Governor Bill Lee Hayes public schools, even though most children in Tennessee attend them.
He packed the new State Charter School Commission with people who love to hand public money to private corporations to operate schools that choose their students and operate without accountability.
Tennessee is opening the state treasury to out-of-state corporations, entrepreneurs, and grifters. Come get taxpayer dollars to open schools and drain money from the public schools!
Here are the members chosen by the Governor.
The commission consists of CEOs, politicians, charter school board members.
- Tom Griscom, of Hamilton County, a former director of White House communications under President Ronald Reagan, long-time aide to the late U.S. Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee, and former executive editor and publisher of the Times Free Press in Chattanooga
- David Hanson, of Davidson County, is managing partner of Hillgreen, a private investment firm, and serves on the board for Teach for America and Nashville-based charter network Valor Collegiate Academies.
- Alan Levine, of Washington County in East Tennessee, CEO of Ballad Health and a one-time adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
- Terence Patterson, of Shelby County, is the CEO of the Memphis Education Fundand former head of the Downtown Memphis Commission. He was also the chief of staff for Chicago Public Schools, later becoming the director of the Office of New Schools in Chicago, where he managed 113 new charter schools.
- Mary Pierce, of Davidson County, was a leading charter school advocate during her one term as a school board member with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.
- Christine Richards, of Shelby County, a former general counsel for FedEx
- Derwin Sisnett, of Shelby County, co-founded Gestalt Community Schools, a Memphis-based charter school network. He is the founder and managing partner of Maslow Development Inc., a nonprofit organization that develops communities around high performing schools.
- Eddie Smith of Knox County, is a Republican who served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 2014 until 2018, when he was ousted by Democrat Gloria Johnson.
- Wendy Tucker, of Williamson County, is an attorney and adjunct professor at Vanderbilt School of Law. A member of the state Board of Education since 2014, she has been an advocate of children with special needs.
Maybe one or two people who care about kids slipped through. The majority can be counted on to undermine public schools for the benefit of privatizers from out of state.
Shame on Governor Bill Lee.
Lee has no shame. He’s a hard core Libertarain and free-market, Christian zealot.
ZEALOT is the deeply frightening word.
Worn like a badge of honor.
Seems like Governor Lee decided to copy the “best practices” of Andrew Cuomo — didn’t Cuomo pack the SUNY Charter commission with charter proponents, too?
Cuomo has done that for what, 8 years?
Lee’s “best” ideas come straight out of the DeVos & Koch think tanks. He’s even more extreme than Haslam ideologically and, from watching the voucher bill skulduggery, much more ruthless.
Thanks Diane for posting this. I cannot comprehend how such a clear conflict of interest can be institutionalized.
Haslam was already scary, and did a lot a to undermine public schools via privatization, but Lee promises to be much worse.
Haslam, billionaire reformer, EX-Gov of TN, is now on the board of TFA
Uh. We can expect TFA trying to take over the state.
It’s also rumored that Haslam funded the free community college program (TN Promise), by simply taking away tens of millions from the funds of public universities. Indeed, there was a severe “budget shortfall” 4-5 years ago in the 4 year public colleges, and then next year came TN Promise.
Haslam then took out the six 4-year colleges from TN Board of Regents system, created boards for each of these colleges by appointing businessmen.
His final good dead in higher ed was to try to outsource campus maintenance and cleaning to the huge, private and out of state firm JLL, with which he had financial ties.
Previous news reports showed Haslam had investments with JLL and that his administration paid the company a $1 million consulting fee to study state buildings before it landed a $330 million, five-year contract to manage Tennessee’s buildings.
https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2017/mar/30/lawmakers-blast-haslam-administration-for-process-toward-jll-contract/
When the University of TN system (the other big public university system in TN) resisted outsourcing to JLL, Haslam fired its board and appointed his own board.
I think what Trump is doing is just a reflection of what’s going on all over the country.
Diane….Governnor Lee has no clue. He is being led by the snake oil salesmen he has put in his administration. BUT the buck stops with him and ignorance is no valid excuse. He is now as complicit as those that surround him. TFA/Broad Superintendent Academy alum, our new TN Commissioner of Education (prior to coming to TN she held 6 job in 3 states over 10 years….she doesn’t stay around long enough to show any obvious improvements but she has surely stirred the pot on questionable activities under her leadership). Then we have the Director of the American Federation for Children (founded by Betsy DeVos) TN branch (Tony Niknejad) who was Lee’s Policy Director during his campaign and now serves as his Policy Director in his administration. He intimidated, twisted arms and made promises to get the needed vote to pass vouchers. When the vote failed on the floor of the House the Speaker took legislators off the floor for 40 minutes until he got someone to change their vote and pass the legislation. TN is so deep in the mud.
As other states are shutting down their ASD, requiring certified teachers in the Charter schools, shutting down state Charter boards and realizing based on the latest NAEP results that Charters are not delivering as promised (in my opinion that is because the promises were based on lies) TN fights for a totally failing ASD and ignores that latest NAEP results not only nationally but at the TN state level.