the new authorization would likely come from Gov. Bill Lee’s Charter School Commission, thereby usurping the local school board.
As noted in Tennessee Education Report:
That’s right, school privatization is coming to Tennessee in suburban and rural districts whether voters want it or not. While Lee’s voucher scheme is bogged down in court, Lee is acting unilaterally to charterize Tennessee’s public schools.
The proposal means 15 new charter schools across the state and it continues Lee’s trend of privatizing public education in the state.
The announcement of charter school expansion across the state comes on the heels of a legislative session that saw Lee and his legislative allies advance a privatization agenda including the continuation of the state’s failed Achievement School District.
In March, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Repubican, announced yet another plan to continue the district. More specifically, Lee wants to allow a handful of his personal favorite charter operators to continue to manage some select ASD schools.
Not content to let a really bad idea die, Lee is backing legislation that would allow some schools to move from the ASD to the jurisdiction of the state’s relatively new Charter School Commission. That Commission was created by Lee in his first year as governor in order to circumvent the rejection of charter schools by local school boards.
While current estimates put Tennessee’s school funding shortfall at $1.7 billion and while Gov. Lee is content to maintain the status quo of underfunded schools, I’m reminded of a time just a few years ago when indicators suggested our state was a mere $400 million behind where we should be to maintain adequate school funding.
Of course, the state certainly has plenty of money to spend on schools - it’s just that policymakers aren’t all that interested:
It’s unconscionable for state leaders to not include significant increases for K-12 funding, especially at a time when the state has racked up $1.42 billion in surplus year-to-date. The money is there to make a significant increase to K-12 funding, but Gov. Lee and the General Assembly have instead chosen to continue stuffing mattresses full of cash.
Just to be clear, the idea that Tennessee has a critical school funding shortfall is not news. Five years ago, the Republican Comptroller of the Treasury put the dollar amount at $400 million. But, in 2016, then-Gov. Bill Haslam and legislators did absolutely nothing to change the trajectory. Instead, Tennessee kept on underfunding schools. Now, a bipartisan group (TACIR) says the shortfall is $1.7 billion. That’s the real consequence of kicking the can down the road.
Now, the General Assembly is following their Pied Piper, Gov. Lee, all the way down the privatization road. Not content to maintain the unacceptable status quo, the plan now seems to privatize at all costs in order to hasten the transfer of public dollars into private hands.