Will 2023 Be the Year of the Charter in Tennessee?
Will 2023 Be the Year of the Charter in Tennessee?
Plans emerge for dramatic expansion of charter schools
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23 “Letters of Intent” Filed by Charter Operators
Pro-charter propaganda machine Tennessee Firefly is out with the story of a bevy of new charter school applications across the state.
The story that’s gotten the purveyors of privatization so excited is that as of now, there are 23 “letters of intent” from charter operators planning to open schools in districts across Tennessee.
As Firefly notes:
School districts across the state received 23 letters of intent this month for applications to open new public charter schools next year. That’s the first step potential charter operators must take before submitting their formal application by February 1, 2023.
The letters of intent include proposed schools in four counties that do not currently have public charter schools and they’re coming from both existing charter operators in Tennessee and those who were rejected this year.
The applications come from a range of operators, including Christian Nationalist Hillsdale College – a group out of Michigan seeking to open schools in five Tennessee counties – Madison, Rutherford, Montgomery, Maury, and Robertson.
At the same time that charter operators are planning a rapid expansion, there’s news that pro-charter forces are aligning to find ways to maximize the amount of money charters receive from the state’s new funding formula, TISA. TISA will be in force starting in the 2023-24 academic year.
Nashville education blogger and new Tennessee Star reporter TC Weber reports that Bill Frist’s education reform organization – SCORE – has hired a national education funding consultant to help charter schools extract public funding for their private operations.
Afton Partners, a national organization specializing in school funding and education policy, has announced via social media a new partnership with the Tennessee State Collaborative for Reforming Education (SCORE) and The Tennessee Charter School Center (TCSC). The stated purpose of the budding collaboration is to help Tennessee’s charter school leaders better understand the operational and financial implications of Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) – the state’s new funding formula for public schools.
The bottom line: The consultant is being paid to help charter operators get the most money from TISA – meaning a greater negative impact to local school system budgets.
It seems clear, too, that charter expansion will be a strain on local budgets:
Nate Rau at Axios has the story about a new nonprofit group that has the stated goal of highlighting the fiscal impact of charter schools on local school district budgets.
The group, Public School Partners, is in the myth-busting business. That is, they seek to dispel the notion that charter schools have little to no fiscal impact on local budgets. (For full disclosure, I’m a supporter of Public School Partners).
This is an especially important project given a state charter commission with the power to override local decisions and force charter schools in districts where they are not wanted.
The group’s website features a fiscal impact calculator that allows users to determine the cost of operating a charter school in any district in Tennessee.
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Federal Legislation Filed to Boost Teacher Pay
As if! Does anybody believe that Bill Frist and SCORE care about public education other than for the tax dollars it will divert to their pockets? Check out the folks involved with SCORE, including Frist. Their kids go to private schools. If they can enrich themselves further through "public" education and get a work force that is willing to work for low wages, that is their bottom line. How many folks in SCORE have taught in a public school for more than 2-3 years? That rules out the Teach for America folks who only do it for their resume and get out of teaching ASAP.