Amy Frogge is a recently elected member of the Metro Nashville school board. She overcame a heavily funded opponent. She was named to our honor roll because she ran for school board to speak for parents and students. A lawyer, she takes her civic duty seriously. She believes in democracy, where the people closest to the problems have a voice in resolving them.
That’s why she has been a strong opponent of the Great Hearts charter school. Frogge describes the situation here.
Its plans were inadequate in relation to diversity. Few of the Arizona Great Hearts schools are diverse. This was not acceptable to the Nashville school board. It was no problem for state commissioner of education Kevin Huffman, who didn’t care if Great Hearts ended up with few or no black children. He withheld $3.4 million from the children of Nashville to punish the school board for turning down Great Hearts.
Why is Kevin Huffman so devoted to this charter operator?
This is what Timothy Noah wrote about Great Hearts Academy in The New Republic, quoting investigative journalist Ann Ryman in the Arizona Republic:
“The schools’ purchases from their own officials,” Ryman writes, “range from curriculum and business consulting to land leases and transportation services. A handful of non-profit schools outsource most of their operations to a board member’s for-profit company.” A nonprofit called Great Hearts Academies runs 15 Arizona charter schools. Since 2009, according to Ryman, the schools have purchased $987,995 in books from Educational Sales Co., whose chairman, Daniel Sauer, is a Great Hearts officer. And that doesn’t count additional book purchases made directly by parents. Six of the Great Hearts schools have links on their Web sites for parents who wish to make such purchases. The links are, of course, to Educational Sales Co. Since 2007 Sauer has donated $50,400 to Great Hearts. You can call that philanthropy, or you can call that an investment on which Sauer’s company received a return of more than 1800 percent. I’m not sure even Russian oligarchs typically get that much on the back end.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I commend Amy Frogge for standing up for public education. I live in Nashville and it seems as though Amy is the only person on the board that will speak up for what she believes, which is a great education for “ALL” children of Nashville. Thank you Amy for your hard work and please keep up the fight.
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Amy is the best board member I’ve ever seen in Nashville. She will always have my vote!
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I love how Amy Frogge was able to use Kevin Huffman’s own words from his law review article to support the position of Nashville’s BOE against approving Great Hearts Academy.
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Reblogged this on Sow. Cultivate. Bloom..
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Thank you for continuing to push this message. Even our own Nashville Public Education Foundation has sold out. A group of parents went to them to to request a 501c3 sponsor to privately raise our $3.4M back and NPEF said they were “Sorry they could not help us. It was not in their misson.” I shake my head and wonder how much money must be involved? We, as Nashville parents, seem to have no traction to help our community understand why the Nashville BOE did the right thing. The leaders in this community trying to shape reform from the State Legislature are not listening to parents in Nashville who were not for Great Hearts.
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Clearly your position has nothing at all to do with the academics of these schools. Arizona has some of the lowest test scores in the nation. If you look at the students performances coming from the GreatHearts schools in comparison you would see a drastic difference. You might attribute that to demographics, however EVERY child has the same chance of getting in based on a “lottery” system. Furthermore, the values and pillars these schools operate by are HONOR based, and all about integrity. So, I challenge you to come visit the schools, see what you are bashing. Remember there are two sides, and these schools began as a grass-roots effort to revolutionize education for the founders children, grandchildren, neighbors and so forth. So if they have long established relationships with vendors, maybe you should note that in your rant.
Sincerely,
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Did you read the exposé in the Arizona Republic about self-dealing by the owner of Great Hearts? Do you know that most of the Great Hearts charters have no diversity?
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Brina, you are right. The parents and school board are not arguing at all about Great Hearts academics. Their academics are stellar. Our board of education saw a great charter school with lack of transportation, unaffordable fees, understaffed for the disabled and an enrollment demographic track record that was not a good fit for 75% of our district on free and reduced lunch. Schools like Great Hearts need to be able to serve a diverse population in one school. Not a diverse population in numerous schools segregated by socioeconomics and race. This type of “neighborhood” school seems to fly in Arizona. But, not in Nashville.
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